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Published: December 4th 2008
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Ubungo Bus Station
Tanzania's central transport hb After a week it was for us to say goodbye to life at the Econolodge and Dar es Salaam. From now on we were under the care of Benjy the rep from our language school, who we were briefly introduced to at the dinner on Thursday night. Benjy had hired 2 big Dalas to get us first to the VSO office. One Dala was simply taken up by all our luggage! After depositing half of it and all valuables at the VSO office we went to Ubungo Bus Station, Dar’s traffic hub with connections into every corner of the country. From here we were to continue with a regular overland coach to Morogoro. Benjy organised the bus tickets, so at least no hassle with the touts. Ubungu was quite a strange place - all these massive busses, quite a bit wider than the European counterparts with 5 seats in every row and painted in bright colour combinations, some with not so reassuring mottos painted on like ‘no fear’!
We had allocated seats, I ended up squeezed between 2 big smelly ladies! Fortunately the more smelly one was in the wrong seat and was reallocated and I got a more petite
Getting onto the coach
Under Benjy's guidance we're getting on the way to Morogoro and neutral neighbour. The journey started alright, just not particularly fast due to the heavy traffic. But the further we got away from Dar the smoother the journey seemed to get, but then there was suddenly a big traffic jam and complete standstill. Not to bother our bus driver, he just opened up a new lane on the not-so-hard shoulder. The closer we got to the front the more lanes or rather piles of cars and lorries there were. But then some angry traffic policeman appeared and made us reverse at least half the way again. Here we remained for about half an hour. The local community seemed to be well prepared as quite a few vendors came to the bus windows to sell cold drinks, biscuits and nuts. Finally traffic from the opposite direction started to appear and make its way past us. Once that all had passed, our convoy was finally about to start moving again and we got to see the root of it all - road works to build a new bridge. Later I heard that had already been going on for 20 years, didn’t seem to be such a masterpiece of engineering.
After this hold
God bless us
He really needs to, the way these bus drivers speed! up of over an hour our bus driver seemed very determined to make up the lost time in ANY possible way. He kept on overtaking everything and everywhere. I just kept seeing angry/threatened drivers in the oncoming traffic flashing their headlights at us. I got more and more scared and felt I made the right decision to get a car (if I was to survive this bus trip!). The scariest bit was this long downhill bend with a steep drop on both sides of the road, where our driver thought he can really push it - we must have been going with at least 130km/h.
Focusing on the TV screen wasn’t much of a distracting alternative option either, as it was first showing some strange Tanzanian film, that started off with a very graphic gang rape scene. There was a shot where you saw blood dripping down the girls thigh! There were children on the bus! She got infected with HIV, kicked out by her parents and slipped into prostitution. This was followed by some kind of soap placed in mud huts with the worst acting I’ve come across for a while. I was starting to wonder what else to expect from Tanzanian TV - after all I was going to work in this field soon. I had been sent a DVD with a couple of the talk show episodes I’ll be working on, so I knew this wouldn’t be as bad or bizarre.
We had a few more short stops on the way, a couple of police control points and some people getting on and off at some villages along the way. There was quite a variation in prosperity in the areas we passed - sometimes proper little brick houses, sometimes tiny mud huts. By now it started to get dark as well, so when we finally arrived in Morogoro it was pitch black. Benjy struck a deal with our racing driver, to drop us off directly at the ‘hostel’ after he had left out the other passengers. So we arrived at this spotless new complex, which turned out to be a Catholic convent. After quickly unloading our bags in the nice rooms, we headed back down again for dinner - big bowls of plain rice, chips, a soupy tomato sauce and lots of meat (which good old veggie me didn’t touch). All quite hungry from the long and frightening journey, we tugged in.
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