Adventures in Dar es Salaam and Maasailand Part II

It takes about a 10 hour bus drive to get from Arusha to Dar es Salaam, and let me tell you, that bus ride is not what I would call a fun time. Hey, at least they have TV screens inside the bus, right? Wrong… Instead of showing a nice movie or something, or just leaving the TV’s off for that matter, they decide to play a cycle of African gospel music videos over and over and over again until they’ve been engraved into your brain. These songs were in Swahili by the way, so it took a lot of repetition for me to learn the songs, and believe me, there was a lot of repetition... By the end of the 10 hour journey, I pretty much knew the songs by heart. It was kind of like a cruel and unusual punishment to experience that for 10 hours straight and I didn’t think that we were ever going to get to Dar, but finally we made it.

As I said in my previous blog post, I was in Dar to shadow a guy named Felis Mubibya, and take pictures while he promoted Kahawa Records on the radio and television. So I basically spent every minute of every day with Felis as he did his job, and I loved every minute of it. It’s impossible to describe a guy like Felis in one word, so I’m gonna give it a shot in three words: intentional, passionate and hilarious. Felis is so much more than that, but those are some key things that I feel describe his personality. He’s just so much fun to be around, and there is never a dull moment when you’re with him. Felis is Congolese, but has been living in Tanzania and Arusha for a while now. I failed to mention in my first blog post that he and his wife Lis and eight month old daughter Destiny, also live on base here at Pamoja.

You see, Felis is not only the general manager of Kahawa Records, but he is also a musician himself. He sings and has his own CD and music videos, and he’s also an accomplished drummer. Felis isn’t using his musical talents for his own personal gain, though; he’s using them to benefit the Kingdom. He has an amazing goal that he is working towards with his music. He wants his music and his teachings to impact and influence the African Christian music scene by introducing aspects such as quality video recording for music videos and biblically supported lyrics. He wants to transform the scene so that the results will reflect the Kingdom, and that’s an awesome goal to have if you ask me. And to be honest, I couldn’t think of a better person to make it happen.

Felis and I definitely had some good times in Dar that I will never forget. He introduced me to eating ugali with fish (a whole fish by the way, eyes and everything), which I now love, and showed me so many other things, like how to drive in the crazy Dar traffic, while still managing to keep me laughing. One day, we were eating some fish at an Oceanside restaurant, and some guy came up that was selling CD’s. Felis started looking through them, and pulled out the gem that was the two-disc set of Boyz II Men Hits. He of course bought the disc set, and now I’d be fine if I never heard another Boyz II Men song again. I mean we wore that CD out because most of our time in Dar was spent in the car and we had nothing else to listen to. I’m not gonna lie, it was pretty fun belting out some smooth R&B with Felis and it’s something that I will never forget.

Spending a whole week in Dar es Salaam was exhausting to put it mildly. It was hot, the traffic was horrendous and it seemed like the only time Felis and I stopped was when we went to sleep at night. Although Dar was certainly an adventure, I am so glad that I was able to go and experience the city, while learning about radio and television promotion, and I couldn’t have asked for a better person to spend it with. I was really glad that I was able to spend time with Felis and get to know him better. By the end of the week, we became pretty good buddies. We constantly gave each other a hard time and we didn’t stop laughing during the whole trip. And hey, now I have another brother in Christ, and that’s pretty awesome.

I hope to have my next blog post out within the next couple of days, and this next one will cover my experiences in Maasai land. Thank you so much for reading!