Blogs from Ngorongoro, Arusha, North, Tanzania, Africa

Got to the heavily guarded Heron Hotel by 8am. Armed guards with mirror thingy on pole. Happily Charlie's taxi didn't have anything ticking stuck to its underside. A massive truck converted for safariing awaited, with 20 or so Rangers in various later stages of retirement and jetlag. Croatian, Canadian, South African, English. And about ten from some place called The You Ess!? Lots of Aussies too. A potentially noisy bunch with the rowdiness knocked out of them for now. Border crossing at Namanga, the Tijuana of Tanzania. Kept it simple, just filled out visa and departure/entry cards in triplicate, twice. nO Photos on pain of finger waggle. Only cash and a complimentary laugh at your western style name. Lots to see from the truck as we spent a good 800 hours on it! 200 of them ... read more

It's two weeks before I return to Tanzania and friends and former projects. I am reminded of the journal I kept in 1991-1993 long before the word blog was known and years before Tanzania had internet. I think it will be interesting to revisit my entries and look with fresh eyes at those cultural clashes that are inevitable. As I attempt to remember my Swahili, I remember some of the learnings of my first experiences with the language and the speakers: Communicating in Tanzania Tanzania has 127 living languages and at least half a dozen dialects in each one. No, don’t despair. Thanks to Mwalimu Nyerere, President of Tanzania 1964-1985 who had a collectivist philosophy known as “ujaama”, Tanzanians all share one common language-Kiswahili or Swahili. Educated urban Tanzanians learn English in secondary school, a vestige ... read more

Next morning we got up early, had our free brekky then got a cab to the bus terminal to get a bus to Moshi. Dario told me to stay in the car which I was very happy to do since we were bombarded with touts, and im so over touts! He went off to look at the buses and buy the tickets, they tried to charge us 38000 each, when the ticket itself says 25000 so we paid 25000 for Fresh Coach (we had never heard of them, and had been planning on taking Dar Express, but the next one wasn’t for hours), and it was comfy enough. We only broke down once, and only for about 10 mins very close to Moshi. We got a taxi to our hotel called Twiga Home, just outside the ... read more

So, the beginnings of my travel blog and entry from week 1! After arriving in Nairobi, we had to wait around for a few hrs before getting our 5.5hr transfer to Arusha on Impala bus which involved a border crossing between Kenya and TNZ, a police official check, ensuring there were no stowaways and a quick pee stop along the dryest, straightest road extending into the distance, dotted along it with Maasai villages - it was interspersed with v.bumpy diversions. Once we arrived in Arusha, a large town in Northern Tanzania - we were greeted by Dan, an SIC coordinator - piling onto a truck we headed off to Centrehouse, our hostel for the next 2 nights - where Parker and I shared a room with Peggy and Princess Daisy, 2 other volunteers... We all walked ... read more