Thursday, May 15, 2003 (Arusha - Tanzania)
Why are we still rushing when we are still on
holiday? Deep into black
Africa now. Thanks to the drivers. And now the
isolation kicks in. Learning how to manage by being thrown into the deep end.
What? Do they sell curios here too? A bus depot such that we've never seen
before. And just
how
many people can you get into this vehicle? In search of fish.
Day 64. It was a bit of a rush around this
morning, as we had to decide pretty quickly whether or not we were going to go
into town with Kenny and Robson. Since we needed to withdraw money somehow, we
decided to go with them after all. The campsite staff were good enough to lock
up all our backpacks for the day so that we could venture out into what has
developed into the ‘real Africa’ to tend to our
chores.
For some time now, there has
been no distinction between white Africa and black Africa like as I had
described it in South Africa. It’s been mostly black Africa in Botswana
and Zimbabwe but pretty much exclusively black Africa in Zambia and Tanzania
– with the exception of some of the campsite staff here. We feel very much
out in the thick of it here and I can scarcely imagine any place more daunting
or rugged – or challenging for that
matter.
Kenny dropped us off in town
and I gave them a tip for all that they have done for us. Pretty much everyone
at Wildlife Adventures has bent over backwards to accommodate us and these two
guys have been no different. We will miss then
both.
For the first time since we
arrived here in Africa, we were now completely alone. No rental car or cell
phone; no tour guide to turn to and nothing more than our wits and recently
acquired experience to help us make do. To emphasize this even further, we were
dropped off in the middle of downtown Arusha, which is an extremely busy and
bustling middle African town. It almost seems like we were transported to
another time. There are masses of people just about everywhere that you look.
The roads and pavements are in an extreme state of disrepair and pretty much
don’t exist a lot of the time. Noises of people, trucks and buses hit you
from every direction and I think I’ve come as close to culture shock here
as ever before. The whole experience was quite overwhelming and I would describe
it as a controlled crash that never
ends.
Somewhat dazed by it all, we
set about trying to obtain US dollars – we always seem to be doing this in
this continent. As with so many other countries in Africa, hard currency talks
louder than the local funny money and we were customarily short of it. Over the
course of the past few weeks, our ATM bank cards have been getting more and more
unreliable. We think this is partly due to the unreliable nature of ATMs in
Africa in general but also because the strip on the back of the cards seems to
be loosing their magnetic properties. Why this affects the ATM cards and not the
credit cards is still a bit of a mystery to us. Perhaps because we’ve been
using the credit cards far less frequently in the ATM machines? Either way, it
seems that both our ATM cards are now completely shot and our only alternatives
are to use the traveller’s checks or to use to credit card either as an
ATM card (at €7.50 charge per transaction, this is an expensive option
that we are trying to avoid) or a cash advance on the credit card (an equally
expensive and undesirable option). Sine the traveller’s checks are the
last remaining certainty, I want to keep them as long as we can so that they are
there for real emergencies. Accordingly, we went in search of some means to
obtain cash using the credit card.
We
shopped around a bit at a couple of banks and bureau de change offices but
nobody seemed interested in our credit cards. We were eventually told to visit
the Barclays bank in town. There, we were eventually able to use the credit
cards to make several ATM withdrawals. The maximum that we could withdraw in a
single transaction was four hundred thousand Tanzanian Shillings (about $400) so
we did this twice with my card and once with Sandy’s. Our bank in Holland
will charge us €7.50 three times for this but at least we now had the
money in hand without having to swallow a 20% finance charge for a cash advance.
Unfortunately, Barclays do not offer an exchange service to non-customers so we
went to the Impala hotel where we could change the money. The rate of exchange
was not too bad at just over one thousand Shillings to the dollar and there was
no commission charged at all.
Whilst
at the Impala hotel, we stopped off in their Internet Café (supposedly the
fastest in town) to catch up on some e-mail and to let everyone know where we
are.
We left the Impala hotel after
an hour or so altogether and ventured off into town to peruse the curio stalls
and just generally soak up the atmosphere. Touts ‘attacked’ us from
all directions once we got to the centre of town but our recent experiences in
Victoria Falls had prepared us for this and we skilfully fended them all
off.
We saw some nice curios in the
market but with less of an emphasis on carved animals and more of a reflection
of the local Maasai culture. Strangely, the Maasai people can be seen in their
traditional, full-length, plaid robes wandering through the streets of downtown
Arusha looking just as much at home as they do walking around in the surrounding
bush areas. It actually seems a bit
surreal.
After wandering the streets
of Arusha for a couple of hours, the feeling of culture shock was starting to
subside and I actually found myself enjoying the chaos. Almost all of the shops
in town closed down between twelve and about two-thirty in the afternoon for
lunch – albeit a very long lunch. Soon thereafter, school must have been
out as the already full streets and pavements were now starting to overflow with
school children in their various school uniforms. With so much going on on the
pavements, people were now overflowing into the road in both
directions.
We had lunch at a place
called McMoody’s. We’d passed it yesterday in the truck and it
looked like it was the local equivalent of a McDonald’s so we decided that
this would be as good a place as any to try to get something to eat that was to
our liking. It was, in fact, a nice little restaurant and we enjoyed a very
tasty and filling meal there. Our waiter was very pleased to receive a tip
amounting to about a dollar and some change and we got to chat with him a
little. He gave us some good advice on how to get back to the campsite (the next
problem for us since the truck was by now on its way to Nairobi). We stopped off
at one of the local pharmacies to pick up some odd bits and then headed farther
down the road to catch a ride on one of the dozens of mini-buses that littler
the roads here.
