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Bus window hawkers in Tanzania are very strong and very cheeky people. I will be sitting, reading my book when all of a sudden the next thing I know, one has pried open the window and stuffed a BBQd corn on the cob into my face, on the end of a long wooden stick. I turn to look at him, which is immediately taken as a sign that I’m interested, so out of no where, another five corn sellers shove their burnt corn in my face too, hoping I might choose one of theirs instead. So now, I have six bits of burnt yellow lumps wiggling in my face without me even uttering so much as a single word, and I thus try to pretend to read my book once more or say "Hapana ashante" (no thank you), hoping they will get the idea and hurriedly move on to the next window, trying to get a sale before the bus moves off.

Tanzania - Of bus hawkers and mountain life

Simon Wadsworth
2006-09-04 10:31:32

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Bus window hawkers in Tanzania are very strong and very cheeky people. I will be sitting, reading my book when all of a sudden the next thing I know, one has pried open the window and stuffed a BBQd corn on the cob into my face, on the end of a long wooden stick. I turn to look at him, which is immediately taken as a sign that I’m interested, so out of no where, another five corn sellers shove their burnt corn in my face too, hoping I might choose one of theirs instead. So now, I have six bits of burnt yellow lumps wiggling in my face without me even uttering so much as a single word, and I thus try to pretend to read my book once more or say "Hapana ashante" (no thank you), hoping they will get the idea and hurriedly move on to the next window, trying to get a sale before the bus moves off.

Others amazingly carry heavy boxes of water, nuts, crackers etc above their heads to bus window level, with just one arm, and hold them there like a statue without getting tired for 5/10minutes. But the strongest are those
The complexity of wooden planks who sell their wares attached by wires to big wooden planks, which they carry round on their heads. Sometimes, there can be ten of them crowding round the bus trying to sell you everything from makeup to Telly-tubby dolls, cheap Argos jewellery to plastic radios. It’s like the tomato sellers - five women all with a bucket of tomatoes neatly arranged in pyramid piles; you wonder how any of them make any money competing with the others, always happy when they get a sale of a couple of hundred shillings (1200Sh = $1). But I guess that’s just the point - they never make enough money.

This last week, window hawkers have been a big part of my little life, as I take a number of buses hopping south to my final destination, Dar Es Salaam. First, there was the 24hour journey from Uganda, across the equator again, through Kenya (surviving Nairobi for the last time, save my transfer flight) and south ...