Act Two: Toilet Breeze

Continued from previous post.

When we finally managed to re-mobilize with the group of 10 guys that came to meet us at the hotel, Ninja was allegedly threatening people, and himself, with a broken bottle. All ten guys were miserable, and who can blame them.

We walked through the dirt streets of the Kariakoo market in the area to pay for the first room in the 1000 degree heat. Since the area is fairly urban, I had a naive vision of some small, quaint apartment. We wandered past the craze of the market and dodged the cars that bounced past on the roller coaster streets… and we kept walking… and walking… until we hit what felt like the end of the world. We ducked through a little “restaurant” and emerged on the other side in an area that you wouldn’t even see on the Discovery Channel. It was like someone came along and removed an entire city block, dug a pit, filled it with shit, and made the best they could out of 1000 cinder blocks and 100 sheets of corrugated metal. There was broken glass everywhere with young children playing barefoot, a stream of sewage flowing down the central alleyway, layers of garbage protruding from the hillside as if a new type of rock formation… It smelled like a enema.

I still can’t figure out what Dotto and Dotto were thinking when they decided to look there for a room. After a few minutes of browsing the area and trying to respectfully not step on some of people sleeping in the narrow passageways, we were led up some stairs to visit the Mama of the area. We got to a small platform where a group of young men stood. As if choreographed, they parted ways to reveal the mama, who was a woman of TV special report proportions, draped ungracefully through the doorway on an assortment of throw pillows. She was partially covered by a sarong but many of her components were in un-modestly splashing about. In such a tragically destitute area of an already poor country it was surreal to stumble across the largest human being I have ever seen with my own eyes. The guys walked off and left us standing there… dumbstruck and Swahililess. Nobody spoke for what felt like an extremely long time, long enough to inhale far too much of a smell somewhere between diarrhea, gasoline, and industrial degreaser. Our hosts were clearly as confused about why we were there as we were. It was one of the oddest moments of my life.

We did the quiet and walking slow version of running away screaming and hopped a dalladalla to the uswalini (low-income sprawls of housing). The rest of the day was drab in comparison but included a suicide threat via text-message from Ninja, a heated negotiation over wazungu-inflated housing prices, and a blow-up with the guys over more roommate drama.

That vacation in Zanzibar next week will be well-needed.

Edit :: It should be noted that Ninja’s threat turned out to be empty and booze-induced, and was really just his way of asking if he’d still be getting a room despite the drama.