Crossing Tanzania, Part Four

Somehow the interminable trip from Kahama to Kibondo ended and we got off the bus promising each other that this was enough for today; even though it was still light out, we’d sleep in this dusty waystation and try our luck with a new vehicle tomorrow morning. But our friend, the woman with the baby, urged us to take the last daladala going south to Kasulu, where the guest houses were cleaner and our chances of getting to Kigoma better.

Another decision to make. As we stood at the door of the daladala trying to imagine how uncomfortable we’d be in those cramped seats, one of the car park hustlers behind us just wouldn’t stop shouting “mzungu.” He obviously wanted our attention, so I whirled around and in my fastest Swahili, said, “Look! Look! My skin is different than yours! How clever you are to notice the difference!” Not expecting to hear Swahili, the man was stunned, and the gang of hustlers around him burst into laughter and began making fun of him for having been told off by an mzungu.

At that point we decided to trust our “mama” and get on the daladala with her. Wanting to sit as comfortably as possible, we squished into the wide front seat next to the driver. This is I dicey strategy at best. Yes, you’re away from the revolving door of passengers standing over you with armpits in your face, but if the bus crashes, you’re the first to fly through the windshield. There was no seatbelt, but again, there was no other option so we took our chances.

A piece of metal was protruding through the seat so painfully that I grabbed a shirt out of my bag and stuffed it under my ass to relieve the pain. I was seated diagonally, backpack on my lap, trying to give Anette room so she wouldn’t interfere with the driver as he changed gears. We set off down the road wondering how long the trip would last and how long we’d be able to sit like this.

As the sun began to set behind the mountains marking the border with Burundi, we noticed that our driver had yet to turn his headlights on. I asked him once why he was waiting, and I didn’t fully understand his answer. Five minutes later, with darkness rapidly enveloping the road, I asked him again and this time I understood – the headlights were broken.

Great. Just what we needed after six hours stuffed in the back of Ally’s Express like cattle, guarded by civilians with AK-47s. Again our minds started racing through the possibilities, and again none of the outcomes were good. Amazingly, as complete darkness fell, our driver still managed to navigate every pothole in the road. A veteran of this route, he literally could have driven it in his sleep.

It was then we noticed that the farther into Tanzania we went, and the smaller and more dangerous the transport became, the stronger grew the camaraderie among the passengers. At the start of this particular journey we overheard our fellow travelers remarking on the oddity of seeing white people on a bus in this part of the country. One who had heard me tell off the hustler explained to the others that these wazungu could speak Swahili. Upon hearing this I turned around and replied, “Even Kihehe!” Kihehe is the tribal language of Iringa, and the whole bus burst into laughter when they heard me say this. From then on we were the objects of their affection as they traded banter with us and about us, exploding into fits of mirth as we rolled on into the night.

After two hours of driving in total darkness without headlights we reached our first village, only discernible by dim kerosene lamps lined up along the side of the road.
We should have known that no one in the village was going to fix our headlights, but we also should have known that the world’s economy has grown to such an extent that cheap goods from China somehow make their way to remote villages in western Tanzania.

The solution? Our driver bought two flashlights and rigged them to the underside of our bus with rope! Fragile though they seemed hanging from the beat-up bumper, they made a world of difference in the inky night. The flashlights stayed on despite all the bumps and potholes, and two hours later we arrived in Kasulu.

A final appreciation to our Tanzanian traveling companions: the mama who had taken us under her wing that morning had been forced to stand for six hours in the nightmarishly crowded aisle on Ally’s Express. When we arrived in Kasulu, her hometown, at 10pm, she lifted the most enormous suitcase onto her head as if it were nothing and walked down the road, baby wrapped tightly to her back, to show us the best guesthouse in town.

Crossing Tanzania, Part Three

Bladders finally relieved, our next task was to find a way from Kahama to Kigoma. One of the women who had traveled with us from Dar was also going to Kigoma, so we asked if she could help us get on the right bus. Baby wrapped tightly to her back, she threaded her way through the hustlers, singled one out, and within minutes procured tickets for all three of us on a bus going to Kibondo, another town we’d never heard of.

We killed a few hours drinking coffee and watching the town of Kahama wake up, then at 11am we got on our new bus, Ally’s Express. Unfortunately, we were given the last two seats in the bus; Anette against the window in the way back corner, and me with my knees at my ears trying to give her some leg room. “Shouldn’t be that bad,” we thought, as we settled in for the six-hour ride.

We had now reached the wilds of western Tanzania, a place that has little to do with the bustle and modernity of Dar Es Salaam. There were no more paved roads, and within an hour our clothes, hair and backpacks were coated in a thick layer of red dust.

