you know you’re in tanzania when...

hi friends, wanted to let everyone know we’re leaving for a maasai village tomorrow. we will be bringing tons of supplies and meds and spending four days running a clinic with two other students (one nursing and one still in college) and dr. lace. the village is very large and we’re going to be extremely busy as they usually only get medical care when we come. it should be a very interesting experience and I’ll do my best to catch up with the blogging once I’m back. we’ll have no electricity or anything while we’re there, so look for an update maybe by next week. wish us luck! this will be an experience for certain… I just hope they’re joking about eating goat testicles… miss you all!!


we’ve been here almost a month and trust me, this is a long overdue blog. it is my, you know you’re in tanzania when, blog. i'll add more when i have time... so here it goes:

you know you are in tanzania when:

-every price is negotiable and anything & everything is for sale.

-all locals stop what they’re doing when you walk down the street and the word “mzungu” follows you wherever you go. (I find this particularly odd because there are so many white people in arusha, im not exactly sure what the novelty is).

-grasshoppers are in your “sterile” operating room, always.

-a feeding tube can double as a foley catheter.

-milk tastes like it just came out of the cow… because it did.

-condoms and gloves make great bargaining tools.

-everything is fried in oil. everything.

-it is socially acceptable to answer your cell phone in any situation. cell phone etiquette does not exist and whether you’re in the middle of an important meeting, the doctor is rounding on your sick child, or you are doing a pelvic exam, if that phone rings you will let it play, (to enjoy your ring tone of course), and then answer it, no matter what, vaginal fluid on your glove and all.

-you feel a need to edit your will before crossing the street.

-being asian excludes you from having a US citizenship.

-a crosswalk is not a place to yield to pedestrians, it is a way of concentrating people so it’s easier to hit them – 5 points each?

-pens = extremely valuable and cherished.

-strangers will take your hand when you cross the street if you look particularly incompetent.

-food is served randomly, but consistently randomly, at restaurants. appetizers will come out last, main dishes will be brought to half the group and 20 minutes later the rest will get their food… customer service, what’s that?
-kids you just met think it is perfectly appropriate to take your hand as they walk down the street with you.

-everyone loves chelsea (the futbol team)

-you place your child on the laps of strangers when you’re on the dala dala

-carrying a purse around, carrying a live chicken around, both are equally socially acceptable.

That’s all for now but there’s much more to come!! t.i.a. :)

a few to add... you know you're in tanzania when:

-mosquito hunting is a sport. my tag line in arusha: fighting malaria, one mosquito at a time (that said, in the bush flies are much more of an issue, and quite a bit more difficult to kill. assuming my doxy works, I’d take a mosquito over a fly any day).

-you know to avoid bridges early in the morning, at dusk, any time it’s dark, and usually on sundays. you’re not exactly why but everyone has warned you about this and there are police at the bridges, so you don’t push your luck.

-you know several people, and they know several people, who have been robbed or mugged here in arusha (that’s comforting)

-it is not usually to see a truck with 20+ people standing in the back.

-men riding in the bed of a truck frequently wear hospital masks (if that’s any indication of the level of pollution here, just please take a deep breath of clean oregon air and appreciate it for me, because my lungs are dying here).

-no matter the day or time, there’s always a special price for you: special sunday price, special morning price, special rafiki price and on and on forever.

-you get called dada by the local women, and you’re no longer considering that they think you’re someone’s father, it means ‘sister’ in swahili.

-hand sanitizer and a little toilet paper accompany you everywhere you go.

-your boogers, you fear, are indefinitely brown.

-clothes need to be shaken very well before you bring them in from hanging dry. something about the detergent, just attracts the huge grasshoppers – awesome

-as a greeting, you bow your head to an elder so that they can touch it.

-you can do pretty much any activity to the light of a headlamp.

-the only two faces worth printing on khangas are obama’s and michael jackson’s.

-you do not find it unusual when two grown men walk down the street hand in hand. yes, we’d consider that a statement of homosexuality in the statues, here it is merely a sign of friendship.

-waving your arm around too close to the road can lead to a “freak accident” aka dr. ishmael breaking is arm on a car during his moring walk.

-there is a single porsche cayenne, red, and it goes 90+ mph no matter what road it’s on. see it and get far out of the way.

-you can fake your way through an entire swahili conversation using only three words: poa, sawa, and nzuri.

-everyone loves bob marley, and his music plays most everywhere you go. that or celine dion or michael jackson. they loovvvee sappy music here.

-you know to hold a rock in your hand when you’re let through the hostel gate late at night. the dogs are used to the guards chucking rocks at them, so if you want to be left alone, show those dogs the rock in your hand.

-a khanga has 731 different uses, probably twice that, but 731 is just the number of things I’ve actually seen it used for.

-everyone loves obama as much as you :)

-headwraps (which we think make us look like cancer patients) actually make for a great way to blend. Oddly enough you are 5 times less likely to be talked to when wearing a headwrap then when not…

-it is not unusual when driving to point out the window and exclaim “carcass” or “rib” or “skull” or some other type of animal remains.

-there’s no such thing as dark chocolate. terrib, I know.

-your taxi driver is most likely some local who got board and decided to make a few extra shillings driving mzungus around.

-it’s no problem is a phrase used regardless of the size of the problem.