I have such bad blisters on my feet now that I desided to honour them by writing about walking. I just counted how many hours I have been walking since I got here. Approximately 45 hours in 2,5 weeks. It's not that much, but it is a lot for a person who is not used to walking everywhere. And I mean everywhere.
It takes 1 hour 15 minutes to get to my project. It is about twenty minutes walk from our house to town. The weather is seldom comfortable for walking: it is usually very hot or it is raining, as it is the rain season here now. Luckily the heaviest rains happen at night. If it has been raining, the roads are so muddy that it is impossible to walk, and then it takes even longer to get where you are going.
You can't walk as unworriedly here as you can in Finland. The obvious reason for that is that there is a constant threat of being robbed. It is quite safe when you are walking along roads where there are other people, but on quieter roads it is not that safe for white people. That's why some of the students always escort us teachers to the safer roads.
You can't just look at the amazing views while walking, because you also really have to watch your step. As I mentioned before, the roads can be muddy, which makes them slippery. I have seen so many volunteers come home with muddy legs, shoes and even muddy bums (one of the unlucky ones slipped straight into a ditch). I managed once to get my feet and flip-flops so badly covered with mud that I had to turn off into a house's yard and wash my feet and shoes there to be able to continue walking - luckily Tanzanian people are very helpful!
It is not only the mud which is making it impossible to walk without watching your step. Even in the town, where most of the roads are asphalt, there can be random holes on the road. One day I stepped one step back to give way to a daladala (a local mini bus) and stepped straight into a knee high hole, fell on my bum and got a wound on my hand. The daladala stopped and everybody in that put their heads out and started to repeat "pole sana, pole sana", which means that they are sorry. It was a nice gesture, but I really didn't need all that attention. At that moment I actually would have rather been surrounded by Finnish people who would have totally ignored me.
Mostly I have no trouble motivating myself to walk, but when I have, I just think that eventually it will be worth it; by the time I get back home, I will have sweat my ass off. ;)
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