I Want a Fast Machine

After riding in what I can only describe as a school-bus with bench seating, for over 12 hours, we made it to Dar, as Betsy previously mentioned; I made a promise to my butt that I wouldn’t do that again until the Danforths arrived in April. Instead, we’ve been exploring Dar in what the locals call, Dala-dalas. They are actually old Japanese school buses, when I say old, I mean really OLD, shipped over and repainted with their destinations and sometimes their ‘mottos’. The paint-jobs look to be somewhat half-hearted as most of the Japanese cartoons are still visible under the section of bus they neglected to cover. Needless to say, these buses were not meant to have anyone over 5’-6” tall or heavier than 150lb. Again, just as everywhere else transportation takes you in this country, recommended capacity is merely a suggestion and rather a game to see how many more people they can stuff onto one of these things.
Today as we left Posta, the dala-dala we were riding “British Airways” crashed! The driver, if you can call him that, of “British Airways” (it is the name of the bus) rammed a Toyota Prado (a small SUV) while attempting to execute a 180 degree turn with roughly 40 people in a Japanese school bus. Needless to say, we didn’t make it and the Prado was smashed into the under-carriage of the bus. Luckily, Tanzania has a road-justice system, where a bunch of on-lookers ran over to assess the situation. After about 30 minutes of bickering back and forth, they came to the conclusion that the SUV driver was at fault since the dala-dala was larger and therefore he should have moved out of the way. A somewhat backwards system and I’m pretty sure the driver of British Airways would have had his license revoked in the US, but it was effective and we were quickly on our way.
The fun of dala-dalas, however doesn’t end there; we were embroiled a few days ago in what one could only call a “dala-dala war”. Similar to gang-land wars of the US, dala-dala wars are considerably less bloody but just as exciting and action-packed! Within the metro area of Dar es Salaam there are roughly 7,400 dala-dalas, which are all privately owned by approximately 2,500 different owners; which means on average that each owner has three. Many of the dala-dalas have similar routes, so it’s a competition to secure as many riders as possible. The other day we hopped onto a Kawe-Kariakoo dala-dala to go purchase fruits and vegetables at the market, not knowing what fun was in store for us. As we begun to roll away from the shoulder of the road, a second Kawe-Kariakoo dala-dala came flashing by to make it to the next stop before ours could get there. As both buses rolled to a stop at the second stand, the other bus ran our bus off the road in an attempt to delay us in getting to the next stand. Unfazed by the “minor” set-back, our driver began to off-road drive as we gunned it in an attempt to inch ahead of the other dala-dala. We were successful in getting ahead only to see that the other dala-dala decided to drag-race us. Both buses, the other riding down the opposite lane of traffic, nearly topping out in speed, ran a plethora of other vehicles off the road as we re-enacted the car-chase scene from the movie “Bullitt”. Although, with a few minor elements missing, such as patented bucket seats and a 1968 Ford Mustang Fastback, we felt as if we were in the back seat with Steve McQueen at the helm! We exited the dala-dala safely, thankful the only thing to have happened to us was elevated blood-pressure, at the Kariakoo market.
-Ryan