This place is crazy

3/23/10

Warning: My vegan and vegetarian friends may find this disturbing!

On Saturday, Junior took Ben and I to Monduli Ju, a Masai marketplace. Junior, a 21-year-old Tanzanian teacher at Orkeeswa, has become one of my good friends. He is probably the most hilarious person I have ever met. He has lived in Monduli his entire life, and enjoys taking Ben and I around Monduli to explore.

On the way up the mountain, we stopped at a lake. The water was milky brown. There were brightly colored butterflies everywhere. The Masai take their cows, goats, and donkeys to the lake so they can drink. Junior said that he has seen cheetahs drinking from the lake before.

The marketplace was about a 30-minute drive into the mountains outside of Monduli. On Saturdays there is a goat slaughter. We walked up a hill to where there were goat carcasses hanging up. It was like an assembly line with different stations: slaughter, head and brain removal, hide removal, disembowelment, and roasting meat over a fire. They use every part of the animal except for the excrement. We watched as they laboriously squeezed it out of the big and small intestines. They didn’t seem to mind that we were there, and I got some great photos. All the men and boys were working while the women were at the foot of the hill selling what looked like corn meal on blankets. I was not disturbed at all until they brought out a live, bleating goat to kill. I had to turn around and plug my ears. Ben and Junior watched the slaughter. When I turned around, I saw a look of complete horror on Ben’s face, and Junior was laughing hysterically at our reactions. Junior bought us some ribs that had been roasted over a fire. I had a few bites, but it tasted weird to me.Then we went back to town to play pool at Junior's favorite bar, Full Dose (They have the most hilarious bar names here: Three Way, Golden Shower, etc.). We played pool on a slanted, rough, and crinkled pool table. I was doing badly, and this kid came up to me and said, "You are very bad." We went out that night because Junior said he knew of a disco, but we never found it.

The next day, Ben and I went to Moshi, which is about three hours away from Monduli. We planned on going to a nearby waterfall in Marangu, but that never happened. We stayed in Moshi and planned on going to the waterfall in the morning, but at 7 am I got a knock on my door and it was the receptionist saying that I needed to talk to some immigration officers. I freaked out and went and got Ben. There were two very intimidating men waiting for us, and they questioned us about not having our passports with us. We thought that since we were traveling within Tanzania that we didn't need our passports. They said that it was an offense not to have our passports, and that we should "come with them." Ben and I both were extremely terrified and tried apologizing to them and explaining that we did not know. I don't know if I've ever been more scared in my life. I thought they were going to arrest us and that I would never see the light of day ever again. They were very stern, and they said they would not let us go until they looked at our passports. So, we had to call Ben's host father and he had to drive all the way to Moshi with our passports. We waited in suspense at the hotel for 5 hours because the immigration officers told us we couldn't leave. Meanwhile, a few locals and the receptionist told us that we should just leave and that the officers wouldn't follow us back to Monduli. Neither of us felt comfortable leaving because we had given them information about where we were staying. Ben's host father ended up going to the immigration office before picking us up to clear up the mess. When he picked us up and said that he had taken care of it, we were so relieved. He seemed relaxed about the whole thing and did not seem inconvenienced. He even took us out to lunch.

We found out later that the immigration officers randomly check hotels for "illegal" travelers who didn't fill out their passport information. When we got back to Monduli, we learned that a lot of fellow American volunteers had gone to that same hotel without passports and had no trouble. I guess it was just bad luck. For the next four days I plan on staying in Monduli.