Dala diaries

Riding on the dala dala is always eventful. If not the dripping sweat, sardine-like cramming type of eventful, then it’s the interesting cultural difference type of eventful. Here’s a few recent little surprises:

– someone just plopped their baby on my lap. According to my friends, this is quite common. People just trust you with their babies when the bus gets too crowded. Plus, everyone needs at least two hands, if not three, to hang on tight when there’s a crazy driver.

– people also plop their belongings on your lap. I guess if they can trust you with their babies, they can trust you with their belongings. I’ve also had people offer to take my bags when the dala gets crowded. Nothing has ever happened with any of my belongings. Apparently people just don’t steal on a dala (people on the street, however, often reach in through the windows when there’s a traffic jam; no texting in a traffic jam if you sit next to a window!). I guess mob justice can happen pretty badly in an enclosed space.

– for some reason, I often have lots of 50 Tsh coins (the smallest denomination). Conductors (there are two people who run a dala, the driver and the conductor who collects money and shouts out destination names/stuffs people into the dala) love changing money with me. Walking along dala routes, you would find tables with stacks of small coins. Apparently it’s quite a business, finding 50 Tsh coins and exchanging it with dala conductors.

– one time, a dala dala conductor had to jump off for a while (I’m assuming he really had to go to pee). People started getting off left, right, and centre (probably those who hadn’t pay). The other passengers actually jumped out and stopped some of them, saying something to the extent that you haven’t paid! Then even asked the driver to come off and get money from these people. But no one seemed ashamed at anything. As an aside, I find that here sometimes, people would tell you that you just paid 12,000 instead of 15,000, when you are sure you paid 15,000. When you tell them you don’t owe them anything, they don’t have any small facial expression of shame (as I would imagine at home, anybody would) that you had just caught them trying to cheat you. I’m not sure if this only happens to foreigners…

– music is always on in a daladala. Most likely very loudly. Though apparently not as loud as in South Africa.

– most of the daladalas are imported Japanese used school/hospital mini-buses. Some Hong Kong minibuses too (very nostalgic if I run into one). There smaller dalas that look like the school buses I rode when I was in primary school in HK. I keep thinking one day I’ll actually see one with a HK school name painted on it.