Swinging Back Through Dar

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  Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Saturday, February 3, 2007

Our luxury bus ride to Dar turned out to be much like one of the long-haul flights we've taken on this trip.  Twelve hours belted into a seat, riding high over the short bushes and scrub that decorates much of the Rift Valley's floor.  Indeed, if anything deserves the term "Airbus" it might be this monstrosity hurtling down a potholed road, though the speed bumps never caused it to achieve too much extra altitude.  Our flight from the blasted heat is punctuated by several attempts at cabin service by the crew.  Buttermilk candies are handed out, and then ginger biscuits.  Finally, they dragged out several cartons of Pepsi bottles, one each to a passenger.  After drinking, we were expected to put the bottles back in the crates.  Hilariously, the crates full of empty bottles were then left in the aisle of the bus for the remainder of the trip, around 8 hours, so that every passenger could trip on them at least twice.  It was after the food service that our bus became a kind of speeding garbage distribution service, with all the passengers throwing their plastic bottles, wadded up napkins, and other detritus out of the open windows.  Those up front hadn't quite grasped that when they did this, it had a tendency to blow back into the bus and onto a passenger in a row further down.  That, or they didn't care.  What else? Oh yes, your on-board entertainment on this flight will be the worst shot and edited film ever created, in Swahili, along with many other television programs of similar quality.  The sound for today's movie will be provided by a stereo located under seats J3 and J4.  Wave to those muzungu people in those seats, because even when they put in those little purple earplugs they've been carrying around for moments like this, the vibrations caused by the extreme volume will shake the sound waves into their brains.  Oh, the horror.  I read and finished Stephen Fry's "The Liar", an excellent book, then played cards, then finally passed out from the heat. 
When I awoke, we'd stopped for lunch at the Al-Jazeera Restaurant.  Hmm.  Interesting name.  It turns out to be not as Arabic as the name suggests, and not even as expensive as a place that's the only game for a hundred miles normally would be. 

Like all things pleasant or dreadful, the bus ride was eventually over, and we were expulsed into Dar's gargantuan bus station, filled with hungry looking stray taxi drivers and touts. 

It was getting dark, so we checked into the ominous sounding "The Terminal Hotel", which actually turns out to have air-conditioning and a TV in the room. 

In the morning, Cierra went to the Internet cafe while I tried to get information on bus fares to one of the cities in the north.  There were approximately 1,000 ticketing offices located outside the station, each a small room filled with peeling paint and 4 to 6 layabouts in uniform.  These people were complemented nicely by the mob of layabouts outside, eager to grab your hand and drag you toward whatever office is likely to hand them a bribe.  At least they're energetic enough to move.  If you could somehow bulldoze this place and convince all these people to do something with their lives, you might be able to feed the world's hungry, pave a Tanzanian road, or something similarly impossible.  You will forgive the venting of a bit of frustration, I hope, as I was knocked about in the froth of this archaic maelstrom for a half hour of scrawling various fares and times on a piece of paper.  In the most surreal moment of the day, a very angry little person who worked in one of these offices came up yelling at me in the hall, snatching away my paper and shouting questions at me in Swahili.  I shrugged, smiling blankly, and the crowd around us laughed as he yelled at me a bit more, then moved on. 

Our day in Dar was spent doing odds and ends.  We tried once again to find a guidebook, but the only ones we could find were so fantastically expensive there would have to be gold bars stitched into the binding to return half the investment.  We went grocery shopping, went by the information center, and visited an ATM, all of the things that we hadn't been able to do while in the smaller cities and towns. 

Walking on the street, we were set upon by a team of thieves.  Cierra noticed a couple of people get in front of us and slow down.  Then another man grabbed my hand, pulling me backwards.  I jerked the hand free, but he was grabbing at my shoe, and another man was drifting closer to my right side than made sense for the amount of free space on the sidewalk.  I instinctively moved left to get away, but he sidled in closer, and all the while his accomplice continued to try to draw my attention left by pretending there was something dangerous on my shoe.  I ignored this fool as best I could, and put my free hand on my wallet so that the pickpocket couldn't gain anything of value.  Fortunately, I keep another piece of clothing tied around my waist most days to keep my wallet from being easily accessible, so he was attempting to reach into my front pocket, which contained nothing more valuable than a tourist map.  I told the guy at my shoe to get lost, still guarding my wallet with the other hand and then walked out of the little trap they'd laid for us right there on the open sidewalk.  Perhaps I should have screamed "Police!" in an attempt to have them arrested, but from what I know of the police here, I'd likely have had to pay for whatever help I might get from them, and walking quickly away seemed the best way to keep everything I had.  While I wish I could say I elbowed the nasty fellow in the throat while he went for my pocket, the whole team cleared out as quickly as we did, free to rob the next guy to come along.  Remember, whenever someone tries to direct your attention elsewhere, put your eyes and hands where they should be - on the things you want to keep.  We lost nothing on that street, except a little piece of our innocence.

