This is What I am Made Of

I am rushing headfirst into oncoming traffic and my teenage self is 9,000 miles away from not only blinkers and stop signs but everything I have ever known. Dar’s air is thick, making the evening traffic headlights, by-passers and vendors seem out of focus. I am caught between exhilaration and genuine unease as our “bajaji”— a questionable hybrid between a motorcycle and a golf cart— makes jerky dives to the left and right when charging down the centre of the road progresses from risky to an inevitable crash course. Everything that I know so far about Tanzania is that it demands to be felt and is cannot be rationalized. As I grip the small side railing, zipping past the brightly clad street Mamas selling fruit on the street, and the massive Coca Cola billboards, I feel as though I have made a grave mistake.Robert Frost was wrong. I should have taken the path more traveled by, one with a well maintained path and Exit Here signs around every bend. At eighteen, I am tripping over the hidden threshold from child to adult in the most unfamiliar of environments and momentarily wish I was attending my first year of university. My thoughts rein in as I finally arrive at the restaurant. However, it looks nothing like a restaurant and more like a tacky beach themed party with decorations no one bothered to take down: universally flimsily white plastic chairs, sun-faded tiki lights and straw roofing.The nameless venue seems to also double as an Expat hangout with German, Dutch and English mingling with the official Swahili. Our server looks out of place in his jarringly white outfit, a stark contrast to the dirt floor. The menu is verbal. My crash course in Swahili is failing me so I play it safe, choosing the only protein I remember. Samaki na wali— fish and rice. A safe choice. Or so it would seem. When it arrives, the rice is like any other I have ever seen or tasted—white, fluffy, slightly sticky. The fish is like no other fish I have seen, except perhaps in the sea. An entire fish—fins, scales, eyes—is laid before me. I am equally fascinated as I am shocked. I feel that much like my wide- eyed fish, I am also wondering how I got here. I’ve got this, I keep thinking. I’m here. Although Tanzania seemed to be writing a very different story for me than I could have imagined, I thought that at least I could very well be the fearless protagonist of this story, and with that I dug into the flaky white flesh hands first, grinning that I was not in a lecture hall.