A Recap of My Travels

I’ve finished traveling and am now in my new home for the next few months here in Arusha.  I’ve come across some down time so I figure I can sit and type up a little bit about the trip I just went on with Dylan.  To read the pre-departure notes, go back a couple posts and I think it’s there.  I really had a blast though and it was great because I’ve never done anything like that before.  I wrote some journals throughout but mostly I was just taking bullet points of the significant events and I’ll share some highlights.  I hope you enjoy.

Day 1 – Hop a Train – 19 February

After having a farewell dinner/pool party for our program that got us back to UDSM in the late evening, I spent the rest of my night packing and trying to study which took me late into the night which was mostly sleepless anyway.  My last final exam did not go flawlessly and I got out later than I had hoped so I had to head back to my room and pack away the last few things in a frenzy.  We stop by Ken’s office, get our $40 deposit back from our rooms and watch the seconds tick by as we think we might miss our train.  We finally made it to the train though right on time thanks to our bajaji driver (though he did start going the other way entirely for a minute).  We should have known better though and we waited for a couple hours before the train actually left.  Overall, was just so relieved to be out of that place and done.

We got a first class cabin which only has 4 bunks and we’re sharing with a guy who’s from Tacoma where his wife is a professor at University of Puget Sound but is on sabbatical so they’re living in Zanzibar for a year with their two young sons.  He spent pretty much the whole time with his family in the next cabin over and got off before the night so we essentially had the place to ourselves and enjoyed some beers.  The train tracks go right between Selous Game Park and Mikumi National Park so we get to see some gazelle, warthogs, giraffes, huge birds, etc. right as the sun was going down.

Day 2 – Arrive in Mbeya – 20 February

I wake up in the middle of the night to what I think is some crazy problems the train is having but I think it just has to go one foot/minute when it climbs this hill or something.  I went back to sleep and woke up cold which was a foreign feeling after spending so much time in Dar es Salaam (a sign of a new era).  We get in to Mbeya later than expected, but it gave me time to finish reading Siddhartha which I started the night before though we didn’t really have time to do much besides wander town.  We get some good food and then just go back to our hotel room which has a TV and cable so we spend the rest of the night mesmerized as we catch up on things like the olympics, Haiti, and even got to see The Simpsons and Sanford & Son… we just watched for hours because it had been so long since we’d really done that and it was just unreal.

Day 3 – Getting to Malawi – 21 February

We head out the next day and get on a coaster heading south towards the Malawian border.  The Tanzanian police had stops about every 10-15 minutes along the route to get bribes or something, I’m not sure.  As expected, it takes longer than expected and the border town was just complete madness.  We changed some cash over with the random dudes selling Malawian Kwacha and ride on the back of bicycles to the border crossing.  Everything goes well there and then we walk into Malawi where some random car pulls up that supposedly will take us to the nearest town though it didn’t look like a taxi.  Along the way, the guy literally fills the trunk of the car with corn – like just ears and ears of corn, so much so that he can’t close the trunk so they have to take some out – and we have some lunch before catching a mini bus (what Malawians call daladalas) to take us to Mzuzu, the nearest big town that’s supposed to have an ATM.  We get in after sundown and taxi cab jackals try to get us to pay the equivalent of $40 to take us to this town on Lake Malawi where we want to get the next morning to take the ferry.  We almost fell for it to, but thankfully did not.

Day 4-6 – The Ferry – I think I’ll just stop doing it like this from now on

We take another mini bus the next day to a town on Lake Malawi called Nkhata Bay and there we find out the ferry doesn’t leave until something like 7 or 9 in the evening so we have all day to just hang out.  We meet some guys who sell art and stuff to tourists and also try to sell us Malawi Wowie.  The ferry eventually gets moving though there were no seats or anything for us so we just sat on deck and looked at the stars – glad that the rain had stopped.  I end up staying up for what is essentially the whole night and they keep trying to force us to go down to second class (which is what we got tickets for) where it’s standing room only.  It was pretty shitty though I did get to meet a sergeant in Malawi’s military and he was actually pretty cool.  The next couple days were just long and slow though the scenery was very nice (like most of Malawi, actually).  We met a University of Oregon alum and some peace corps volunteers who we actually ran into a day later.  It was nice to get off and walk again though in the end and we started making our way to Lilongwe (Malawi’s political capital and probably second biggest city) by mini bus.  One ride was pretty bad though and I had to share my valued foot/leg space with some chickens (and I swear there was a duck in there too).

