Busman's Holiday

Despite travelling widely in East Africa, I haven't actually seen all that much of Tanzania accepting Kili, Moshi, Longido (Maasai heartland) and what seems like repeated trips on the Nairobi – Moshi highway. So for Godfrey's 30th birthday 3 of us decided to get out of town. 'Twende Mwanza!' - 'Let's go to Mwanza' was my suggestion, and Godfrey and Eli seemed to agree, so off we went.
Buses and coaches are not allowed to travel in the dark in Tanzania (presumably due to the lamentable approach to road safety inherent in all professional drivers in this country) so our safari began very early in the morning. We woke with the muslims observing Ramadan, however food was not on our minds as we walked to the bus. The bus left at day break and after the obligatory argument about who was sitting where, we started off on what turned out to be a 14 hour journey to Mwanza.

Neither GF nor Eli have been to Mwanza before, so I don't think any of us were entirely prepared for the length of journey, nor the dust situation along the way. Rainy season is well and truly over now and most roads are in some state of disrepair or rebuilding, so within minutes we were covered in a layer of dust. GF took the approach of combining my shawl over his mouth and nose, my sunglasses on his eyes as well as his baseball cap, resulting in quite an interesting look, though presumably a slightly less dangerous intake of dirt than the rest of us.

The road went through (do you have a map handy?) Babati, Singida, Nzega and Shinyanga before reaching Mwanza, on the shores of Lake Victoria. I have to say that my lasting impression from this journey is that Tanzania all looks quite similar, really. We past Lake Manyara early, though I must admit I was nodding off at this point as I didn't notice it, and Mount Hanang which is not nearly as impressive as Mount Meru or Kili. Singida was memorable as it is a town of boulders, so tiny houses will be positioned right next to mammoth bits of rock, which looked quite cool, but must interfere with their evening sunbathing.
Other than that, Tz appears to be an endless stream of brightly painted dukas and traffic police. I packed food for the journey but it wasn't really necessary as food is offered to you continuously. For breakfast we had fried meat and bananas, with a mid morning snack of boiled eggs. Lunch was chipsi kuku and samosas with fresh orange and mid afternoon snack was tomatoes. Despite seemingly eating continuously, we were all looking forwards to Mwanza's famous samaki (fish) when we arrived.
We found a decent hotel and then went straight for dinner. The food took a while to come but when it did arrive was absolutely massive. I went for a fish soup which turned out to contain a whole giant fish, two bananas, two potatoes and other assorted chopped veg. Very welcome though.
It later turned out that we had probably been overcharged for the food, not because I am a Mzungu, but mainly because GF and Eli we out of towners, and obviously so. They were outraged – and didn't seem to see the fact that that happens to me constantly.

The next day was Godfrey's actual birthday. 30 years old today! Though he doesn't look a day over 23, lucky sod. We wondered into town in search of Capri Point, the smarter end of town which has a fancy hotel where we could get a good view of the lake. Along the way we picked up a new member of the party, a guy originally from Arusha who now lives in Mwanza and works in the tourism industry. He was still with us, 2 days later. He didn't seem to have much to do that day so he became our unofficial tour guide, showing us the hotel, the rest of Capri Point and the views and Bismarck Rock (featuring on the 1000Tsh note). He also pointed out a man who had been in the documentary film 'Darwin's Nightmare' about the unacceptable treatment and overfishing of Lake Victoria by the powers that be. The film is banned in Tz and the man we saw was now clearly crazy and wandering around aimlessly. The thought was that his present condition is an indirect result of being in the film. I mustn't say more, as the walls have ears. After that he steered us to the beach where we ate more fish and spent a very happy afternoon paddling, drinking beer and listening to music whilst the sun went down.
We headed back to town after that to dance the night away to Bongo Flavour music and dread tomorrow morning's early rise, as the next plan was to catch the ferry to Ukerewe Island the next day.

The reason that I call this a busman's holiday is because whenever we saw some Wazungu, Eli and GF would approach the person accompanying them and arrange to meet them later in order to talk business and create networks between Arusha and where ever we happened to be at the time. Very clever, but not so interesting for me.

What was advertised as a 9 o'clock ferry became 9.30, and then actually 10am before we left the port, making me somewhat annoyed that I had set the alarm for 7.15am. The boat took us out into Lake Victoria to the UK and was a fairly uneventful trip all told, I have certainly been on much more scenic ferry rides, but then I am truly spoilt in that way.
For me the main excitement of arriving was brushing my leg against the exhaust pipe of a pikipiki whilst getting into Eli's uncle's car (he has just moved here from Dar Es Salaam and is the regions head of secondary school education). This resulted in a fairly minor but painful burn, a few tears and a frantic call to my aunt to remind me of the best way to treat burns. The local advice was to put honey on it and leave it uncovered. I followed Julia's advice and cleaned it, disinfected it and covered it. That's the end of my swimming for a few days. Only I could get a motorbike injury without ever actually having been on a motorbike.

My (now very dirty) guidebook – thanks though Nic, it's been invaluable – says that Nansio, UK's principle town is 'sleepy'. We would say that is something of an understatement. There is really nothing going on here, other than net fishing and washing in the lake. Lot's of naked bodies for me to avert my eyes from. Exploring the town didn't take long, so the evening was devoted to eating fish (of course) and catching up with relatives. My Swahili is now moderately good, and good enough to understand the jist of conversations, but I really need to be awake and ready, and that night I wasn't, so I excused myself and left the men to it.

