I’m in this small rental car with Felis and we’re on
our way back to Julius and Jade’s house from Miriam’s house. It’s around 5:00
pm and we are in the city of Dar es Salaam, and it’s been a really long day for
Felis and me. We were really tired and just wanted to get back to Julius and
Jade’s to rest. As we are driving on the crowded street during rush hour, a
motorcycle tries to pass us on our right in a really tight space, causing Felis
to swerve left. All of a sudden, BOOM!
Dar es Salaam is a crazy place. I spent a whole week
in Dar (from Monday the 10th to the 17th) with Felis,
Jacob and Wilfredi, and our mission was to promote Kahawa Records (Pamoja’s
record label) by appearing on television stations and radios, talking about
Kahawa Records and the Maasai choir that Pamoja supports called the En-Kata
Choir. Felis and I were graciously hosted by Julius, a Kenyan who is a
missionary out of Canada, and his wife Jade, who is a Canadian-born missionary.
They opened up there house for us and were great hosts and I am so thankful for
their hospitality. Since Julius and Jade only had room for two people, Jacob
and Wilfredi stayed at a hotel downtown. Anyways, I was in Dar to shadow Felis,
the general manager of Kahawa Records, and take pictures as he talked to
different radio stations and television stations about the record label and his
vision for it. While we were on more of the promotion side, Jacob and Wilfredi
were on the distribution side. They were trying to distribute the En-Kata Photo
Book and the En-Kata CD and DVD to different bookstores and music stores across
Dar. It was a really awesome and successful trip because Felis was able to
appear on a national Tanzanian radio station called Clouds FM to talk about Kahawa
Records and the En-Kata Choir, as well as a local gospel television station
called Sibuka Television. The distribution side was also very successful. Jacob
and Wilfredi were able to sell several copies of the En-Kata Photo Book and the
CD’s and DVD’s to different stores around Dar. It was really cool because one
of the stores that ended up buying some of the Maasai CD’s originally told
Jacob that Maasai music would never sell in Tanzania. That really discouraged
Jacob, but God provided and the store ended up buying several CD’s, and just a
couple of days later, the store had already sold four copies! God is truly
amazing. This trip was such an awesome experience for me and I am so glad that
I went.
Now, let’s talk a little bit about Dar es Salaam the
city, and what makes it so crazy. First off, after spending a week in Dar, I
have no right to complain about crazy drivers ever again. It seems like there
are just no rules on the road in Dar and it’s pretty chaotic. Not to mention,
all of the traffic. Dar es Salaam is not technically the capital of Tanzania,
but it might as well be because pretty much everything is in Dar. This means
that the city is like a constant traffic jam. Needless to say, Felis and I
spent a lot of our time in the car trying to get to wherever we had to go. That
brings me to the beginning of the post. As we were driving, a motorcycle tried
to pass us and Felis, who was driving, had to swerve left to avoid a collision.
However, to our left was a boy on a bicycle riding down the street, and as we
swerved, our mirror collided with the boy’s bike handle causing the passenger
side mirror to shatter, and throwing the boy off the bike and into a ditch. As
we hit him, I honestly thought that there was no way the boy could be alive. We
hit him hard and he flew off of his bike into the ditch on the side of the
road. We slowed down and tried to find a place to pull over on the side of the
road to make sure that the boy was ok and as we were doing that, some random
guy came up on a bike and started yelling at us in Swahili, and telling us that
we need to check on the boy. Once we found a place to pull over, we got out of
the car and Felis calmly explained to him that we couldn’t just stop in the
middle of the road, and that we were going to check on the boy. I looked back
and saw the boy getting up and walking toward us. That in itself was such a
relief to me, but we saw that he was holding his arm weird; making us think
that he had broken it. When he got to us, we looked at his arm and saw that it
was a little scraped and bruised, but not that bad. He was tough and wasn’t
complaining at all. We drove him and the guy that was telling us to check on
him to the hospital just to make sure that he was okay, and it turned out that
he didn’t get hurt at all other than a minor abrasion, and he told that he
didn’t even need to go to the hospital. I couldn’t believe it. It was such a
God moment. I thought that the boy was going to be dead, and he didn’t even get
hurt! It was a very stressful situation, and Felis and I prayed a lot, but once
we found out the boy was okay, we were so relieved and thankful. Even though
the mirror was broken on the rental car, it could’ve been so much worse and we
were so thankful that God had control over the whole situation.
So that is just a tidbit of what Dar is like, and
have plenty more to talk about with my experiences in Dar, and my trip to Maasai
land, but those will have to come in my next couple of blog posts. Until then,
thank you so much for reading!
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