Nuns, protests and buses in Tanzania

Visiting a friend in Southern Tanzania last month turned out to be quite an experience. After a great few days relaxing in Mombasa, including a poor attempt to kayak around the island, we boarded the bus to Dar, dollars in hand hoping we would get a visa at the border. 9 hours, two visas and a very bumpy Tanzanian road later we arrived in Dar-es–Salaam (Haven of peace) on a bank holiday weekend to find pretty much the whole city shut. Then began our ridiculous attempts to continue our journey on to the very south of Tanzania to a town called Mtwara, during rainy season and assisted by an array of characters much more adept at conning the mzungo than those in Kenya.

So it goes:
5.30 am, arrived at bus station with tickets bought the previous night and then waited, and waited and waited. About 4 hours later the penny finally drops with our fellow Tanzanian passengers that no bus is coming and the crowd gets angry. Several phone calls to the bus company and finally a representative arrives.
‘ No bus today’ we were told. Then, a sudden change of heart
‘A bus for some of you who bought your tickets here’
‘What bus?’
‘The small Chinese hopper bus over there’ which had just driven away for fear of being mobbed by angry passengers wanting to get on. Then a little while later…
“Go get on the bus’
‘What bus this time?’ The same hopper bus now hiding behind some trees to avoid said angry mob.
Soon enough this bus is discovered and a scuffle for seats is followed by a protest of people we’d never seen before claiming they had been thrown off the hopper bus. A short while later and we are on the move, hurray! But wait a minute, where’s that we are headed? The police station! Justice is then done as the police oversee the reimbursement of all fares (though we get back less than we paid as we had been overcharged in the first place).

Actually never been this far away from home

‘Great now we go to Mtwara?’
‘No now we go back to the bus station, no bus today’
‘Er hang on, why is that man winking at us and saying you two mzungo will go to Mtwara?’
So arriving back at the bus station some savvy passengers realize that the bus company still intends to take the bus to Mtwara, possibly with only us on it
‘No-one leave the bus’ they say (or at least I think they do as this whole episode is in fluent Kiswahili and we haven’t a clue!)
They refuse to get off so we decide to and as we leave a police man comes after us
‘Where are you going this bus will take you two to Mtwara’
‘Just us? When and how much?’
‘Well what you have to understand about transport in Tanzania is that it is very very expensive………………’

Later that same day
‘Hello are there any flights to Mtwara tomorrow morning’
‘Yes there are’
‘Can we book them’
‘No there are no flights tomorrow morning’

Absolutely worth all the hassle

Next morning as we turn up at airport at 6am on our friend’s advice‘Are there any flights to Mtwara this morning’
‘Yes’
‘Can we book a seat’

‘No the flight is full’
‘So we can’t get to Mtwara today’
‘No’
‘Ok, thank you’
‘But you can go at midday if you want’

Virtually a private beach at our disposal

So after a frustrating day trying to leave Dar we finally arrived on a ‘blown our budget’ flight into the beautiful little town of Mtwara where our friends Adrian and Caroline hosted us wonderfully. Staying at a beach house which took us right out onto a pristine beach which only us and the fishermen used, swimming, snorkeling and eating gorgeous fresh fish, drinks at sundown overlooking the bay, taking in the slower pace of life and slowly becoming enchanted by the town. On our third day we were joined in the beach house by a group of nuns (the house belongs to the Benedictine order) with whom we struggled to find appropriate conversation but shared a lovely breakfast of hot chocolate and stodge.
All in all well worth the hassle and we can’t wait to find an excuse to go back.

The Lord provides 5 star accommodation

Kenya vs UK - six months in

Today marks the sixth month anniversary of our arrival in Kenya and to celebrate we thought we would do a quick comparison of things we like and don’t like here and at home. It goes without saying that we miss family and friends but other than that there are some things which surprised us:

The things we love about Kenya
1. Never knowing what the day will bring - seeing a camel walk down our street or monkeys in the trees near our house, rainstorms so violent you think your house might wash away
2. The taste of the fruits
3. Finding out what Kenyans know and like about the UK; the Premier League obviously, Top Gear (strangely), the Royal family
4. Colours – it’s like a different spectrum
5. Having ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ holidays every month – Kenya is a stunning country
6. Having a sense of perspective; the relative ease and privilege of British life, the sense that there is more to life than work, but also of geography. We can’t believe how many people we haven’t visited on account of how far away they live in the UK. The island is tiny!
7. Giraffes, warthogs, elephants and hippos-our favourites of all the amazing wildlife we have seen so far
8. DVD Derek and his latest pre-release titles

The things we don’t like and won’t miss about Kenya
1. Food, especially ugali. The carb based diet, augmented with chewy meat, is not the greatest
2. Traffic - the chaos of the matatus and the amount of time you can be sat in queues breathing in the foul black air
3. Dust - the feeling that you are never truly clean in Nairobi
4. Prayer - having to adhere to it in meetings, having to listen to the call to prayer, having to nod in agreement about the merits of organized religion
5. Bugs and flies
6. Shouts of ‘mzungo, mzungo' in the street, for no apparent reason other than to remind you that you are white and not black it seems
7. Being overcharged for all sorts of things because you are a mzungo and in particular being told ‘what you have to understand about xxxx in Kenya is that it is very, very expensive…..'
8. Kenyan politics-much more about personality than ideology but you get the feeling that they are all screwing the country over
9. Attitudes to women and homosexuals
10. Plugs which hiss at you, showers which ‘make you dance’ and the general quality of electrical fittings
11. The absolute disregard for customer service

The things we miss about the UK
1. Proper cups of tea made without boiling a vat of full fat milk
2. Cakes that have sugar in them
3. Dressing gowns-mornings are quite nippy now in Nairobi
4. Being able to walk around freely after dark
5. Good roads
6. Nice bathrooms including a bath
7. The NHS and public services- truly what sets Britain apart from the rest of the world
8. Cheese
9. 5-a-side football and the Championship
10. Clean fingernails
11. Bus timetables
12. Queues
13. Sandwiches
14. Being paid each month

The things we don’t miss about the UK
1. The weather
2. Incessant complaining about how hard life is in one of the richest countries in the world
3. Having a TV
4. Celebrity obsessed culture
5. Health and safety culture- if there is a river at the bottom of your playground just teach children not to play near it.
6. Waiting for transport-you may have to queue once you are in it but you never wait long for transport in Nairobi
7. Watery tomatoes
8. Pessimism