Mzungu Mweyne Mjinga

It's been quite a first few days. My time here since I arrived on Thursday afternoon has been exhilarating, overwhelming, exhausting, and somewhat lonely. Right now, as I write this, I am starting to feel more comfortable in this place, and the nagging homesickness (and threat of actual sickness) seemed to have started to subside. This place is really quite different than anywhere I've ever been, and I really felt the effects of that as I adjusted to my new life for the next seven or so weeks. Let me bring you all up to speed, starting with my flight over (a day in itself!)

My journey began at 11:40 in the morning at JFK, where I boarded an Airbus A380 double decker plane (hell yeah) for the ensuing 12 hour flight. The flight was fine, except for some screaming babies which didn't help me sleep (I ended up bagging the whole sleeping plan). Here's a video of me around hour 8 (sorry if the audio is bad!) (Also sorry for the nonsensical rambling I was very tired!!).

After landing in Dubai, I walked around the airport, called my family and my girlfriend, and then ate a hamburger for either breakfast or dinner (at this point my body had no idea what time it was). My subsequent flight was painless, I caught some sleep, and then finally I landed in Dar! After waiting unreasonably long for my bag and thankfully finding a taxi that was legit, I got my first experience of Dar es Salaam. Here are some videos from the taxi:

I made it to my hotel, explored the area around my apartment (where I found my supermarket and the closest thing to American coffee I'll find here), and got settled in my room. I'm staying in the old city center, which used to be the hub of economic activity. Nowadays, the construction and money is uptown in Masaki and Oyster Bay, where primarily ex pats and the wealthy live. 

For dinner that night, I went to a local takeout place called Chef's Pride, accompanied by my friend, and hotel concierge / taxi driver Mohammed. Mohammed is hired out by the hotel to help clueless travelers like me, and having him around to drive me places at night (it's not safe to walk around by myself, or in general), show me around the city, and chat with my in Swahili has been amazing.

The next couple days were spent equally between cluelessly exploring the city by myself (which usually ends up with people trying to scam you or ask you for money), and hanging out with Mohammed, who drove me all over the city for sightseeing and food. Dar is a bit like Los Angeles; you can walk around your specific neighborhood but to get between neighborhoods requires some sort of motorized transportation, whether that means a taxi (which is expensive), pikipiki (a motorcycle), daladala (small independent buses the locals use for transit), bigger buses commissioned by the city, or boda bodas (three wheeled motorcycle cabs). Mohammed and I went to dinner a few times, went out to a bar Saturday night (where I tried my first taste of Kilimanjaro Ale - not bad!) and, just today, explored the Kariakoo market, where I picked up a few CDs. Here are some pictures from my first few days here:

I watched the world cup final from the Alliance Francaise de Dar es Salaam

My work on bongo flava has been slow, since walking out of the apartment and speaking Swahili takes up an enormous amount of brain capacity, so even thinking about arranging interviews and meeting contacts wasn't possible until my fourth day here. I've never traveled alone before, and I've never been in a place where being white and American makes you stick out quite so much. I'm slowly learning to ignore anyone who talks to me in English on the street, or anyone who calls out "Mzungu!" to me - these are the Dar es Salaam equivalents of tourist scams in Times Square, and I am, even though I don't want to be, essentially a tourist at this point. On the second night, I got quite homesick, and it's been difficult since then to be confident in my work and in me being here, but these feelings are common in one's first fieldwork journey. One thing I've realized is that English is pretty much useless in the places I want to go around the city. People here speak it, but not well, and my Swahili has exponentially improved since getting here since I'm constantly bombarded by situations where the easy way to navigate them is to speak Swahili. One woman even asked how long I had been in Tanzania for since I spoke so well - that was nice to hear (although I wonder if her expectations were extremely low because of my appearance). 

The music world here is interesting. I think the combination of a conservative government, and the fact that I think quite a few people  don't have the money to purchase either a device to stream music from or concert tickets means that the bongo flava scene here is calmer than it was five to ten years ago. I went to a CD store today and barely was able to find some old musiki wa dansi records, and I've asked Mohammed about bongo flava concerts and shows and he's told me multiple times that often, the money isn't there to support these lavish shows. My new question is - what's the future of bongo flava? Who is going to these shows? What music is prevalent here now? Where are the venues for concerts? Does this industry help support the locals, or is it something that primarily entertains and benefits ex pats?

Fieldwork and traveling alone is hard. But, after five or six days, I'm finally starting to get relatively comfortable here.