Our two-legged journey consisted of a visit to the village of Kwakombo where Zahra's Mom (De-Bora, as they call her) lived and worked for two years while performing research for her doctorate, the primary reason for our trip, as well as a night stay in the sort of nearby coastal city of Tanga.
Kwakombo is a four hour bus ride away from Moshi. By itself the ride wouldn't be bad, but it is made slightly more stressful by not actually knowing where exactly your destination is or what it looks like. Our pestering of the bus attendents paid off though, as they good naturedly waved us down when we reached our "stop". The bus only has scheduled stops at larger towns or villages, but they're willing to let you off along the way. As a result, we were more or less left on the side of the road with cicel fields across the street and what we believed to be the village extending to either direction.
In an interesting example of modernization, Zahra's village family actually has cell phones, despite lacking in more fundamental resources such as electricity and water. While this fact made our trip easier to arrange, it also became the source of much confusion. The conversation we had over the phone with the village teacher (walimu), who knows some english, after we got off the bus went something like this:
Zahra: Jambo! We're here!
walimu: Where are you?
Z: Here! In Kwakombo!
w: Tell the bus driver to stop at the bus station.
Z: We're off the bus. We're here.
w: Where? I'm on the road.
Z: We're on the road.
So that went on for a little while. Mixed in was us also confirming with confused onlookers that we really were in Kwakombo. Thanks to a helpful guy on a motorcycle we were eventually united, though that too involved a few mix ups.
After Chabanga, Zahra's village grandfather (babu), was delivered to us on the back of the motorcycle, the introductions began. First we met his daughter, Hemhina, then his grand-daughter (the walimu), then his wife, two more of his daughters, and many neighbors and children of indecernable relation.
Chabanga's house is one of the nicer ones in the village, from what we saw. About a dozen family members and us crowded into the largest of the few rooms in his house. Here we spent the majority of our visit eating, looking at pictures either taken by or of Zahra's mom and attempting to converse in Swahili. Most of our communication ended with Chabanga repeating "Thank you, thank you very much" in English to nothing in particular or us being offered something. These somethings included coconut, sugar cane, soda, water and eggs. The latter of these we were given as a gift to take with us, which we thought was odd, as we now had to carry around eggs which were sure to break on the bus (when we finally did make it back to Moshi we found that one of the eggs was indeed cracked, but we also learned that the eggs were all hard-boiled anyway).
Though it was a very rich experience, the visit only lasted a few hours. After a brief downpour, Chabanga and his family joined us in waiting by the side of the road and assisted us in waving down a bus to Tanga. We caught a crowded mini-bus (daladala) and two hours later arrived in the coastal city.
Tanga was a ghost town and wildly uneventful. We got seafood for dinner, which was a nice change, as the only fish in Moshi is a little suspect. We watched some football (no, not that football, just soccer) on our hotel TV (one of the great luxuries that comes with an $8 hotel room, although running water is apparently not included in that fee) and passed out before 9. We hopped an early bus out of town the next morning, and 6 uncomfortable hours later arrived back in Moshi.
Congratulations for making it to the end of this marathon post. Our visit was quite the experience and we're very excited to be able to share it. Hopefully we've succeeded in getting some of the pictures up as well.
Miss you all,
Z&M
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