Sailing from Plymouth

Touching Tanzania
© Tom Bartlett, June 2009

For Molly, Rob, Rosie and Tess
Who Made it All Possible

The pilot said we’d be able to see Kilimanjaro through the right windows (interesting double meaning), so I quickly pushed over from my aisle seat – the plane was half-empty after Nairobi - and looked back and down over the wing. In the post-sunset gloom, what I saw below looked to be a witches’ brew of fluffy cloud and jagged peak. A possible optical illusion, in that the clouds might have been snow, and the peaks, angular cloud formations.

The scene passed quickly behind, and I eased into my seat, exhausted from the lengthy flight. A short time later, we banked to starboard, and I crossed to the other side of the plane to see that we were passing over the coast. The moon lit a silky beam over the ink-black ocean, and from its light I was able to make out the distinct outline of Zanzibar, and then of two smaller islands (which, I learned later, included the uninhabited Mbudya and Bagamoyo) closer to Dar.

As we touched down at Nyerere International, I reflected on the two views I had just had, and sensed in them a foreshadow of the week ahead: times of cloudiness and uncertainty, interspersed with moments of clarity and vision. I also felt an anticipation of the unexpected; a great stand-alone mountain hidden behind insubstantive water vapour, and mysterious islands floating like darkened ships near the shore.

Before I left England my friend Jane, a Tanzanian émigré, came over to prep me. She had earlier hosted two mutual friends at her family home in Dar, and referred several times to their wish to “see the poverty.”

“If you go to see the poverty,” Jane instructed,” be sure not to bring any valuables. Not even wedding ring.”

“I can handle myself, Jane,” I chided. “It’s no doubt the same situation as in places like the Philippines, Central America and in the Dominican Republic. Be wary, move decisively. How bad can it get?”

She rolled her eyes. “Just don’t accept any sweets on buses. They’re drugged. And be ready for random conversations.”

I had spoken with swagger, but in reality had begun to question my preparedness for this whole expedition, and what I was hoping to achieve. Guiltily I realised that yes, I was going to “see the poverty”… but I’d justified this to anyone who asked by talking plans to observe and network in education and training, my professional interests. I hadn’t convinced myself, though. Throughout the weeks leading up to the trip, I had had the nagging feeling that the visit, my first to sub-Saharan Africa, would be nothing like what I was anticipating, and that I would finally have to go with a completely open mind and agenda.

2.

The drive in from the airport with my sister and her family was unsettlingly familiar in its developing-world reference points: semi-darkened, transient-looking shacks lining the perilous road, its sides populated by teetering cyclists and reckless road-crossers. Mainly it was these, the anonymous people scuttling along and across the roadway, dicing with death in their proximity to speeding vehicles, and their lack of any sort of bright or reflective clothing, that caught my attention.

I remember the same scene from El Salvador, and further back from the Philippines; looking out on this run from airport to city, from the safety of a locked car; the barely-avoidable voyeurism of the fortunate, speeding through the gauntlet of the what-might-have-been, there but for the grace of God…

The next day, a Sunday, we were out on one of those islands I’d seen from the plane: Mbudya. In certain ways this was the “tropical paradise” that is replicated in so many of the developing parts of the world: uninhabited, palm-fringed beaches edging into clear warm water.

Yet poverty is never that far away. As my relatives and I were reclining on the beach, we saw a lone fisherman in a sailing dugout beach his craft not far from us. The hull was literally a single, hollowed-out tree trunk, with a ragged brown sail held up by a limb-thin mast. This mini-dhow, one of several which plied the waters around the island searching for fish, seemed to lack a boom, rudder and keel; yet from what I saw of the dugouts beating against the wind in front of us, the fishermen seemed to know just which shift of weight or sail was needed to move forward.

The man near us flashed a bright, apologetic smile, before he set to work repairing his flimsy sail, which seemed to involve merely tying one piece of fabric to another. After a couple of minutes of deliberate, concentrated activity, he was off: pushing the dugout off the beach, grabbing the main sheet (a small length of rope tied to the back of the sail), and shifting his body to and fro as the boat inched forward.

In an entire afternoon on that beach, we did not see a single fish caught. But we saw some amazing sailing.

How could these guys – and their families - survive?

3.

Survival and employment seemed to weigh heavily on the mind of Ibrahim, a security guard/gardener at my sister’s house. He’d agreed to accompany me to Ubongu Bus Station to help me get a ticket for the bus up to Moshi, near Kilimanjaro, and as we walked along the Msasani Peninsula he told me about his family – children in secondary school in a town west of Dar – and asked about the possibility of working in England or America.

