Monday, June 02, 2008
Tanzania
We have been back from Tanzania for three weeks now, but it has taken me a long time to type up this blog entry – and I’m still not finished. Part 1 is our journey to Mr. Urassa’s home on Mt. Kilimanjaro. Part 2 will come later; I hope I won’t need another three weeks to type it or I’ll forget everything I did. The second term is now back in full swing. It’s gong rather well now that we’re finally coming to terms with the fact that we can’t stay in Tanzania forever. We had parent-teacher meetings, but other than that it is rather uneventful. I’m supervising study this week, which means I’m at school WAY too much. My ninth grade class is practicing solving equations. I’ve really enjoyed teaching them algebra – it’s my favorite part of math. Physical science is also going well: atoms. Eighth grade math is dragging; we’re converting between fractions and decimals, but its mind numbing “reteaching” the things they are “supposed” to know. I have to go to school for evening study RIGHT NOW, so, without further ado:
Part 1: Kilimanjaro
Traveling to Tanzania
Nkurenkuru to Rundu (2 hours) to Katima (5 hours) to Linvingstone, Zambia (4 hours) to Lusaka (6 hours) to Tanzanian Border (14 hours) to Chalinze (10 hours) to Moshi (5 hours) to Machame/Nkuu (1 hour). That’s 47 total hours, but it took us 5 days waiting for buses, waiting at police checkpoints, waiting for food, waiting to replace a tire, waiting at the weigh stations, waiting for the sun to come up, waiting for the brakes to be fixed. We were in such good spirits, though, with the excitement of our travel, seeing the new land, and enjoying the company of my colleague, Mr. Urassa, who was taking us to his home in the village of Nkuu, literally on the side of Mt. Kilimanjaro (Nkuu might not be on Google Earth, but Machame should be if you want to see).
Before I can continue, I must say more about Mr. Urassa. Mr. Urassa is an extreme extrovert, courteous, boisterous, confusing, hilarious, contradictory, completely unique and absolutely unforgettable. During basketball, volleyball, staff meetings or just regular conversation he is always saying “thank you very much” or “you are welcome” whether it is relevant or not. As Jarrod pointed out when he visited, he uses “you are welcome” in the correct (literal) sense, not simply as a nonchalant reply to “thank you,” and he never uses the contraction “you’re.” The welcoming nature of Mr. Urassa first became apparent a year ago when he invited Lindsey and me to his home. We quickly agreed, and since that day the stories and promises of welcoming customs persisted with increasing frequency. He said he lived on the side of Mt. Kilimanjaro. He said bananas, coffee, and avocados grew in such abundance that they would rot on the jungle floor or be fed to animals. He said there were random waterfalls. He said we wouldn’t have to pay for anything while we were under his care. Lindsey and I chuckled, rolled our eyes, and wondered what it would really be like…
Before we left Namibia he had already started “welcoming us.” When we were waiting for our ride in Rundu, he ran in to the petrol station and bought us some Cokes. We thanked him and said he didn’t need to do that. He smiled, said “this is only the beginning” and opened his small, hard-cased Japanese suitcase. Inside were only two things: a black plastic bag and a towel. He pulled out the bag and inside were several Russians (a.k.a. Russian sausages). So we dined.
Along the way there were four instances I can remember when people said “Oh yeah, I remember you” with a grin on their face. I can only imagine how many other people also delighted in seeing him again but didn’t say anything. This made him a very nice travel companion, especially in Lusaka and at the border town between Tanzania and Zambia, where a lot of people had trouble seeing past our white skin.
True to his word, along the way he refused to let us pay for anything, and bought us anything we looked at, even when we weren’t interested. We feasted on bananas (roasted and fresh), oranges, grilled goat, French fries, roasted corn, samosas (like egg rolls, but triangular), and pineapples. The pineapples put Namibia and even Hawaii to shame – my mouth is watering now thinking about them again.