Lilongwe

This was our planned destination and after arriving we really didn’t have any further plans.  We couch surfed at this really nice place with a lady from Malta who was also hosting these other two British guys (really cool dudes that we got along with pretty well) as well as two ladies who were Swedish or Dutch or something.  We go out that first night to this place where all the expats go to and it’s the first time in a long time where I truly felt like I wasn’t a minority and it really messed with my head.  The next day I was actually pretty confused and stuff but I got over it eventually.  Lilongwe is a bizarre place and it’s like split into two cities which we saw a little bit of both.  I don’t know at what point this was, but we decided to go to Zambia because the visa fees were $50 and we just got our deposits back from the dorms which were about the same price so we got bus tickets from Lilongwe to Lusaka.  We had to leave early in the morning and I didn’t feel like losing more money so I turned down the invitation to head to the casino with everyone else at the house.  I wake up a couple hours later to Dylan throwing a big stack of money at me that he all won because he hit his lucky number (27) on the only round of roulette he has ever or will ever play in his life.  I end up watching an awful movie with the Brits and then getting one hour of sleep before we had to head out.  The cab driver never shows up though and doesn’t answer his phone so we start walking down the road hoping not to miss our bus and fortunately we get there right on time and don’t even have to wait around.

On to Zambia – 26 February

We sleep a little before reaching the border and when we get there we start going through the motions without a hitch except that Dylan tries to change money over with this one guy and who becomes convinced that Dylan took his money from him.  The police have to get involved and the guy is yelling in another language while this other pastor guy who got on our bus was preaching and also yelling at the same time.  It was Armageddon and I had the aisle seat so everything was just going off all around me.  The police guy believes Dylan easily thanks to these other Zambian guys who stepped in to give us a hand and were really cool.  The rest of the day was just a long bus ride through a cool forest area that was mostly uninhabited except for the wild bird that flew out and broke our windshield.  Once again, we arrive in the dark so we don’t really get to see the city at all or do much but go to our hostel.  Once there, we reevaluate our plans and know that we want to see Victoria Falls but also want to take the train back to Tanzania.  We end up deciding to go early the next morning to Livingstone which you should check out on google maps just because it’s right by like four different countries.

Livingstone – 27 and 28 February

On the road to Livingstone I have a great realization that I do actually like Tanzania and just Africa in general more than I knew and that I could actually live here after all.  I thought a lot about Tanzania and Dar especially on this trip and I learned a lot of things and felt a lot of different emotions but I’m just overall satisfied and happy with things right now and have been since about this time.  To keep things brief, we made it to Victoria Falls and paid the $10 each to get in which is probably the best ten bucks spent on the entire trip.  That place was really cool and I mean it.  I don’t have many good up close photos because it’s just so incredibly wet and also so massive that photos when you’re near just don’t capture how massive it is.  I had my mind set on bungee jumping off of this bridge there when we got there that day but the maximum price I had determined was lower than what they listed so it would have been cool to say I bungee jumped there (I’m allowed to do one douche bag thing every once in a while) but it just wasn’t worth it so I’m going to try to do something else cool with the money I saved there instead.

Back to Lusaka… briefly

Our couch surfing connection doesn’t work out so we had to stay at some godawful hostel back in Lusaka and we have to decide whether to take the Tuesday train and not spend enough time in Zambia or the Friday and spend too much while missing other opportunities in Tanzania.  This hostel sure helped convince us to just get out of there and although I wish I would have seem more of Zambia and stayed longer, we had too much calling us back to Tanzania.  We got up early to at least walk around the city a little bit before heading to catch the train and it’s just fascinating to see how other places are and how they’re different from Tanzania.  I’m wondering if their ability to speak English is important or their proximity to South Africa or if they just have less corruption/better management or if we just didn’t see the right things or a combination or what but Zambia seemed a lot less poor/more developed/logically operational than anywhere in Tanzania.  Even on the train back, there were less people trying to sell us things through the window and once we crossed back into Tanzania, there were just little children begging for food and/or money all along the tracks.  Just so many thoughts running through my mind throughout this whole trip and it was really good to get this new perspective.

