Bajajs no longer seem as crazy as they used to be. They are the quickest way of getting from one place to another as they can avoid traffic. Traffic is a huge deal in Dar Es Salaam. There's not surprise though if you live in a 4.5 million people city where the main road is two lanes each way. It usually starts around 3 and does not stop until 9-10 in the evening. People here are in constant traffic.

Marcelo (my Italian roommate) and I had to take an evening Dala Dala back to our intern house which is about 20mins away from the other house. We left at around 9 PM with our Tanzanian friend Philemon, but as it was getting late he had to go home so he couldn't take the bus with us. So we were standing at the bus stop, waiting for our dala dala. Got on. Remember I was telling you about the best drivers here? Scratch that. The driver was desperately trying to avoid the traffic so he used a side road to overtake cars stuck in a jam. As he was trying to get back on the road, his assumption that another dala dala would let him in was too optimistic. We hit the bus... So here we are, 9PM, dark as hell, just Marcelo and myself, two mzungu (swahili for white people) in a bus full of locals. Soon after this we realised that we're not going any further and we had to get off the bus... Luckily, we met a guy who spoke English and walked with us for about 15mins. 'Don't take out your phone now, it's a pretty rough area'. Another 15mins we had to walk by ourselves. I'm not saying I was completely relaxed but I wasn't very stressed. Maybe a bit anxious. I was actually quite enjoying it. As we were getting close to our house some guy approached me and grabbed my hand. For a fraction of a second I considered all the possible choices - run, scream, fight back? I pushed him away and as he called my name I realised it was our friend Felix, who came to pick us up. Uff. That was a long walk.