In Namibia we travel around in vans (combis) or pickups (baakies), but Zambia and Tanzania have way more people, so there are several large busses that travel from town to town. They vary in comfort, but all (except one) seem to be in less-than-perfect condition. It was common to stop every few hours to change a tire or have a guy crawl under the bus to do something. However, one time we had a more serious problem. In the middle of the night in Zambia our bus came to a stop. At first I just thought it was the typical flat tire and we’d be back on the road again shortly. But after a while people started looking worried (we couldn’t understand what they were saying) and some were taking their bags off the bus. Lindsey went to check what had happened and came back quite flustered. The entire wheel was bent (this probably happened a few hours earlier when our driver took the bus off road to pass about 15 other buses and trucks in line at the weigh station). We both had Oh No! running though our heads, and by this time everyone had piled out of the bus; we decided to wake up Mr. Urassa. In a few minutes taxis started arriving. This was inexplicable, because it seemed like we were in the middle of nowhere, we hadn’t passed anything in hours and, after all, it was the middle of the night. By our good fortune we were only a few k from a very small town called Mpika. As more time went by, some of the buses we passed at the weigh station came by. Some stopped and some didn’t. If I was on one those buses I really would have been laughing. Those that stopped had room for two or three new passengers, while about 20 rushed and pushed at the opening. With our big bags, tired bodies and Western manners, we were never able to penetrate through. Eventually we got a taxi into Mpika. I quickly spotted the bench I planned to make my bed for the night. However, after about 15 minutes of sitting and staring at an empty road and a black sky, a mini bus appeared (from nowhere) and turned off the road (to nowhere) and shockingly was empty. Urassa went straight for it. Within a few minutes it turned around to come and pick us up. By the time we had our bags and were walking to it, several of our fellow passengers from the previous bus materialized (from nowhere!) and started rushing and pushing. We calmly kept our cool and luckily made it inside. It wasn’t a comfortable ride, but they did play some Johnny Cash and got us to the border in the nick of time.
Urassa’s home
We would have arrived at Mr. Urassa’s home before night fall had he so wished, but we took our sweet time. He introduced us to his “sister” and “brother” in Moshi and went to several establishments for grilled goat, fried bananas and cold beer (Serengeti, Kilimanjaro, Tusker, Safari). At one place he told me that Serengeti beer had a leopard on the label because Serengeti park is the only place in the world you can see leopards (which isn’t true…yet). Eventually we set off to Nkuu. For the last half of the hour drive, we started ascending the mountain, and the road gradually deteriorates from paved to washed away mud and rocks. We stopped several times before reaching his house to greet and be welcomed by friends and brothers – it seemed to take hours to travel what should have taken 10 minutes through the village.
When we finally arrived at the house, the wife and daughter met us and then quickly prepared a dinner of stewed bananas and beef, with avocados and beer. We ate every meal by ourselves on stools in the living room, sometimes watching TV but mostly not. (It seemed weird that we were eating alone, but it must have been part of their culture.) His living room is decorated with several calendars, a Fanta beach ball, and a tennis racket. The TV remote was covered in plastic. The entire perimeter is outlined with couches except for the entertainment center and Xerox machine. After dinner we got the tour of the place. Modest by your standards, but very nice for Africa; would have been a palace in Namibia. In a lot of African countries, people invest their money by developing homes in the large towns or cities, but in Tanzania they build up their home in the village. Our car could barely travel up and down side of the mountain, through the mud, and over the large rocks – I can’t imagine transporting the materials for a house. There are even several houses built along walking trails (not roads), and it’s not like these are small cabins in the woods, they are real, full houses. Urassa’s house had a large living room, kitchen, 3 bedrooms and a store. Adjacent was a guest house with 3 more rooms, a chicken coop, and a barn with cows and pigs. And a bathroom – if you can call it that. In Tanzania the common toilet is the hole in the ground, which I never quite got used to. Across the country they ranged in comfort; from an uncovered concrete slab to a porcelain bowl that actually flushed (but still no where to sit). At Urassa’s it was a concrete slab with a piece of wood covering the whole, a bucket of water, and toilet paper. I never saw toilet paper anywhere else in the country, so I guess that is what the water was for but I can’t exactly figure it out. I think that’s why it is so important that they only eat and shake with their right hand. I think it is funny that they had a boy’s and girl’s toilet that were exactly the same. I used both.
