The road to Kondoa

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This is an account of my month long trip to Tanzania which started in the city of Dar es Salaam from where I travelled to the capital Dodoma and from there to Kondoa and back to Dodoma. Part 1. The road to Kondoa

The second part of the trip was from Dodoma to the coast to the towns of Muheza, Pangani and Tanga, then back inland to the towns of Korogwe, Handeni before returning to Dar. Part 2. The road to Pangani.



THE ROAD TO KONDOA



Dar es Salaam


My hotel in Kariokoo, Dar es Salaam could not exactly be described as a 5 star joint but it was efficient enough to have breakfast on the table at 7am. I wanted an early breakfast and then catch an earlyish bus to Dodoma. I went back to my room after my omelette, where I was curious to see if the same 3 channels on the TV were the same that I had found there yesterday. I turned the TV on and yes those channels were the same, CNN, a local Swahili channel showing a kids cartoon and the third must have been the hotels own video channel that played continuous porn films throughout the day and night. So I turned off “Phat Black Juicy Anal Booty Volume 6” and finished my packing.

The mwendokasi as it is known by the locals or DART (Dar rapid transit system) stage on Msimbazi Street was only a 5 minute walk away. The DART busses run on bus-only lanes and are brilliant at getting about Dar’s chaotic streets, there is a whole network of routes planned that will eventually reach all parts of the city and from the centre of town will set off in all directions including to the airport and TANZARA train station.

I paid my 650TZS (which seems to be the standard fare) forthe20-25 minute ride to Ubungo bus-park. Ubungo can be confusing but before you even reach the buses you will no doubt be approached by someone possibly on the walkway over the road from the DART bus stop who will direct you to a bus. I presume these ‘touts’ a getting a few bob from the bus operators and it may well be added on to your bus ticket but I was happy to be led to a bus that left 40minutes later and I was certainly not in the mood for traipsing around Ubungo searching every bus to see which one was headed for Dodoma. The ticket cost me 22,000k for a seat on the “semi-lux” bus. The film Blood Diamond had just started on the bus’ overhead TV screen and I was surprised that I quite enjoyed watching it again so much so I hardly noticed us leaving but did notice for the first dozen kilometres we were driving either in front of or just behind a bus that was going all the way to Kigali! That would be a hell of a journey three times as long as the bus ride I was about to undertake.

Approximately halfway to Dodoma is the town of Morogoro where we had a ten minute break at a well organised bus stop with restaurants at Masanvu near Morogoro’s own bus park. I visited the loo and jumped back on board with a bag of crisps. The next film was “The Gods They must be Crazy” a film I last saw in 1990 but once again I enjoyed this daft movie.

I was just thankful they were showing movies rather than local music videos most of which seem to involve the male singer wearing white jeans (rips at the knees are optional) posturing in front of an expensive car while he every now and then grabs his crotch.

The light was beginning to fade as we arrived at the capital city’s bus park. As a rule I never get transport from a bodaboda or taxi driver that ‘doorsteps’ me as I alight from a bus. Dodoma was no exception as taxi and bajaj drivers and helmeted boda riders formed a scrum around the bus door as soon as it opened. I pushed my way through the crowd walked to the entrance to the bus park and chose a boda rider and not the other way around. Anyone that blocks my exiting a bus or tries to grab my bag to put it in their bajaj doesn’t really deserve my business.

I’d previously stayed at Orange tree guest house when in Dodoma and the boda driver knew where it was but they had no vacancies! When parliament is sitting hotel rooms in town can get snapped up by government workers and finding a room free in town is much harder, maybe all the parliamentarians and their staff were in town.

I tried the Motel Gabby Green around the corner which had many vacancies. I was hoping to pay only 15,000TZS but the 20,000TZS room I was shown was very smart with a flat-screen TV on the wall, a big netted bed, a fan that was already going and my own spotless bathroom. Breakfast in the morning was only bread and chai but that was included in the price and was served by the lovely Salome who worked there.

