Walking at night

Arusha definitely has a decent crime rate, which means that a lot of people are pretty anxious about going out at night. In some cases, people will insist on traveling only by taxi, while other people on a tighter budget opt for motorcycles to travel safely. Personally, I love night time and find walking incredibly relaxing. This tends to make several of my friends anxious, so I try to avoid the subject in certain audiences.

Tonight after Frisbee, it was a particularly beautiful night, so I decided to walk about 1.5 miles back to the office from town. It was moonless, and only about 10% of the street lights installed in Arusha actually work, so I had to rely on headlights to light the way. There are plenty of stretches where I was on my own with the stars, which is gorgeous since I can see so many.

As it happens, there are some well-known segments where thieves are known to hide, so I made sure to keep a brisk pace as I was going through these areas. (Unfortunately, I had forgotten my sneakers, so I was somewhat handicapped in my sandals.) The first one is a bridge near town, where there is a lot of trees before and after where people could (and do) hide. As I jogged along, there were no headlights to light the way, but I wasn't going to slow down until I was safely past the area. My eyes and ears were on full alert for movement of any kind, but then I felt my foot hit nothingness where the pavement should have been.

I discovered that there was a hole in the pavement about 18 inches deep, and I felt my shin hit the edge of the hole and I was on the ground. It knocked the wind out of me, but quickly I realized where I was and spun around to make sure no one was trying to approach. I realized that my anxious reaction was proof that I know how unsafe I was being. I quickly scrambled to my feet and moved forward to where there was some lighting. I saw that I had some nasty scrapes on my shin, knee and forearm but made myself keep moving normally, since I didn't want to attract any attention.

On my way back to the office, I stopped at one of the safari hotels in town to clean myself up a bit and made it back the last mile to the office without further event, but I was a little sore by the end. I realized that I wasn't paying much attention to the stars by that point, which was a bit of a disappointment, so before I went in, I shifted a long gaze at the stars and let my thoughts gather themselves.