A typical form of public transport in Tanzania is the dala-dala. Dala-dala are minibuses and are very popular because they are cheap compared to other means of transport such as boda-boda (motorbikes), bajaji (autoritscha) or Uber. It is a rule, that a dala-dala only leaves when all seats are occupied and also when it‘s filled with standing passengers. In Dar es Salaam, these minibuses squeeze through the crowded streets with all the traffic. While the Dereva, driver, stays in the right lane in the left-hand traffic, the Conda, conductor, shouts to the people standing nearby the road where the Dala Dala is going and thus asks them to get in. He backs up his shouting by banging on the door. Sometime he goes through the bus and holds out his hand to get the ticket money from the passagers. Sometimes not only people are transported in a dala dala, but also objects. In Lushoto, for example, there was a whole bunch of bananas in a dala dala and once I saw a live chicken sitting under one man‘s seat.
On the way to the host family, we sat in a Dala Dala, whose windows were decorated with the German football player Mesut Özil. From our seat in the last row, I could observe a woman with her 5 children. The children were estimated to be between 9 months and 8 years old. They shared only three seats between the six oft them and because they had such a little space, you could see, that were uncomfortable. When the dala dala made a other stop and got filled with even more people man on their left noticed their unfortunate situation. He offered to take the little one and give him a little place to sleep up to his stop. Gratefully the mother took this offer. The mum could concentrade on the other two small ones and they had enough space to sit comfortabelly fort he rest of the ride. The little one slept through all of it.
That shows a person, who cares, doesn’t always wait for someone to ask for help but rather offers them.
written by Johanna Jansing