All things considered, it's probably safe to say this summer has seen more action than the rest of my post-puberty existence combined. And while females have featured not insignificantly in the experience because I am down with black girls of every single culture, my time in Tanzania has been different for the main reason that more of it has been spent living than reflecting. I've always thought that a truly meaningful inhabitance of Planet Earth - where human beings find it worth their while to search for truth, to be generous and selfless despite the blow to their survival fitness, and to attach some moral weight to cuddling after sex (which encompasses the first two items, by the way) - is a fine balance of the two. But the circumstances were a bit different this time around. I was halfway around the world from the place I call home, and the only way to do this incredible opportunity justice was to indulge in the sensory cosmogramma that may not come again. So now seems like the right time to retrieve some memories from the backburner and give them a nice, slow roast. Juices be dripping, brah.
Perhaps the most logical place to start is my home. Every morning, I awake from my mefloquine-immune REM slumber neatly tucked in a beautifully embroidered golden blanket like a kangaroo joey. The gold is a nice touch because the bed sheet is light salmon and the wooden headboard deep mahogany so if you throw in my temporarily burnished complexion, you probably have enough permutations on the painter's palette to finish at least one section of the Serengeti plains. The gold is also nice because it shimmers on the white marble tiles and then diffuses toward the ceiling, giving the appearance that the room is well lit even at dawn.
My room is one of four bedrooms that opens into a narrow corridor, interrupted for a brief stretch by a cavity holding the washing machine and drying board. The amount of light in the corridor is never the same at any given moment, depending on the amount of light received by the outside world and transmitted through each bedroom between the curtains, as well as its interplay with the blanket's gold. The bathroom is the only other repository on the second floor, and always full of surprises, since I have shared it with rotating rosters of two or three guests that have never included a male. So my Irish Spring soap and Head &Shoulders 2-in-1 Shampoo & Conditioner are mere pawns in an impressive procession of bath and hygiene products, and despite my pride in simplicity, I must confess that the names, packaging, and scents of this collection are damn creative, if not downright seductive. But what's more curious, perhaps, is that the site, after a female has showered, seems to retain some of her vital essence such that any combination of these artificial scents is always enveloped in a thin veneer of raw freshness reminiscent of a spring brook. Another discovery worth sharing is that the straightener and curler are in fact real devices.
Whether it's the frequency of use, the slowness of morning light to trickle through the windows in the first floor, or the difference between stone and marble, the white winding staircase down to the first floor does not have the same immaculate or bright character as the tiles in my bedroom. But this is usually the optimal site for sightings of small geckos that often match the white of walls and steps. As is customary of creatures in developing countries, these little buggers have remarkable footspeeds and athleticism and may or may not have secret parachutes hidden in their underbelly. A short left turn after the descent brings me to the mouth of the kitchen, which, I'm ashamed to say, really gets no love from me. The microwave has done a lot of heating take-away lunches on my behalf, and the refrigerator has been great about preserving my bananas but I leave the oven and cutting board to the residents with two X chromosomes. The living room, which leaks out to meet the hallway, is well-furnished with two comfortable opposing couches, a one-seater that directly faces a flat-screen Samsung TV, and a coffee table with a curious fiction collection headlined by Tom Wolfe and Jhumpa Lahiri, which, if you connect the obvious dots, says many Indian immigrants go on to study at prestigious schools and are now more sexually active.
Once I go out the main door, I waddle through a kind of stone garden until the security guard at the gate asks about my morning or sleep in Swahili. Sometimes he engages me in a longer conversation during which he will drop some not so subtle hints about the little salary he is getting and little food he's had in the last 24 hours. I have always considered stinginess one of my worst moral failures, and my conduct in Tanzania has done nothing to prove otherwise. After a few instances of coughing up some change and buying cheap bread for him from the supermarket, I started to ignore his requests. The truth is that despite where I stand and all that I have in my current position of life, and despite my full cognizance of the fact that others, through no fault of their own, are much worse off than I am, I still can't shake off memories of the daily sacrifices my parents made to get me here. Not yet.
The walk to my workplace is otherwise benign and even quite pleasant. The lushness that sets Tanzania apart from many of its African neighbors is apparent even in Dar es Salaam, the country's ultra-crowded urban center. Every morning I pass by probably a few dozen species of trees planted along sides of the road and outside houses, some of which are so random in character and distribution that I am convinced if there were ever a Noah called upon to preserve two of each flora and fauna, he must have been a Tanzanian. Coconut trees and other tropical vegetation with broad fronds fight for sunlight against flowering trees and thick-waisted behemoths with overhanging canopy, the latter of which is particularly useful for hiding litter (I have yet to see a public trash can in Tanzania) and underground sewage lines. My favorite tree, though, is this wooly spool of wrinkly leaves wrapped around a thin trunk - when it sways in the wind, it reminds me of those tree monsters from fantasy movies.
As you can probably infer from my earlier description of the guesthouse, the neighborhood where I reside is not like most in Tanzania, or even Dar es Salaam. High-rise apartments and lavish private homes are dwarfed by sprawling arrangements of run-down concrete block houses around the city, many that lack running water, electricity, and sanitary facilities. And though the guesthouse has been paid for and arranged by Harvard, it's an awkward position that I find myself, to count myself an advocate for social justice and human dignity while living the lifestyle of many who undermine them.
But for the hard-working Tanzanian folks who are building the to-be apartments and private homes in my neighborhood? A few poorly pronounced overtures in Swahili from my end have been enough for them to welcome me as a member of their community. Every morning when I approach the dozen or so workers eating breakfast in front of the skeleton of "Swiss Towers", I become nuthin but a G thang as I gratefully receive high-fives, handshakes, and fist bumps. I return their "Habari" with "Nzuri", "Mambo" with "Poa," and soon I will have already rounded the bend in the road, where James the security guard and Samuel the shoe polisher will get up from under their parasol to shake my hand and ask how I slept. The Swahili phrase that won them over, though? Weka mikono juu - Put your hands in the air.
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