Everyone is watching the football match England-France. In Europe and in Tanzania. People this morning told me that Italy yesterday tied the match with Spain. Some people at the pub invited me to watch the match with them tonight, but I don’t like to go out when it’s dark (and here it gets dark at 6.30).
At first I wasn’t particularly impressed by Lindi. This morning when I woke up I went for a short walk on the beach and some fishermen I photographed from far away (can’t see the faces in the pic) invited me to get closer and once I was there they asked for some money for the picture. 100 Tsh, so 5 eurocents. It was more a joke than a true payment, but it annoyed me a bit. Then I went to the station to have breakfast (near the bus station there are always the cheapest restaurants) and finally I had my chai and chapati that I missed so much. And while there I spoke to a nice guy. Basically in 10 minutes I had already seen everything there is to see in Lindi. The beach with the fishermen, the German Boma like in Mikindani, but abandoned and falling down. The main crossroad. The two restaurants recommended in the Lonely Planet. Because I didn’t know what to do, I went to one of these for a second breakfast. With coffee this time. Nothing compared to the coffee at Africafé in Arusha, a normal Nescafé, but it satisfied a need I had. I spent almost one hour there.
When I went out I wanted to go back to the hotel to spend some time on the web, at least during the hottest hours (tea and coffee had made me sweat a lot) but I passed by the cops pub with a nice beer poster and I felt the urge to have a beer. At 11.30 in the morning. There was a guy, Cuthbert, that while I was drinking my beer started talking to me. I sat at a table and to read my book when the waitress brought me a napking with Cuthbert’s phone number written on it. Then I got a beer offered by him. And after some time here he comes as well. At the end the beer went to his “brother” (I was already tipsy after the first one) and they offered me lunch (guess what? Chipsi mayhai, potato omelette). We spent a couple of hours talking of nothing. He told me he’s a businessman. Here almost everyone is an “agent” or “businessman” if they are not employed somewhere. Cuthbert must really be a businessman because he was wearing shoes. He was a bit misterious about it, but at the end he told me he sells coal in Dar Es Salaam. There’s something illegal in it, because he bribes policemen and this is why he is often here at the policemen pub. While we were there an old men approached us selling watermelons; he asked someting in Swahili, went away and came back with two cigarettes, one for him and one for Cuthbert; he sat at the table with us, but Cuthbert sent him away. But I believe he offered him the lunch, and the cigarette. After a couple of hours Cuthbert got tired and told me he had some business to do. He went to the other table to finish his beer with his friends. We agreed to meet at 6 in the evening to do I don’t know what.
So I went back to my hotel. I rested there for a short time, just to let the heat pass. At about 3.30 I went to read at the beach. In the shade, because all dressed up I can’t stand the sun. A girl came asking for money, but didn’t insist. A boat docked and from nowhere came a crowd to take part to the usual fish auction. After a bit Francis arrived. As he didn’t want to leave me alone reading, I asked him to walk with me on the beach. We walked a lot and it was nice because he speaks a good English and he told me about the school system in Tanzania. Apparently public schools are free for the first 7 years (primary) and they are quite cheap in the secondary years. But if you don’t pass the exams of the 7th year, you can’t go to Secondary School. You can only go to private schools, that few people can afford. There are also public colleges, with few students admitted, only the best ones, and he is one of these. He studied Medicine and now works at Lindi hospital. He hopes one day to be able to get a Master Degree abroad, it would be great for his CV, but it’s very hard to get a scholarship. We passed by a group of people I saw at the beach last night, when they had invited me to pray with them. Francis explained that they are doing their singing rehearsal. At the beach because with the noise of the ocean they have to sing louder and their voice becomes stronger. Or something like this. At one point I had to say goodbye to meet Cuthbert.
More people invited me to watch the match with them, everyone is very kind, the ocean is just feet away (the sound of the waves cradles me in the night), the guesthouse is nice and at a good price (today they even cleaned the room, changed the linen and added a clean towel and soap; only toiletpaper is missing)… I am thinking of staying one more night. Let’s see how I wake up in the morning.
I don’t think I’m going to see the second half of the match, I’m half asleep already.
My blog is getting a bit boring. Like this trip. I mean, in the last days I’ve just traveled from one town to the other, walking in the street, with few interesting things to tell, maybe because people in the South of Tanzania speak little English, and without real tourist attractions there’s not much I can do or write about.
Anyway even thought they don’t speak to me, people are very kind here. They are less used to foreigners (in Mtwara live about 800 Westerners, but they are all on oil platforms in the ocean, I’ve been told).
