On the Road to Dar es Salaam

Africa » Tanzania » East » Dar es Salaam
February 16th 2006

Published: February 17th 2006

The Germans had been giving us very good money-saving advice, but this last advice wasn’t so good. We had planned on leaving at 6 a.m. or so and taking the TSC 6000 (Tanzanian shillings, about $6) bus from Lushoto to Dar es Salaam. However, they seemed to think that this would take 9 excruciating hours, stopping every village or so, so they had heard that it would be better to take a dalla-dallas(Toyota minivan) down the mountain to Mambo, and then get a luxury, express bus that would take only 4 hours, non-stop.

So, we got to the bus area about 8:15, and it took about an hour to find enough people to fill up the dalla-dallas…I even got out and became a hawker, trying to talk people into coming with us. Everyone laughed! It took two hours after we started and we were never less than 15 people in the minivan and once we think we counted 25 people.

Toyota has a lock on minivans here; when we saw how they hold together, we thought that perhaps we should have bought a Toyota, rather than a Honda. However, all of the generators here are Hondas, just like the one we bought after Hurricane Hugo and which is still with us in David City, NE.

When we finally got to the bottom of the mountain in Momba, we ended up waiting for the express luxury bus that was twice as expensive as we had been told that it would be, and that price seemed to be constant, no matter who we asked. We eventually got two seats together, with our three bags under the bus (remember that we now have not only our two back packs but this whole bag of cloth pieces collected in Kampala!).

There weren’t supposed to be any standing passengers on this bus (HA!), but right next to us was a Maasai mother and her daughter about 6 years of age. The women across the aisle were carrying a bucket that they gave the mother to sit on, and Bill let the little girl press onto his seat. BIG EYES! The women across the aisle offered the little girl some chips (French fries) but she wouldn’t take any.

As the ride stretched on and on, eventually, Bill decided to show the little girl colored pictures in the Lonely Plane guide book. She wasn’t at all responsive UNTIL he came to the Maasai pictures. Oh, she was excited then. He ended up turning the pages over and over, and then the Mother appeared to be giving names to the various animals, etc. Finally, I asked if I could take their pictures, and the mother said yes, so when I showed the picture to the little girl, oh, she was so excited…pointed to herself and her mother. (I will try to get Bill to post that picture soon)

Later a cashew-selling hawker boarded the bus, so we bought two little tubes of cashews and offered one to the little girl, who refused it. The women across the aisle then took some, and said to the mother, they are giving it to all of us, whereupon the little girl enjoyed her cashews.

When we finally got off the bus, the hawkers were everywhere, and Bill made arrangements with one taxi driver, and then WOE, only my backpack and the cloth bag were to be found! Oh, we were really nervous, but no one else seemed to mind, and Bill went on the other side of the bus, and then we got his bag off my side of the bus. There was no way that I could yell at him through the bottom of the bus, so when he finally came around, he was thinking that somehow his bag was gone, but it wasn’t, so we laughed and headed off to the taxi.

No problem getting to the Jambo Hotel, we were very glad that we had used the German’s cell phone the day before and had reservations. We are in a room with soap and no towels, but LOTS of water in the shower. The fan is on high speed, so we are considering sleeping without the nets, inasmuch as it is very hot and humid. In fact, I will probably have to wet myself down a couple of times tonight. We figured that paying for no-electricity in a fan room wouldn’t hurt as much as paying for no-electricity in an air conditioned room.

We started out to buy a towel, the only hotel without a towel, and met this guy from Vancouver who is about as paranoid as anyone I have ever met. Told us, oh, you should be wearing socks to hide your money in (so Bill turned around and came upstairs to put on socks) while he told me that Zanzibar is terribly dangerous, that we would be mugged the minute we walked out of the walled hotel, that we should fly to Zanzibar and then to Mombassa, etc., etc. and if you don’t speak their language, they will mug you and rob you.

Finally, I said, I guess you are saying that we shouldn’t have left the United States??? And then he asked, “what state are you from? And when I told him Nebraska, he was totally surprised and said, what are you doing here from Nebraksa?

What a kook! Did scare us though, but, off we went, bought a towel for TSH 3000 ($3) got lost, got scared, met an Indian businessman who invited us to his house, which also scared us, but he drew us an excellent map directing us to wonderful Indian restaurants and to an electrical supply house where we can get a transformer to charge our batteries (we seemed to have fried the one we brought along).

We had an Indian buffet, I had my wine that I smuggled off the plane, Bill had a beer, and then we met several more Indians outside several temples, and they insisted on our sharing some different part of a coconut tree (to eat) and then of course, we had to try their Indian masala chai, which was very good, although not as good as in India, but then, we recognize that we really do like buffalo milk in our masala tea. The tea wallahs (sellers) then gave us the names of a couple of good hotels in Zanzibar, and told us to be careful but not to worry too much about getting back to the hotel.

I got to the Internet, Bill took his shower, and then he is asleep and snoring away while I FINALLY feel as if I am catching up. You know, I really do like catching up with my travels.

We figured that it took us about three days on our own to get back into the swing of things. Mainly, we should find people who travel as we do, pick their brains for places to stay, and then meet people around us.

One thing that I would like to say:

If the officials that run the World Bank, and Bill and Melinda Gates would ride these buses for six hours, they would begin to understand that the fourth world doesn’t need grand plans but rather little ones that truly make a difference.

The dry, red dust is unrelenting, the water shortage so great. It is not that people don’t work; it just takes so much energy to do ANYTHING!
Just think about what it means to walk miles to get a five gallon can of water, and then to walk miles back to your home, carrying it on top of your head.

Instead of grand hydro-electric plants, instead, we should be focused on a pump in every village. Instead of providing more air conditioning in cities, we should be focused on creating cheap, affordable solar panels to provide some power in the villages.

Little things that make a BIG DIFFERENCE! That's it for today, more tomorrow.

On the Road to Dar es Salaam

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