Kuuliza si ujinga

It's Easter break, and I'm on the road again.

This break, I decided I wanted to visit Mwanza. Mwanza is the second largest city in Tanzania, after Dar es Salaam. Like Dar, it's a port, but not an ocean port. Mwanza is on Lake Victoria, which is both the source of the Nile River and the largest lake in Africa. Well, I thought, I'll probably never have another chance to see Lake Victoria in my life. So I made plans to go to Mwanza for break.

Finding information on transport here was difficult. My guidebook claimed the road was unpaved, and that it could take days to reach the city. Tanzanians told me the road was recently paved and that you could get there in a day from Arusha. Unsure who to believe, I decided to plan a two day trip.

And so, on Saturday, I stood along the paved road from Arusha, trying to flag down a bus going to the town of Singida. The plan was to stay in Singida, the half-way point, for the night, then go to Mwanza in the morning.

By 6:45 am, I was sitting on my bags in the middle of the aisle of a bus. It was going fast. Way too fast, in my humble, I-don't-want-to-die-today opinion. But I was on, and the fare was paid, and the chances of finding a safer and slower bus were rather low.

We turned off the paved road onto the dirt road, and settled in for a bumpy five hour ride to Singida. On dirt roads, buses should slow down. This one didn't. I was like a student sitting on the back of a school bus as it goes over speed bumps: every time there was a bump, I bumped straight into the air with it. The guy behind me asked me if I wanted his seat. 'No, don't worry about it,' I said, not wanting to take the comfortable seat he'd paid good shilingi for. 'Someone will probably get off in Babati, and then I'll get a seat'.

Incidentally, Babati is a beautiful town, green and fertile. But people didn't get off in Babati: they got on instead. The bus was soon filled with students in brown sweaters and black pants, standing in the aisle on their way home for Easter break. Fortunately, I'd gotten a seat by now: when the bus had stopped for people to go to the bathroom, the guy on the seat next to me had gotten off, and had refused to take his seat back when he reboarded the bus. By that point, my arms were tired enough from clutching the seats on both sides of me that I was just happy to sit down.

We pulled into the town of Katesh around 10:30 am. I looked at my watch, amazed. We'd be in Singida by noon. Given my bus's speed, it probably wasn't just going to Singida...it was probably racing all the way to Mwanza. I started texting desperately back and forth with the friend I was supposed to meet in Mwanza. Would he get there today? Could he get there today? Could we meet in Mwanza instead?

And given that I'd already tested my luck for the last six hours, should I really stay on this bus?

Well, my friend wasn't sure he'd make it to Mwanza, but he thought it was likely. Given the choice between spending the night alone in Singida and having a chance of meeting up with him in Mwanza, I'd much rather go straight to Mwanza. The road to Mwanza was supposedly paved...that meant the bus would be slightly better driven. All right. I'll buy a ticket through to Mwanza.

And so, after a brief stop at a gas station for some really sketchy looking chicken and chipsi (french fries), we were off into the unknown.

Two observations about the next six hours:
-the road from Singida to Mwanza is, indeed, paved
-the view on that road is really, really boring
(flat, sparsely populated, farmland...ah well, I've been spoiled by having to pass through a national park every time I leave my town for Arusha)

At 6 pm, after an amazingly smooth journey, we pulled into Mwanza. By 7, I'd found my friend (who had, indeed, managed to arrive) and dropped off my bags at our hotel.

Journeys in Tanzania are usually full of stories of what went wrong: a broken-down bus, a long wait, a three hour engine-fixing break at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. This journey was, by Tanzanian standards, remarkably smooth. Yes, I sat in the aisle for a few hours. Yes, the conductor tried to cheat me and give me a higher fare--twice. But somehow, we covered five regions of Tanzania in twelve hours. That's pretty amazing, and I give thanks for my good luck.