After a night in Dar es Salaam, I took a Dala Dala, which is a shared bus, for four hours through the forests of Tanzania on dirt roads. The bus was packed with people, who sat on the aisle between the seats. I was covered in sweat in the sweltering bus. When I arrived in Nyamisati, I was met with the view of hundreds of people sitting in the shade. I wandered around aimlessly trying to find a ticket for the Mafia Island Ferry. I learned that the ferry ran very inconstantly due to weather and the tide, so people would wait for days to buy a ticket when the ticket office opened. The people that didn't get a ticket would wait around until the next time the ferry was running in the hopes of buying a ticket then. Luckily for me, the ferry was running that day, and I managed to get myself a ticket. While waiting for the ferry to come that day at 7pm, I snapped this photo of two young boys playing checkers with bottle caps in the shade.

Nyamisati, Tanzania (January 2025)