Tukuyu - Capitol of Tea and Bananas

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  Tukuyu, Tanzania
Sunday, March 4, 2007

Greetings from Tukuyu Tz, the local capitol of tea and bananas, and a great word if you have too many U's in Scrabble.  This is our last stop in the delightfully cool (if a bit wet) southern highlands of Tanzania; tomorrow we'll drop down to Malawai, new country, new currency, new time zone (back one hour), new food (??), new language (and we were just getting the hang of Swahili menus...), and back to the heat. This internet cafe is horribly slow, and may also be the last we see for a week or two in Malawai. 

Since last writing we have been cruising down the southern highlands. Flat is NOT a word which applies here. The first day out of Iringa, the rolling hills ended up in almost another 1000m of climbing for the day. Mosquito nets and fans were missing from the hotel - apparently they think we're too high to need either, and were more or less correct. We found Cheese here

01 Godfrey's Children's Center, near Mbeya

! Not very good cheese, but it was at least a dairy product, and I've had a cheese hankering for weeks now. The market stalls here are well stocked... but all with the same stuff. You can have 6 stalls in a row, all with 90% inventory overlap.

Anyway, back to the biking:  It's also darn windy, but at least it's a crosswind. Spent the night in Mafinga, another fun word, and home of the Chai Bora tea factory (this is THE tea in Tz). Then on to Macambanko, a random, windy junction town. Many many km were biked through the highlands tree farms - looks a look like the Pacific NW tree farms actually. The biking is gorgeous, the temperatures are very comfortable, the only issue is that the road is barely wide enough for 2 buses, and the shoulder is pretty high grass, so we watch the rear-view very carefully. Traffic is fortunately sparse, but when there's converging traffic, it's dive for the ditch time.

We were pretty bonked on arrival in Macambanko, and looking for lunch in a big way. Naturally we encountered the standard problem. Who actually sells lunch? A shop labeled 'restaurant' is no guarantee of food. Having chairs and tables out front may indicate food, but may just be a bar, or a gesti with chairs for loitering. Likewise, a store labeled 'grocery' may or may not have food, may in fact be a restaurant, or a bar

02 Gretchen and Friends

. We went for the place labeled 'Restaurant' and which had chairs. Food? Only chicken. Chipsi-omelette? (our usual standby, eggs and chips (french fries for yanks) cooked together). Not a chance. Rice & Beans? No have. Well bugger. Eventually we were allowed to sit at the chairs, and then wander down the row of stalls with a helper from the 'restaurant' until we found Mama cooking chipsi-omelette, have her cook us lunch, and back to the 'restaurant' where we bought a couple cokes to share the wealth around. At this point, Gretchen realizes that the Mama immediately next to where we are sitting has been serving ugali and beans all along. Figures. The hotel was nice, and very new - still smelled like paint. The power was out, but this is not unusual. But as darkness fell, there was a building-shaking roar, and the lights came on; the new hotel also had a big new generator. The noise was unbelievable, the walls were vibrating, a short bit of imagination and we could have been in steerage on a ship somewhere. But noise is an easily tolerated sign of progress here, much better to have light with noise, than no light . Noise is everywhere - honking, yelling, road noise, there is NO rudeness here associated with screaming at the top of your lungs down the street at 2am. Ear plugs are good, but a good night's sleep would be damn well appreciated any time now.

Next day we got to drop way down, a nice way to blow through 120km, but tempered by a wall on the horizon, and the knowledge we'd be going up it the next day

03 Our guids to Ngozi Crater Lake

. Stayed the night in a grungy little spot, where the water was soooo bad, we actually bought bottled water instead of using the water filter, even for cooking. A lot of Tz has had pretty murky water, either reddish-brown, or grey, depending on the silt. But you have to fill a pot, or a sink to notice. Here, on the other hand, the water was so bad, it was visibly brown coming out of the tap, and no end to the chunks and particles. Probably a pipe straight out of the river.

Then it was time to climb. We don't have a good map of Tz, so weren't sure how much climbing we had in store. We knew that Mbeya is pretty high, and Tukuyu is pretty high, and that we were going towards Mbeya, and then south towards Tukuyu to find Godfrey's Children's center, an orphanage where a few Americans were volunteering. We had met them in Iringa and they said to stop in. So we figured we'd climb a bit, but not as high as Tukuyu, so how big a day could it be anyhow? Well, we headed out, and, and in short order climbed 350m. Had a snack, and then, suddenly there was a Japanese chap on a bike! The first other Nzugu (white-man) on a bike we had seen! But he spoke very little English, so not much of a conversation, except to assure us that we kept going up. Another 400m climb, and we're in Uyole for lunch. And now towards Tukuku. The scenery was gorgeous, green, fantastic rolling hills, spectacular clouds, and all that. Unfortunately, the road went straight up one of them hills, and now, finally, another 500m higher (ja, over 1250m for the day), we're at the top, and the rain starts as we screech down the other side into Godfrey's, where we found, well, more or less complete bedlam. A small army of even smaller folk ran out, grabbed our bikes, and off we went to the center (set back from the road a bit). Debi, and her daughters Amy and Sara weren't around right then, and in fact, the adult count was very low, so we had a short tour until Debi came back, along with the founder, named Barry, who was originally from Tz, but now lives in Oregon

