On the Tanzanian dirt roads

After 80km of a beautiful road smelling good chemistry of asphalt, poof! sand, pebbles, dust. Oh! I thought first that it will not last, I’ll find the asphalt back after the next village. And then after 2-3 days of tracks including 25 km pushing the bike in the sandbanks, I lost my beautiful youthful illusions and I enjoy the new adventure.

After all, I wanted to avoid tourist areas, I can not complain: at least, I am sure that no one is accustomed to seeing a mzungu (white men) around here, as shown by the kids who saw me arrive in the village, abandoning their capsules-made tractor in the middle of the track to flee behind a box, or girls who run ten meters away from the water pump when I arrive, before returning to help me filling my bottles up.

Everyone has been amazing with me in these wild roads. In the villages, I do not lose time anymore asking if they have a tap (a what?), I just follow the procession of buckets on the heads of women to get to the pump where I can generally drink clear water. When there is no pump around, then I have to ask for water to people who serve me this sort of thing:

It is drinkable, the taste a little earthy. For meals, I fortunately made some provisions in a sort of supermarket in Mbeya, which allowed me to alternate between meals stove (I had passages 80km without village) and meals in the “restaurants” that are often hard to distinguish from classic house.

The track would last 800km until Tabora and then from Nzega to Kahama. Kilometers during which I will again meet the olives baboons, the superb Jabiru of Africa, but especially for the first time : the tse-tse flies.

The legendary fly that everyone speaks about for a sudden fatigue gave me more hard time than I thought. They bite through clothing, they are not even afraid products containing DEET, and unlike a normal fly, they can fly at 40km/h (instead of 25). I discovered that more I moved, more they were numerous and noticed when peeing that the number of flies decreased. The problem is to move as little as possible while avoiding bites from those still present.

So I was getting to the point where, covered in flies and tired of having to constantly agitate the arms while cycling, I had to put on my winter jacket under 35˚Celsius, which did not stop the attacks from time to time on the legs and hands. It’s stupid, I did not plan mitts for Tanzania …

I had got used to the tracks of sand and rocks, where progress is difficult, slow, I had adapted my rhythm, my days, to make it my routine and I do not even get angry anymore against the buses hurtling at full speed, dragging behind them a monstrous cloud of sand. That does not stop me from worshiping the return of tarmac arrived in Tabora. My original plan was to cross the Burundi but local comics decided to get excited a few days before my arrival. Some ups and downs in the capital are not bad, but 25,000 people fleeing the country show that the reverse path is not good idea.

And it’s finally after Tabora and the tse-tse that problems really began for me. The tracks were sometimes difficult, but the people were so nice and the road so original that I enjoyed the experience. It is in these kind of places that you feel the authenticity of the country, and you discover the premises that are not in contact with the “safari tourism.”

Arrived at Nzega, I ate a bad fish that have started a war in my stomach. This was followed by five days of nausea and stomach disquieting agitations. I was even hosted one night by a group of villagers before Biharamulo, bringing me fruits and bottled water in my house to help my recovery. This was unfortunately not followed by miraculous effects and it took me a few extra days on my bike to get better, swallowing the minimum for restoring order in my gut. I have rarely known more difficult mornings when I had to fold my tent and load my bike in contenting myself with a little sugar water for the whole morning. I then crossed a bandit zone between Burundi, Rwanda and Lake Victoria, that police, more armed than Schwartzennegger in Commando, protected by successive dams. For some years the area is fairly quiet but recent problems in Burundi had apparently revived tensions.

[Caption id = “attachment_2652” align = “AlignCenter” width = “640”] water distribution service in a Tanzanian city [/ caption]

I crossed the border after spending a night in a Mutukula hostel for $ 3, a guest house run by an alcoholic woman. The next day, I discovered a new country, Uganda, which marked me immediately positively. The regions of Tanzania I went through were very poor, the displays were often hard to see, and many inhabitants were showing remarkable inactivity that did not encourage to compassion. In Uganda, I immediately underscored the advanced development, its displays of colorful fruits and vegetables and, miracle, the more important activity of its inhabitants. The country is, indeed, helped by a humid climate where everything seems to grow effortlessly, Tanzania offered less on that point.
For some years I travel in these hot countries around the equator, I noticed that in hot countries where life has traditionally been easier in recent millennia, the people there were much less active. I first explained it by the heat that prevails but after working in the Australian desert for two years, my conclusion is that offering more facilities to survive, the people for thousands of years, have never been pushed to improve their condition more than necessary, unlike a Scandinavian who had no choice but to heat the wooden house in winter. Obviously I could be wrong and exchanges with other civilizations during the last centuries have contributed to erase a little bit these differences but I think I’m not far from the truth when I see how the work culture as we know it has little presence here.

I then join the capital city in three days, noting in passing that the drivers were not necessarily better than in Tanzania. Kampala was a priori very unpleasant for me: overcrowded, polluted, dusty, heavy traffic (much like my entry in Lusaka that I fled as fast as possible). Yet, the smiling face of the people, the way people interact, not aggressively, the atmosphere have attracted me there right away.
I got an address and a kind of a plan to reach the Ewaka Guest house, a few kilometers outside the city center. On arriving there, my colorful shirt by wandering days and my smell were enough to draw the attention of receptionist who starts asking me questions about my four years of travel. Hearing some snatches of conversation from his bed, a German hallucinates and jumped out to greet me! I must be dreaming too: this is Dennis, a German met three years ago in Laos during the same trip and with whom we had kept very good contacts but neither he nor I know that the other was in Africa. We had more or less traveled together a few weeks between Luang Prabang and Don Det and there was about one in a million chance of being in the same country, the same city, the same place, the same day. And yet … my journey offered me these wonderful reunion after a sick week during which I thought every day to have a buddy with me. Some events are priceless.

ps: in fact, I can not answer the question “ What is the national dish in your country ?”
If anyone has an answer that would make consensus, I’m interested.