Walk Like an African

IFAKARA, Tanzania - It’s a lazy Sunday afternoon in the small town of Ifakara. I’m 200 miles from the bustling hub of Dar es Salaam, my original internship site.  I'll be spending two weeks here. That wasn’t part of the plan, but little here is.

I’ve made plans to walk around town with Laura, an American entomologist, and Clara, a Ugandan medical researcher. My watch says it’s 3 p.m. Time to meet up, my mental iCal fires off. Let’s stick to the schedule.

The three of us set off in search of everything from fabric to rice to peanut butter. We couldn’t find these staples at the two rickety wooden produce stands inside our hospital compound. A 9-year-old boy, the son of the cook at Laura’s research site, joins our trio. My conversation with Laura sparks; surrounded by gentle sunlight and adventurous prospects, we don’t turn to check on the boy and Clara for a few minutes. When we do, they’re at least 30 paces behind.

Clara joins us at her leisure. “You Americans,” she gripes, shaking her dark head, her carefully coiffed hair streaked with magenta extensions. “Always in such a hurry, walking so fast. You need to walk like an African.”  Laura and I laugh her off, making excuses. We’ve got tall friends, we say. She’s from Washington, D.C.; I’m from Boston. We were born efficient. By American standards, we weren’t walking fast at all.

I’ve spent the past week in Ifakara waiting to work. With my supervisor sick for days on end, I’ve whiled away the hours with e-books, illegally streamed television, and drawn-out sighs. When I opened my email to discover I would have to reschedule my Kilimanjaro plans, I was red-faced in seconds. “Plans,” I mentally muttered. “Have – to – stick – to – plans!”

I’ve come to realize that I thrive on order; any number of piercings and tie-dyed shirts cannot mask my neurotic inflexibility. I’ve taken to stocking up on toilet paper here, always certain that we’re about to run out. I hang newly clean clothes on the line far before I’ve run out – what if it rains and they take two days to dry rather than one?

“You’re so independent,” everyone tells me: between a semester studying abroad in Kenya and a summer internship in Tanzania, I will be spending half of 2013 in East Africa. But I think my friend Sarah got it right: “You’re the most adventurous homebody I know.”

I yearn to see more of the world, and so far, so good. But every time I learn the virtue of flexibility while abroad, I miraculously discard it the second my plane’s wheels hit the Logan tarmac. I can’t say I’ll be any different come August, but for the next two months, I’ll try to walk like an African.