“Very bad here,” he moaned, his expressive face downcast as we boarded a ‘dalla dalla’, one of the overcrowded mini-buses that dart around Dar and the surrounding area. “No jobs. I could work in U.K., yes, and U.S.A.? Anything- cleaning? Driving?”

I nodded sympathetically, but knew that his chances were slim. Ibrahim had no family connections in either place, and doors which had been open to the huddled masses before the “War on Terrorism” no longer were; if not closed, they were jammed half-open, allowing only the most determined to squeeze through.

Crammed into the “basi” (twelve seats, but many more passengers) I once again turned to the scene outside to avoid Ibrahim’s probing questions. I didn’t have answers.

We were passing through a relatively prosperous area, as people seemed to be busily occupied in and around the small shops which fronted the road. Yet still there was the open sewer separating us from them, and the shoeless half-naked children playing too close to the road, and the flies and the noise…

Or was that just me in culture shock, looking at “them” through northern eyes? Speaking of eyes, I noticed that Ibrahim’s were red-rimmed and bloodshot; from weeping? Sleeping? Some sort of tranquilizing medication? We rode on in silence.

Ubongu was a scene of utter chaos and overcrowding, with young men moving purposefully towards arriving busses and taxis to push business, or just lounging around in doorways. The van dropped us across the road, and as we disembarked we were immediately accosted by a small group of insistent touts.

“Basi?”
“Where you go?”
“Taxi?”

Ibrahim did his best to fend them off in polite but insistent Swahili as we pushed our way across the road. I had spotted a sign for the Scandinavian Bus Company perched above the single-storey buildings of the station, and decided to make a bee-line.

The touts faded away as they perhaps sensed my determination, and I was soon able to purchase a one-way ticket at the Scandinavian booth for a very-reasonable 24,000 shillings. I would be leaving the next morning at 9:00 AM. I noticed the company slogan was “In God We Trust”, and hoped that that trust included brakes, tyres and drivers.

4.

To play it safe the following morning, not wishing to replicate the dalla-dalla experience too early in the day, I jumped into a taxi soon after seeing my niece off at the International School halfway down the Msasani. In the skewed economics that is perhaps common in the developing world, the five mile taxi trip to Ubongu would cost 15,000 shillings. Same trip in a dalla-dalla? 1,500. Then there was the reasonably-priced seven-hour Scandinavian journey up to Moshi. Where was the sense?

The taxi driver insisted on an extra couple thousand after negotiating us through the thronged gates of Ubongu and around to a gated compound housing the Scandinavian buses. This was clearly a tout-free zone, and I was relieved to be able to relax on a plastic chair under an open-sided shelter before the marathon journey north.

This turned out to be a breakneck excursion through an ever-changing panorama of Tanzanian life and scenery, as we passed over the hilly, overpopulated slums of suburban Dar and into the fertile farmland towards the interior of the country. Heading north, we skirted the hills near Kurogwe and Same (pronounced “Samay”), the vast Maasai Steppe stretching away to the west. The coach bombed along at eighty on the two-lane road, the driver occasionally leaning on his horn to warn road-crossers, human and livestock, of the approaching threat.

It was a trip with an abundance of sensual experiences, made easier by the fact that this bus was a lot less crowded than the average dalla-dalla. I could move around, and look out of different windows, like on the plane. Across the aisle from me was a young British backpacking couple, and they recognized the guidebook I was reading.

“Excellent advice, that one,” remarked John, in an undistinguished London accent. “But a little too political. Who needs it?”

As it turns out, I had just been reading about Tanzania’s failed experiment in socialism and Maoism, and I took issue. “Well, how can you understand a place without knowing its political history?”

Fiona cut in. “Who needs to understand? Why not just experience and enjoy?” John was nodding in agreement.

“Fair enough,” I answered, “But politics helps, at least, to better understand why all those guys out there” (I waved generally towards the touts approaching the bus as it pulled over to the roadside for what appeared to be a security check) “are spending their days selling fruit and souvenirs. Isn’t there a better way to make a living? Evidently not: Nyrere’s plan to decentralize and focus on family and village means a basically localized, subsistence economy.”

Almost as soon as I said them, I regretted my words as just so much white noise. What do I really know about this country and its people? Here I was skimming through Lonely Planet and making judgments.

Meanwhile palms – human, not plant - were slapping the sides of the bus, and other hands were raising bunches of green bananas, dark wood carvings, and plastic-wrapped juice boxes to our eye level. Without warning, the bus engine revved and we pulled away, while our entrepreneurs started a slow jog to keep up.

