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| 8 October 2003 - The dash to Moshi | ||||||||||||||||||||
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The Tanzanian side of the border crossing at Kasumulu was, diplomatically put, complex. In keeping with typical african large government bureaucracies, all these civil servants have to be given jobs so instead of doing everything in 2 offices in 10 minutes, it is spread out over 5 offices involving 10 people, some of them so slow/dumb that makes you wonder how they got to be where they are. No, I am not giving any prizes for correct answers. First office you go to is for immigration, where the passports get checked and stamped (luckily Isla had arranged our visas in Pretoria before we left otherwise this would have meant an additional step). Next a discussion about insurance, but luckily we had the COMESA yellow card otherwise the least you will get fleeced for is $25 for 1 month (and we paid $40 for all countries for 6 months!). Next is the paperwork for the car, in a second office: give carnet and registration papers to person who looks at it and says ok, can go to third office and informs you that there are also $5 road toll and $20 foreign vehicle permit fees to pay. Go to next office, man looks at papers, starts filling in carnet register, then decides he is not going to put his ass on the line in case something is not right with my papers so off we go to another office, number 4 now, his boss. He politely knocks, we enter, he closes door behind as his boss's office is air conditioned and no hot air may enter. I grin, thinking that all the hot air is in these guys heads! The big cheese checks carnet, vehicle papers and passport and decides that I am indeed the owner of the vehicle and tells the chicken guy to do the paperwork. Back to third office, registers and carnet get filled in, then off to second office to pay the fees. Sit down, fill in forms and receipts, then man gets up and asks me to follow to the other side of the office where he goes behind a cashier's counter and suddenly he becomes the cashier - mindboggingly he can do 2 jobs at (almost) the same time! I pay the fees, get the receipts, go back to collect carnet with receipts as proof of payment. Done! Not yet. The police still, so off to office number 5, where a woman with 3 stars on her shoulder tries unsuccessfully to enter my details in her vehicle register. After failing the "reading of the carnet" test I try the "dictation" test to her, but after she fails that too I tactfully take the pen from her and fill in the register myself. Done I thought. Not yet. Now you go to the hut at the boom gate where a friendly man chats to you and checks that you have paid and followed the procedure of getting all your details into all of their registers. Thereafter you are free to go. Luckily for us there was nobody else at the border post so all this took only half an hour. The change in climate and hence vegetation in arriving in south west Tanzania from northern Malawi is sudden. The last stretch in Malawi was dry, flat and the villages looked poor, but the Mbeya/Tukuyu area of of the southern highlands is bright green, hilly and heavily cultivated. Every hillside is covered in either tea, bananas, maize or sugar. We stopped in Tukuyu to get some shillings at the National Bank of Commerce (there are no forex bureaux) but the rate was not all that bad so I can recommend it (not that you have a choice: it is the only bank in town). Just outside town we stopped on the side of the road to eat our vetkoek with eggs and mayo, but the hard boiled eggs turned out to be raw eggs so vetkoek with nothing it was. Clearly my communication skills had not improved much during the 2 weeks in Malawi. For the last few days we had been trying to decide whether to stick to our original idea of travelling western and southern Tanzania first and then head off towards Moshi and the Kilimanjaro climb, or head straight for Kili and do the west/south afterwards. As we got closer to Mbeya, our route splitting point, the decision was made: the former was more practical as the general travelling direction would cover the areas we wanted to visit in a roughly counter-clockwise direction, but in the end we decided that the latter was the safest option - let's do Kili while we are still fresh and healthy, and do the west/south afterwards. You never know, a few days of some or other funny bug and you need a couple of weeks to recover. Also, the moon would be between full and half which would help the final night's ascent. Lake Rukwa, Katavi National Park, Udzungwa and others will have to wait until after Kili. Having made the decision, we wanted to get to Moshi as soon as possible so looking at the maps we decided that Kisolanza Farm about 50km before Iringa was nearly reachable before dark so the co-ordinates went into the GPS and we were off towards Moshi. Now for those who do not know, Tanzanian drivers, especially bus and truck drivers, are totally reckless, driving foot flat regardless of the condition of the road or indeed their vehicles, and certainly regardless of their passengers and other road users. So the only way that these maniacs are slowed down in towns and villages is with large speed humps in every town and village. These are not your average speed humps that most of us are used to, these are guaranteed to break things if taken too fast. All buses have some or other slogan written in big letters in the front and/or back, something like "In God we trust". Wryfully, Isla and I said "That may be fine, but the driver is the idiot you should rather trust". And "Speed Express" is certainly no lie! The road towards Iringa was mostly very good, and we reached Kisolanza Farm (also known as The Old Farm) just after dark. My hope of buying a piece of steak at their small farm shop evaporated as they had run out of fillet, sirloin, etc. (I think the O'Sullivans must have bought the whole lot) so we had to be content with a packet of pork sausages over the coals before going to bed. After a long drive, we were by far and away the last people to leave the next morning. We had a good look around the camp and decided that the owners actually spent a few minutes planning things: the thunder boxes at least have seats, the showers have hooks where you can hang your stuff and are big enough so your things don't get wet, there is a washing area, braai places, and the overlanders have their own area away from the rest of the guys so they can keep each other awake while partying/talking all night. And the small shop has a few things you can buy if you arrive late, although all the meat must be fetched from the farmhouse, which is ok because there are a number of very friendly and helpful camp assistants to show you around and get things for you. Perhaps the owners will publish a "How to set up a camp site" guide for all the other wannabe camp owners. We even indulged in a few of their chocolate brownies before leaving. |
