The Scents Memories are Made of

          While in the midst of selling household items and packing up my belongings, I have begun reflecting over my time spent in Tanzania. What will I miss? What will I remember? I frequently find myself around town experiencing some bit of local culture and trying to commit it to memory so I don’t forget these daily rituals. What are the sounds, the smells, the emotions, the textures, and the tastes, all of those things that are impossible to capture trough the lens of the camera? How will I feel when I begin to forget these things?

          I know that these intense emotions associated with the defining characteristics of this culture will slowly fade from my memory. This is one of the reasons I started this blog; it is a written memory for me, a way to cherish and look back on the time I have spent here. I now feel a certain sense of urgency to categorize and claim as many of these memories as I can. Today I continue by filing away a few of these memories and I invite you to share them with me.

          Upon any re-arrival into Dar after being away, I look out the plane window as I descend upon the small airport on the outskirts of town. The tilted, decrepit homes made out of whatever metal can be found all look the same, with rusted walls and roofs that match the bronze and red of the clay on which they attempt to stand. Property lines do not exist; they are jammed next to one another insinuating no regard to planning or organization. Amidst these homes and the deficit of resources they possess stand the stately, majestic palm trees, swaying in the breeze in their tall, polished form. This view is the first of many reminders that I am once again in the tropics.

          As one walks off of the plane and leaves the processed, circulated air of machines and chemicals, another such reminder seizes the new arrival: the smell of the tropics. The uninformed and inexperienced sojourner has all kinds of imaginative notions about the smell of the tropics: fresh salt water drifting in from the shores, vanilla beans, cloves, oranges, coconuts, and flowers that waft past the nose, hinting of exotic things to come. The reality that is soon realized is harshly different from this fanciful dream. Its intensity overwhelms the ill-adjusted nose, its thickness, volume, and sticky abundance is unmistakable. The pungency of the odor reminds me that this is a place where life happens in a form more natural than most Westerners are accustomed. This is a point where all stages of the life cycle of all living things exist together. In this cycle, things unyieldingly reproduce, spread, and bloom while at the same time its cohabitants fester, spoil, rot, and decay.

          It is the cacophony of rotting fish and slaughtered chickens, stagnant water and fresh flowers, decaying meat and ripe bananas, of filthy, sweaty bodies and even filthier clothes. All in all, it is the scent of death and life, seduction and repulsion, converging from the immediate surroundings. The wind carries it from the fish market, the produce stalls, the endless trash piles, dark alley ways, and open sewage pipes. This is the smell of the tropics, a facet not advertised on lighthearted commercials and sunny postcards. This is the smell I hope to remember, the smell of life in all of all of its abundance.