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Published: December 17th 2011
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Road Out Of Iringa
This road reminded me of the roads in northern Ontario, lined with pine trees We hit the road and were on our way out of the hotel by 830AM. We stopped for breakfast, which was a bowl of chicken soup. It is not like the chicken soup we are familiar with at home. It is a bowl of chicken broth with two pieces of sliced carrot in it. The piece of chicken they give you is bigger than a “quarter chicken dinner” you get at Swiss Chalet. You end up peeling the meat off the bowls and putting it in the broth. It was excellent.
From Iringa we drove along highway T1 until we got to Highway T6... see the pattern here, yet? There are only so many highways in Tanzania... I think they are all single digit.
Anyways, we drove from Iringa (Ee-ring-gah) to Njombe (n-jom-bay). It was a picturesque city, nothing like Banff, Alberta, but picturesque nonetheless.
When we got to Njombe, we took a dirt road where the sign said “Mekete - 110 km”. We bounced along the road and the views were amazing. There were valleys of green.... The interesting thing about this trip is that I am seeing a landscape that
I never imagined to see in Tanzania. The rolling hills turned into mountains and the roads, although dirt and quite rural, twisted a turned; leaving us with another breathtaking view around each corner. It truly looks like thousands of yards of green velvet folded and draped to appear like rolling hills. It doesn't look like Africa, but more of what I imagine Ireland to look it... simply amazing.
As we drove on the dirt road, it started to rain. It wasn’t coming too hard, but enough to make the road quite muddy. At one point a truck stopped us and told us to drive slowly because there was a turn up ahead that was quite slippery. We slowed down and when we got to the turn, we could see a tour bus that slid off the road and into the sandy ditch.
Our driver decided to go around a truck that had stopped in the middle of the road and we slid into the ditch as well. We were fortunate enough to have 4-wheel drive so we slowly got out of the sandy ditch and moved along.
The roads are tucked
into the side of the hills and there are no guardrails to prevent us from going over the edge.
As we came to one stretch in the road where the view was stunning, our driver, being considerate, thought it would be nice to pull over so that we could take pictures of the scenery. Good idea, bad execution.... We got stuck again and this time it was worse. With a little patience and a lot of prayers, we got out of the ditch and continued on our way. We all agreed no more stopping for pictures.
We are staying in the village of Mseketwa. It is approximately 30 kilometres from Mekete (Mah-kett-tee). It is tucked into a valley and this place is unlike anything I have seen so far in Tanzania. This area is quite remote and therefore, attitudes are behind the times here. HIV/AIDS is quite prominent here as is Gender Based Violence... where it seems to be okay for husbands to beat their wives for any number of reasons. Or where school teachers/head masters to insist on having sex with the female students, etc. That is why we are here to do
the episode. An NGO called FHI360 has launched a program where there will be three safe schools... places of learning where there will not be abuse on the female and male students and staff... cross your fingers!
Just after we arrived, the rains started... This place will probably be a mud pit tomorrow... That always makes for good blog entries and pictures!
Our hotel is nice. Get this... it is costing us 10,000 Tsh a night ($6.50 Cdn). The toilets don't flush so we have buckets of water in the bathroom to take care of that. The electricity doesn't work so the generator went on about 6PM and it is conveniently outside my window (thank God for earplugs), but they have a bar and a restaurent (yes, that's how they spell it) and it seems to be the village hot spot.
It is 8PM and I am off to bed... It is quite chilly here as the altitude is high. We are in pants, socks, sneakers, shirts and jackets. The sky at sunset reminded me of a Canadian sky in autumn. It was a good feeling when I saw that.
Tomorrow, we get busy and get to work.
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Jeff
non-member comment
Get your mind out of the gutter!
How can you tell which is ditch and which is road?