Tanzanian Drive-Thru

Last weekend (May 1-4) we were able to get away to Mwanza for a short trip. It is a 3 hour drive on all paved roads. Mwanza has many things that Musoma does not, including supplies (certain canned goods, cheese, bacon, etc.) and restaurants (Chinese, Indian and Pizza). It was a lovely trip and the weather was beautiful. We stayed at our friend Naomi's house-- check out this beautiful view of Lake Victoria!Between Mwanza and Musoma is a little area called Kiabakara. It's not quite a town-- I think it's most accurately described as a produce stand with a nearby village or 2. Local farmers stand on the side of the road and have buckets of fresh produce. The selling process was culturally stressful to us for such a long time. Then a few months ago we were traveling home from Mwanza and started to really appreciate not getting out of the car to do our produce shopping! Now it's often one of the highlights on the drive back from Mwanza. Here's how it works. First, a car or bus pulls over between the 2 speedbumps (these mark a "slow zone"). This is an invitation for all the women to approach your car (or bus as you can see above) with buckets piled high with produce. You choose what you want, bargain the price, pay and take the fruit through the window. Sounds easy, huh? It usually is. Sometimes, though, you get someone who is being really pushy about their rotten bananas and will actually put them inside your car trying to get you to buy them. Oh, another fun thing is to just tell one person what you want (ie: naomba ndizi na matango-- I'd like bananas and cucumbers). They'll call out NDIZI! or MATANGO! Then 3-4 people selling those items will run to your car so you're more likely to buy theirs. It's quite the event.
We can usually tell how we're doing on the culture stress scale by how we look at this event. If we're homesick and culture stressed, the Tanzania Drive-Thru is really overwhelming. When we're doing well, though, it's a lot of fun!

-JLR