Strangers

           Walking around a city for the first time is always overwhelming. If you are new to the country, do not speak the language, and are walking alone, it is difficult to lasso up fear and self-consciousness to internalize the geography or interact with people. As I wandered that morning in Dar es Salaam, stomach clenched, eyes wide, feet stumbling, I wanted more than anything to see yet remain unseen. I wished I could first be allowed to float around the neighborhood, looking into the little shops, watching the deft flips of sizzling chapatti, admire the colors of peeling buildings, patterns of chapping tarmac. I wanted to see men and women greet each other, the daily relations between customers and shopkeepers, taxi drivers and pedestrians. The passing Eastern women in silk saris, Arabic women covered fully by veils, African women wrapped in vibrant kangas... despite their various heritages, did they know each other as Tanzanians? Or were they each as strange to one another as I was?

Needless to say I was not invisible this morning, but conspicuously alien. Westerners are accustomed to a pretense of anonymity—more self-consumed with tasks and stacked thoughts, we sometimes pretend to ignore one another, and assume we too remain normal, unremarkable. I walk briskly because in Chicago that’s how confident locals (‘city-slickers’) move past awkward tourists that shuffle loudly and gawk. But here in Tanzania I can feel that my hurried gate seems unfriendly, paranoid, and alarmingly uptight—it takes me hours to notice that here locals shuffle, because calmly, there is time for everything.

         The habit of brisk walking is a sensible one to fall into when living in a western city. But where have I been for so long that the naturalness of greeting others has become utterly strange?