Hey Mzungu! Mchumba! Mpenzi!

In Australia, it's not so unbelievable that I am 30 and not married, or that I am 30 and no one has yet asked me to marry them (I mean in the non-joking sense). But in Tanzania it appears to be a concept as ridiculous as not supporting a soka team. I have been here since 4pm Sunday afternoon and I have been into Dar itself exactly once, and so far the marriage proposal tally stands at six. Yes, six. And it doesn't seem to matter to any wanamume if they are married already. Everyone wants to be my mchumba (fiance) or my mpenzi (lover). So, apparently it never rains but it pours, and if marriage is what I want, I should have moved to East Africa a long time ago.

Aside from the abundance of potential wachumba, I am having a wonderful time in Dar as we prepare madly for our dispatches to different parts of the country on Saturday. I'm here with Emma (Scotland) Rachel (England) and Lauren (Australia by way of England) and the three of them are going to Mwanza on Saturday while I head off to Tabora to meet the three vols who have already been there for six weeks. As you can imagine it's slightly daunting to imagine arriving in Tabora alone (arriving in Dar with Emma - we met in Dubai airport - was daunting enough) but I'm sure everything will be fine once I get there. Right now I'm enjoying the very Isaac Dinisen experience of sleeping under a mosquito net and being slightly worried about the vicious Napalm/Hiroshima effect that the required nightly insect room-spray appears to have on any and every living thing in our room... if it annihilates millipedes in a tenth of second, what might it be doing to me? Si kitu.... karibou Afrika...

After spending exactly 90 minutes in Dar yesterday I am actually incredibly glad I will be in a relatively small town - Dar is completely maniacal with a strange sense of normality and modernity, but I can't imagine being able to walk around alone. There are people absolutely everywhere and the traffic-pedestrian relationship is as bad as anything I've ever experienced, but every second shop sells cell phones and many signs are in English. The country was socialist until fairly recently and you can see both the signs of socialism and the signs of development - as in, NONE of the streets are paved, even in the middle of the city, but there's some extremely cool-sounding swahili hip-hop on the airwaves. We were taken into town yesterday by Loyce our swahili teacher, crammed into the back of a daladala with 19 other people (yes, that made 24 people in the back of a minivan - I counted) and it was lucky the van was so crowded I couldn't see out the front or I may have converted to Christianity on the spot in order to save my soul. Once in town, Loyce took us through the markets but became quite worried about having to take care of all four wazunga women and began muttering darkly about men who would chop off our hands to get to our bags. Needless to say that had a sobering effect on the shopping mood and we tended to stay out of one particular food market (which still rate amongst my favourite travel atractions, no matter where I am in the world) where Loyce felt the pickpocketing vibe.

Despite her premonition, my initial perception of Tanzanians is that they are incredibly warm, good-natured, kind to and patient with wazungu. No one's in a hurry here and everyone wants to help - and all the proposals and cat calls and shouts of "hey mzungu!" are all in good fun. During our "cultural do's and don'ts" lesson (OMIans take note!) it was stressed how important it is to dress modestly and do as the locals do - Loyce explained that there's one rule of acceptance and indulgence for watalii (tourists) but quite another for volunteers who are coming into the country and teaching (read: influencing) the children. I like that pride and I hope I can get through the next 10 weeks without offending anyone too badly (swearing is a real no-no here .... I may as well give up right now....). Overhwlemingly, I think it is the language that will provide the biggest source of frustration but at least I don't have any trouble whatsoever with the pronounciation - some people really struggle with that whereas it's understanding kiswahili speakers themselves that is the problem for me. Sure I might be able to string a sentence together, but what does that mean if I can't understand their replies?!

I've decided that email and cell phones are both a blessing and a curse because I can stay in touch with people so much easier but this makes me miss everyone more! I'll post this now in case the electricity conks out and I lose everything... hopefully will get a chance to load some pictures and update again before heading to Tabora at the crack of dawn on Saturday (the morning after we are, rumour has it, being taken out dancing.... yikes).

More again soon....