“Wewe mzungu!”
“Hey, meestah! You buy!”
“Look, look!!”

The dust soon obscured them as we pulled back onto the road and continued our journey north. Later that afternoon, we veered left at a fork, and I noted from my guidebook map that we were now skirting around the southern flank of Kilimanjaro. Straining my eyes to see through the windows next to the sleeping Brits, I tried to make out the great mountain, but she was covered in mist and cloud. A short time later, we turned left again at a roundabout and descended a gradual slope into Moshi.

As we pulled into another chaotic bus station, I braced myself for the inevitable onslaught of sales pitch and tout. Sure enough, no sooner was I off the bus and striding towards what I assumed was the center of town than a young man fell into step next to me.

“Hey, bratha, you look for hotel, yes? I help you.”
“No thanks. I think I know where it is…”
“You go to Lutheran Umoja, yes?”

(How did he know that?? I’d picked the place from the guidebook, as it looked cheap, quiet, and far enough from the station to be out of the range of touts. Now here was one strolling along with me, and he seemed to be able to read my mind. Yet I didn’t have the heart to tell him to get lost; he was young, earnest, conversational…)

“You also want a Kili trek, yes? I can make it, all included, 40,000 shillings. We make deal, you ready in morning, we go.”

(I had planned a trek around the foothills of Kilimanjaro, but I had wanted to do it alone, or at least with someone who wasn’t a tour guide. Mountain geography has always been rather straightforward for me: up to the top, down to the bottom, across a contour line for a stroll along the flank. Who needs a guide?)

After walking a few blocks, mostly on the road, as the sidewalk was cracked and jumbled, as if an earthquake had hit and no repairs had been made, we turned right up a bumpy dirt road, and then into the Umoja compound.

“Thank you, we’ll stop here.” I said. “Do you have a card? I’ll ring you in the morning if I want a trek.” After nearly eight hours on a bus, I was in no mood to stand, chat, bargain; the young man seemed to understand this, as he produced a card, made a short bow, and turned away back down the dirt road.

That night, as I lay on my cot under a shroud-like mosquito net, I reflected on my would-be guide’s working life; if he hadn’t latched on to me, what then? The British backpackers? Their budget seemed a thinner shoestring than mine, and they probably would have given the guide an immediate brush-off.

Yet again I had the thought: how do these people survive? Maybe it’s something to do with the communalism of the Nyere ideal, with families and whole villages supporting individual members. I would have to learn more.



5.

The next morning I was back at the bus station to catch a dalla-dalla up to the village of Marangu, near one of the official gates for the trek to the top of Kilimanjaro. My intention was to hike up to the gate and scout around the area, in anticipation of a possible future climb to the summit.

Before that, however, I had to scout around the bus station to find the right vehicle in the swirling mass of semi-derelict buses and dallas coming and going from the two roads leading in and out of Moshi. Making my way to the central building, I noted the words “Booking Office” in faded paint on a crumbling wall, with an arrow pointing up an adjacent outdoor staircase. At the top of the stairs, however, there was no sign of an office; just a series of closed doors and an inch-deep puddle of rainwater on the floor.

A young boy was standing aimlessly nearby, so I asked with a shrug, “booking office?” He immediately waved his hand beckoningly for me to follow him downstairs, and we descended to a large open space with tables set up for safari tours and long-distance coaches. A couple of suited but bedraggled-looking men seated at the tables looked over at me expectantly, but after I’d scanned the signs I shook my head and said to the boy, “Marangu.”

An older boy sidled over, and asked, “Basi?”

“Marangu,” I replied. “Dalla-dalla.”

“Follow.”

He led me out of the back of the building, younger boy scurrying behind, to where a group of dalla-dallas were idling and filling with people.

The older boy stopped at one, made a sweeping motion towards the open double-doors, then swept his arm back towards me, palm open.

Fishing in my pocket, I retrieved a 500-shilling note – about 20 pence – and placed it in the boy’s hand. The smaller boy was standing next to him, his wide eyes staring at me expectantly.

“For you two… share… together…” I stammered ineffectually. I didn’t have any other loose change or small bills, but figured the note would go far for these young hustlers.

Without comment, the older boy flashed a bright grin, closed his fist over the cash, turned on his heel and dashed away through the parked dalla-dallas. The younger boy took up the chase, but it was already too late. He stopped and gave me one last look over his shoulder as he, too, then bolted away through the vans: a doleful, expressionless look of resignation which I will remember for a long time to come. I’d failed him, as had his elder. But I’d failed him worse.