As we labored along the bumpy road, Ally’s Express kept stopping to pick up person after person, bag after bag, until the aisle of the bus was completely filled with standing passengers. It was now midday, the sun was hot, we were all sweaty and dusty, and the smells were overpowering (most Africans don’t wear deodorant). Our legs were cramped, we were thirsty but we couldn’t drink too much because then we’d have to pee, and anyway it was now impossible to get out of the bus. We were trapped.

There must have been 50 people standing squashed against each other in the aisle. All we could see was a sea of bodies. Our fellow passengers in the back began to protest, yelling out, “we’re human beings, not cattle!” each time the conductor ordered people to squish farther down the aisle to let more people on board. The road was sharply crowned due to erosion, and every time we veered to the side to add more passengers, it felt like we were hanging upside down from an amusement park ride.

The bus was now so heavy we were sure it would tip over, and our minds began racing with scenarios of how we would get out in such an event. All the scenarios ended in our grisly death, either from the impact of the bus hitting the ground or from being trampled as people tried to get out. This was as close to panic as we wanted to get - a few more hours and both of us would have gotten claustrophobia for life. We swore to each other that after this trip, we would never again willingly put ourselves in this type of situation.

Sure, we feel that we gain respect from the locals by traveling as they do, and it gives us a truer perspective of Tanzanian life, but the fact is that we have a choice because of our wealth, and that will always make us different. Why, then, were we choosing to put ourselves in this dangerous position? Well, in this case, there was simply no other way to get to Kigoma. Our tickets on the direct bus had been sold away in Dar, and now we were in the middle of remote western Tanzania with no other choice than to make it by the only available means.

To make matters worse, at our next stop we saw several men in civilian clothes carrying AK-47s, of whom two boarded our bus. Considering how uncomfortable we already felt, this was enough to put us over the edge. We asked our fellow travelers and found out the men were guards who protected buses on this stretch of road. “Protect buses from what?” we asked. “Ambush and robbery,” came the reply.

Turns out we were about to pass by three Burundian refugee camps, and according to local Tanzanians, people in these camps often raid local villages. Whether or not this was simply uninformed prejudice, it only added to our growing panic. Already trapped in the way back of the bus surrounded by hundreds of bodies, we were now looking at the barrel of an AK-47 silhouetted against the windshield and wondering what could be lurking in the dense bush beyond.

Crossing Tanzania, Part Two

The first several hours were fine. We left Dar at about 7am and reached Dodoma, ostensibly the administrative capital of the country, before noon. The paved road disintegrated soon thereafter and we lurched off the main road to follow a wide sandy track that paralleled it. We saw several bulldozers and backhoes and assumed it was just a small detour due to roadwork, but then we saw the Chinese foremen in their hard hats and SUVs and realized this was a major development project. For anyone who doesn’t know, China is building Africa’s roads. On some street corners in Dar there are now more Chinese than Arabs or Indians, a historical first.

Turns out that this project has been underway for five years but not a single section of the planned 300km of tarmac has been laid. The sandy side-road has become the main road, and our driver treated it as such, rollicking along at 120 kmph over its numerous humps and depressions. We were seated a bit too far back in the bus, and thus were thrown skywards every time we hit a peak or valley. At times it got out of hand, and all the passengers in the back, after a collective gasp and pitch forward, started screaming at the driver to slow down. It was hot and dusty, which meant that the dust poured steadily through the windows and made it hard to breathe. It was a desolate countryside devoid of villages, which meant no way to buy water, which we were now out of.

After an eternity of hanging on hard to the seats around us, gritting our teeth because of the dust and the constant jarring of our bones, and dreaming of a drink of water, we reached paved road again and were ecstatic. We were now more than halfway to Kigoma, it was still light out, and we hadn’t experienced any major trouble yet…

KABOOM!! WHHSSSSHHHH RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE!! All of the sudden smoke started pouring in the windows as the bus listed heavily to the left, and a Swahili woman sitting to our left shot up out of her seat and began yelling in a terrified voice, “YESU! YESU! YESU!” (Jesus, Jesus, Jesus).

The poor woman had obviously had a bad experience with a blowout on a bus before, and she was shaking and crying uncontrollably, head buried in her kanga when we finally ground to a halt a few second later. Her traveling companion tried to console her, as did other passengers, but she just sat there until everyone had gotten off the bus to wait for the drivers to change the tire.

Another truth of African life: if you want to drive a vehicle here, you must be able to fix that vehicle. We have come to have great respect for the drivers and conductors who are almost always able to fix these ageing machines by any means and with any parts necessary. We always enjoy these moments of camaraderie on long travels; everyone gets off, several male passengers often help change the tire, others look on, legs are stretched, bladders are emptied, and we are all together on the red earth in the middle of the bush, the huge sky overhead and emptiness and silence surrounding us. Tanzania has 40 million people, but it sure doesn’t feel like it when you break down in places like this, somewhere between Dodoma and nowhere.

