Arrival: Hints of Warmth in the Cool Night

A Story in Which I Make a Fool of Myself in the Way New World Travelers Do, and Enjoy (Almost) Every Minute.

The plane touched down at Kilimanjaro Airport around 10 pm, or as someone informed me, 2 pm at home. We were all anxious to disembark, and slowly shuffled out the back end of the Dutch plane. As I approached the door, I took in a deep breath, filling my nose with foreign scents. I guess I hadn’t thought about the smelling part of our travels to Tanzania, because I was startled, and happily exclaimed, “I can smell Africa!”

            I took another deep breath, taking in the heady scents of unrecognized flowers, large presumably furry mammals, and the fresh night air. Air rushed towards me as I stepped onto the swaying metal staircase, and I continued to gulp down the scents of the country that I could not see.

            Disoriented from all the enormous breaths I was taking, I was hustled to immigration, amazed by the green glowing fingerprint machines, and reading all the signage, even if I didn’t understand half the words. I was surprised that the Swahili signs were also labeled clearly in English; having come prepared to be completely confused. My eyes glanced off the sign for bathrooms, but I was already firmly ensconced in the short but slow immigration line and ignored the small voice telling me to use it while I had it.

            After shuffling through the line, I went through the portal that magically declared me a legal visitor of Tanzania, and scooped up my checked bag from where it was waiting, among neat rows of luggage. We threw our bags up to the men waiting on top of the bus that would take us to Arusha, and they strapped them in. While they did that, we were welcomed by our travel guide, Don, who had arranged the whole event. After greetings, we loaded into the vehicle and laughed about the hip hop music videos on the little screen. I positioned myself right next to a window, so I could poke my nose out and smell more of the land. As we hurtled down the dirt road, on the left side, in the dark, I smelled Green, Fire, Animal, and sometimes trash. Most of all, I smelled Warm hinted in the cool breeze.

            “How long until we arrive in Arusha?” I shouted up to Don. I don’t remember if I got a straight answer, but whatever it was, it was longer than I wanted to be on the bus – I had to pee, badly.

            “Is there a bathroom anywhere near?” Don shook his head. I longingly recalled the bathrooms I passed up in the airport, and settled in to hold it for a long time.

            The whole bus ride was two or three hours. Two or three excruciating hours, as I winced at every bump in the road and contemplated peeing out the window of the moving bus, bare-bum to the night sky. When we finally arrived at Lush Gardens hotel, in Arusha, I exploded out of the bus, and danced to the front desk.

            “Where is the bathroom? Bathroom? Bathroom, please?” I asked quickly, rocking from one foot to another and jerking around to keep from emptying my bladder on the spot. A young woman with her hair in cornrows quietly showed me to a dark room that had a bathroom. I took in the room briefly as I sprinted across it, relieved to finally be able to relieve myself. As I shut the door I puzzled over the pink flip flops laid out neatly for guests.

            I left the bathroom floating in euphoria, all the adrenaline of the event sucked out of me, replaced by jelly legs and a happy smile. The room was luxuriously stocked with heavy wooden furniture. There was a wardrobe, a TV stand, a desk and chair, and gracing the center of the room, a large bed with white sheets and a white net canopy. I dismissed it quickly, knowing I wouldn’t have nearly such sumptuous accommodations. I was quite surprised to have peed in a luxury suite, and went to find my travel companions, now that the emergency had subsided.

            Our bags were already unloaded when I got out there, and the bus pulled away soon after I found my group. Claiming our belongings, we were led to our rooms, and given keys. There were two three-person rooms, two two-person rooms, and two single-person rooms. The professors each got their own rooms, and we split into groups by gender, three men, three women, two men, two women. Hannah didn’t seem too pleased to have me as a roommate, but the other women had already banded together.

            Our rooms were gorgeous, each a unique arrangement of the room I had seen before, with cool granite flooring and dim incandescent lighting. Hannah and I deposited our belongings and grabbed our cameras to go exploring, and see what kind of place our lodgings were.

            The pictures didn’t turn out great, with or without flash, but we took them anyway, happy to be outside and in a new country. The first time I stepped onto the grass, I loosened my shoes and slipped out of them, burying my feet briefly in the cool grass like plant that covered the ground, exclaiming softly, “This is my first time touching foreign soil!”

            Eventually we wandered out of the garden, and back to our room, snapping pictures of flowers and details of our accommodations as we went. Just before we turned the corner to our room, I looked up and noticed the lighting would shift from cool blue to fiery red, and snapped a photo, thinking of the play between warm and cool that the Tanzanian night had hinted at.