Three weeks up-country

Three weeks up-country

Mambo?

Here everything is quite OK. I’m just back in Dar, after a long and challenging (especially since I had malaria again) bus-trip, which I will come back to later. During my up-country trip I travelled through a large part of this extended country. Last update I told about the kilos I lost and that I still felt weak because of the malaria. Well shortly after that I felt strong as always again. I decided to stop with the Doxicyclin because of its side-effects in the long run and because it had not helped a thing in my case (and I know of others who got the full malaria as well despite taking it [but it is said that it ensures at least that you can’t die from malaria]). A few days ago however I experienced the familiar symptoms to a lesser extent again and after a test it appeared that I was infected with the malaria parasite once more! On the one hand I considered not to take medication to try to become resistant (o.d.z. “If it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger”), but on the other hand; it was malaria falciparum again, which is the most dangerous (and here most common) type, and I didn’t want to take unnecessary risk. And no matter how hard I try, also because of my dynamic life I cannot avoid being stung; I appear to be haute cuisine for the local mosquitoes. So now I’ll be looking for an alternative precautionary medicine. But don’t worry; I feel fine actually, much better than the previous time. Enough about that; let’s reflect on the past three to four weeks.

My final days before leaving Dar were relaxing (since it also was a goodbye to Ronald for four months). For instance we went to Pepijn’s place; a nice villa with animals, among others a vervet monkey, and stayed over for the night. Also, we went to this pretty small paradise-like island some kilometres from Dar for some snorkelling with coral and, sorry I couldn’t help it, bouldering on the overhanging rocky shore. I spotted quite some nice fishes which I would like to catch myself (pour des connoisseurs; among others trevallies), coral in all colours, and an octopus. Somewhere nearby there is a shipwreck, which I’ll try to find next time. Probably I’ll go back with two of our neighbours, Josh and Claire from British Colombia; such people that you can admire because of all the nice adventurous things they do. Hopefully we’ll be able to arrange a big game fishing trip as well. Furthermore, we went to a Dutch ‘smartlappenfestival’, where several expats were making a fool of themselves in a nice way and where we could even enjoy the performance of a professional and convincing (when not performing he had a strong Limburgian accent, but my doubts vanished instantly when he started singing) Andre Hazes-look-alike.

After having had some delay of course (I had to wait for some marketing materials), I took the bus up-country. I have been now for many hours in buses and have seen quite some variety in landscapes. Whereas the coast is dominated with palm tree forests and baobabs, in-land there is more diversity; one finds open and flat savannah, rather dense hilly woods, rocky mountains with nice faces, and hills with huge boulders. Especially the ride from Mwanza to Musoma was brilliant; initially I was admiring the huge Lake Victoria (the world’s second largest lake and source of the Nile) to the left and then suddenly I amazed myself about the vast herds of cattle to the right. When having a closer look it appeared that I was just passing Serengeti National Park’s western border; the herds were no cattle, but zebras, antelopes, baboons, and wildebeests. Even from the outer limit, directly bordering a relatively crowded road, it is evident that this area is home to the largest population of large mammals in the world. I’m looking forward to going there!

Another thing that is evident when crossing the country is that Tanzania (although westerners may think of it as a relatively wealthy country as a result of the tourist-industry) is very poor; villages consist of mud-houses, brick really is exceptional. In fact, 57.8% of the population is living from less than one US dollar a day. That instantly explains why almost everyone appears to beg, demand, or cheat you for money; although you may still be a student, a mzungu per definition is rich in their terms. The adverse result is that you start becoming cynical and ignoring people; it initially made me feel rather lonely. As I visit a place for two days at maximum you cannot really learn to know people and the vast majority that you do speak only want to have your attention for insincere reasons. The places I visited, apart from Mwanza really are in black Africa; I was lucky if I spotted one mzungu apart from myself in the whole town. Nevertheless; the moments that you are having a sincere chat or are invited for a drink yourself, instead of someone begging or demanding you, compensate a whole lot.

I have now become more acquainted to travelling by African bus as I travelled somewhere between 3500 and 4000 kilometres last three weeks. Still, it sometimes is somewhat uncomfortable. For instance, the other day I had a totally blue shoulder as a result of continuously bumping to the side of the bus. Or the time that I had been cheated with the ticket (I knew I paid twice the regular price and I gave the operator a hard time, but he knew that they were the only ones providing a ride into the required direction) and found that my seat number did not correspond to any in the bus; standing with a large bag, marketing banners, and a solar demonstration suitcase in a over-crowded, luggage stuffed, and bumpy African bus will never become a hobby of mine. But the ultimate challenge was my trip back to Dar. I could not take a direct bus so needed to travel to another town for three hours and stay there the night. The day after I waited for 3,5 hours on my bus to find out that it didn’t go. So, I took another bus, which meant that I needed to stand for 5 hours in an overly packed bus before having a seat. As a result of being overly packed we were stopped by the police twice and negotiations to bribe the police officers took an hour on both occasions. The trip took 22 hours, which meant that we had to stay overnight in the bus, when having malaria. But, I knew that I would have a laugh afterwards;)

In line with travelling by bus, the accommodations sometimes were somewhat basic. A cold shower was a luxury as I often only had a bucket with cold water, if there is running water. For instance in Singida and Shinyanga there only was water two half hours a day. In addition, I’m now already satisfied if I have my own hole in the floor as a loo, instead of a shared toilet. But frankly, I can’t complain; hygiene is quite reasonable as I never was bothered with bed bugs. Still, I had unwanted visitors in two occasions. The first one was mice that I had chased away already several times. At night however I was awakened by a nibbling sound very nearby. After checking the bed it appeared that a mouse was chewing my mattress to pieces, just underneath the place where my head laid. The other occasion was a room that was crowded with cockroaches and ants. After one night I had to take ants out of my pants all day during a bus trip; luckily their bites were not in relation to their size.