The next day (a scorcher) I followed the advice of the guidebook and did the only thing there is to do on the UK, hire a bike. I dragged GF along for the ride, and on our 25p per hour bikes we explored a bit of the island. Quite pretty, and a few hills to climb to see the views of the lakes, the highlight of the tour being Bukindo Palace. A large house apparently designed by an Italian architect, but still made of barely disguised breeze blocks. I don't think it would be assigned 'palace' status in Europe, but I suppose it was an impressive enough building, though somewhat in disrepair. It was used by the chiefs of the main tribe on the island for 3 generations. The attendant woman (and family) tried to charge me 10,000Tsh to enter, though having read ahead I knew there was barely anything to see. I negotiated down to 3,000Tsh and was glad, as I was shown one room containing 5 drums and a wooden chair. Slightly less impressive for me, as Mum has a drum just like those that she was given as a gift from her sister's stay in Uganda. Godfrey got in for free as my 'tour guide'. Interesting as I decided to hire the bikes, and did all the navigating.
The lowpoint of the tour was Godfrey getting a puncture of the way back and having to walk home, oops.

Something interesting that we learnt about the Islanders is that they are happy for people to do well and build nice houses on the island, as long as they are not locals. Basically any local person who does well would be forced to live elsewhere or face a grisly end, from what I understand. Though they are happy for outsiders to come in and run businesses etc. What a strange idea.

From Ukerewe it was decided that there was no way that we going to go back along the Arusha – Mwanza road, so instead we would go north and above the Serengeti rather than below it. This meant getting the ferry from the North of the island across to Masahunga and then a bus ride to Bunda, and then another to Butiama. This may sound simple enough, but a complicating factor was the fact that none of our bank cards worked in the bank on the island, and we were all down to our last Tsh10,000 (£5). The ferry ride was 15p, so not an issue, but eventually we were going to get into difficulty. The ferry, of course, left late, and we only really got our 15p's worth with a cramped, standing room only crossing spent trying to protect my wound from unwelcome attack from passing legs.
The bus ride to Bunda was about £1.50 each, eating considerably into our money and meaning that we were not able to buy food or water in case we got stranded in the middle of nowhere. Before boarding the ferry I had bought what I though would be a portable, nutritious snack for us all. A pineapple. Obviously it transpired to be a prickly, heavy, inaccessible snack which I proceeded to carry by hand for the next 5 hours, whilst staring longingly at it, imagining what it's juicy, ripe flesh tasted like.
In Bunda we took a farcical taxi journey looking for a source of money, to find that the travelling bank had just left for the week. £3.35 left. The next 4 hours are so confusing that I can't even remember them, but it involved several different means of transport, mostly full to the rafters with people sitting in each others laps, a brief trip into Musoma City for cash and then a hasty retreat to Butiama, the birth place of J K Nyerere, whom I am assured that older readers will be well aware of.

I had never heard of him until I came to Tz and was promptly informed that he was the Baba ya Taifa - father of the nation. And Butiama is his birth and burial place. All very exciting, of course, but at 4.30pm after no lunch and a boiled egg for breakfast, the main item on the agenda was food. We ate at the only cafe in the village and had beef and rice (not much of the former, lots of the latter, as is typical of most portions). Before this though of course, we cracked open the pineapple.
Satisfied, we set about learning about JK. I knew almost nothing, so the learning curve was steep, but to sum up, he founded TANU and instigated the bloodless independence from British rule after returning from Edinburgh University. My guide book says he is universally popular. It is not spoken of, or certainly not very loudly, but I don't think this is entirely true.
From what I read though, despite some mistakes, he did bring independence, literacy and healthcare to the country, no mean feat.
We were shown his mausoleum, his birth place and his widow's current house, on a cliff top with spectacular views. I find it interesting that he spent his life selling the worth of Tz to it's inhabitants and outsiders and improving services, yet when he got Leukaemia and needed treatment, he flew to London and died there.

After the museum we went for a wander before dinner, as lunch really wasn't that long ago. Eli got talking to a woman who lived in the village and was walking that way, so we were all chatting when we past an older man crouching near the road. I assumed that he was doing some kind of work, but when we had past Eli went back to help him, and it turned out that he was actually stuck in the barbed wire of the fence and unable to move. Once released, he explained that he was walking to Tanga (ie, the other side of the country) and swayed into the sunset.

After dinner I settled into our £2.50 room for a very uncomfortable night's sleep complete with too small bed, too small sheets and a mosquito fighting to get inside the night. Given the size of the holes, I'm surprised he didn't succeed. I guess you get what you pay for.

Another early start the next day and another farcical journey over the border and into Kenya using multiple means of transport until we got to some town or other where there may or may not be buses to Nairobi. The outlook didn't look good, actually, as most buses went at noon and it was 12.30, and the others didn't leave til evening. The town wasn't bad, but I think it would have been stretching it to spend 8 hours there. Miraculously one did arrive, and we were 3 of the 8 people allowed on. Another 6 hours and we would be in Nairobi. Again, somehow we were without money, as we were now in Kenya and only had enough for the bus, so lunch and dinner time went by without eating. This was more than made up for, however, by the absolutely stunning scenery that was passing by the window, from almost rainforest type woodland, to steep sandy cliffs, to amazing views of the Rift Valley (now the 5th angle I have seen it from) from a cliff top.
Upon arrival in Nairobi my ability to stay patient (low at the best of times) was really being tested and I was not in the mood for the long walk that occurred next to find suitably cheap lodgings. That said, Nairobi is very expensive and I was also not prepared to spend what the hotels were asking. I wasn't particularly enamoured of the roads in Nairobi either, where pedestrian crossings are unheard of and you basically have to run between the moving traffic with your eyes shut and fingers crossed.
As was the theme of the trip, food was the most important thing on our minds once we had found a suitable hotel, so off we went for a (relatively) extortionate chipsi kuku and Tusker beer.

I think we were all in agreement that we didn't like Nairobi very much and decided to get the bus back home the next day. Another 7 hours along a dusty road, and then home sweet home.