Mikindani is a Swahili town at only 10km from Mtwara. It used to be the most important harbour of the area. With the abolition of slavery, it lost importance and only at the end of the Eighteenth Century with German occupation it became an important commercial center. To testify this there’s the old slaves market, that now hosts a few shops, and the Old Boma, the headquarters of the German government at the time, that is now a beautiful hotel.
The place where I’m staying arranges dives in Mtwara, so this morning first thing I did was doing one. We went back to the fish market, I looked for my fisherman, but with the low tide he also rests. We were in the water for almost one hour. Visibility wasn’t the best, but I saw some nice fish and some scary ones; it was almost three years since the last time I dived, it was a quiet way to start again. It’s nice to go back with the fish from time to time.
Once we were back in Mikindani, just 100m from my hotel (very nice btw, and one of the most expensives I’ve been so far) I was caught by my friend-guide of the place. Ismu. He’s probably about 17, I didn’t ask. His English is not of the best, but he seems not to care and told me a lot of stories about the various buildings, of which I understood nothing. But it was nice of him. The good thing is that his friendship allowed me to get closer to local people. Here in Tanzania adults don’t like to be photographed, and if they don’t speak English they don’t even say hello, in particular women. At the market in Mikindani I bought some sweet fried bread and some nuts, that I was happy to share with some kids we met in the street (there are kids everywhere in Tanzania!); in exchange they allowed me to photograph them. They are so cute! A little further there were some ladies dancing while another one was giving the rythm beating on an upside-down bucket. They invited me to join. It was so much fun. They showed me how they move their butt and when I tried to mimic them, they laughed hardly. When I took the smallest of the kids as my dance partner, they laughed even more. I was then asked to do a small donation to a local charity, that I was happy to comply with.
After a couple of hours spent walking around the village, Ismu took me to drink a sprite at a place by the sea. There were three plastic sunbeds on a mezzanine above a beach full of plastic bags, with some cloths hanging to hide from the sun and curious eyes. Ismu wore my sandals and my sunglasses and asked me to take a picture of him. He was fun. I must print one and send it to him. Or better, to the hotel and they will give it to him. I noticed in Mtwara that at the post office there are some numbered boxes. I guess it’s there that families receive their mail. They should do something similar in Italy, considering how bad the mail delivery system is.
In Mikindani I found out that there are three levels of restaurants in Tanzania: those that don’t have a sign, they are basically the kitchen of a family, where you can have breakfast for 500 Tsh, about 25 cents, and 700 for the ugali with vegetables. Then there are the local restaurants, where breakfast is 50 cents and 2000 Tsh is dinner. And finally the western restaurants, usually managed by Westerners, that have prices similar to Europe, and of course I avoid these. I might visit them for a beer, if they have a nice garden or a special view. The hotel where I’m staying has a popular restaurant, well known in this part of Tanzania, and there are always customers coming from outside Mikindani, so they were surprised when I paid the room and had nothing to pay for the restaurant. Let’s say I’m not their best guest. Quite often foreigners living in Dar Es Salaam come here for the weekend. It is a nice place to relax indeed, you can dive or go snorkelling or rent a kayak and go around the bay. There’s even a “yacht club” (with no yachts) with a guard keeping away curious people if you want to bath (only with high tide though).
The night I was in Mikindani there was a group of people that caught my attention. I found out later that they were coming from different parts of Tanzania for a business meeting. The group was composed by an Austrian guy that has been living in Tanzania for 23 years and in Africa for almost 30, an Indian girl managing an agency in Arusha that organizes tours in any part of Tanzania, another guy of Indian origins too (or so seemed) that I don’t know what he was doing, and a Member of the Parliament of Tanzania. It was with this last one that I spoke. He came to talk to me and he proposed to ask the Austrian man to take me to Lindi. The MP would take a flight to Dodoma. He gave me his business card. I don’t know what I can do with the email address of a Tanzanian MP, but he was very kind and I think he can do some good for his country. I felt like I was speaking to Nelson Mandela. So with the Austrian we took the MP and the Indian-Tanzanians to the airport, and we drove to Lindi.
The drive was a nice change from the usual super busy buses. And I had the chance to talk to someone that knows the country quite well. He confirmed my feeling that people of the South are more welcoming than the rest of Tanzania. And despite what they say, it’s not true that they are lazy. He wouldn’t go back to Austria because here people can enjoy life better, not like in Europe where you only think of work. It might be because here if you have good ideas it’s not difficult to start a business, unlike Europe.
And people really laugh with joy. When was the last time I laughed whole-heartedly?