Crammed against a window in the speeding dalla-dalla, I squinted through the roadside dust and smoke for a view of the majestic mountain passing by to our left. Lush vegetation of palm and creeping vine trailed away uphill from the huts and small shops lining the road, but nothing more was visible higher up. The heights were obscured behind cloud.

At Marangu, a humble sloping village with no discernible centre, I practically popped out of the overcrowded (at our most busy, 23 passengers in a 12-seater) van, banging my head on the door frame in the process. I had no idea where to go; just a determination to walk uphill until the hoped-for gate appeared.

No doubt sensing my hesitance, a thin, bony man started walking beside me, a teenager on his other side. He introduced himself as Moses; the boy, “my uncle”, Marco. Moses looked like a shorter, bonier version of Michael Jordan; bald pate, piercing gaze, athlete’s swagger. We sauntered along the village’s main street until shacks gave way to jungle, always uphill. As we did, I gradually came to the realization that I had probably hired a guide and his assistant for the day, but my excitement at finally being on Kili clouded any thoughts of costs and commitments.

Moses guided us up a side road, leading steeply into the forest. I briefly thought of bailing out, feeling for the first time a loss of security, but he and Marco were so friendly, and I felt strong enough to bolt if trouble arose, that I kept walking.

Throughout the morning Moses, and to a lesser extent Marco, kept a running commentary on the flora and fauna of the foothills, pausing periodically to pick wild strawberries, guavas, coffee beans, peppermint leaves. We chewed and talked, and the heat and humidity slowed us down. I gave Moses my baseball hat as the sweat was sliding down his shiny dome in rivulets and into his eyes. We rested by two successive waterfalls, “Mama” and “Papa”, before reaching the gate signaling the trailhead for the mountain track. After spending some time sauntering around the national park buildings, fending off touts trying to sell us t-shirts, we headed back down to the village.

Before we parted, the three of us sat down in teetering wicker chairs at an outdoor bar and engaged in what was for me an uncomfortable session of haggling over their fee.

I’m fairly sure that to my two guides I was yet another middle-aged American pursuing a Hemingwayesque fantasy on a generous budget. The truth was, I was not exactly pinching pennies or shillings but was still watching my wallet (figuratively as well as literally) throughout this trip. I therefore found myself indignant at both myself and them for not having agreed a price at the start of the day.

It ended with my parting with more shillings than I had hoped, but in retrospect I’m grateful for having had the experience of hiking a part of Kilimanjaro with two people who knew her intimately. What’s more, in the final analysis I suppose that in most travel, one must resign oneself to the reality of having to part with cash, perhaps more cash than one would like. There is also solace in feeling that the local economy is being supported, and that entrepreneurs like Moses and Marco are only doing what any of us would do in their position.

Yet I couldn’t shake the concern I had that so many men and boys were engaged in such a transient and unpredictable form of work. Having been though bouts of unemployment myself, I felt that I understood to some degree the “needs must” approach that so many of these young and middle-aged men are taking; and it was natural that they approach people who were in a position to pay them for their services. Still… in a country and a continent with so much need (over forty million AIDS orphans by 2010, for example), I kept coming up with questions: is their time best spent shoving bags of fruit up at passing coaches, or waiting for a potential customer to get off the next dalla?

I knew these feelings would linger as I waited to board the Scandinavian back to Dar the next day, but looked forward to taking refuge in the familiar shabby interior of the bus. After the dusty, crowded tension of Moshi, I planned to slump into my seat and sleep.

As I was about to board the bus, my way was suddenly blocked by a stocky young man, his short-sleeved button-up shirt tucked tightly into his belt, which rode high on his tummy.

I was about to mumble “No.. no..” in anticipation of some sort of attempted sales pitch, when I noticed something about his face. The eyes… the open grin… Down’s Syndrome; the first I had seen in Africa.

Without any hesitation, the young man stepped towards me and enveloped me in a cushiony bear hug.

“Hijambo,” he slurred. “Gee- bye… gee-bye.”

Hugging him back, the tension and suspicion finally given release, I whispered back, “Hijambo… Salaam… Goodbye, my friend.”

6.

The Scandinavian hurtled south – it all felt like downhill – along the familiar, pock-marked road; through a parched landscape of stunted trees and grass-shack villages fronting empty hills to our left, and the big-sky steppe to our right. Kili faded away behind as a vast mountain of cloud. Looking ahead towards the steppe, I half-expected to see The Man With No Name riding towards us on a horse.