The wife’s name was Mamanema and Urassa sometimes called her Manema, because the oldest child’s name is Nema. You see, in Tanzania, after giving birth to her first child the mama changes her name to “MamaChild.” I wonder what Mamascott thinks about that? For some reason it made me think of the American South. The next morning Mamanema made us chai, fat cakes and fried bananas and then Mr. Urassa showed us around the village. Before getting too drunk we made a stop at the two village schools. Like most schools in Africa, they are short on resources. Mamanema is the principal at the junior school. The staff at the senior school made a big deal out of meeting us. I couldn’t figure out why they were all in the staff room around ten o’clock. They said it was break time but we were there for almost an hour. Meanwhile all the kids from both schools were running amuck, playing soccer, gardening and staring at the mzungu. The principal brought us into his office, sat us down, and told us a sob story about the financial situation of the school. It was an awkward situation. We are going to send some books back with Mr. Urassa during the next school break.
The roads were more like trails through the jungle. Coffee, avocado and banana trees grew at will from the pitch black soil. Usually it was partly cloudy, but you got the feeling that you were partly in the clouds as well. We stopped at each one of his friend’s houses along the road, so we unwillingly had drank several warm beers before noon. Not only warm beer, but we also had banana beer. Banana beer? Yes. It’s not exactly beer, but there is alcohol in it. It doesn’t taste as bad as I thought that it would, so it wasn’t too bad pretending to like it (and in some instances pretending to drink it). It was served in very big yellow cups that we passed around in a circle. It was so cheap that every one of his friends (or “brothers”) was able to buy another cup to pass around.
Other than that short stop at the school, that entire day was a cycle of going from house to house, warm beer to warm beer. Primitive bar hopping if you will. They way they treat guests is very flattering, though sometimes strange. For example, one old man insisted we come into his house. We sat down, he turned on and blared the radio, then left the room. Urassa never even entered. In a few minutes the host brought us some boiled eggs and salt. When we had finished the eggs, Mr. Urassa informed us that “in our honor and out of the highest respect he had prepared us [more] food.” This time it was bananas and beans. It was really good and probably my favorite banana dish I had in Tanzania (cooked bananas taste like potatoes).
The next day was more of the same. We started off with promises of going to Mr. Urassa’s farm, but we stopped at every other house for a visit and beer or cup of banana brew. It was mid-afternoon before we had made it more than a few kilometers, so we relegated to just going around the village again (I wonder if Mr. Urassa ever really intended on taking us to the farm?). We finished that days journey at a bar overlooking a long field of green grass (we are not used to seeing grass). There were cows and goats, several small kids, and some people playing soccer. We ate some grilled goat meat and sipped our cold(!) beers as Mr. Urassa told us that this is the best place to view Kilimanjaro. Huh? What? Where!?! For the third day in a row, the mountain was covered by clouds.
On our last day with Urassa we went to Moshi. We didn’t have a ride this day, so we had to walk to the hike point (Americans read: bus stop or taxi line). Urassa would never give us any information in advance, and this was no exception. So when we started walking I wasn’t sure if we were just escorting his wife to work (he didn’t tell us that she was also coming to Moshi), going somewhere to drink, going to our ride, or walking all the way to Moshi – and I didn’t care either. The walk was beautiful; giant trees, foggy mist, beautiful flowers. We took several pictures and insisted of getting one of Mr. and Mrs. Urassa in front of a waterfall. Africans taking pictures are funny enough because they don’t know how to smile, but Mr. Urassa cracked me up. He posed indifferently and didn’t even look at the camera. Then we asked him to take a picture of us. He snapped it before we were ready with about a 30 degree angle. (Kim, this reminds me of your family picture with the guy’s foot also in frame.) As the walk went on, it started to rain and it seemed the incline of the hills got steeper. Because I didn’t know we were doing a mountain walk that morning, I was wearing my Old Navy flip flips. Big mistake. I could barely walk up or down, and it didn’t help matters the path was 8 inches wide in some parts, muddy in others, occasionally both, and always on unleveled ground. Locals would pass us carrying things on their heads wearing raggedy clothes and big ass rain boots. Mr. Urassa wondered out of sight ahead of us, thankfully the Mrs. had enough sense to stay with us. When we finally reached where we were going (which was the place to wait for a dalla dalla) we were in for a fantastic surprise.
