Divine Intervention

Wow, the past week or so has been more than exciting on our side of the planet! First of all, I’ve been ill with flu-like symptoms for the past couple of weeks until a few days ago. It wouldn’t attract much attention aside from the fact that I had my first, “Pu your pants on the side of the road” experience. Yep, you heard it right, although I didn’t go in my pants there was no way I could not possibly make it to a bathroom, so that was great! I’ve been on a daily regimen of cipro for the past week and seem to be on the mend which has made for a much more pleasant trip.

Well, we decided this past Friday was going to be the “great escape” for us. We arranged plans to head out for Kigoma. According to Betsy, Kigoma was to be a land of “milk and honey” in which we were to be delivered. After speaking with a few of the locals who were helping in arranging the trip, one of them, Esto (research guru of Haydom) warned that going from Haydom to Kigoma direct was an “adventure”. Betsy, having heard the warnings from locals that the trip was not necessarily the most pleasant and deciding to forge ahead was also warned by her fiancé. Our massive amounts of luggage, coupled with us being wazungu, meant that this trip, no matter how pleasant the bus, was going to be a difficult one. Again, Betsy dismissed any reluctance or reservations I had and decided that going straight through was the best plan of action.

(see below: Betsy no longer makes ANY decision from this point on)

We awoke Friday morning and much to our chagrin, it was pouring rain! This also wouldn’t be of immense importance aside from the fact that all of the roads out of Haydom are dirt paths; so any type of precipitation makes for quite the eventful landcruiser ride! We found ourselves at the hospital garage with the drivers around in a circle arguing about whether or not we were going to be able to leave that morning; we were not happy people at this point. Finally, one of them made the decision that we were to try and three separate drivers hopped in to the car. I’m not sure why we needed all three drivers… not sure if I’ll ever understand that. Well, we believe from this point on it was direct divine intervention which kept us from Kigoma. About two hours into our trip to SIngida, the stop-over town for buses heading from Dar es Salaam to Kigoma, we came to a river which traversed the road we were to cross. Being in a Landcruiser I told the drive, “Twende”, since we were running late, but he hesitated to continue. Our landcruiser was outfitted with a snorkel and had 18” of clearance, I knew we would be fine, but they were still hesitant. Before we knew it our drivers had walked off, leaving Betsy and I in the car surrounded by 50 bored Tanzanians wanting to cross the same river on foot. About two hours after our drivers deserted us, having been ogled over for a similar amount of time by the bored Tanzanians and countless efforts to convince Betsy we should just take the landcruiser ourselves across the river, our drivers returned. We think they went and grabbed a cup of chai, although neither of us was certain either way. Finally, after watching a large charter bus enter and forge the river successfully, we made our attempt and to everyone’s relief, we made it just fine.

Two hours later we arrived in Singida the same time our bus was scheduled to leave. One problem, we were lost and didn’t know where to go. As we frantically called people to find out where to go, we happened upon the bus-stand and to our relief; the bus had not yet arrived from Dar. So, we bought our tickets and crossed the street to grab some lunch around 3pm. For the following six hours we were continually told that the bus would arrive within the current hour only to find that it never arrived. As time approached 9pm, our hospital drivers were antsy to head back to Haydom, since it was over a 3 hour trip back. We released them after they drove our stuff to the side of the road; we had five LARGE suitcases, two large boxes of Betsy’s surveys, two laptop computers and a large daypack! I decided to run to the restroom since the bus hadn’t arrived yet and was over 6 hours behind schedule. I exited the restroom to find an out of breath Tanzanian chasing after me yelling, “your bus, your bus!” Inferring that he meant my bus had arrived I doubled it back to the spot on the side of the road I left Betsy to find her deep in argument with the concierge of the bus on how much extra we needed to pay for all of our luggage! He wanted us to pay him 60,000 Tsh, about $50 USD, almost the price of our two tickets to Kigoma combined. She offered him 20,000 Tsh in which he responded in silence. As the argument continued on the side of the road, Betsy became more and more despondent while I became increasingly jovial, it was quite the juxtaposition. As we ate the dust from the bus pealing out as it left us on the side of the road, we came to realize, (Betsy: that we were stuck on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere at 10pm, me: that I didn’t have to ride in a bus crammed with 100 stinky Tanzanians for over 24 hours) that we were on the threshold of hell!

Well, that’s where we stayed, not on the side of the road but in Singida. We decided, I decided (see below) that we were going to stay in Singida and do the second part of her study here. We awoke in the morning to find that Singida is a surprisingly nice town, with cassava chips and the golf channel! We couldn’t have asked for a better mistake, it even seems to make more sense for Betsy’s research to stay here, as kids in Haydom could feasibly come here, where as Kigoma is too far away. So, cheers to all of you back in the US, I’m going to enjoy a little more soccer and CNN news on the TV, it’s been a long time!
-Ryan