We stopped for lunch at the “Liverpool Restaurant”, a cross between a bazaar and a truck stop, where all of us stocked up on cellophane-wrapped chicken and chips and bags of fresh fruit. In this setting, nobody seemed to mind being hustled; it was all about food, and the jolting journey seemed to have provoked not road-sickness but hunger, and there was good-natured bantering and bartering between touts and travelers.

Hours later, several delays caused by accidents and road repairs meant that we didn’t pull into Dar until well after sunset. Nobody disembarked at Ubongu – the scene was just too hellish, I suppose; bad enough in daylight –but staying on the bus meant an extremely slow procession into the city centre due to what I assumed was rush hour.

I caught a taxi home from the Scandinavian terminus with a driver who knew next-to-no English; he, possibly, veteran of a school system which ignores the English language until secondary school. (Yes, cast off the colonial shackles, Julius, however…) I leaned over the seat from the back to offer the driver a biscuit from a bag I had brought with me, whereupon he silently grabbed the whole bag, dropped it on the passenger seat, and began popping biscuits into his mouth like a druggie with ‘Ludes. Munching precluded talking, all the while hurtling through the traffic-free backstreets on our way to the Msasani Peninsula. Priceless. I was bone-tired, but I was beginning to warm to Tanzania. Unfortunately, this was my last night.

On my final day in-country, I retreated to Bagamoyo to gather my thoughts. Once again, I watched as fishermen battled wind and wave in their dugout sailboats. Once again, I watched as the boatmen who brought us to the island worked as a team to get us out to the pristine sands safely, and with the luxury of cooked fish and cold beer.

When I’d planned this trip months earlier I’d had no idea of the impact these daily working lives – and the other un- and under-employed lives – would have on me. I’d hoped to visit charities, training programmes, schools… but instead spent much of the week just looking out of windows, listening, and reflecting on the roles of men at work and out of work. In just that short span of time, I felt the scales starting to fall from my eyes, in that I was beginning to see a way of working, and of being unemployed or marginally employed, that was vastly different to what we have in ‘the developed world.’ I began to realise that I could not impose snap judgments and values on a culture which is, after all, many millennia older than “ours.”

Yet…yet…yet… I’m left with memories of the miles passing by outside the speeding Scandinavian, and the seemingly endless procession of villages and hamlets, populated almost exclusively by men at repose; shooting pool, or rising from stools to try and hawk something bus-side. I hear the voices next to my head as I walk a bit faster to try to move away; voices so friendly, but invariably trying to sell. Just one exception: that farewell hug in Moshi.

Then I think again of the shocking statistics: all those AIDS orphans. 25,000 children dead every day in the developing world due to the effects of malnutrition and preventable diseases. Where are the men in all of this? Why can’t they help?


7.

My plane lifts off into the night; the overnight haul to Nairobi, Zurich, and on to Heathrow in the morning. This time, I see little out of my porthole but the dwindling lights of western suburban Dar. There are no islands, and I don’t know when or where we pass by Kili. By now, my mind has started to shift from observing mode to planning mode; looking ahead to all that I have to do back in England.

The cabin lights dim as I ponder the working week, and what I need to accomplish at home: lawn, hedge, wash the car… and then a bizarre vision crosses my mind. It goes like this: after I’ve done my chores, I flop down in a chair in the front room, and thumb-press the remote to command the television to work its hypnotic magic. As I stare into the screen, not even registering what I’m watching, a man stops outside my house and looks in at me – but I don’t see him. He is a Tanzanian; it is Ibrahim. He is on his way to work, a night shift cleaning our two village pubs. He smiles as he looks at me, the idle man at repose. As he moves along, he sees through windows other men in similar positions in their front rooms. He encounters one of my neighbours cleaning his car for the second time in a week, largely because he seems to have nothing better to do. Another man further along is trimming his hedge meticulously to a uniform height, stepping back occasionally to view his handiwork, like an artist pondering a canvas. He does this every week. Next door to him, the house is empty, as the owner is down at his allotment. Due to some undisclosed disability, this man has been ‘off work’ for a long time. He has recently announced via Facebook that he is temporarily suspending micro-farming on his allotment so that he can watch Wimbledon for its allotted two weeks.

Ibrahim walks on, smiling that bright, genuine East African smile, and shaking his head. He’s just stepped off a nearly-empty bus from the city centre, and he enjoys walking to the pubs and passing village houses. What’s more, although he has just finished a prior shift cleaning a factory and will be up most of the night scrubbing pubs, his eyes are no longer red.