Samosas! They are from India, containing a hodgepodge of vegetables and usually potatoes. One advantage over egg rolls is that they always contain meat. We first found them in Lusaka; as we got closer to the Indian Ocean they became more common. Typically a whole batch of them will be made at once, so they are rarely hot (a food pet peeve of mine, along with noodles that stick together). But when we arrived at the hike point it was still early, so the samosas we found were fresh and steaming hot. You never know what you’re going to bite into; these were filled with goat, chilies and onion in perfect ratio (a lot of meat!). Lindsey and I quickly devoured the five that Mr. Urassa bought for us – the cost, about 50 cents. Ashamed and trying to be polite we then refused when he and Mamanema insisted on buying more for us. Eventually we gave in (actually we didn’t have a choice, he just bought them for us). After that I never had the urge for samosas again. Not because I had been turned off but because I was completely and utterly satisfied and I knew there was no way of having a better samosa then the seven I scarfed down on that fine day; like why Michael Jordan shouldn’t have come back to play for the Wizards.
“Dalla dalla” must mean mass transit in Swahili. They can be trucks or vans. The vans have special accommodations for extra people, like tall ceilings for standing room only and handle bars on the outside to help those people that are standing on the bumper. Unlike Namibia, they use a conductor (separate from the driver) that deals with the passengers (the driver just drives). At each stop he slides open the door or throws suitcases on top, collects money, ushers in new customers, then slaps the roof to let the driver know they are ready to go – that would always remind me of ambulances from the days when I watched E.R. A lot of time the conductor will give the signal to the driver before he is inside or on the bumper. I remember one time the driver took off a little faster than the conductor expected and he had to sprint to catch up, hop in, and then close the door. You get used to the transportation situation in Africa, but it seems I always underestimate when the vehicle is “full.” Every time, these dalla dallas squeezed in about 10 more people past what I thought would have been capacity. Maybe “dalla dalla” means clown car.
After about an hour of stopping every few minutes to exchange passengers, we arrived in Moshi. Moshi is Mr. Urassa’s town (as opposed to his village). Our stated purpose for this day was to check the bus station and times of departure, but he wanted to start off by showing us around his favorite places and forcing us to eat and drink. We went with a brisk walk through town, though not the most direct route, and this was very curious to me given that this was his town. At one point we stopped, looked around, then backtracked. Confused, but not wanting to show it, he took us into the nearest restaurant with the pretext that we would dine together. Neither of us were hungry, but we obliged. We ordered and he paid while we sat down, then he disappeared. We ate what we could of the rice, beans, and goat and then sat and waited for Mr. Urassa to return. He came in frantically, asked if we were finished, and hurried us outside. He then took us directly to his “favorite” restaurant and was shocked that we refused to eat. I think he was so consumed by finding this second restaurant that he didn’t realize we had already eaten breakfast and then goat samosas before he had just dropped us off at the first restaurant.
After he finished his meal, we wandered around the hectic bus station, never really finding out any information about a bus, other than that they left early in the morning – which we already knew. After a while, we parted with Urassa and enjoyed the afternoon by wandering around and buying a few souvenirs, including a really cool oil painting of an elephant. When we met up with Urassa he brought us beers before we went with his “brother” Emmanuel back to Nkuu. Emmanuel drove an old Peugeot with red velvet seats. I thought the car was sweet. He didn’t, and mentioned that it was really the best he could do because he was so poor. On the way back to Nkuu something in the engine busted. I thought the car was dead, but after a while it was “fixed”, only now the engine was terribly loud. I felt bad for Emmanuel that he had this problem with his car while he was assisting us, but I was more nervous because he had agreed to take us back to Moshi the following morning. (That ride the next morning turned out fine, except for the fact that Emmanuel gave us a letter asking us for $20,000 to buy a Japanese car.)
