Mwanza

I realize I’m almost a week slow on these blog posts, but I don’t imagine it should make too much of a difference so I won’t be getting any more prompt, probably.

Saturday morning, we intended to get an early start for the trek down to Mwanza and, although not the 6am departure my mother had initially been aiming for, it was still pretty early when we were leaving Musoma in Robi’s blue Land Cruiser. It’s a three-hour drive and the road, while pretty good by Tanzanian road standards, has sections in which there are many holes, not to mention the bikers carrying all manner of things that must be avoided. Luckily there are not that many other vehicles on the road but I am sure the driving experience is still a bit stressful so I don’t envy my mother for having to drive the whole thing since I don’t have my Tanzanian driver’s license.

Well we arrived in Mwanza and luckily the store we were looking for to buy the oven was right off the main street because otherwise we would have had to stop and ask directions. We park, pay the woman with the bright vest 500 shillings and go into the store. Pretty uneventful there: buy the stove, pay for it, talk to the shop owner about selling the solar lights and solar phone chargers – he’s interested in the chargers but already has the lights. We talk with him a bit and he tells us to pull up in front of the store – putting the oven in the car wouldn’t take long enough for them to chain the car something that, he warns us, happens if you’re parked illegally even if you don’t know it. So I wait while my mom tries to go around the block to pull up in front of the store but actually ends up going around half the city and pulling up in front of the store. We load up the oven in the back, and then, though we aren’t actually parked, my mom runs back to the other store right here, Zara Solar to see if they’re interested in the solar chargers. In the meantime, the truck that had been unloading in front of us finishes and drives off, leaving us obviously not legally parked whereas before it was not nearly so obvious.

Although my mom had only been away from the car for one minute, a man comes up and begins chaining a boot on the car. At first I don’t recognize him as a parking cop in his dark blue jumpsuit when he approaches the car, but then I see what he’s doing. I tell him we aren’t actually parked here and when he asks for the driver, I run to get my mom, 20 feet away, who quickly picks up the charger and runs back to the car. She hops in and starts the engine but it is too late – the boot is on the wheel and, they warn her, will ruin the tire if you try to move. She pleads with them at first nicely, then desperately, then angrily but ends up having to pay the 50,000 shilling (currently ~$39 at 1300/= per USD) parking ticket.

This is especially unfortunate because we were running low on shillings already. At first I am worried that she would let that one parking ticket ruin her day, but after a nice lunch at a nice hotel (for wazungu apparently, because everyone eating there seemed to be) right on Lake Victoria, her mood was much improved and we began looking for fabrics and the other things that my mom had in mind to buy to make life here a bit more like life in the US.

First: store with many kitchen things conveniently across the street from our parking spot. We buy knives and a cutting board. Second: main street looking for fabric stores. Some of them appear to be closed but we find one that is open and look through the fabrics piled on the tables and the shelves spanning the walls from floor to ceiling. I buy one 12m piece with puzzle designs. Back to the car. Grocery store to get some things we can’t get in Musoma – even at Kotra (my mom rightly equates it to a 7-11 in the US, but it is the best supermarket here in Musoma and the only place to buy cheese and butter). Next stop, the bank: we are down to 15,000 shillings between us.

Our wallets thus replenished, we head to the market, which is quite a bit larger and yet more tightly packed that Musoma’s. Last year when we visited Mwanza, we missed the market, seeing only the bus station on the edge of it, but this time we wend our way through the food stands among the throng people buying and selling pretty much everything. Past the area where all the food is sold, the crowds are less dense and we look at a couple of piles of fabric in front of the shops. One man has good taste in fabric (they must choose which of the large pieces to buy and cut them up to 4m to sell them) and we buy four different designs from him – I choose three for the pants and my mom chooses one for herself. We continue down through the market, past the strangest assortment of things – much of it of the cheap Chinese variety of almost everything here. Peeler and cheese grater are checked off the list. We also get some silverware that is much nicer than the cheap Chinese set we have at home that is not holding up to any use at all. It isn’t yet four and we’ve fulfilled all of that for which we had come to Mwanza. We walk back to the car, silverware clinking in the bag, and depart for Musoma.

We arrive back in Musoma shortly after the sun has set, which means that the last few speed bumps were not fun. It had rained a little bit toward the end of the drive back but it isn’t raining now. We decide to take advantage of having the car to go to dinner at Tembo beach, a hotel/campsite/restaurant right on Lake Victoria. We are sitting down at a table outside when I notice by her accent and the silhouette of her profile against the lake that ahead of us is definitely Claudia, one of the other students at the school who had finished her 5-week course the day before. She’s sitting with Father Makarios, or Mak for short, another student at the school and we join them.

They’re both very fun and it is a good dinner, which we eat inside due to the rain that approached, complete with lightning, before dinner. We talk about the African experience in general, Claudia’s work around an hour away and Mak’s in Nairobi, we also discuss classes some, and Mak makes jokes about some of the other students. His favorite target is Melodie, the other Unitedstatesian student – a loud woman from Arkansas. After the after-dinner whiskey that Claudia ordered, we all head back to Mak’s room at the language school because we were giving him a ride anyhow, although it was a tight fit for Claudia in the back with the oven. We hang out there for a while and Father Mak (Be careful, or he’ll send you to room 18, Melodie’s room) pours some more whiskey for everyone, that’s one of those things you can only get at Kotra.

And we head home.