Our next committee meeting is tomorrow and this time I am ready. I am ready with wedding colours, an MC, a vehicle and a time the wedding and reception will start. I am also ready to fight for the things in which I find important.
Yesterday Bariki and I traveled to Arusha (a city over two hours away) to look at his suit. When we were in Nairobi he had showed me the colour of his suit and based our decision on wedding colours on the colour he showed me. The suit I saw yesterday was not even close to that colour. So without further ado the wedding colours are pink and cream. That’s right the tomboy Jen that you have all grown to know and love has chosen pink and cream. Is it bad to say I don’t even care? The colours could be fluorescent green and yellow and I wouldn’t care. Well maybe a little. I just want to marry the man that I love and begin our lives together with our daughter Elli.
The trip home from Arusha turned out to be an adventure in itself. Our Daladala (public transportation) was not sounding so good. Now to give you an idea of the public transportation here is hard. Picture a 14 passenger van type vehicle that only really holds 11 people comfortably. Okay now that you are picturing that put 20 people sitting down and 11 people standing. That’s right there were 31 people that I could count in this vehicle with the door closed by the way. Sometimes if there is no room inside they leave the sliding door open and 5 or 6 people stand on the ledge holding onto the door way. So 31 people and I start to hear some funny noises coming from this van. I said to myself this does not sound good. I was right a few miles later there was a giant crash that sounded like a tire blowing and we came to an abrupt stop. I think some people thought the van was on fire because suddenly total mayhem broke out. People were crawling over each other to get out. They were trying to jump out the windows. And I was in the very back wondering what in the world was happening. I think something went with the radiator because you could see a lot of liquid on the highway from when I heard to bang to when we stopped.
So down the highway we began to hike in the opposite direction we were trying to go. I didn’t understand why but it was so we were ahead of the rest of the group for when another daladala came. Some came but none going to Marangu where I live. So, on the side of the road stood me, Bariki, a friend of ours and a total stranger from the bus who maybe figured he had a better chance for a ride with the white girl trying to hitch hike back to Marangu. I Jennifer Scheetz hitch hiked in Africa for the first time in her life. Every car that passed ignored our friend that was trying to stop them. But one hand out from the white girl and the vehicle stopped. I laughed and was pretty proud of myself. So 4 people crawl into the Land cruiser and we were off again on our way home. It was fun and I will remember it for a long time.
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