Let it rain

“With a one-way ticket, no plan, no money and no time frame.”

That is the now well-rehearsed answer I’ve been giving almost every day for the last two months to the inevitable question of just how this lone South African girl ended up in this part of Tanzania. The question of why is harder to explain.

“Because I had to. Because I am a traveller. Because life is an adventure. Because I love Africa.”

But as I sat on my bed trying to dig what I assumed was a sea urchin spine out of my foot, I began to question my sanity. Waking up in a dorm full of strangers with the sounds of a city screeching at you, damp clothing from your roommate’s attempted laundry day strung around you and the fan decidedly not spinning next to you is unpleasant. Getting to the bathroom to discover there’s no water or electricity for a shower simply makes it comedic.

A friend from home was in town for a night and in lieu of a shower, he suggested that a swim would be the best way to get clean. My German roommate and I were in no state to make decisions, so a few moments later we found ourselves in thigh-deep in water crossing the veritable river that the rainy season had transformed the road into, to ask the nearest dala-dala driver if his bus was going past Coco Beach. Through our limited Swahili the driver established that he wasn’t mishearing us; we were either crazy or unaware of the inappropriate weather and did in fact want to go to the beach, so in we hopped. The bus stop was a 20 minute walk from the beach, and after only 2 minutes the rain returned with a vengeance. We rushed to a temporary shelter and stood laughing at one another. The sky wasn’t letting up; it was the kind of rain that was more of a solid waterfall than any number of individual droplets. But as we were going to the beach with the intention of getting wet, we decided there was no harm in continuing our journey. At first there were taxis slowing and hooting to offer us lifts, but as they became suspiciously quiet I stopped to take in the image we had painted. There was a mad German girl dancing through the puddles, a mad South African in hysterics, and me, ankle deep in a pothole, full-length dress dripping off my body and Cheshire cat sized grin on my face. I wouldn’t have stopped for us either.

And though we left the beach sticky and dirtier than we’d arrived, covered in bumps and scrapes from being thrown over the coral, I realised that moments like these were exactly the reason we travel.