Tanzanian Road Trip

We arrived late in Dar Es Salaam, stepping out of the plane at midnight. The heat and humidity hit us like a hot, wet towel suddenly draped over our heads. Nineteen hours earlier I had stood shivering into Sverre as I waited for the airport bus to pick me up by our apartment building, dressed in a light rain jacket instead of my normal winter coat. Now my jeans and three-quarter length sleeved shirt felt oppressively heavy. We piled all of our belongings on top of a Land Cruiser and set off to one of the fancier hotels in town. The expensive room for the night may have been nothing to the professors and PhD's who are funded by the university, but my small student pension cried. Fortunately this would not be the trend of our hotel stays.

The next morning we left early-ish.

I have come to find over the past few days that Tanzanian time runs remarkably similar to California time. If a Tanzanian or a Californian tells you she will meet you at ten o'clock, you only become worried after an hour has passed. So maybe I exaggerate a little for the Californians, but the point is the concept of timeliness is a complete reversal from Norway, where punctuality is king. If you tell a Norwegian to meet you at ten o'clock, she will call you at 9:55 wondering where you are.

So, at an early-ish time we left the hotel and I was able to catch my first glimpse of the Indian Ocean.

We drove to Morogoro and the agricultural university there. My studies are primarily dealing with beef cattle production and processing, so we stopped by local supermarkets, high-end grocery stores, and local markets. The markets are piled high with dried small fish, grains, maize, peanuts, packaged spices and fresh vegetables.

Peanuts, rice, and spices piled high for your shopping pleasure.

The meat shops are a different matter. Meat hangs in the warm air from hooks in open shops where flies can enter. Because of these conditions, most common people buy their meat early in the morning, right after freshly slaughtered animals have been delivered. "Freshness," to the people who cannot afford to buy in grocery stores, is considered meat from an animal killed mere hours ago, instead of by a date on a package.

Fresh goat hangs in an open air shop.

Yesterday morning I awoke early in order to catch the bus to Arusha. Buses often have "In God We Trust" emblazoned on the back window, and you may feel as though the drivers are taking this fatalistic phrase to heart. I boarded the bus with a professor from the university and two Tanzanian master's students. The student who I will be working with sat next to me and translated as a policeman reminded us in Swahili to always wear our seat belts. The air conditioning was non-existent. I spent much of the ten hour drive adjusting the window to regulate air blowing in over us. I stared out the window at the passing land when I wasn't reading my Kindle. The rest of the bus watched Tanzanian comedy shows, the whole group roaring with laughter at Swahili jokes I couldn't understand, but the slapstick parts needed no translation.

Our bus.

As the only foreigner on this trip, I soon learned the Tanzanian word for a white foreigner: mzungu. Every time the bus stopped, vendors raced to the sides, thrusting up boxes of cold drinks, grilled corn on the cob, boiled eggs, chocolate cookies, and other treats for sale. Money passed through open windows. Whenever I was spotted, the cry of "Mzungu! Mzungu!" went up, with boxes crowding the window and the vendors hissing "psst!" to catch my attention. My seatmate leaned over me several times and shout for people to leave me alone after I had squeaked, "Apana, apana," No, no, ineffectively. We took a ten minute stop for lunch at a road-side cafe. After a fast potty break (nb: Always bring toilet paper in your bag) we galloped through a buffet line of noodles, beef, steamed greens, and fresh fruit. Other mzungu who were traveling by car sat at their leisure. On the bus we balanced our lunches on our laps, eating fitfully when we weren't bouncing over pot holes.

Much of the drive was dry land with rolling hills.

Small villages line the roads. Land is burned to control grasses and clear land.

Here and there, cool forests appeared.

Finally, toward the end of our journey, we knew we were getting close. Mount Kilimanjaro loomed over the road, its summit obscured by clouds. I leaned back and forth, trying to get a good picture through the bus windows. Hopefully I will be able to catch the mountain again on a clear day.


We stopped that night in Arusha, tired, hot, and a little cranky (that last bit may have just been me). Taxi drivers circled the bus like hawks, looking for business. The moment they spotted me, drivers swarmed around, danging their car keys in their face and shouting, "Taxi, lady? Taxi? Mzungu, mzungu! Taxi!" My seatmate and new friend grabbed my by the elbow and steered me through the crowd to where we picked up my luggage. The professor with us snapped at the drivers to leave me alone, which they did immediately. "It is good to be old here!" He grinned at me as he pointed to his white hair, "Everybody listens."

At the hotel I dropped gratefully into my bed, absolutely exhausted. My seatmate (I must come up with a code name for him, as I will be following him around like a puppy for the next week) let me borrow one of his phones. Sverre called before I slept, and we mumbled back and forth to each other for over half an hour, glad to hear each other's voices.

I hung up the phone and snuggled under the sheet, looking through the mosquito net that made the orange ambient street light streaming through the window fuzzy. I miss my home and my dog, but I am ready to get to work. I fell asleep to the sounds of cars, musicians playing, and people laughing and talking long into the night.