I’m in Mtwara, the southernmost town along the coast. From here you can go to Mozambique, during the rain season, when the boat can cross the river Ruvuma that separates the two countries.
I was expecting a big city, but it’s a little more than a village, with few things to do. The main attraction is the fish market, at the beach, where early in the morning and in the late afternoon there are fish auctions. Fishermen take their kayak and go to a nearby peninsula to fish, and when they are back they put the catch of the day on display and they sell it to the best offerer. I got there last night by mistake. Because I find it difficult to navigate this town. There are two main roads and hundreds of other tiny alleys that are not on Lonely Planet map and the place where I am staying is out of the map. To go back to the hotel I followed the sun, that at that time showed me the West direction. Luckily I’m a natural navigator.
The market is so nice! A fisherman saw me taking a picture of him. He didn’t get upset, on the contrary, he started smiling.
Last night a Mozambican boy wrote me a love letter. Half broken English, half Portuguese. And today in the afternoon while I was at this café looking for shelter from the midday heat, another guy speaking only a few words in English was able to tell me that he wanted to be my “friend” and take me on the next destinations of my trip. He was good looking, and I could have learnt some Swahili, but I dismissed the offer. Of course he asked why I don’t have children. He has two, but no wife. Wife is trouble. A Mzungo might be a better option. It’s quite common here to have children and be single. For this reason when they talk to me they are not surprised that I’m not married, but that I don’t have children.
For the first time since I’m in Tanzania I am staying in a place far from the bus station. Usually I prefer to stay in the town centre, so that I can go around on foot. But I really needed to sleep well after three days of travel that exhausted me. And here it’s lovely. There’s a café and a restaurant, quite expensive (last night I ate here and I paid 7 euro!!! Tonight at a local restaurant I had dinner for 50 cents), that has always some clients. Wealthy clients, that can afford these prices. And foreigners. Anyway, I slept really well. The place is run by a Polish lady, that was married to a Tanzanian man, now dead. She speaks Swahili better than English, I’m so jealous!
Today I wanted to wake up early to go to the market, but didn’t make it. I woke up at 7am and went there taking my time. I had breakfast with chapati and chai. Delicious! I saw my nice fisherman again (I recognized him from the cloths and the hat). Then walked a bit around town, guided by Marami, that is from Dar Es Salaam and is studying Engineering here. Apparently he had nothing better to do. Well, I managed to orienteer myself a bit better in the labyrinth of alleys. We spent an hour at the café while I was writing and reading my guidebook and he was doing nothing. They have a different way of spending the time here, they are used to do nothing. They wait for the bus for two hours or more without anything to read to kill the time. At the restaurant they wait for half an hour for some chips, looking at the void. They sit in front of their home cheerfully welcoming the two buses that drive by during the day. They spend one hour in a café looking at an Italian girl writing her travel journal. It’s a different approach to life. I am not even able to watch a movie without doing something else at the same time, like a jigsaw puzzle or a crosswords. When traveling luckily I always have a notebook with me. So I fill my diaries with stupid things, because I don’t always have something interesting to write about.
There was a power cut. It’s quite common here. I was walking with Marami, and I asked him if he ever goes swimming to the beach near town. No, he doesn’t like swimming and he can’t do it. He likes playing football. Not today though, he’s not feeling well. “What’s wrong?”. “I have malaria”, he replies. Like this, as if it was a cold.
5pm It’s very hot today. Luckily in the street there are some orange vendors, they are so refreshing and sweet! I’m at the beach. An annoying mosquito devastated my ankles with its bites. I’m so jealous of that boy bathing! Even if I had a bathing suit I wouldn’t go in because here women don’t bath, and if they do they do it all dressed. Further away a boy is doing some flips. He’s training to do somersaults. He’s got a great body. As a child I also enjoyed doing flips like this. Maybe if I trained enough I could have learnt better. I rememer that at middle school I did a flip without touching the mattress with my hands and the teacher scolded me. And on mum’s bed I did some big flips. I ran from the bathroom and up on the bed with a nice flip. But I ended on the bed on my back, not on my feet. Flips always fascinated me. Maybe for this reason I find this guy particularly cool. Now he’s doing some splits in the air. And 4 flips one after the other. Wow. I want to do that too.
I’m afraid I’ll have to wait until I’m in Zanzibar to bath.
10.27 pm There must be a church nearby. I can hear Halleluja and other gospels. At this time? Tonight for dinner I had ugali with beans and vegetables. I had to ask for a spoon because I can’t understand how to eat the beans. You should squash the ugali (that looks like a potato mash but tastes like… nothing) with your hands, to make it more compact, but how do I put the beans in the middle? While I was having dinner two guys took me company. When they heard I am catholic they invited me to go to the University church next weekend. When I told them I’m not going to church they were very disappointed, even more than my father. They probably take religion very seriously here.
