For some reason the bus from Mugumu to Arusha didn’t come to Mugumu, so to catch it Kemi (my brother from the family and travel companion for most of the vacation) and I had to hop on the back of a packed lorry for an hour and a half to Nata. At least on the lorry we had seats. At Nata we found the bus so full we could barely squeeze into the packed aisle.
Shortly after entering the Serengeti the bus screeched to a halt. For some reason there was a rushing river where the road ahead was supposed to be. We were told it would take maybe 3 hours for the flooding water to die down. About 45 mins later a Safari Jeep came along and nonchalantly headed right into the river, submerging in the water almost halfway up it’s windows, and popped out on the other side with what looked like relative ease. The bus driver and his assistant were convinced, and announced we would be following suit. With a bus as crowded as this one, if we tipped over almost everyone would drown or be crushed in the mad rush to escape. Me and Kemi were pretty close to the door at the front so I told myself we had a good chance of making it, even though we probably didn’t. The bus pulled through just fine, though, and I thus discerned before I started my Kili climb that my climbing backpack was indeed waterproof.
As we were exiting the Serengeti the bus had to pass through a gate, and had at least it’s width and a half worth of room to do so. For some reason this wasn’t enough and the driver plowed right into a side of the gate, shattering three windows and popping a tire.
We arrived in Arusha that night without any further problems and while waiting to get our luggage from under the bus the worst pickpocket I’ve ever seen tried to fleece me. With a small shove and a “toka mwizi!” he scrammed.
What was to be my final bus ride from Dar es Salaam to Lilongwe ended up involving 7 different vehicles and taking 42 hours. We left Dar at 6 AM and arrived at the border around 2 AM the next morning, where we all caught a little shuteye until 6 AM when the border would open. Some of my fellow passengers had kindly informed the four wazungu (myself and three chicks from UC Santa Cruz I met on the bus) that we spend most of the day going through customs at the border, because so many people traveled to Dar to pick up goods that aren’t available in Malawi. I could believe it seeing how packed the bus was with luggage. We four vanilla faces decided we’d leave the bus and cross the border ourselves and find further transport once crossing into Malawi.
We breezed through immigration and customs, none of our bags were so much as glanced at. We quickly found a taxi that would take us to Karonga for a great price (less than 3 bucks each for an hour taxi ride). There we also easily got on a nice sized minibus with plenty of room, which would take me to Mzuzu, dropping the girls off on the way near Livingstonia. The girls must have been good luck because as soon as they hopped off the bus problems began to arise. The minibus gave out and I had to get on a much smaller one w/o any seat for me for the final 2 hours to Mzuzu.
There I was ushered to a bus that would take me the rest of the way to Lilongwe. I should have known better than to get on a bus called “Super Sink,” for that’s what my expectations of it did as soon as we got going. The bus shuddered and hobbled up hills. About 200 km from Lilongwe the gear system got jammed and it took about an hour to get it working again. With the bus’s metallic guts hanging out (the bus driver and his assistant didn’t want to maneuver the gear apparatus back into its compartment under the floor lest it break again) we limped about another 50 km before the bus crapped out for good. Instead of sleeping another night on a bus I decided to flag down another bus and made it to Lilongwe by 1 AM. Whew!
For the first week of my trip I stayed in Maili Moja, a small district about a 40 min minibus ride from Dar es Salaam. Soldiers and their families primarily populate the place because rent is cheap (soldiers are paid roughly $100 per month) and it is close to an army base. Described by its residents as a slum, it’s a small neighborhood of one and two room houses with pit toilets and shacks for bathing shared by about 6 families each. It was a stark change from the relatively luxurious accommodations I enjoy in Lilongwe, but Kemi and I were being put up for free, so I was happy.
We stayed with a cousin of his who’s a soldier, Sam, Sam’s wife Happiness, and their 1 month-old son Josephat.
(Happiness, Sam, Kemi & I with Josephat)
There had never been a white person staying in Maili Moja on a regular basis as far back as anyone I spoke to could remember, and the first week was a crash course in relearning Kiswahili. During the day Kemi & I would take minibuses into Dar and visit friends, do errands, or go to the beach north of the city.
For Christmas we prepared a duck and pilau (pretty much dirty rice) and Sam bought a bunch of beer. Some of his friends came over and we spent the day drinking and watching a televised variety show by some megachuch.
One of the segments must have been stock footage because it was an American family with haircuts straight out of the 80’s gathered around a grand piano singing Christmas songs.
The young son in the green sweater performed a song with his sister where he busted some serious rhymes about Jesus.
The mother was especially horrifying.
Later in the day I was told we were taking the baby Josephat out for his first trip outside of the housing complex. The destination turned out to be a rowdy outdoor bar, certainly no place for a child. Sam’s a nice guy but not the sharpest tool in the shed.
I found out from Kemi later in the trip that Sam had taken out a loan of about $1,000 from the bank to start up a little general shop in Maili Moja that his wife could operate while taking care of the baby. Some people got wind of how much money he had and got to him before he could invest it. They told Sam that they knew a way that he could triple that money using magic. Sam went along with it. They took him out into the woods and divided the money up into three equal sized piles, and then sandwiched the piles between piles of equally thick paper. They then sprinkled “magic” powder on the paper and wrapped the whole bundle up in banana leaves and buried it underground. The claim was that the powder would transform the paper into genuine bills. They stayed in the forest throughout the night whispering “spells” and at some point Sam must have dozed off because they switched the bundle out for a decoy. When morning came they dug it up and told Sam the magic still needed a couple of hours to work and so he should wait until he got home to open the bundle. Of course they were long gone when he did open it and discovered he’d been swindled.
While Sam was exceedingly credulous it should be noted that magic and sorcery are widely believed to exist to most Tanzanians. Kemi told me a story from when he was in Primary School about how a classmate of his stole a duck from an old man. The senior came to his school and warned that if the culprit didn’t come forward within 5 days he couldn’t be blamed for what happened. No one admitted guilt and 5 days later the children were outside on break and suddenly the sky became very dark and cloudy. Lightning started to flash and a bolt killed two students. No one knew if either of the students was the one who stole the duck but hearing a firsthand account like this makes it hard not to believe that this was a supernatural occurrence. Unless of course it was a false memory, perhaps a story Kemi had heard as a child.
Speaking of wacky shit and time limits, I found out more details about the death of Samuel Rachau, the super evil guy who was the main culprit in stealing vast amounts of funds sent to Kisangura Secondary School (see two entries ago). I had known that he had died in 2007 but I found out that he had gone to the headmaster of Kisangura Primary School (which also receives funds raised by New York Quarterly Meeting) and tried to get him to pocket funds and share them with him. The headmaster refused and Rachau gave his typical threat of using sorcery to harm him if he didn’t comply. Rachau said he had one week, the headmaster replied, “Oh yeah, you have three days!” On the third day, Rachau died.
Spoooooky.
Anyhow, that’s part 1 of my vacation. Tune in soon for stories from my homecoming to Mugumu and the Mt. Kilimanjaro climb (spoiler: we made it to the top)
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