More memorable than the near breakdown was our first viewing of Kilimanjaro on that ride back to the village. Up until then, it had been entirely covered by clouds. It would have been a shame to have been so close without actually seeing it. The clouds broke up only around the peak, but it was impressive nonetheless. The color and shadows of the snow were really cool, but the height of it was mind boggling. Previously, when it was covered in clouds, I had tried to imagine its height, size, and location, but I was way off. I would look at the horizon then tilt my head back so I was looking to where I guessed it would be. But when I actually saw it I had to tilt my head back two or three times as far. I didn’t think it was possible for anything to be that big or reach that high into the sky. The angle my neck had to make was unforgettable. Urassa told the truth, he really does live on the side of Mt. Kilimanjaro.
Part 1: Kilimanjaro
Traveling to Tanzania
Nkurenkuru to Rundu (2 hours) to Katima (5 hours) to Linvingstone, Zambia (4 hours) to Lusaka (6 hours) to Tanzanian Border (14 hours) to Chalinze (10 hours) to Moshi (5 hours) to Machame/Nkuu (1 hour). That’s 47 total hours, but it took us 5 days waiting for buses, waiting at police checkpoints, waiting for food, waiting to replace a tire, waiting at the weigh stations, waiting for the sun to come up, waiting for the brakes to be fixed. We were in such good spirits, though, with the excitement of our travel, seeing the new land, and enjoying the company of my colleague, Mr. Urassa, who was taking us to his home in the village of Nkuu, literally on the side of Mt. Kilimanjaro (Nkuu might not be on Google Earth, but Machame should be if you want to see).
Before I can continue, I must say more about Mr. Urassa. Mr. Urassa is an extreme extrovert, courteous, boisterous, confusing, hilarious, contradictory, completely unique and absolutely unforgettable. During basketball, volleyball, staff meetings or just regular conversation he is always saying “thank you very much” or “you are welcome” whether it is relevant or not. As Jarrod pointed out when he visited, he uses “you are welcome” in the correct (literal) sense, not simply as a nonchalant reply to “thank you,” and he never uses the contraction “you’re.” The welcoming nature of Mr. Urassa first became apparent a year ago when he invited Lindsey and me to his home. We quickly agreed, and since that day the stories and promises of welcoming customs persisted with increasing frequency. He said he lived on the side of Mt. Kilimanjaro. He said bananas, coffee, and avocados grew in such abundance that they would rot on the jungle floor or be fed to animals. He said there were random waterfalls. He said we wouldn’t have to pay for anything while we were under his care. Lindsey and I chuckled, rolled our eyes, and wondered what it would really be like…
Before we left Namibia he had already started “welcoming us.” When we were waiting for our ride in Rundu, he ran in to the petrol station and bought us some Cokes. We thanked him and said he didn’t need to do that. He smiled, said “this is only the beginning” and opened his small, hard-cased Japanese suitcase. Inside were only two things: a black plastic bag and a towel. He pulled out the bag and inside were several Russians (a.k.a. Russian sausages). So we dined.
Along the way there were four instances I can remember when people said “Oh yeah, I remember you” with a grin on their face. I can only imagine how many other people also delighted in seeing him again but didn’t say anything. This made him a very nice travel companion, especially in Lusaka and at the border town between Tanzania and Zambia, where a lot of people had trouble seeing past our white skin.
True to his word, along the way he refused to let us pay for anything, and bought us anything we looked at, even when we weren’t interested. We feasted on bananas (roasted and fresh), oranges, grilled goat, French fries, roasted corn, samosas (like egg rolls, but triangular), and pineapples. The pineapples put Namibia and even Hawaii to shame – my mouth is watering now thinking about them again.
