Tanzania (part 8)

Sefu spoke English. He told me he worked for the people who owned the house and for the people who owned the boats, they were not the same people evidently. He was headed to Arusha tomorrow to meet the people who owned the boats. He kept the house for them and he kept his motorcycle in the garage. He wanted to ride me on his motorcycle. I was rather obliged since my bicycle had gotten a flat somehow during the period I had been walking it through town. In town Sefu helped get some water. We then sat and did nothing. I had told Sefu I was looking for a place to get lunch and so I thought our sitting was waiting for lunch. The village kids and came to sit and talk to me. They laughed as I tried to imitate their speech. After about half an hour we walked around some more, for apparently no reason. Sefu didn't talk to me very much. He seemed very content just to sit or walk around with me doing nothing, not talking except when I asked him questions, which I soon ran out of. I could not for the life of me figure out what was going on. Sefu took me to meet his family. They welcomed me into their reed hut and then we just stood there together. I must have said "asante sauna" (Thank you very much) 5 times just to break the silence. Then Sefu walked out, not encouraging me to follow him and I stood alone with his family. They all looked at me and I looked at the reed hut architecture. I finally just left, saying asaunte sauna over and over the whole way out. I was then confronted by a lady that my missionary friends would have said was possessed by demons. She talked to me for about 10 minutes saying something about Malaria and aids, all the while making provocative gestures towards me. People gathered around us and laughed. She asked me for a coke. It was a very strange experience. Sefu finally got impatient and told me to follow him. We got back on his bike, went back to his place, and looked at my bike with its flat tire. Two guys drove up on their motorcycles and talked to Sefu for another 1/2 hour. One of the men looked like a younger Fidel Castro. He was shorter and had a bad limp, but he had a very nice picki picki (Swahili for motor bike). He was dirty and scruffy and looked like someone that would be in a movie about South American drug wars, or the Cuban mafia.

Finally Sefu was ready to go. I told him that if he'd just tell me where to go I could probably find my way. I was tired of being led around. He insisted that he intended to take me to the food, I hoped that meant 'now'. I asked him about my bike and he said they'd fix it here and he'd bring it to me tomorrow before he left for Arusha. I left it with the Masai boy. As we rode past the next-door village that I thought he was taking me to, nearest my lodging, I asked him if we were going very far and he said no. It was dark when we finally arrived. After about half an hour of talking to people in this distant village, Sefu told me that nobody was serving chapatis and that this was because they were considered a breakfast food here. I had originally mentioned chapatis because this was the only local food I knew the name of and had wanted to emphasize the fact that I wanted local food and didn't want a pricey touristy restaurant. I winced hoping that our delay hadn't been on account of a wild breakfast chapati hunt and told him that really, anything was fine, anything at all. I figured now that it was dark I wouldn't have to worry about the sight of an unconventional dish restricting my appetite. Sepu placed an order and we went to a corner store for a coke. I noticed a woman selling cakes. Sefu said they were rice cakes. I bought two. They were sandy.

The restaurants in these villages consist of a Mama, two pots, and re-barb charcoal-burning barbeque/stove. The Mama's tend to have a specialty that they make more or less everyday, the more advanced restaurants might have a few specialties they rotate between meals. Everyone in the village seems to know who makes what and when. So for somewhere between 1 and 2 dollars you can go sit down and have a Mama warm you up a local dish of ugali (a kind of corn meal that looks like mashed potatoes, in Mozambique they call it sudza) and meat gulag, or rice and greens saturated in coconut oil, which is what we had this particular night, I think. The candle-light that flickered romantically during the course of our meal did little to illuminate the dark green mass that I was stuffing into my face with a spoon that had been borrowed from the "restaurant" down the street. I asked Sefu the name of this dish that I imagined might have been seaweed marinated in coconut oil but his response was un-pronounceable and I was too tired to request further clarification

