Public Transportation

Where, oh where to start with this one. Daladala…It is a 15-passenger-van, turned into a bus. It has four sometimes five rows of seating. It has enough seats for 16 people, but here in Tanzania you don’t always need a seat! The record (we’ve seen) in these “busses” are 26 people at one time. The conductor usually has a hard time closing the door during these times, and he is left half hanging out the window. Obviously, this is the mode of transportation here, and we use daladalas every day to get to project sites, which works out for us (sorta) because they are super cheap and reliable (mostly.) There is no set time of arrival or departure, and I feel like a hitch hiker trying to flag one down to pick me up. They follow a general route, but they stop and go depending on the people getting on and off. They have this cool little nonverbal system. If you want to get off somewhere near-by, just knock on the metal twice or if you are us you can just yell the simple Swahili words that you know like “stop” or “here”. (Shu sha happa!) Most foreigners however, do not take daladalas. Unless they are really cool (like us), and they forget they are foreigners (like us). We consider ourselves cool enough to ride daladalas. When we get on the bus, the people stare and try to talk to us. Interestingly enough, there was one instance when a daladala had stalled (only like 14 times in a two minute period). A group of about 10 guys came from nowhere to push the van to a start. Volunteer Emilee Eddings was sitting by the window in the back when these men converged on the daladala, and one of the guys stuck his head in the window and said “Mambo” (basically hello). Which scared her half to death. Needless to say, she shut the window after that.

Now, the really fun part/ slightly sketchy part is the piki piki’s. Piki pikis are motorcycles that men in Africa drive around, and they will take you anywhere you want if you pay them. Some are scarier than others, but some have become our friends! There was one guy that knew Caroline really well, and he was really nice and careful. However, when you are not riding them, they get really annoying. We swear they play this game called “see how close you can get to the pedestrians on the road without hitting them” or even “let’s see how much dust we can kick up” and “let’s see how much wind we can push into their hair to make it stick in their lip gloss” (okay, that last one only applies to me.) Still, piki pikis are fun! And much better than daladalas.