In Namibia we travel around in vans (combis) or pickups (baakies), but Zambia and Tanzania have way more people, so there are several large busses that travel from town to town. They vary in comfort, but all (except one) seem to be in less-than-perfect condition. It was common to stop every few hours to change a tire or have a guy crawl under the bus to do something. However, one time we had a more serious problem. In the middle of the night in Zambia our bus came to a stop. At first I just thought it was the typical flat tire and we’d be back on the road again shortly. But after a while people started looking worried (we couldn’t understand what they were saying) and some were taking their bags off the bus. Lindsey went to check what had happened and came back quite flustered. The entire wheel was bent (this probably happened a few hours earlier when our driver took the bus off road to pass about 15 other buses and trucks in line at the weigh station). We both had Oh No! running though our heads, and by this time everyone had piled out of the bus; we decided to wake up Mr. Urassa. In a few minutes taxis started arriving. This was inexplicable, because it seemed like we were in the middle of nowhere, we hadn’t passed anything in hours and, after all, it was the middle of the night. By our good fortune we were only a few k from a very small town called Mpika. As more time went by, some of the buses we passed at the weigh station came by. Some stopped and some didn’t. If I was on one those buses I really would have been laughing. Those that stopped had room for two or three new passengers, while about 20 rushed and pushed at the opening. With our big bags, tired bodies and Western manners, we were never able to penetrate through. Eventually we got a taxi into Mpika. I quickly spotted the bench I planned to make my bed for the night. However, after about 15 minutes of sitting and staring at an empty road and a black sky, a mini bus appeared (from nowhere) and turned off the road (to nowhere) and shockingly was empty. Urassa went straight for it. Within a few minutes it turned around to come and pick us up. By the time we had our bags and were walking to it, several of our fellow passengers from the previous bus materialized (from nowhere!) and started rushing and pushing. We calmly kept our cool and luckily made it inside. It wasn’t a comfortable ride, but they did play some Johnny Cash and got us to the border in the nick of time.
Urassa’s home
We would have arrived at Mr. Urassa’s home before night fall had he so wished, but we took our sweet time. He introduced us to his “sister” and “brother” in Moshi and went to several establishments for grilled goat, fried bananas and cold beer (Serengeti, Kilimanjaro, Tusker, Safari). At one place he told me that Serengeti beer had a leopard on the label because Serengeti park is the only place in the world you can see leopards (which isn’t true…yet). Eventually we set off to Nkuu. For the last half of the hour drive, we started ascending the mountain, and the road gradually deteriorates from paved to washed away mud and rocks. We stopped several times before reaching his house to greet and be welcomed by friends and brothers – it seemed to take hours to travel what should have taken 10 minutes through the village.
When we finally arrived at the house, the wife and daughter met us and then quickly prepared a dinner of stewed bananas and beef, with avocados and beer. We ate every meal by ourselves on stools in the living room, sometimes watching TV but mostly not. (It seemed weird that we were eating alone, but it must have been part of their culture.) His living room is decorated with several calendars, a Fanta beach ball, and a tennis racket. The TV remote was covered in plastic. The entire perimeter is outlined with couches except for the entertainment center and Xerox machine. After dinner we got the tour of the place. Modest by your standards, but very nice for Africa; would have been a palace in Namibia. In a lot of African countries, people invest their money by developing homes in the large towns or cities, but in Tanzania they build up their home in the village. Our car could barely travel up and down side of the mountain, through the mud, and over the large rocks – I can’t imagine transporting the materials for a house. There are even several houses built along walking trails (not roads), and it’s not like these are small cabins in the woods, they are real, full houses. Urassa’s house had a large living room, kitchen, 3 bedrooms and a store. Adjacent was a guest house with 3 more rooms, a chicken coop, and a barn with cows and pigs. And a bathroom – if you can call it that. In Tanzania the common toilet is the hole in the ground, which I never quite got used to. Across the country they ranged in comfort; from an uncovered concrete slab to a porcelain bowl that actually flushed (but still no where to sit). At Urassa’s it was a concrete slab with a piece of wood covering the whole, a bucket of water, and toilet paper. I never saw toilet paper anywhere else in the country, so I guess that is what the water was for but I can’t exactly figure it out. I think that’s why it is so important that they only eat and shake with their right hand. I think it is funny that they had a boy’s and girl’s toilet that were exactly the same. I used both.
The wife’s name was Mamanema and Urassa sometimes called her Manema, because the oldest child’s name is Nema. You see, in Tanzania, after giving birth to her first child the mama changes her name to “MamaChild.” I wonder what Mamascott thinks about that? For some reason it made me think of the American South. The next morning Mamanema made us chai, fat cakes and fried bananas and then Mr. Urassa showed us around the village. Before getting too drunk we made a stop at the two village schools. Like most schools in Africa, they are short on resources. Mamanema is the principal at the junior school. The staff at the senior school made a big deal out of meeting us. I couldn’t figure out why they were all in the staff room around ten o’clock. They said it was break time but we were there for almost an hour. Meanwhile all the kids from both schools were running amuck, playing soccer, gardening and staring at the mzungu. The principal brought us into his office, sat us down, and told us a sob story about the financial situation of the school. It was an awkward situation. We are going to send some books back with Mr. Urassa during the next school break.
