Bat out of Hell....

Sunday evening I took a turn for the worse, after dinner I became extremely sleepy. I went to bed early the evening, around 9pm and awoke around 11pm and could barely control my bowels. Just before 2am I was vomiting and extremely dizzy, I didn’t know what was going on, I felt fine only five hours earlier. This continued for much of the night until I felt as though I purged everything in my body. The next morning Betsy ran out to pick up some Sprite, what a life-saver! I was bed-ridden for all of Monday and most of Tuesday, which is not the most pleasant scenario in Haydom. That is especially true when Betsy, on Tuesday came down with Giardia, AGAIN! I keep telling her to stop eating other people’s Pu, but it’s just so hard to remind her when I’m sitting in bed. I think Frank has the same problem sometimes.

To make a long story short, we planned our escape from Haydom while we were still sick as dogs, not knowing if we would make it. We left Haydom at 5:30am in the notorious Land Cruiser, yeah, that one! Thank god for oral rehydration salts, which taste horrible but made both of us feel a TON better that morning. After another grueling 5.5 hours to Arusha, we crashed at the Meru House Inn. I must say that was the second worst ride of my life although it paled in comparison to the first, we were able to finagle for the front seats!

After the much needed stop-over in Arusha, we boarded the Dar (not so) Express, for Dar es Salaam. We’re both enamored by the fact that it seems you can board this bus at any junction of your liking; we stopped in the most random of places to pick people up. It was nice to see the country-side of Tanzania; we went from mountainous rainforest, to grassy savannah, ending in the coastal tropics of Dar. Along the way we were shown a movie, Prey, probably the worst movie I’ve ever seen. I equate it to Jaws on land, although Steven Spielberg definitely did not direct this flick. I think Tanzanians love the crappiest of American cinema (reference prior post about Stupidest Animal Videos). Set in the Serengeti, a tour goes horribly awry! The tour guide is first eaten by a lion and drops the keys to the vehicle 100 yards away. Meanwhile, the entire pride of lions surround the car and the people are trapped inside, for days on end. Eventually, through a stroke of good luck, people find the car and semi-rescue the occupants only to be over taken by the large male lion. The woman in the movie somehow rigs the car with a gas-bomb and blows the whole thing to hell, making it out unscathed! Truly a great film, one for the ages.

Well, we arrived in Dar, and let me tell you, I’m considering staying here the rest of the time and sending Betsy back! It’s a pretty cool city, the little I’ve seen of it, which there is a lot of. Speaking of which, we’re itching to head to the beach, so I’ll cut this short. Kipepeo, here we come (That’s what I’m talking about, anthropology finally pays off)!
-Ryan