Dodoma, Tanzania
I made it through miles and miles of mountains and dirt roads to arrive at the Tanzanian capital, Dodoma. It was declared the capital decades ago, but the government never fully managed to move here. It is quite far out from the hustle of the Tanzanian coast, and still feels like a village despite several large buildings on the main road, and the parliament. One moment I am walking near a huge mosque, and as I turn the corner, dust and tin roof shops greet me. It is quite a strange place, with a mix of professionals and villagers living here.
After I finished the Kilimanjaro climb, I moved on to the Serengeti, a place I had long dreamed of going. I had managed to save money by booking last minute onto a departing tour, and so my fellows were a friendly Russian couple. We had a driver, and a cook, and drove an old land rover onto the plains of Africa. There was an incredible sight - it was like a wild Mongolia. Sometimes the yellow grass would seem to stretch forever, dotted with gazelle herds munching away. As we entered the park, we spotted a cheetah in the long grass. It was stalking a herd of gazelles, and we watched with fascination as it crept closer, waited, then sprung at the herd and clawed one down. Further on, jackals looked at us, panting, and lion packs could be seen sleeping all day under a big tree. We were there for three days driving around the park, trying to see something interesting. Once, we saw a baboon sitting on a rock near the road, so human like - he even sneezed! And on the last day, we drove down into the Ngorongoro Crater, a remnant of an ancient volcano now filled with grazing antelope, wildebeests, and predators.
I had my tour drop me off at a small village at a junction of the main road, so that I could continue onto Kolo, a village around which surround caveman rock paintings. Walking around the village, I greeted many people, and many more people stared at me perplexed, or suspiciously. Tanzanians are usually a little suspicious of strangers, which may be allayed a little by greeting them. There was a big Masai man who waved me over, and we talked in a mixture of my limited Swahili words and hang gestures. The Masaai usually keep their traditions of cow and goat herding from their mud and straw huts, wearing their traditional robes and always carrying a stick and long knife. I gathered that he had walked to there from his village and was going to stay somewhere nearby? Further on, a swarm of kids excitedly yelled, "Muzungu!", a word for white man or foreigner. I also get called "Chino!" a lot in place of a name. They all wanted to hi five me. Then three men sitting on the side of the road wanted to talk to me to see if they could sell me bus tickets, but after that they just wanted to talk. They told me about the Masai chief and medicine man of a nearby village who had 18 wives and a ridiculous number of cows (Masai measure wealth in terms of cows, and about 30 cows is enough to buy a wife).
The next day, I continued my journey onto the village of Kolo. I got into a Daladala, which is a minivan used as an intercity bus, and took it to a town halfway. The town was a collection of tin roofed rectangular brick buildings used as shops or houses. They managed to jam every cranny of the Daladala full of people as we headed down the highway. There in the town, I switched to another daladala, one with exceptionally horrible brakes. Soon, the paved road ended, and we bounced up and down on stones, going into the mountains. There was a banana growing village which the women were selling bananas by the roadside for 2.5 cents each. And there were more villages of brick and mud huts, often without electricity. Tanzania is definitely the poorest country I have been in, and I think that is because the government is so corrupt. It seems that the government officials' main priorities are making money for themselves. The police have tons of checkpoints on the roads in which they inspect tires or something (but not minivans which are full of 30 people), and sometimes want a "gift". The road to Kolo is under construction by China - and my Daladala driver takes me out to meet a Chinese guy who is working on the road. He smiles when I speak to him in Chinese, and seems really glad to meet me. He has been there for a year, and laments the fact that he has already eaten his lunch, and that I will have to sit in the bed of the company pickup truck, which they offered to me to continue my journey to Kolo. He wants a woman sitting in the front of the truck to go to the back so I can sit in the front, perhaps because he values his countrymen more than the locals, but I refuse, and go to the bed of the pickup truck, along with 10 others who are done serving lunch to the road construction workers, and are now going home to the villages. So the pickup truck bumps along the still dirt road, and my butt is having a hard time of it, so I am glad when Kolo isn't too far away, and I arrive.
The next day, a tour guide and I rented a guy's motorcycle, and we set out to see the caveman rock paintings. I am driving the motorcycle, and though I have a license for one, my past driving record for motorcycles has been once manual and once automatic. However, it is easy enough to operate the gears on the dirt road, and I am doing fine. Suddenly, my tour guide tells me to bank right onto a really narrow and rocky road. It twists and turns, and sometimes becomes more rocky, and sometimes becomes less rocky. I begin to struggle on the hills, and often stall the bike, during which we would kick start the motorcycle back to life. It was an unbelievable struggle to manage the clutch and go uphill on the rocky road, but it was the struggle for life. This is Africa - where you have to fight to keep going, or become swallowed up by a lion who is always behind you. Finally, we make it, with only one wipeout on record. We go see the red colored rock paintings, made by the hunter gathers in the region thousands of years ago. In the middle of our artistic admiration, we hear the sound of drums. A company approaches - a company from a village not too far, led by the local medicine man. They have come here to worship the spirits of their ancestors, because of a certain dream a woman had, who is with the company. A drummer drums, an old lady chants, and the medicine man and dream lady swing as if in a trance. They make their way to a cave, into which the medicine man and dream lady crawl. The rest remain outside, drumming and chanting. The medicine man crawls in and out of the cave, dragging his medicine, and a white hen with no spots inside. The hen caws in fear, and seems to sense her doom. She will soon be sacrificed to the ancestral spirits. The medicine man and dream lady are in the cave. Who knew when they would come out again? Not the people outside. They would remain inside until they got a sign.
I managed to drive the motorcycle down the rocky slopes back to town, and I can say that I know how to ride a motorcycle now. I thank my guide catch a truck hauling beer towards Malawi, and am on my way.