The roads were more like trails through the jungle. Coffee, avocado and banana trees grew at will from the pitch black soil. Usually it was partly cloudy, but you got the feeling that you were partly in the clouds as well. We stopped at each one of his friend’s houses along the road, so we unwillingly had drank several warm beers before noon. Not only warm beer, but we also had banana beer. Banana beer? Yes. It’s not exactly beer, but there is alcohol in it. It doesn’t taste as bad as I thought that it would, so it wasn’t too bad pretending to like it (and in some instances pretending to drink it). It was served in very big yellow cups that we passed around in a circle. It was so cheap that every one of his friends (or “brothers”) was able to buy another cup to pass around.
Other than that short stop at the school, that entire day was a cycle of going from house to house, warm beer to warm beer. Primitive bar hopping if you will. They way they treat guests is very flattering, though sometimes strange. For example, one old man insisted we come into his house. We sat down, he turned on and blared the radio, then left the room. Urassa never even entered. In a few minutes the host brought us some boiled eggs and salt. When we had finished the eggs, Mr. Urassa informed us that “in our honor and out of the highest respect he had prepared us [more] food.” This time it was bananas and beans. It was really good and probably my favorite banana dish I had in Tanzania (cooked bananas taste like potatoes).
The next day was more of the same. We started off with promises of going to Mr. Urassa’s farm, but we stopped at every other house for a visit and beer or cup of banana brew. It was mid-afternoon before we had made it more than a few kilometers, so we relegated to just going around the village again (I wonder if Mr. Urassa ever really intended on taking us to the farm?). We finished that days journey at a bar overlooking a long field of green grass (we are not used to seeing grass). There were cows and goats, several small kids, and some people playing soccer. We ate some grilled goat meat and sipped our cold(!) beers as Mr. Urassa told us that this is the best place to view Kilimanjaro. Huh? What? Where!?! For the third day in a row, the mountain was covered by clouds.
On our last day with Urassa we went to Moshi. We didn’t have a ride this day, so we had to walk to the hike point (Americans read: bus stop or taxi line). Urassa would never give us any information in advance, and this was no exception. So when we started walking I wasn’t sure if we were just escorting his wife to work (he didn’t tell us that she was also coming to Moshi), going somewhere to drink, going to our ride, or walking all the way to Moshi – and I didn’t care either. The walk was beautiful; giant trees, foggy mist, beautiful flowers. We took several pictures and insisted of getting one of Mr. and Mrs. Urassa in front of a waterfall. Africans taking pictures are funny enough because they don’t know how to smile, but Mr. Urassa cracked me up. He posed indifferently and didn’t even look at the camera. Then we asked him to take a picture of us. He snapped it before we were ready with about a 30 degree angle. (Kim, this reminds me of your family picture with the guy’s foot also in frame.) As the walk went on, it started to rain and it seemed the incline of the hills got steeper. Because I didn’t know we were doing a mountain walk that morning, I was wearing my Old Navy flip flips. Big mistake. I could barely walk up or down, and it didn’t help matters the path was 8 inches wide in some parts, muddy in others, occasionally both, and always on unleveled ground. Locals would pass us carrying things on their heads wearing raggedy clothes and big ass rain boots. Mr. Urassa wondered out of sight ahead of us, thankfully the Mrs. had enough sense to stay with us. When we finally reached where we were going (which was the place to wait for a dalla dalla) we were in for a fantastic surprise.