There’s a tiny lizard hiding near my backpack. If she wants to come illegaly to Italy, she’s welcome. But she’s informed that Cagliostro will enjoy her a lot.
I thought the biggest danger I had here in Tanzania was to fall into a manhole (they are not covered) and break a leg, in particular when I take the bus at 5 am and it’s pitch dark (there’s no street light, but luckily there’s a full moon these days). But I found out there’s something more dangerous: traveling on a minibus on unpaved roads.
The trip from Songea to Masasi was a nightmare. My place was at the end of the minibus, in a corner, where only kids would sit comfortably. My knees were stuck against the seat in front of me and I couldn’t change position because there was no room. We were squeezed like hens in cages and the aisle was full of luggage, bags of rice and corn, boxes. So every time I had to get off to pee (I couldn’t wait for 11 hours, despite me drinking as little as possible) I had to climb over all the seats to go back to my place.
After about one hour on the road, with the bus speeding as crazy, among jumps and curves, we swerved dangerously. I thought we would tip over. We stopped, and the four helpers got off the van and run to the back of it. I thought we had run over someone and they were going to assist him/her. No, in the middle of the road there was a boy that unfortunately was at the wrong place at the wrong time and they started kicking him and punching him. After some time he managed to free himself and run away, but he was really beaten up badly. People on the bus seemed satisfied. The beast that almost caused an accident was rightly punished. I was in shock.
We left, faster than ever. So I started to sleep. Or at least pretend. I’d rather not see what was going on around me. I opened the window, to have an escape exit in case we found ourselves wheels up, and I placed my head on the front seat. In that position I was almost comfortable because the pelvis was slightly behind and my knees hurt a bit less.
In Tunduru, roughly half way, a few people got off. Many more joined. When I went back to the van, after the pee break, there was a bag on my seat. At first I thought it was good, because I could sit on it and let my legs free and comfy on the nearby seat. But a guy got on the van after we left (he entered from the window because there was no chance he could get in from the front door, two guys were actually leaning from the door already), and sat in the back with us. No more space for my legs. I had to keep my legs bent on the bag for 5 more hours and only when we stopped was I able to stretch them out of the window. I couldn’t handle it anymore. I arrived in Masasi with my head exploding. I finished the biscuits packet, took my malaria pills, and at 7pm I was in bed.
The next day another minivan, but the road was paved and even if the driver was going too fast again, it felt less dangerous. And my legs were slightly more comfortable, so it was bearable. But I was looking forward to getting to Mtwara to be able to rest and we stopped 3 times because there was a problem with the van and the expected four hours for the trip became six. Ok, at the end in Mtwara I found a really quiet place and I could rest really well.
Today I feel pretty. I can see my reflection on the notebook. Yesterday I washed my hair and today it’s nice and curly. The face is a bit tanned (the rest of my body is still white, except maybe for a bit of arms). I am wearing some new earrings that my roommate in Arusha forgot before she left. And I am wearing a skirt. Long. The only thing out of place is the white blouse that is not white anymore and won’t be white ever.
It’s 12.47pm, I’m up since 7am, and I haven’t seen anything of Iringa yet. Because just after breakfast I went to an internet point where I bought a 3 day internet credit (that I finished in one hour because it only had 80MB in upload) to update my blog. Of course the connection was very slow and it took me three hours to upload the pictures from the safari.
Then I came to this coffeeshop recommended by Lonely Planet, where you get UNLIMITED coffee for 2.500 Tsh (about 1.25€), and why should I ever get up from here? I’m already at my second cup. This place is a meeting point for foreigners. Prices are almost Western-like, they have burgers and sandwiches, the design is rich (African style in the European idealization of Africa, with palm trees and wooden tables, not the real decadent African style made of plastic tablecloth and crumble walls) and they have a nice washroom with toilet paper and running water. I actually came here for this. I needed a toilet and knew here I could find one; when I asked if I could go to the toilet, I was told “are you going to buy anything?”. Ops. Nothing more anti-Tanzanian than this. In African local restaurants you can use the toilet when you want, you can also bring your own food from home and buy only a beer, or you can sit without buying anything, just to rest a bit.
There’s a group of English people having lunch with pies and cappuccino. They probably manage a safari agency (Iringa is near Ruaha National Park, less popular than the parks of the North, but equally beautiful) and I don’t like them too much. They seem arrogant. The Whites living the dream rich life in a country of poor people.
