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I sat down, defeated, all alone in the thick of night. There was nothing around me except the wild abandon of the Tanzanian mountains cloaked in a veil of darkness. “This is a traveler’s worst nightmare,” I thought. I was stranded in rural Tanzania in the middle of the night with no way to get home. Hours earlier, I had set off for Nyabugogo Bus Station in Kigali, ready to make the trip to my petite village tucked into the lush hills of northwestern Tanzania. I had made the trip countless times. Buses routinely left every half hour to the Rusumo border, where I caught a taxi home. “Next bus: 3pm,” the bus company attended announced. “3pm?!” I cried. “That’s in three hours.” My chest tightened as I calculated the reality of reaching home today. The trip should take four hours to the border barring any breakdowns. And no one knew whether the border closed at 8pm Rwandan time or 8pm Tanzanian time. The bus finally pulled in at 3:30 pm, greeted by a mad mob pushing to board. Lost in the throng of madness, I desperately waved my ticket in the bus attendant’s face. The attendant scooted people and bags of rice around to find a makeshift seat for me, where I situated myself between two young Rwandan boys, their eyes wide as they stared at me. Angry shouts of “mzungu” reverberated as the bus departed the station. The white person had gotten the last seat. We bumped along the red dirt roads, cutting through terraced farms and banana plantations until at long last we arrived at the border. The last lights faded into the distance as I walked away from Rwanda and towards Tanzania. The two kilometer walk stretched for miles. In daylight, this walk bypassed luscious waterfalls and verdant mountains. I trudged through the jungle, cloaked in a foreboding darkness, accompanied only by the roar of the rushing river. With each step, I imagined someone lurking behind me. Finally! The outline of a tin shack—the Tanzanian border post—loomed in the distance. “Asante sana!” I exclaimed in gratitude, grabbing my stamped passport back from behind barred windows. I was almost home. I spun around to the usually bustling taxi stand to find an empty dirt field. “Where are the taxis?” my mind raced. The only building in sight was a makeshift aluminum bar dimly lit by a single bulb, from which Tanzanian men spilled out, sloshing bottles of Kilimanjaro beers. The only vehicle was a motorcycle belonging to a stout man more than a few drinks in. “Unakwenda Ngara? Dola mia moja,” he slurred. For a ripe price of $100, he offered to drive me home down unlit, unpaved roads. Not a chance. The otherwise empty street pulsed under the rhythm of Afrobeat tunes. Defeated, I walked down the single road, which quickly disappeared into the dark hills. Suddenly, lights shone into my tear-streaked face. I looked up to face a massive truck. “Where are you going? Why are you here alone this time of night?” a deep voice stopped me in my tracks. “Do you need a ride?” I blubbered my sob story, already clambering up the tall steps into the truck, my mind blank, body trembling. A prayer carpet adorned the floor. A crescent moon and star hung from the ceiling. I didn’t know what to make of these details. What had I gotten myself into? A single woman alone in a truck with three men. This was my worst travelling nightmare. Two hours passed impossibly slowly as the truck curved around mountain passes. My sweaty hands clutched onto my bag while every worst possible scenario raced through my mind. I was alone, vulnerable, and completely at the mercy of three strangers. At long last the truck began to pass familiar sights and descend into the valley where I lived. Before long, I was tumbling out of the truck onto my front porch, shaken and in awe. “Good night! And next time, don’t cross the border after dark.” The truck slowly pulled away, leaving me standing alone again. Yet now, the dark felt a little bit lighter, penetrated by the unexpected kindness of strangers.