Our waiter had told
us to head towards the supermarket where we should ask for the bus to the town
in which the campsite was located. The ride should cost four hundred Shillings
each (about $0.40). Other than that, we had no idea what was in store for us. It
turned out to be a real cultural
highlight.
We neared the supermarket
but could not see anything that was obviously a bus stop until we looked over to
the other side of the street. After a while, we realized that we were looking at
the bus depot. This epiphany brought with it the chilling realization that we
would have to venture into it to find our ride. I’ve nerve seen so many
people in such large concentrations before. Pandemonium reigned supreme as
thousands of people were all busy trying to find their minibuses whilst touts
and traders we whizzing around trying to sell things. After managing to get just
a few feet into the crowd, we were approached by someone whom we surmised was
trying to ascertain what our destination was. Although many people here speak
English pretty well, this is one of the few places where the first language of
choice is something other than English – even towards us obvious tourists.
I blurted out the name of the town where the campsite is located a few times
(some fifteen kilometres outside of Arusha) which was received by a few
indecipherable words in reply but the body language revealed that he understood
where we wanted to go and motioned for us to follow him, which we did for about
ten meters or so through the crowd. At this point, he called out to another
fellow and effectively handed us off to be taken still farther and deeper into
the crowd. We followed this next guy before being handed off yet again to
someone else. This last guy eventually motioned us towards a minibus that was
crammed full of people. It seems that we had found the right vehicle that was
going in our direction but I was a little disheartened at the fact that it was
obviously bursting at the seems and was worried about having to spend the rest
of the afternoon in this mayhem waiting for the next bus. Quite amazingly, we
were ushered towards to side door and invited to get
it!
It was quite a squeeze but we
ultimately did get inside the bus and sat there for about ten minutes whilst the
guy that squeezed us in continued to walk around outside screaming out the name
of our destination repeatedly. After a while, I realized that our man was
actually still advertising for more passengers! I was completely stunned by this
revelation, as there was clearly no way anyone else could possibly fit inside.
The bus by now was already at over twice its design capacity and putting quite
some strain on the suspension. Sitting there with the rest of the crowd of
sardines waiting to get going, we must have been approached some thirty times by
various traders wanting to sell us everything from loaves of bread to biscuits
to watches and just about anything else. A strange sort of calm washed over me
and I chuckled to myself at the sheer madness of the situation. This must have
been the most bizarre experience of my life to
date.
Just when I thought I was going
to loose all sense of reality, the bus finally started to move. The only problem
was that the side door was still open and I was sitting in the seat nearest to
it and was barely able to keep myself from falling out due to the pressure of
the sheer number of people inside. Our man then jumped onto the side railing and
just barely edged himself inside. He then somehow managed to slide the door
shut. The bus slowly navigated its way towards one side of the plaza and, to my
complete and utter amazement, stopped to let another two passengers on. Madness,
I say, sheer madness. The worse was yet to come! As we turned out into the main
road, we slowly inched through the traffic with our man sticking his head out
the window and still shouting out the name of our destination. He was still
trying to attract more passengers! Where would he put them, on the roof?! It
wasn’t but a few minutes into the journey that we had found another couple
of people along the side of the road wanting to go in our direction.
Unbelievably, the side door was eased open and yet two more people got it. By
this time, I’d completely lost it and just sat there (squeezed) shaking my
head and chuckling in the direction of my lap. There was absolutely no sitting
space and several people were by now standing half up and arched
over.
With the bus now crammed full
with enough people to start a small soccer league, the driver put his foot down
and let the engine roar. My seat was facing backwards and I was so very glad of
it since I would probably have cringed to death had I had to face forward to
confront the full horror of the bus motoring at high speed through the still
busy streets, trying to avoid pedestrians and other vehicles meandering around
in all directions.
I was starting to
think of all the things I’ve achieved in my life and all the things that I
might not get a chance to finish when we thankfully arrived at our stop and we
‘fell’ out. I think I would rather be charged by an angry elephant
than go through that again – although that has already happened
too.
The adrenaline slowly worked its
way out of my body during the remainder of the afternoon and we even visited a
few market rondavals (round, thatched, mud huts) next to the campsite where some
Maasai women had made various Maasai jewellery and other
trinkets.
We had earlier arranged to
meet with a man known as ‘Fish’ to arrange our custom safari
itinerary into the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater. He was several hours late
arriving (pretty good by African standards actually) but did eventually show up
and we now have everything sorted. We’ve bought and paid for a
four-night/five-day excursion with just the two of us, a guide and a 4x4 jeep.
It is a full-board arrangement with lodge accommodation and we paid $1200 for
the total package ($120 per person per night). We will be picked up tomorrow
morning at eight o’clock. This will be our last chance to get to see
Cheetahs and Leopards in the wild and I do so very hope that it will be worth
it. Another tour group that just came back from a similar trip told us that they
saw Lions and Cheetahs and Leopards so there is hope yet.
Posted: Thu - May 15, 2003 at 08:16 AM