Safari Part I: Dodoma, Dar/ Zbar

It has been far too long since I last gave you an update and now that I’ve settled back into life at Nyabange/ MTCEA, I’m long overdue for my next blog post(s). I left Musoma March 31st and didn’t return until April 27th – almost a four week absence! My travel schedule was so frantic that I never had enough time to sit down, reflect, and digest everything that happened along the way. Until now. I was fortunate enough to have travel partners for nearly every leg of my month-long journey. In that time, I spent approx. 60 hours in buses and made a complete circuit of Tanzania – Musoma – Dodoma – Dar/Zanzibar – Arusha – Nairobi(Capetown) – Musoma/Mugumu/Mwanza. It’s quite the list! The following is not a comprehensive account of what happened in those weeks but a look at the highlights. Enjoy!

Dodoma: For this 13 hour journey, I was joined by Theo (my boss) and his two kids, Oure and Joyce, on their way to visit their mother, Agnes, who is currently studying at Dodoma University. I spent a few days visiting Josh and Fairchild, both with MCC. Josh is responsible for a major water project that aims to build four sand dams by the end of this year in partnership with the Mennonite Church of Dodoma. It’s a huge undertaking but he seems to be handling it well. I was introduced to various people from the Church, including the soon-to-be Bishop. These people live and breathe Church. There’s something going on nearly every day from Sunday school to Bible studies to services to community projects – amazing! I met up with Fairchild who is the Church’s Youth Coordinator. Needless to say, her Kiswahili is far better than mine. She’s even started teaching the Church staff English, translating as she goes along. I was very impressed and reminded how lacking my language skills really are. It doesn’t help that I’m surrounded by competent English speakers at school and at home plus teaching English four days a week. Ah well, I know enough to get by. I got a personal tour of the Dodoma University campus from Agnes. The place is huge! They aim to make it the largest university in Eastern Africa. All I can say is that it’s a long hot hike up to the dorms that would encourage anyone to remember everything they need for class.

Dar/ Zbar: Unfortunately, our bus got stuck in a major traffic jam in downtown Dar and we missed the last ferry out to Zanzibar. We ended up spending the evening in the most posh hotel lounge in Dar with a couple of other young people traveling around Tanzania. At the crack of dawn, we were down by the water searching for the ferry office when a guy pulled us into his ACed office. He took our information and walked out the door – definitely weird. Pete followed him to another row of offices next door and figured out the guy was running a scam: his office is 100 meters from the real ferry office so he can snatch unsuspecting tourists, take their info, buy their tickets, and make a couple extra bucks off them. Not a bad set-up but luckily Pete figured it out. Upon arriving in Zbar, we rushed to the spice tour office and found the owner patiently waiting for us. He led us to two waiting vans and we were off. The rest of the morning was spent looking at various bushes, trees, and vines that produce the major spices we use: cloves, coriander, lemon grass, vanilla pods, curry.

Once we were back in town, we met ‘the scooter guy’, Salim. For some reason, we thought it would take us five hours to get to the North Beaches. Salim assured us it was only one, tops two, hours and we still had plenty of time to make it before sundown. An hour later, we were on the road, driving rented scooters – the bruises and scratches I’d incurred learning to drive my host father’s piki piki were worth it. Driving scooters was a blast! The island is beautiful, lush and green. The people aren’t fascinated by mzungus because they see so many of them, so no cat calls and stares, just smiles and waves. By the time the sun was setting, we were sitting on a fine white sandy beach, sipping bitter lemons, my favourite TZ soda. We ran into a girl from Toronto we’d met on our spice tour the day before and ended up hanging out on the beach. We slapped on 40 lotion and I still managed to get a serious burn. It felt like I had this perma-red glow for a week after. We got back to Stonetown safely and Salim ended up being our tour guide through the winding alleys of the Old City. We were hunting down gifts and he knew all the local shops. Once we hit the tourist district, the prices skyrocketed and we realized how good a deal we’d made. I loved pulling out the little Kiswahili I know to impress the locals and wrangle a better price out of them. Bargaining is definitely the name of the game and most tourists don’t even try – half the fun is arguing over the exorbitant price of a scarf that should really only cost half of what they’re asking. Our time on Zbar came to a close much too quickly and then we were on our way to a team meeting in Arusha.