Piggy in the Middle

by Anna Byrne (United Kingdom (Great Britain))

Making a local connection Tanzania

ucy was (and still is) a fitness fanatic. Just before we began our final year of university, she’d kindly invited me to her parent’s home in Tanzania (her family had moved from Cheshire to Tanzania ‘temporarily’, and five years later found themselves unable to leave). After having spent the first three days eating with the locals, island hopping, enjoying the local music, exploring the Dar es Salaam markets, and a safari roadtrip, it was pretty easy to understand how Cheshire hadn’t held its own in the home or away battle. The people, the food, and the culture were eye-opening. Only one thing had been a concern. Lucy was a total fitness fanatic. Don’t get me wrong; I love to stay active and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I secretly enjoyed the daily sports Lucy had meticulously scheduled in during our 2 month trip. I did not, however, have plans to be doing 5am workouts and I most certainly hadn’t packed any running shoes. But, Lucy had been desperate for us to go on a long run together, and tempted me in with the offer of an early morning sunset jog before the midday blaze, with the reward of fresh mangoes at the market at the end (suspiciously similar to me dragging out my friends on long walks in Yorkshire with the promise of a pint or four at the end...). What could possibly go wrong? Alarm off, glass of water downed, cold shower endured, and off we were building up to a light jog through the bright and colourful markets. I can still smell the food the locals were preparing on the streets even now. Naturally, we took a short pause to take some photos of the magical early morning buzz we found ourselves in. I must have been enjoying it all a little too much because after a steady 20 minutes jogging, I looked ahead and Lucy was nowhere to be seen. I sprinted as fast as I could (embarrassingly achieving a cheer from children on the roadside) to hopefully find her in the distance around the corner. Of course, she was nowhere to be seen. There I was alone in Lucy’s younger sister’s 2-sizes-too-small shoes. I’d learnt the numbers one to twenty in Swahili which could have, despite my dodgy accent, potentially helped some way in getting the tuk-tuk home. But by now it was heaving and realistically I wouldn’t have known where to be asked to be taken anyway. The children had by now been following me, giggling and cheering after my embarrassingly short 20 second sprint. They soon began beckoning me to the side of the street. They must have been about 10 years old, and I could see their mother holding a baby and watching over the children. They threw a ball at me, which I caught (thanks Lucy for the practice). Before I knew it I was playing piggy in the middle with a group of about fifteen children. They jumped on me trying to get piggy backs and throw me off from catching the ball. When I caught it, the surrounding market cheered. The children took my hand and showed me a makeshift brick wall with a tally on it. Finally, a sport I could earn a point in. Whilst this short unexpected connection between myself and the people around me may seem trivial compared to other moments of the trip, it was one of the happiest days. Everyone was laughing and within a matter of seconds I’d gone from a lost and unprepared girl surrounded only by strangers, to feeling part of a warm, welcoming community made up of elders, parents, friends and children. As we sat on the side of the road on the ground, passing the ball around the circle whilst watching the sun come up, I caught the view of a young mother bringing out a basket of fruit including (you guessed it) mangoes. I look back on this moment with such fondness, and I think it was the feeling that I had then, that pushes me to explore new travel adventures far from home. And yes, I did walk home without suncream in the 40 degree heat, get lost, and burn to a crisp.