Back in Tanzania

Dylan wanted to stay in the same place in Mbeya so I didn’t protest though it wasn’t as magical this time and not all the channels came through.  The next morning, I couldn’t get the warm water to work though Dylan could so I had to freeze a bit and then immigration officers came knocking at our door which we handled somehow.  My current residence status is… questionable, let’s say so I’m trying to be very careful right now.

Iringa

We had to the city of Iringa (in the region by the same name) from Mbeya and get dropped off right into God unleashing an ocean of rain which let up slightly as we headed into the actual town part.  I really liked the city there though and we spent two nights at this weird little inn where they only had single rooms open but they were cheap so it was fine and I spent the night in my own room for the first time in a long time (though now I have one here in Arusha.)  The building next door was a mosque though and my window faced that direction so I was roused at 4:45 AM for the call to prayer and spent the next hour listening to their service or something.  The next day we went to this cool valley site called Isamila or something that had formed by the limestone layers being eroded and leaving cool pillars and stuff.  The clouds had more to say than our tour guy and we kept hearing very worrisome and powerful thunder as we trekked down this river bed, expecting a flash flood any second.  We got lucky here I guess too.  Headed back to town and just checked it out a bit before leaving the next day to head back to Dar at last.

Homeless at home – back to Dar es Salaam – 6 March

As seems to be the trend, we didn’t make it to where we were going until after dark, later than expected but at least it was a place we already knew.  It was warm (everywhere else we had been on the entire trip had been in the rainy season) and it felt good to be back to the city which I think we both legitimately missed.  We stayed at a place near campus that Dylan knew that was cheap and had air conditioning… a huge bonus.  Over the next couple days we walked around downtown, met our friend’s parents, saw some Tanzanian friends that were still in Dar, got to take photos on campus and just relaxed a bit even.  We moved out of the hotel and in with our friend Dan who had held onto our bags for us while we traveled.  The next couple days were busy and hectic but good as I got to see my roommate one last time.  He is one cool dude and I’m really glad that I got to live with him and know him.  I also got to teach a couple more times and I’m also really glad that I got to get to know those guys as well.  I got my bus tickets to head out to Arusha on Wednesday and ended up going out with Dan on that last night.  We went to this swanky club where the girls were good looking, though the place was too nice (nicer than any club I’ll ever go to again) and it was just taking itself too seriously.  It wasn’t my scene and even Dan wasn’t enjoying it so we wound up at his home away from home… the Las Vegas Casino.  I proceeded to lose all my money though I was fortunate enough to have enough for a cab to get me to the bus station in the morning.  Then they charged me for having excess baggage and I got on the bus with only 700 shillings (maybe 52 cents) to hold me over for what turned out to be like a 10 hour bus ride.  My Swahili got me some free fruit at the place we stopped for lunch and even upon arriving in Arusha, my new home, I still could boast having that 700 shillings… and hunger.

So now here I am at my new home for the next 12 weeks.  This is essentially the conclusion to that last chapter on my life and I’ll some change things here and post an introduction to the new chapter so stay tuned.

Overall Notables:

- Went by Bajaji, rail, daladala, mini bus, coaster, and coach buses.  We wanted to ride in the back of a truck and rent motorcycles but this just never happened.

- First time in a land-locked country (both Malawi and Zambia are)

- The number of countries I’ve been to is now up to 7 (though technically it’s 10)

- We spent most of our time without any map our guidebook which was kind of cool but probably meant more headaches and ripoffs

- Rode the entire Tanzania Zambia Rail line

- I saw a laundry machine for the first time since I left home

- Victoria Falls is supposedly one of the seven natural wonders of the world

- Successfully fasted on several occasions (living on mostly bread and multivitamins the rest of the time)

- First time couch surfing

- Survived a very long time on very little different pieces of clothing

- I more than doubled my count of warm showers taken since arriving (now where I live we have hot water though so that’s just a remnant of another era)

- The actual times I took showers or changed clothes were few and far between… as were places that actually had toilet seats (…just don’t ask…)

Looking back on all of this that I typed up, it doesn’t really get the grasp of what traveling here was really like but more just says what happened.  The truth is that every day I could have written something twice as long as this just for that day alone and what it was like.  I’ve got a million stories just from those two-and-a-half weeks and they probably will never all be told but one day I’d like to be able to share them though it’s going to have to come just in conversations when we’re hanging out.  I’m still not sure how to think about this trip though it was very important and now that I’m here in Arusha where I’ll remain for the rest of my time in Tanzania, I feel refreshed, prepared, and in the right mindset to do this.