The Indian girl on the bus told me that Iringa is her favorite place, she wouldn’t live anywhere else. And she said I would have loved it, because here I can find many fellow travelers. And recommended me to stay at least one week, to go see a camping site a bit out of town because there go many foreigners and recommended a hotel, favored by my “friends”. She probably doesn’t feel Tanzanian, or doesn’t like to be, despite the fact that she was born in Iringa, and she loves tourists company; you could tell it from the way she was annoyed by other passengers on the bus, while with me she was all sweet and nice.
Iringa is pretty indeed, with its nice houses and the kind people, but I must be careful. It’s a trap! It seduces you with its welcoming atmosphere and the comfort of its services, but it’s far from the Africa I came to see, with the chai at 300 Tsh and the children looking at you as if you were an alien. And nobody called me Mzungo!! Ok, it was nice to reconnect with the world for abit, but it’s best if I go away. Tomorrow I’m taking a bus to Songea.
What backpacking on public transportation in Tanzania means
June 3, 2012
7am of a Sunday and streets are full of people. They are going to Mess, some to the Lutheran church, others to the Anglican one. I can hear nice music coming from the Lutheran church. And the same weird little screams I heard during the wedding (see Dar Es Salaam). I’m at my favorite café having breakfast. From Dodoma to Iringa there are two roads. One goes a bit large through Morongoro, all paved. And one that they call “shortcut”, that goes straight to Iringa, but it’s not paved. It’s half the price to take the shortcut, and this is enough to make up my mind. At 7.30 I must be at the bus station for the head count. The bus doesn’t leave before 8.30. It’s 7.25 and I’m already sweating. It must be quite hot here during the day. It’s 270km to Iringa, and it takes 8 hours or more.
9.46am. 219 km to go. It’s good I took the shortcut. We drive slowly through the countryside and the villages of red houses. MLONA is the name of this village. The bus is a junk. The interiors are covered in red dust, there are holes where once were bottoms, to ignite it you have to connect two wires, odometer and other instruments don’t work, the transmission sometimes gets stuck, but the driver knows its beast and we have nothing to worry about. They are building a new road to connect Dodoma to Iringa. To do it they are uprooting a lot of centuries old trees (or so they seem looking at the dimension of the trunks). The roller to level the ground and other machines are Chinese.
The driver is multitasking while driving. He calls and writes on two different mobile phones, checks the passengers payments, drinks, eats, counts money, takes tickets, gives orders. But he made me sit in the front, where I can keep everything under control, and I like him for this. They exchanged some tomato cans with goat milk brought by the village children. One of the helpers of the bus is really goodlooking. Dirty and without underwear, but smiling and handsome. At another village they bought two goat thighs, I would say from shape and dimension. They attached them to the roof without bag or other containers, they are just there swinging over the driver’s head. The bus is super full. It’s not a comfortable trip. And I’m lucky I’m sitting! Maybe I should have paid the 0,30€ for a bag to cover my backpack. I am curious to see how it will end up.
One of the inspectors bought three hens, alive. He puts them in the luggage compartment. Oh no, he changed his mind, he’s taking them inside with us.
The tender to build the new road must have been won by a Chinese company because from time to time you can see almond-shaped eyes under a straw hat and clean clothes. They must be the engineers that supervise the work. We passed by the Chines headquarter. New white houses with airconditioning and huge cars in the courtyard; they are a bit of a clash if compared to the wood and soil houses, with no water nor electricity, just a few meters away.
4.30pm. Poor hens. You can tell they are still alive only when someone steps on them. I don’t want to eat meat anymore. A girl of Indian origins got on the bus. She sat next to me and started reading an English book. She’s a bit of a princess, gets annoyed if the poor guys standing touch her or if by mistake they step on her feet. Oh, she’s the driver’s sister. She gives me some advice on what to do in Iringa. There’s no swimming pool, she’s afraid. There is one in Dodoma. Did I see it? Well, actually the swimming pool was not my priority. Apparently for them it is. In Moshi I was taken to visit the swimming pool too, and my guide was very proud of it. Surely in a country where water is a precious element, a swimming pool must have a different value.
7pm. We arrived in Iringa at about 5.30. I ate a boiled cob for lunch, and now I’m quite hungry. I’m waiting for the usual potato omelette. Tomorrow I must go to a decent restaurant and eat something different. I like Iringa. It’s quiet, with beautiful houses, nice and welcoming people. I’m in a hotel a bit out of town, seems quiet. I hope I’ll sleep well.