Just before dusk the new tire was safely in place, the old shredded one now sharing space with the luggage, and we rumbled on into the night. At about 10pm, after 15 hours of driving, we stopped for the night in Nzega, a small junction close to our final destination. We wanted to keep an eye on our backpacks and keep our seats, so instead of finding a room in a guesthouse we lathered up with bug spray and settled in for what little sleep we could get on the hard, narrow seats.

At about 3am we were awakened by loud, agitated voices. We soon learned that one of our conductors had been attacked by a band of thieves with metal pipes as he was walking outside the bus. We heard our driver swearing revenge, but we simply put our heads back down as he sped off, knowing it would be a fruitless search. The hours between 3 and 6am were a blur of alternate attempts at finding the thieves, going to the police for help, and going to the hospital. Fortunately our conductor was not seriously hurt, and with his wounds dressed we drove out of Nzega before dawn.

You might think that was the last little twist on this first leg of our journey, but no. When I woke up again at dawn I had to pee terribly, but as usual I was at the mercy of the long journey and the few planned stops. I waited in agony for about half an hour, but the bus never stopped for more than 30 seconds to let people on or off. When we stopped near a gas station and someone had some bags to offload, I took my chance.

Standing outside in the bright early morning sun, back to my fellow passengers but conscious of their eyes (and those of the gas station employees, whose wall I was about to pee on) I got stage fright. I tried my best, but I knew the clock was ticking because this wasn’t a planned bathroom stop. Everyone was waiting for me, and I had to go so badly that it was just too much pressure – literally – so I zipped up without having relieved myself and jumped back on the bus hoping no one noticed how silly I had been.

When I sat back down I confided to Anette how much pain I was in, and she suggested that the old empty bottle trick might be my only way out. For the next 15 minutes or so I flip-flopped frenetically in my mind: “take out the bottle…jump off again…take out the bottle…jump off again.” Having already lost once to stage fright, I finally grabbed the bottle and went to the back row of the bus. I had just unzipped my pants and unscrewed the bottle cap and was waiting for relief when an old man in the front of the bus got up and began walking towards the back. Anette turned around and shot me a knowing glance, and I confirmed with my eyes that yes, I had already begun trying to pee.

There was nothing she could do to stop the man, so I chucked the bottle (which hadn’t yet begun to fill) and quickly covered my pants with my shirt because I didn’t have time to zip up before he sat down next to me. Damn African curiosity! Why of all moments did this man have to choose now to strike up a conversation with the conspicuously tall white man on his bus?

Africans are generally starved for exposure to the outside world, especially personal contact with foreigners, so many of them are overenthusiastic in their dealings with white people. We’ve gotten used to smiling politely, answering their many questions, and hoping for a turn of events to give us an excuse to get away. This time there was no escape. There was nothing to do suck it up, ignore my bladder (for a second time) and engage the man in polite conversation. Anette, meanwhile, was doing all she could to not turn around and burst into peals of laughter at my plight and my forced politeness.

It was 7am, for Chrissakes. Who the hell starts a conversation with a stranger at 7am after having spent a sleepless night on a bus?!! Fortunately it was only about fifteen more minutes until Kahama, and I somehow made it without being rude to my new friend and peeing all over the two of us. When we finally rolled to a stop in Kahama - 24 hours after beginning our trip in Dar - I raced to the public pay “toilet” (hole in the ground) and relieved myself, then stepped out into the morning sun to hug Anette as we congratulated each other on what we thought would be the most difficult leg of our journey.

Crossing Tanzania, Part One

We arrived at Dar’s central bus station well before daybreak, eager to get a good seat and stuff our backpacks into the overhead compartments for the two-day long trip across Tanzania to Kigoma, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. It is a fabled African traverse, plied for centuries by Zanzibari traders seeking ivory and slaves for export to the Middle East and beyond.

A century and a half ago Dr. David Livingstone began his many journeys along the route, making Ujiji, Kigoma’s southern neighbor, his home during his decades-long search for the source of Nile. In 1871 reporter Henry Morton Stanley, on a rescue mission financed by London’s Herald newspaper, trekked with his army of porters for eight months from the coast to reach Ujiji, where he finally found the old explorer and uttered those famous words, “Dr. Livingtone, I presume?”

In the early 1900s, the Germans built a railroad from Dar Es Salaam to Kigoma; a straight shot of about 1200km, it tamed the wild route and opened up increased trade with Central Africa. Although the trains run as slowly today as they did a hundred years ago, it’s still the best way to get to Kigoma, but as our luck would have it the train was booked until August.