04 Ngozi Crater Lake - with company

. It was cold, and raining lightly just then, so this seemed appropriate somehow. The center was in a bit of an uproar with personnel changes, and everyone gone for a meeting in Mbeya tomorrow, so we got to stay in Debi's usual room, and with that, they were off again, leaving us with all the kids, who wanted to say hi, and hang out, hang on us, and most of all, they wanted to ride our ultra-cool bikes which had both brakes and gears which worked!!! (Did I mention that the scariest part of the Iringa climb, the 8km of straight up, was the guys on the bikes screaming straight down, with 40L of water jugs on the back, and just using their flip-flop as a brake?????) . The bikes here are either one speed, or if they had gears, the deralieurs are broken now, and the brakes have been disconnected since the tires are so un-true as for the brakes to be pointless. Interstingly, the African 1-speed is geared pretty high. This sometimes results in us, fully loaded, paralleling locals on an un-loaded 1-speed for way too long since the speeds match pretty well. Sometimes, the speeds don't really match, but the locals have a mean competitive streak, and are damned if they'll be passed by some fancy-pants nzugu on a super expensive bike. Chased one chap for a good 8km this way, though his legs might spin off on the down hills. But I digress; back at the orphange: We un-wisely allowed the bikes to be borrowed, and then fretted about it until they returned, a passenger riding on the back pannier rack as is the style here, and we locked them up despite further pleas

05 Who needs an umbrella?

. I did manage to break the stove at least, providing lots of entertainment for the small folk as I tried to avoid profanity while wiring two parts back together which had previously been welded together until I had started cooking dinner.

The orphanage was a rather unique never-never land experience. Up to 50 kids there, ages 3-15, and major pre-school, but we missed a lot of that since it was a weekend, and anyone who could find a relative, was off visiting. On the other hand, with all leadership missing, the remaining kids made up for it.  Orphanages are a strange entity in Africa - the culture, and the government are very anti-orphanage, because they believe that the extended family should look after the kids.  HIV is changing that, and the government isn't keeping up.  This town had an additional problem; they lie at the bottom of a steep hill with a big curve. One day a petrol tanker over-turned. People ran out to get free gas. You can guess the rest, and a significant percentage of the adult population was suddenly gone.  The place is run partly by
Africa Bridge, an American based NGO run by Barry.

Next day we climbed the the Ngozi crater with Rama, the oldest kid, and 3 smaller folks helping out

06 A Jesus Factory??

. One of them looked about 5, but had impressive biceps, and was probably closer to 8 or 9, just not tall. The trail to the crater winds through very high corn / sugar cane (?? but that's what they called it), and then straight up through the rain forest. The forest was thick, the flies were thicker, and, despite thoughts of a very solitary nature hike, there were tons of kids! It was a school field trip! We reached the top of this old volcano with a big lake in the middle, and there were about 80 kids up there! We sat down to eat a snack, and they all watched us, not the scenery they'd hiked up to see! We had a nice snack of crackers (and the kids just tossed all the wrappers on the ground, as they do with all trash) , and the best bread we've had in Tz yet (called Mkati, we're wondering how many we can haul with us to Malawi), and then down we went, skipping the bit of hiking down to the lake since the trail was so steep, the kids were trickling down 3 at a time. Halfway down it started pouring rain - what do you expect in a rain forest? But why carry a jacket when there are banana leaves? The kids hacked of 6 big leaves, one for each of us, and with these 'brollies' we hiked out, getting only mostly drenched.

Debi and her two kids came back that night, and we had a few hours of good conversation about the joys of being an nzugu in Tz. All we really want right now (along with cheese) is anonymity

06 A new take on religion?

. They are stuck riding the Dala-Dala's (mini-bus taxis) several times a week. These are designed to seat 12, but the have seen up to 30 squeezed on board. And imagine the body odor.... We were suddenly very glad to be on bicycle! And now in Tukuyu, where this internet bar is filling up with smoke (wood smoke first, now diesel exhaust for variety), and the grocery stores have gotten very lame so that our sustaining gorp of raisins-peanuts-cashews is down to just peanuts. Hope Malawi has something more interesting for snacks!

We had a delightful tea tour today with "Rungwe Tea and Tours", a eco-toursim type outfit here. We spent many hours hiking through small tea farms, one big tea plantation, tasting some tea from the local factory (unfortunately didn't get a factory tour), and back again. Our guide was a retired teacher, very good english, and answered lots of questions we've had for a while. Although we didn't bother asking why restaurants don't serve food, but groceries sometimes do, even if they have nothing to buy.

A few other random Africa musings:
On electricity: When it's working at least, the plug is this massive 3-prong affair. The ground has a physical interlock to prevent the other two prongs from being used unless the ground is inserted

07 How to pick tea

. Solid safety feature, completely ignored by all the companies selling plugs with only 2 prongs to cut costs, and means finding something to jam into the grounding prong (careful which one you choose) to trip the safety interlock.

On getting change for a purchase: This is a major event, and, for some reason, seems totally unexpected by the vendor. We sit in a small restaurant for an hour and watch them collect small bills for small purchases. We then hand over, say 5000/= for a 1600/= cheque. They run all over the restauarant looking for change. Usually they head out the door and try all their friends as well. Just where the hell did the other bills go??????

On fruit: In the land of bananas, why can't they think of anything more creating than just eating them straight off the tree? Need some Thai folks to show them the ropes.

On biology: An NGO in Iringa had a display claiming that if the local villagers had enough empty water bottles, they could fill the bottles in the morning with bad water, put them on the roof for the day, and by the end of the day, there would be enough UV to kill the bacteria and make it safe to drink. Good idea (they were collecting water bottles to distribute), and may even work, hell, but the end of the day in the sun here I'm pretty well dead.

That's all for now, will try to put up some pictures later, but the computers, AND the connection are both horible, so no promises.
M<

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09 Growing tea - the family farm way

10 Tea Plantation, near Tukuyu, Tz

11 Kids in Tz

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