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The tarred public road through the middle of Mikumi National Park is littered with speed humps to try and prevent vehicles from going too fast. Hundreds of animals have been killed by speeding vehicles. Just driving through we saw elephant, giraffe, zebra, buffalo and various antelopes. Late in the afternoon we found the turnoff for Malela Nzuri Campsite and camped there for the night. It is situated on the outside boundary of Mikumi NP and has various access tracks into the park. At this time of the year the camp site is very dry and dusty, but it has a huge boma and cold water showers and it is the only place available outside the park for a reasonable fee. Morogoro further on does not have any camping facilities so there are few choices in the area. As we parked, the whole welcoming committee arrived but kept their distance and left after a while. One or two of the children would come around every now and again but leave shortly thereafter. Just curious. The sunset over the african bush was stunning. By this stage our food stocks were running low so I knocked together whatever veggies were left with some eggs, and isn't it funny how dinner seems to work out great when you put together your last few items. John, the camp manager, popped in a little later to see if we needed anything, and at least he spoke english so we could have a chat and he helped us with a bit of Swahili. Malela Nzuri means "good village camping". He even promised us to write down a few useful words/phrases for us and bring it around in the morning. I don't think they get many people staying over. The night was quiet and we slept real well. In the morning John indeed returned with a sheet of paper with a number of swahili phrases written down, but he left the english equivalent for us to write, probably as his english writing is not good. After a quick breakfast, we were off on our last leg to Moshi. First stop was Morogoro to fill up with diesel, cheapest so far in Tanzania. Fuel gets cheaper as you head towards the coast. But after Morogoro the road works and stop/go sections slowed us down a lot, and by lunch time we only got as far as Korogwe. Do not stop at the White Parrot Motel for food: we paid sh3000 for 2 chicken sandwiches which took ages to materialize. We stopped outside town to eat these and found that there was the equivalent of a chicken wing worth of meat in the sandwiches. After Korogwe the road improved. |
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Despite our first impressions in the Tukuyu area, in general, Tanzania does not quite match up to Zambia or Malawi: we had become used to seeing the neat small villages that every now and again lined the roads in Zambia and Malawi, but in Tanzania there are more but smaller villages, looking derelict and with rubbish lying around. Whereas in the other countries even the poor homes were kept neat, here the buildings were left to fall apart and the debris left everywhere. People, mostly the men, lay about doing nothing, and the stalls selling fruit and vegetables were absent. Very few gardens had anything growing in them, and very few fields were being worked, which is probably why there was nothing for sale. But in every village there were adverts for beer and cell phones. In the days and weeks to come, chatting to a number of Tanzanians, we got to understand why this is so. One thing that struck us in Malawi was that in all the shops there were banners to "support Malawi products". For example, on a shelf with biscuits or jam or sugar you would get Malawian, South African and Kenyan products, but under the Malawin product there would be a small advert promoting the local product to support your own country. This is a simple example but was evident all over the place. Very patriotic we thought, and a little similar to the "Proudly South African" campaign back home. But in Tanzania, hardly anything is produced locally. You go into a shop looking for baked beans and sugar (not exactly luxury items) and you end up buying Heinz's baked beans and Mumias sugar from Kenya. If you want some local coffee which is supposed to be pretty good, you end up paying the same as the coffee imported from Kenya or even Italy. We found out that Tanzania processes very little of its food products except for staple foods, and the little that it does produce is viewed by many people as inferior, thus is not supported, and imported goods are favoured by those that can afford them. The general run down appearance is due to the old socialist regime under Nyerere where everything was done for the people by the government. Despite the fact that politically things changed decades ago, some people have the ingrained attitude of days gone by and are unwilling to change. We were told that the current government is trying to change people's attitudes, to take more ownership of their futures, but it is taking a long time. Cynically perhaps, one of the people we were chatting to suggested that it suits some people to do nothing and wait for the government to give handouts. Ok, enough of a diversion now, and back to our story instead of other people's views of their country. As we got closer to Moshi, Isla and I were on the lookout for Mt Kilimanjaro on the offchance it was not completely covered in cloud. We did not really know what to expect to see because it is not exactly every day that you approach a mountain that sticks out 5000 metres above the surrounding plains! About 50km before Moshi, we were looking at a couple of hills, one of which was rather tall, and we were joking that that one was it, and a minute later Isla shouts "there it is!!". That first view was awesome. The small bumps we were looking at were nothing compared to Kili. The sky was hazy and the top of Kili was covered by cloud as usual so the mountain blended quite well into the horizon, but Mawenzi to the East was clear, and there is no way you can mistake the highest mountain in Africa. It is unique, so we stopped by the road to take in the view, thought about chickening out, but got in the Landy and drove on. |
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 Kili in the clouds on the left and Mawenzi to the right |
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