I showered changed and nipped around the corner for a few beers at Serengeti Bar then had one more at Plan B bar where I got roped into a conversation about Spurs’ chances of winning the league before buying a take-away chipsi maiai which I ate back at my room and with Al Jazeera still playing on the box I drifted off into a dreamy night’s sleep.



Dodoma

The Motel Gabby Green is outside of the town centre in a suburb that lies just across the main road from the Bunge the parliament building in Dodoma but is probably as far from the bus park as a lot of the accommodation in the town centre. And that was where I was heading with my fold-up umbrella in my hand in the drizzle to the bus park to buy a ticket to Kondoa for tomorrow.

I’d left clothes to be washed with Salome at the Motel and not wanting to travel with damp laundry the next morning I thought it wise to pay extra for them to be ironed. I was right to be weary on handing over my clothes as the weather was looking decidedly dodgy and indeed it chucked it down for most of the afternoon. But I need not have worried as when I got back to my room that evening from a lazy afternoon in the Belafonte bar, my clothes were washed and ironed and folded and placed separately on my bed under my fan that had been left on at the highest setting making sure my clothes were completely dry and aired.

Kondoa


My Arusha express buss left for Kondoa just after 8:30 and at 11:00 after traveling on an immaculate newly laid road the bus pulled to a halt in Kondoa, not quite in the bus park. I walked around and spotted a cheap looking guest house, and it was cheap 6,000 for a single room 8,000 for a twin. The toilet and shower were across the courtyard. I explained to the woman working there that I was after a room with a bathroom.

“I boil water for a hot shower in the morning” she said trying to convince me to stay. I thanked her and tried a place further up the same street but here also the rooms shared bathrooms, but was then pointed in the direction of The New Planet Motel. They definitely had self-contained rooms but the young chappie showing me the room wanted 30,000TZS.

“I’m looking for somewhere for about 15” I told him.

“OK 20k “. He offered.

“No thanks, I’ll find one for 15” I told him.

“OK, you take it for 15.”

You’ve got to laugh. It was a decent room mind.

Around the corner I bought beans and ugali and then wandered around town. I was called over to a coffee stall under a huge baobab tree where an old boy was sitting. Some of the old men in Tanzania who got their education before independence speak lovely English, after 1962 President Julius Nyerere made Swahili the national language which did a lot to unite all the different peoples of Tanzania but left the old boys the only people in the country speaking this lovely form of English. The mzee invited me to his shop so I followed him over to what he called a vernacular book shop. They sold local stories in various local languages from not just TZ but from all over East Africa but being in Kondoa mainly in Kirangi.

Since I’d arrived in town I’d not seen a single bar and I mentioned this to the old boy.

“There are many places in town to take a beer.” He told me. “Later you can have a bath, dress, and then walk out majestically to the bar.”

So come evening time I walked majestically to the Kimolo Grocery. This was much more like it, a proper old boozer with grilled meat and chipsi maiai being sold outside. I had a strange conversation with a barefoot old bloke wrapped in a red checked blanket and carrying a stick, he had long looped ears a la Masai but he was clearly a Rangi.

I had a couple of ‘almost’ cold beers sat outside but as the smell from the charcoal grill wafted over it was hard not think about the food being cooked and came realize resistance was futile and once again indulged in the delights of a chipsi maiai . With the last of my beer and the food of the gods consumed I returned to my guest house to sleep until an all mighty thunder storm woke me in the night.



Day 2 Kondoa


It was a cool grey day. After my breakfast beans, chapati and chai I passed the Kimolo grocery and the old boy in the blanket was still standing outside the bar and couldn’t wait to talk about last night’s storm. Kondoa was like that, It was hard to walk around town as people at every turn would not only want to greet you but would call you over and want a full-on conversation. It was always a friendly conversation but it could be a pain in the arse answering the same questions like how much is it to fly to London or where is John Major now or in the market it was things like Do you have avocados in your country?