Samosas! They are from India, containing a hodgepodge of vegetables and usually potatoes. One advantage over egg rolls is that they always contain meat. We first found them in Lusaka; as we got closer to the Indian Ocean they became more common. Typically a whole batch of them will be made at once, so they are rarely hot (a food pet peeve of mine, along with noodles that stick together). But when we arrived at the hike point it was still early, so the samosas we found were fresh and steaming hot. You never know what you’re going to bite into; these were filled with goat, chilies and onion in perfect ratio (a lot of meat!). Lindsey and I quickly devoured the five that Mr. Urassa bought for us – the cost, about 50 cents. Ashamed and trying to be polite we then refused when he and Mamanema insisted on buying more for us. Eventually we gave in (actually we didn’t have a choice, he just bought them for us). After that I never had the urge for samosas again. Not because I had been turned off but because I was completely and utterly satisfied and I knew there was no way of having a better samosa then the seven I scarfed down on that fine day; like why Michael Jordan shouldn’t have come back to play for the Wizards.
“Dalla dalla” must mean mass transit in Swahili. They can be trucks or vans. The vans have special accommodations for extra people, like tall ceilings for standing room only and handle bars on the outside to help those people that are standing on the bumper. Unlike Namibia, they use a conductor (separate from the driver) that deals with the passengers (the driver just drives). At each stop he slides open the door or throws suitcases on top, collects money, ushers in new customers, then slaps the roof to let the driver know they are ready to go – that would always remind me of ambulances from the days when I watched E.R. A lot of time the conductor will give the signal to the driver before he is inside or on the bumper. I remember one time the driver took off a little faster than the conductor expected and he had to sprint to catch up, hop in, and then close the door. You get used to the transportation situation in Africa, but it seems I always underestimate when the vehicle is “full.” Every time, these dalla dallas squeezed in about 10 more people past what I thought would have been capacity. Maybe “dalla dalla” means clown car.
After about an hour of stopping every few minutes to exchange passengers, we arrived in Moshi. Moshi is Mr. Urassa’s town (as opposed to his village). Our stated purpose for this day was to check the bus station and times of departure, but he wanted to start off by showing us around his favorite places and forcing us to eat and drink. We went with a brisk walk through town, though not the most direct route, and this was very curious to me given that this was his town. At one point we stopped, looked around, then backtracked. Confused, but not wanting to show it, he took us into the nearest restaurant with the pretext that we would dine together. Neither of us were hungry, but we obliged. We ordered and he paid while we sat down, then he disappeared. We ate what we could of the rice, beans, and goat and then sat and waited for Mr. Urassa to return. He came in frantically, asked if we were finished, and hurried us outside. He then took us directly to his “favorite” restaurant and was shocked that we refused to eat. I think he was so consumed by finding this second restaurant that he didn’t realize we had already eaten breakfast and then goat samosas before he had just dropped us off at the first restaurant.
After he finished his meal, we wandered around the hectic bus station, never really finding out any information about a bus, other than that they left early in the morning – which we already knew. After a while, we parted with Urassa and enjoyed the afternoon by wandering around and buying a few souvenirs, including a really cool oil painting of an elephant. When we met up with Urassa he brought us beers before we went with his “brother” Emmanuel back to Nkuu. Emmanuel drove an old Peugeot with red velvet seats. I thought the car was sweet. He didn’t, and mentioned that it was really the best he could do because he was so poor. On the way back to Nkuu something in the engine busted. I thought the car was dead, but after a while it was “fixed”, only now the engine was terribly loud. I felt bad for Emmanuel that he had this problem with his car while he was assisting us, but I was more nervous because he had agreed to take us back to Moshi the following morning. (That ride the next morning turned out fine, except for the fact that Emmanuel gave us a letter asking us for $20,000 to buy a Japanese car.)
More memorable than the near breakdown was our first viewing of Kilimanjaro on that ride back to the village. Up until then, it had been entirely covered by clouds. It would have been a shame to have been so close without actually seeing it. The clouds broke up only around the peak, but it was impressive nonetheless. The color and shadows of the snow were really cool, but the height of it was mind boggling. Previously, when it was covered in clouds, I had tried to imagine its height, size, and location, but I was way off. I would look at the horizon then tilt my head back so I was looking to where I guessed it would be. But when I actually saw it I had to tilt my head back two or three times as far. I didn’t think it was possible for anything to be that big or reach that high into the sky. The angle my neck had to make was unforgettable. Urassa told the truth, he really does live on the side of Mt. Kilimanjaro.