There was only one table at our restaurant so we shared with a few other men, one of whom introduced himself in excellent English as "Wanawandoku." He said he recognized me from that morning at the resort where he had been visiting and swimming with his brother who was also staying at the resort. I then recalled that I had likewise noticed Wanawandoku that morning, though I didn't recognize him now in the dark without his orange swimming trunks. I had also noticed his brother, though I balked at their hereditary relationship, Wanawandoku being a tall, bald, broad chested, muscular man with a round face and jutting forehead and his brother being a shorter, rather scrawny rasta (rasta being the term here for a dread head) with larger eyes and a struggling goatee. Wanawandoku recanted with the admission that they were half brothers.

don't know when I first adopted my alias, but it has since become standard for me to introduce myself to strangers here in Africa as 'Jack.' Maybe it was Sefu or Hot Hot or someone before, but sometime during this trip to the coast I decided that the better reference under which I might identify while here would be Jack. The factors contributing to this altercation were primarily practical. 'Curtis' does not exactly roll off the tongue of non-english speakers, nor does it seem to fit very well in their ears, especially when attempting to nestle it in with my sometimes less-than-audible mumbling, north-west american accent. I will usually offer a number of phonetical variations before my new acquaintance feels ready to have a go at repeating the sounds out-loud himself, the result is usually something like 'kaad-teez'. But I tell them, 'Honestly, I don't even like fish.' Seriously though, even with fluent English speakers I have to carefully concentrate when enunciating my name to avoid becoming 'Chris'. Thinking about how I say my name is rather tedious and I do dislike repeating myself. While I'm on the subject I might as well admit that in my own opinion 'Curtis' is just plainly a terrible name (My apologies to any sensitive namesakes). It's like a running together of the words 'curt' and 'hiss'. There are no well-known figures bearing the name of 'Curtis', except maybe Stephen Curtis Chapman, who I only really mention for Brandon's sake, but even then it's just his middle name. In fact I have never heard of or met any admirable people sharing my name. I remember my mother once explaining that she picked the name because to her it meant 'courteous and kind'. These are not especially inspiring traits, in fact to my ear they harbor faint undertones of superficiality. In any case I have for many years wished that my parents had simply named me Jack. Jack is the perfect name in my eyes. It is a very normal, unassuming name easily pronounced in almost all languages. It has some history and infers and has an everyday guy sort of feel but is not over used like John. In fact I can only remember meeting one Jack in all my life. Oh how I wish I had been named Jack.

Anyway, after dinner Sefu lent his bike to a friend to run some errands and then 45 minutes later we got the bike back and Sefu dropped me off at Drifters. Back at the resort I introduced myself to Wanawandoku's brother who was sitting at the bar with his sponsor, a 50 something white guy from Portland named Richard. The brother called himself 'Sam.' I asked him if that was short for something and he said 'Samuel'. I asked him how he had gotten the name Samuel and his brother got Wanawandoku. Richard, who had apparently met the whole family a few days before, informed me that all the siblings had western names except Wanawandoku. Richard was a bit tight. Both Richard and Sam were very welcoming and seemed eager to share their company with me. Sam came off rather happy go lucky and spoke with an accent that sounded split between french and Jamaican, though he claimed to have lived in Tanzania all his life. Richard evinced something of a cynical exterior that acted more like a wave function in his alcohol-elevated state and often collapsed into admissions of heart-felt sympathy for the down trodden, profound declarations of absolutes, and intimate familiarity with the universal goodness of mankind. Sam and Richard liked to argue. Richard would swear and curse and call Sam all kinds of names and Sam would smile and argue back and sometimes Sam would get and offended and sometimes Richard would recant and turn to me and affirm what a good kid Sam was (Sam was 25) and how much he really liked him and how Sam really knew this and that they were just arguing but sometimes Richard would just make fun of Sam for getting offended. Richard was putting Sam through a school of tourism in Arusha. Sam was a tour guide and was hoping to become a park ranger or a manager or something once he finished his education. I don't know how they met. Richard was now visiting again and Sam was showing him the coast and his childhood home.