After walking around town I walked back down the road in the direction of Dodoma and got to the bridge at the edge of Kondoa town where water the colour of milky tea gushed underneath. I was later told that somewhere near here there is (from what I could make out from my poor Swahili) a hot spring or geezer, but not knowing this at the time I walked back up the hill and into a second hand clothes stall where I ended up buying a cycling jersey. I find it genuinely hard to resist buying 2^nd hand cycling or football jerseys in East Africa; the Tanzanian government have said they want to stop the import of 2^nd hand clothing into the country in order to promote the nations home produced clothing but I can’t see Tanzanian firms filling the huge gap left by the clothes that are imported from the Europe and North America. That gap I believe will be filled by cheaply made clothes from the Far East.

With my Case D’epange cycling top in hand I made my way to the bus park. At the entrance to the park I was asked if I was going to Singida; I said no but knowing the way to Singida is unpaved I was curious about the condition of the road.

“The road is good.” I was told.

Then again, if you were touting tickets to Singida you certainly wouldn’t say the road resembled the surface of the moon. After some confusion I ended up buying a ticket for the 8:30am bus to Dodoma for next day.

I left my room at around 5 that afternoon and more or less went straight to Kimolo Grocery. There were a couple of girls sat in the front bar one still wearing in her hair the hair-elastic I’d given her yesterday to replace the tattered piece of thread she’d previously been wearing. I usually have spare in my pocket.

I drank a couple of beers then ordered a third and after the 4^th ate some roasted maize that was being sold outside. There was some confusion over what I had and had not paid for but it was smoothed out once I bought the girl behind the bar a Konyagi. I was on the Konyagi myself by then as was a bloke from Moshi called Fred who like all the males in the bar was wearing a Maasai blanket and carrying a stick. It was about here that I lost count of how many Konyagis I was knocking back but remember Fred giving me his bracelet made from a cow’s leg bone. The old boy from yesterday was here again and kept appearing in the bar and asked me to take a photo of him with my phone despite me telling him every time that I had no camera on me. I had a ball in the Kimolo, nobody there this night spoke English but it’s weird when you are drunk that your ability to speak a foreign language dramatically improves or at least appears to! I wobbled home past the place that was selling chips but by then I had no appetite and should have eaten earlier, a single maize cob was nowhere enough to soak up all that alcohol.



Dodoma (again)


Not unsurprisingly I was feeling awful in the morning after last night’s over excesses, I took a couple of paracetamol for my banging head but saw them come back up again pretty much straight away. I even struggled to keep water down. I was then regretting buying the bus ticket I’d bought yesterday for today when the day would have beeen much better spent recovering.

I somehow managed to get myself together, I grabbed my bag tottered to the bus park and boarded my bus seating in seat No1 and feeling like I was going to be sick. If I’d have eaten anything last night or this morning it would probably be now on the way back up again.

The bus pulled out of Kondoa bus park at 9 with music blearing from a speaker directly above my head; that didn’t help. I found my earplugs pushed them home and blew up my inflatable neck pillow and tried my best to doze off or at least do my best to ignore the outside world. The journey was an excruciating 3 hours 20 minutes long, we had one stop for a piss and many more for police checkpoints.

Once arrived at Dodoma I jumped on the back of the same bodaboda I’d jumped on when I’d arrived here from Dar es Salaam and I was dropped off near my hotel where I bought chips , a bottle of water and half a litre of mtindi (fermented milk). At Gabby Green Hotel the lovely Salome grabbed my bag and led me to another immaculately clean room. I thanked her and in my faltering Swahili did my best to explain about my almighty hangover but instead of sympathy I got a giggle, Thanks Salome.

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Photos

Interesting hotel movie!

Hoteli in Dodoma
I had an excellent 2nd breakfast under this flame tree.

Baobab
It even has a sign for the guest house I stayed in nailed to its mighty girth.

The mighty Bellafonte bar
This is my favourite watering hole in the capital, I was told it actually was named after Harry Belafonte, but sadly there is no juke box with "Island in the sun" on.