During the trip I visited a number of towns. To start with, Dodoma, Tanzania’s official capital (Lau; je had gelijk!), is not very attractive; there simply is nothing to do or see. Although Tanzania is a democracy, since the country’s independence in the ‘70s only one party (the CCM) has been ruling. Throughout Dodoma there is an abundance of CCM-sign posts, banners, and other propaganda and it would not amaze me if it would be forbidden for other parties to do the same. In a large part of Dodoma it is not allowed to take pictures, but that’s not too big a sacrifice as there is not much interesting to eternalise.

Luckily, Singida was more interesting. It is a small, dusty, but colourful town surrounded by hills with huge boulders and two lakes with all kinds of birds (I have only been able to spot all kinds of prey-birds, among others a bald eagle, all kinds of other birds of prey, zilverreigers, ibises, and king fishers, but I have been told that one can find pelicans and flamingos as well). I really felt at home at the lake as I spotted and heart the whistles of Murmeltier-like creatures; rock hyraxes. The surroundings perfectly served a nice run in the morning (which I have done quite often last three weeks since the climate in-land is much more suitable because of much lower humidity and average altitudes of 1000 meter. It also served sleeping like a baby; near the coast I’m soaking every night). When I went back to the lake to take some pictures (I had already been warned by the manager of the company where I had given a Marketing & Sales training to watch out for robbers), I was warned by a man that many robbers were around the lake and that just minutes before two men approached him for asking where the mzungu was as they were after me. He had pointed in the wrong direction. I thanked him and decided to go into the direction of town again. A kilometre further I spotted two men standing on both sides of a small pathway that I needed to take. I saw both men picking something up and when I came closer I saw that they had taken stones and were carrying catapults. Evidently they had been waiting for me. As I mentally prepared myself for a fight I approached them and bluntly asked: “Jambo?”. Luckily, at that very moment out of the blue a shepherd arrived. Nothing happened, which I think should be attributed to the shepherd’s arrival. Naturally it is a bit of a pity to find out that it is not completely safe to go into the bush on your own, but on the other hand; Tanzania is quite safe and not many fire-arms circulate. Anyway, I will not hesitate to enjoy the outback.

The next town, Shinyanga, was a dusty as Singida, but less atmospheric. It was quite a strange sight to find marabous (ugly large scavenging birds) throughout the town. My luck was that there was a South African who owned a snack bar serving a lot of meat (e.g. Boerewors of over 500g); ideal for gaining some weight!

Mwanza, at the shore of Lake Victoria really is a town. I had promised myself that when I would be near Lake Victoria I would have a try to catch a Nile perch (medium sized Nile perches way somewhere between 30 and 50 kgs and the largest caught in the lake even was 262 kg!). I went to a luxurious lodge and got myself a comfortable hut next to a beach. Unfortunately the boat I would take had a leak and was being fixed; it would only take an hour work. As I already expected the hour would take several days in Africa. In stormy conditions I made an attempt from a pier but it didn’t pay out. Still, I met two interesting Swiss guys; they travelled all over Africa in their old Landcruiser and were completely self-sufficient. I had the luck of being invited for some fruit and pasta salad (which I really could use as the Tanzanian kitchen appears only to serve chips, rice, and ugali [a kind of firm maize porridge] with chicken, fish or grinded goat or beef with bones all over the place, but without any vegetables). We could not resist swimming to some boulders some hundreds of meters away. Although swimming in Lake Victoria is not recommendable because of the presence of bilharzia, we decided that the waves would impede the tiny parasites to reach us (this is no nonsense).

In Musoma, at the shore of Lake Victoria near the Kenyan border I asked around for fishing opportunities as well, but I couldn’t find any possibilities.
I can’t tell a whole lot about Tabora as I did not really explore it since I got there malaria again and as a result I felt weak. But I experienced some impressive scenery here; the rainy season is starting now and impressive dark clouds and thunder flashes dominated the sky.

All the travelling I do of course is part of my internship at the Free Energy Foundation. Logically you ask yourself whether it is worth all the effort; sitting in buses for days to give some trainings and promotional solar presentations. This feeling increased when some companies I visited did not arrange the up-country trip for promotional presentations that they were supposed to do. However, more and more I’m feeling confident that the Foundation’s approach is the only way; people in the villages still are very much unaware of the opportunities of solar systems and you simply need to visit them there. Also, employees of the companies I visited appeared to have many questions and learned a whole lot and benefit from the materials we produced. The presentations up-country are great. After one presentation I had to wait for the marketing officer of our partnering company because he was busy with arranging some sales. In the meanwhile I was playing soccer (natuurlijk lekker hooghouden) with 200 school children. Later on a teacher invited me to have shots at a goal as all children wanted to act as keeper when I was giving it a try. As a result of my presentation, and the marketing materials that I produced for a large part by myself, I had encouraged 4 people out of an audience of 25 to buy a solar home system instantly (an investment that corresponds still to several months of income). This is great if you realise that the particular partnering company only sold 13 or 14 solar home systems a year despite having a marketing officer and 7 other employees; my work had direct effect!

To conclude, I’ve seen and done a whole lot during the last weeks. I now have a good feeling about what we are doing here and I really learn to know the country beyond the tourist attractions. Also, I got used to being on my own; something I realised I have never really been before. But after a minor change in attitude it is in fact quite nice to enjoy a beer by yourself when you’re spotting a falcon consuming its prey in a palm tree in the day’s final purple rays. Sorry for having written such a long story, maybe it’s better if I split it up next time;) Thanks again for all responses, messages, and mails; I appreciate it!

Kwa heri!

Peter