The Kindness of Strangers

We've been the fortunate recipients of several small and large acts of kindness.

In Tukuyu we took a number of tours with the community tea tour program and the manager, David, went above and beyond in assisting us. He accompanied us to the market to help purchase food for lunch and make sure we weren't getting ripped off. He walked us to the bus on our last day to make sure we got decent seats on the correct bus. He called around to help us with train reservations. He just generally helped us with any and every question we might have.

The Mbeya train stationmaster did indeed call the senior conductor and rearrange some compartments so that we could ride the train together. We showed up at his office four hours before the train's scheduled arrival (six hours before the actual arrival) per his instructions and he updated us as to the status of our tickets multiple times during the day. He insisted on us keeping our bags in his office so we didn't have to lug them around the station all day. Never mind that there were hundreds of other people at the station and his job description probably doesn't include the responsibility of caring for confused American tourists who can't plan ahead. The whole thing started because we had two phone numbers to the train station and we couldn't get through to the booking agent. I expected the stationmaster would just hand us off to someone else.

Yesterday afternoon we wandered around Dar Es Salaam and decided to sample some street fruit. My brother always gets excited about eating "street meat", the unidentifiable pieces of gristle being grilled on the sidewalk, but we opted for fruit. Men bicycled by with baskets full of mangos, pineapple that they will slice up on the spot, and coconuts. The top of the coconut is cut off and then handed to you to drink the water spilling out from inside. Then you hand back the empty coconut and the vendor scrapes all the soft flesh off the inside and hands it back for you to eat. In the midst of this process a Tanzanian businessman came up, drank two coconuts in rapid succession, made some friendly small talk, and paid for our coconut as well as his own. It was a simple, unwarranted, but much appreciated gesture.

Certainly we receive different treatment because we're white and obviously tourists. Which is somewhat unfortunate because we're not looking for special status but it's just part of the territory. None of these instances were forced, they were just people being friendly and helping us.

I offer this blog as a response to all the times we complain about annoying street touts, vendors trying to charge us double the going rate for a given item, and all the other various gripes when traveling.