Village Museum

Waiting for a Dala Dala

Dala Dala!

Our Spacious Dala Dala

African Drummers

African Dancers

Zoe's Indedible Oxtail Soup

So I just wrote this awesome post about today, and then the internet decided it didn't want to work. lame.  I will attempt to recreate it now.  Today we went to the Village Museum downtown.  I thought I would give you a chronicle of our dala dala adventure to get to the museum since I keep talking about dala dala's but you have yet to see a real one!  There are several dala dala stops at the university, and you wait by a stop until a dala dala passes by and you can hop on.  The dala dala's have the names of two cities written on the front of them.  Basically, the dala dala goes back and forth between the two cities dropping people off and picking them up.  All you have to know is the correct side of the street to stand on and the name of the town that you are going to and you are golden!  Once you hop on, you hope that there will be a seat (we are often crammed into a dala dala and have to stand because there aren't any seats left).  We have fit upwards of 30 people on a single dala dala!  Typically, the dala dala's are the size of a short school bus, but they do vary.  They are usually run by two Tanzanians: one who is the driver and one who is the conductor/money man.  The money man comes and shakes his handful of coins in your face when he needs you to pay (typically it costs about 20 cents) and then stops the driver when you yell "shusha (shoosha)" - stop - to get off.  And alas you can breathe B.O. and exhaust free air!  One thing I've learned about Tanzanians while riding in dala dala's: I don't think they believe in using deodorant. 
Anyway, back to the point.  Today we went to the Village Museum which was basically an outdoor exhibit of the Tanzanian tribes and their lifestyles.  We wandered around looking at the various mud and straw huts and reading about the different tribes in Tanzania.  Afterwords, we shopped at the market outside the museum and I got some souveneirs (I won't spoil the surprise by telling you what they are!) but also got a coin purse ($1.50) and three postcards ($1 each) for myself.  For lunch we had...well...let's just say it was interesting.  The menu consisted of tongue soup, intestine soup, joint soup, tail soup, and gizzard (among other things).  The only slightly normal thing there was chicken and chips (french fries), which is what I ended up getting.  The tail soup was extremely gross and I almost gagged watching Zoe try to eat it.  It consisted of chuncks of lard and bone in soup broth.  And the joint soup was interesting too, although I didn't try it.  Let's just say that that lunch made us all appreciate the cafeteria food here in the dorm.  The rest of the day was spent doing homework and practicing Swahili and catching up on my internet.  It's so hard to stay in touch when you don't have  a working computer!  I hope you all have a wonderful day back in the states (or wherever else you are).  Talk to you later!
Erin