Tanzanian Goddess... apparently

It felt like 45 degrees Celsius and it was humid – that was Dar es Salaam. I ran away to Zanzibarian paradise but thought it important to share my new education regarding Tanzanian men and my tactics to advert them.

Walking anywhere in Dar men came running up to Anouk and I.  In café’s and restaurants waiters have professed their undying love for me, walking into even a travel agency or a bank, security guards asked me for my name and number.

After some hits and misses these are my solutions:

#1: Say I have a boyfriend and will be meeting him shortly, this works almost never.

#2:  I explain that don’t have a phone number and I communicate only via email. Sometimes this doesn’t work because I have my phone out on the table while a waiter is asking for digits, in that case I have told them that my (awesome) boyfriend won’t like it if they called.  Once I gave the wrong number to someone but I think that the waiter didn’t believe me when he calling right away and I explained that my cell wasn’t working.

#3: Sometimes I would entertain the conversation as far as “jambo” and then switch to French and talk to Anouk thus ignoring the guy, this is normally my strategy by the end of the day when I just want to tell everyone to go to hell. When I applied this formula on my last night in Dar I turned to Anouk and in French said: “Ugh, let just talk in French, I really don’t want to talk to this fucking guy”, to which he responded in perfect French, “Oh, you speak French too!  So now tell me your name…”

#4: My Ugandan stylee strategy is also applied at the end of the day, I just reply “so sorry” to every single question.  This allows the guy to think I’m either retarded or an asshole – but the best part is I’m not being aggressive (something important to keep in mind and that Anouk never learnt – that story’s for next time)

Despite all of this in depth research and strategy manipulation I still found myself a stalker, yes the only person that I couldn’t avoid giving my phone number to called me everyday, despite me yelling at him and hanging up several time, especially at 2am – that of course would be the guy who sold me my new sim card for my phone.