We had heard from friends that there are no direct buses to Kigoma, but upon inquiry we discovered there is in fact one company: aptly-named Adventure. Their “direct” service follows a circuitous route that winds north to just shy of Lake Victoria before diving south again to follow the border with Burundi, adding some 400km to the trip.

With no other way of crossing Tanzania in less than a week (one can fly nowadays, but where’s the fun in that?) we reserved our seats on Adventure days in advance to make sure we would get there. Too bad we forgot the cardinal rule of long-distance African travel…

“Majina?”
“Alex and Anita.”

We watched as the conductor’s finger traced the list of passengers and didn’t find our names, and then it became clear – despite multiple assurances that we could pay on the morning of the trip, the man who took our reservations a week earlier had sold our spots because we hadn’t paid the money up front. Panic began to set in; we had just killed a week in Dar waiting for a permit that never came, and now we were all packed up with no place to go! How stupid could we have been?!!

The first streaks of dawn splashed some color onto the scene: two mzungu travelers looking like confused tourists with their two backpacks each, eyes searching the sea of giant buses for some sign of what to do next, surrounded by a yelling, tugging, jostling crush of the unsavory young men who make their livings at African bus stations.

In Africa, if someone (especially an mzungu) needs something, a crowd of three, six, then ten or twelve men will immediately materialize and each man will begin shouting his advice, pulling at your arm and assuring you of the best deal, the best price, the best bus, etc. Dealing with these men can actually be a lot of fun if you have the right attitude, but it is rarely pleasant, and especially not at 6 in the morning.

In the middle of our growing crowd and its chaos, with half-drunk men grabbing our arms and trying to lead us off in different directions, we looked at each other and felt overwhelmed and defeated. So when someone told us there was another company going most of the way to Kigoma, we took a chance and followed him through the crowd to a hulking old bus that was quickly filling up with passengers.

We talked to the conductor and he explained that he was going to Kahama. We had no idea where Kahama was, but he assured us that it was more than halfway to Kigoma, and that we should be able to get a series of minibuses from there to our final destination. Again we looked at each other and were forced to make a decision. “OK, let’s do it.” We paid the money, stuffed our backpacks into the shelf above our heads and sat down flustered and uncertain about the journey ahead.

Normally we like to take the best buses possible; we avoid the death traps, the ones that are too old, too overloaded or have a reputation for reckless driving, and we always try to get decently comfortable seats. It’s usually not a problem; we’ve learned that transport in Africa doesn’t have to be a nightmare, even for my 6’6” frame. But on that morning, as we felt the iron bars of our backrests jabbing our bones through the worn felt of the ripped cushions, we knew we were in for a long, uncomfortable ride.

East Africa Around

Dear Readers,

We have just returned to Iringa sick with fever and exhaustion, but elated and in awe of all we’ve seen and learned after a month of travel throughout East Africa. Our original plan for July was to work in a Congolese refugee camp in Western Tanzania, but we were denied the entry permit by a surly government official who was unmoved by our charming personalities:-)

This sudden blow to our plans left us wondering what to do with the rest of the month, so we decided to take our grand tour of East Africa’s 5 countries, which we had been planning for next spring. In the coming weeks we will try to edit our journals into coherent narratives to share with all of you. Here’s a quick preview:

We traveled in a giant circle beginning and ending in Dar Es Salaam, covering some 3000 kilometers in 23 days, and spending a total of 130 hours on African buses, the insides of which we never want to see again in our lifetime. We learned how to greet in 3 new languages: Kirundi, Kinyarwanda, and Luganda, and used our Kiswahili everywhere we went.

We read the US State Department warnings about travel to Burundi, but decided to go anyway and were well rewarded - the most dangerous thing that happened to us was not rebel attacks, but comically inept thieves following us around the market of Bujumbura.

We saw the physical and emotional scars of the Rwandan people 14 years after the genocide, which the glimmering modern buildings of a rebuilt Kigali cannot hide. We scaled an 11,000 foot volcano thick with jungle vegetation, and in so doing became intimately acquainted with mud.

We saw the most incredible live performance of African music and dance by the Ugandan National Dance Troupe, and were surrounded by music day and night throughout our stay in vibrant Kampala.

We experienced a Nairobi that few tourists ever see, staying with friends in a humble suburb and visiting a second-hand clothing market deep within a labyrinth of the dirtiest, muddiest, most trash-strewn streets we’ve ever seen.

All these sights, sounds, smells, tastes and conversations have given us a new understanding of Tanzania, or “T-Zed,” as other East Africans call it, in its regional context. Tired though we are, the trip was the perfect way to culminate our first year in Africa. Stay tuned for more…