I made it through miles and miles of mountains and dirt roads to arrive at the Tanzanian capital, Dodoma. It was declared the capital decades ago, but the government never fully managed to move here. It is quite far out from the hustle of the Tanzanian coast, and still feels like a village despite several large buildings on the main road, and the parliament. One moment I am walking near a huge mosque, and as I turn the corner, dust and tin roof shops greet me. It is quite a strange place, with a mix of professionals and villagers living here.
After I finished the Kilimanjaro climb, I moved on to the Serengeti, a place I had long dreamed of going. I had managed to save money by booking last minute onto a departing tour, and so my fellows were a friendly Russian couple. We had a driver, and a cook, and drove an old land rover onto the plains of Africa. There was an incredible sight - it was like a wild Mongolia. Sometimes the yellow grass would seem to stretch forever, dotted with gazelle herds munching away. As we entered the park, we spotted a cheetah in the long grass. It was stalking a herd of gazelles, and we watched with fascination as it crept closer, waited, then sprung at the herd and clawed one down. Further on, jackals looked at us, panting, and lion packs could be seen sleeping all day under a big tree. We were there for three days driving around the park, trying to see something interesting. Once, we saw a baboon sitting on a rock near the road, so human like - he even sneezed! And on the last day, we drove down into the Ngorongoro Crater, a remnant of an ancient volcano now filled with grazing antelope, wildebeests, and predators.
I had my tour drop me off at a small village at a junction of the main road, so that I could continue onto Kolo, a village around which surround caveman rock paintings. Walking around the village, I greeted many people, and many more people stared at me perplexed, or suspiciously. Tanzanians are usually a little suspicious of strangers, which may be allayed a little by greeting them. There was a big Masai man who waved me over, and we talked in a mixture of my limited Swahili words and hang gestures. The Masaai usually keep their traditions of cow and goat herding from their mud and straw huts, wearing their traditional robes and always carrying a stick and long knife. I gathered that he had walked to there from his village and was going to stay somewhere nearby? Further on, a swarm of kids excitedly yelled, "Muzungu!", a word for white man or foreigner. I also get called "Chino!" a lot in place of a name. They all wanted to hi five me. Then three men sitting on the side of the road wanted to talk to me to see if they could sell me bus tickets, but after that they just wanted to talk. They told me about the Masai chief and medicine man of a nearby village who had 18 wives and a ridiculous number of cows (Masai measure wealth in terms of cows, and about 30 cows is enough to buy a wife).
The next day, I continued my journey onto the village of Kolo. I got into a Daladala, which is a minivan used as an intercity bus, and took it to a town halfway. The town was a collection of tin roofed rectangular brick buildings used as shops or houses. They managed to jam every cranny of the Daladala full of people as we headed down the highway. There in the town, I switched to another daladala, one with exceptionally horrible brakes. Soon, the paved road ended, and we bounced up and down on stones, going into the mountains. There was a banana growing village which the women were selling bananas by the roadside for 2.5 cents each. And there were more villages of brick and mud huts, often without electricity. Tanzania is definitely the poorest country I have been in, and I think that is because the government is so corrupt. It seems that the government officials' main priorities are making money for themselves. The police have tons of checkpoints on the roads in which they inspect tires or something (but not minivans which are full of 30 people), and sometimes want a "gift". The road to Kolo is under construction by China - and my Daladala driver takes me out to meet a Chinese guy who is working on the road. He smiles when I speak to him in Chinese, and seems really glad to meet me. He has been there for a year, and laments the fact that he has already eaten his lunch, and that I will have to sit in the bed of the company pickup truck, which they offered to me to continue my journey to Kolo. He wants a woman sitting in the front of the truck to go to the back so I can sit in the front, perhaps because he values his countrymen more than the locals, but I refuse, and go to the bed of the pickup truck, along with 10 others who are done serving lunch to the road construction workers, and are now going home to the villages. So the pickup truck bumps along the still dirt road, and my butt is having a hard time of it, so I am glad when Kolo isn't too far away, and I arrive.
The next day, a tour guide and I rented a guy's motorcycle, and we set out to see the caveman rock paintings. I am driving the motorcycle, and though I have a license for one, my past driving record for motorcycles has been once manual and once automatic. However, it is easy enough to operate the gears on the dirt road, and I am doing fine. Suddenly, my tour guide tells me to bank right onto a really narrow and rocky road. It twists and turns, and sometimes becomes more rocky, and sometimes becomes less rocky. I begin to struggle on the hills, and often stall the bike, during which we would kick start the motorcycle back to life. It was an unbelievable struggle to manage the clutch and go uphill on the rocky road, but it was the struggle for life. This is Africa - where you have to fight to keep going, or become swallowed up by a lion who is always behind you. Finally, we make it, with only one wipeout on record. We go see the red colored rock paintings, made by the hunter gathers in the region thousands of years ago. In the middle of our artistic admiration, we hear the sound of drums. A company approaches - a company from a village not too far, led by the local medicine man. They have come here to worship the spirits of their ancestors, because of a certain dream a woman had, who is with the company. A drummer drums, an old lady chants, and the medicine man and dream lady swing as if in a trance. They make their way to a cave, into which the medicine man and dream lady crawl. The rest remain outside, drumming and chanting. The medicine man crawls in and out of the cave, dragging his medicine, and a white hen with no spots inside. The hen caws in fear, and seems to sense her doom. She will soon be sacrificed to the ancestral spirits. The medicine man and dream lady are in the cave. Who knew when they would come out again? Not the people outside. They would remain inside until they got a sign.
I managed to drive the motorcycle down the rocky slopes back to town, and I can say that I know how to ride a motorcycle now. I thank my guide catch a truck hauling beer towards Malawi, and am on my way.
The Serengeti
Wonders of the ancients
Medicine please?