The beauty of no breathing room...

While packed into yet another sweltering, over-crowded daladala the other day, I began to realize that in Tanzania, you learn very quickly how to discern good touching from bad touching. Sounds silly, but bear with me on this line of thought... For example, this morning, some guy in the bus definitely tapped me on the rear, and seeing as my body was in a contorted position inside the daladala – halfway laying across people who were sitting in seats while my lower half stayed stationed as best it could near the front door but still two bodies away from my line of vision – I could feel this tapping on my butt and momentarily contemplated kicking my foot back. But I then understood that the tap meant my caboose was blocking this guy's entry or exit from the van, which was quite fortunate for him because had this been any other setting, I'd have turned back and taught him never to disrespect a lady in such a way ever again. But seeing the action was made with honest intentions, no harm done.

So like I said, you learn quickly how to discern good touch from bad touch. You just have to because there is no way to satisfy our foreign sensitivity for any notion of personal space – it simply does not exist here. No matter where you are, you always seem to end up touching people somehow because of crowds, compact market rows and people's cultural characteristic of being very friendly and communal, leaving you with what us Westerners would call “breathing room.”

At first, all the handshaking and shoulder-to-shoulder cramming and hugging and overall touching made me very uncomfortable because I'm just not the touchy-feely type, especially with strangers! But I got over it (or rather got used to it) quickly and am growing to almost appreciate the physical contact, the squishing in beside people, the packing shoulder-to-shoulder, the shop ladies taking you by the hand to show you every last knick-knack in their store that she's willing to make a deal “just for you, good morning price!” It's a sort of comfort, feeling all the sweaty bodies who are also sharing with you in the experiences going on around you, making the moment a tangible event rather than leaving you isolated and lost in your solitary thoughts.

The contact relaxes me by making the moment so much less surreal, but it also makes me much more alert, aware of my immediate surroundings and precautions I must take to stay safe. In short, commutes suddenly also become part of the experience rather than a transitory state while the scenes passing outside the window at warp speed (literally, I told you they're crazy drivers here) put me in a trance. It teaches me that you can't always ask for and certainly cannot always get space and isolation but rather just suck it up which, as an introvert, has taught me so many new and good lessons I never foresaw learning during my time here. “Surprise! Love, Tanzania.”