At an Internet cafe and call center, Cierra had a chance to call home for the first time in a few weeks.  The booths at these places are tiny, so I passed the time sitting in the lobby, reading every newspaper in the place and counting the ceiling tiles.  Forty minutes later, she emerged all puffy-faced.  Oh-oh.  Bad news from home.  I knew what it was about, but knew not to ask about it and make her cry in front of the whole place, so I paid the nice lady and we walked out of there.  It was a little while before she could talk about it.  Our little Mikey- dog was thin at 9 and a half pounds when we had left, but had declined over the past weeks to 7 and a half, truly skeletal.  He was being force fed and hating it.  A new medication had been started for his stomach ulcers, but it would take 21 days to go into effect and it had only been four.  Hoping for a miracle had been nice while we had the luxury, but it didn't seem responsible anymore now that he was so miserable.  She had cried with her Mom, cried on the phone to her Dad, and then told them to make the decision when it would be best to let Mikey go, but not to keep putting him through this for us.  Mikey has been with Cierra and I for as long as we've been together, and with Cierra and her family for much longer.  I always knew it would be terrible for her when it came time to say goodbye to him, and I'm not sure if being away will make it easier for her or harder.  For me, I think this way it'll be easier to remember the little guy when he was healthy and active, during all the great years when he'd play with his toys, then come and lie down with his head on my chest.  I wish we could say goodbye, but I'm not sure it would help him anyway, and he's got other people who love him who'll be there.  Sigh.  I've been blinking back tears for the last few minutes writing this, and it seems so empty and small for the amount of feeling that we have over him.  But I don't know what else to put down, either, and fear that I've gone on too long as well.  Enough wallowing.  We're very sad.  Beyond that, we owe a huge debt to Deann and Greg, who've been taking care of Mikey in a very intensive way, to the detriment of their own sleep and emotional well-being.

The ride back to the hotel got our minds off our feelings when the dalla-dalla we were in was hit by another vehicle.  The damage was superficial, scratching paint and knocking the taillights askew, but the driver and conductor got out to start yelling at the other driver, hoping for a big payout.  After a while of this, someone inside asked them a question, and the answer caused everyone inside to sigh and shuffle out of the vehicle.  Those that had a ticket were refunded a portion of the fare.  The others who'd just paid, like us, were out of luck.  One of the other passengers was nice enough to show us where the next stop was, and we fought for a space in a minibus that was already standing room only.  We stayed part of this sweaty human sandwich for over forty minutes as we inched forward in one of Dar's afternoon traffic jams.  Finally, we arrived at the bus station, bought our tickets with a minimum of hassle, and settled down to get some sleep before a second long ride in the morning.

We paid the non-luxury fare for our ride up to Moshi, so we were happy to find that the bus had an intact windshield and everything.  Sure, the armrest on my chair had been broken off and left only a jagged plastic surface on which to scratch my arm, and the "seat belt" was just two strips of fabric.  Still, you can bet we tied those two suckers together after we got going and the driver revealed the depth of his insanity.  He had no qualms at all about pulling out to pass another bus around blind corners, or hilltops, or even when any fool could see a Mack Truck barreling towards us.  Each time, we'd wander back into our lane just before impact.  Or I should hope we did.  I'm actually still on this bus while writing this, so I'm not out of danger yet, though if this gets posted to the blog, then I suppose it follows that I'm still alive.

At a crossroads, our bus stopped to load a bunch of cargo in the hold beneath.  After waiting forever to get moving again, I got off to buy a Coke.  This was apparently the signal for the journey to start again, and Cierra had to yell for them to wait so that I wouldn't be left behind.  The shopkeeper wanted me to leave the bottle, but I'd clearly paid enough for the drink and bottle and a down payment on his store besides.  I sprinted over and hopped up on the bus without spilling a drop of the soda.

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