Iringa, Tanzania
Trip Start
Jun 08, 2008
1
7
28
Trip End
Aug 15, 2008
Iringa,
Tanzania
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Woke up at 4:30 after only finally getting to sleep at 3 a.m. due to it having been my first night in the tent. I hardly slept a wink, which did not bode well for our marathon 12 hour drive across Tanzania planned for today.
After a 5 a.m. departure from the campsite, we stopped for breakfast at a small roadside café in the middle of Tanzania, where I was immediately greeted by a smiling white face and the question "Where are y'all from?" Not quite believing my ears I asked the young lady to repeat her question. Once again she did, and this time I was sure that she had said "y'all". So I answered, "Judging from your use of the word y'all, I come from pretty much the same place that you do!" Her response was both a shock and a joy: "We're a group of students from LSU in Baton Rouge, Louisiana." Is that a coincidence or what? Meeting a group of students from my home town and my alma mater at a random café in the middle of Africa
01-Group of students from LSU
! I gave the young lady my mother's phone number and asked her to call her and tell her that we met in Africa when she gets back home next month. So Mom, if you get a call from a total stranger in about a month claiming to have met me in Tanzania, don' be too surprised. In fact, you should be more surprised if she DOESN'T call.Our marathon journey continued, stopping only for sandwiches (self made) along the side of the road just after noon. The scenery along the way was beautiful: rocky hills, thousands of baobob trees (I later learned that this area is called Baobob Valley), and the occasional village of mud huts and poor people scratching out a living. The weather was clear, sunny and increasingly cool as we climbed to higher altitudes.
We reached our camp at about 17:30, just in time to pitch our tents in the daylight, which made a huge difference in our ability to get everything done properly. After setting up camp in the middle of nowhere, we had a lovely, cozy candlelit dinner in a restored mud hut restaurant owned and operated by an English gentleman farmer who spends part of his year in this remote part of Tanzania. By the time we went to bed it was already freezing, so I slept in my thermal underwear, jacket and wool cap.
Comments
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Don't think I ever met an 'alma mater' far from home.