Ok, so I haven’t added much in the last month or so. I needed to take some time out, since I seemed to be adding a lot of depressing stuff. As well as that something screwed up on the server side meaning I can’t upload pictures – I’ll fix that when I get my laptop back from being repaired next week.
We are in Dar again – man it is hot. I have a peeling nose and neck from the rather long walk we did with Kinyonga last week. We walked from Ol Doinyo Sanba (I think that is its name) back to Ngaramtoni, after spending a night camping up on a foothill of Meru, overlooking Arusha. Amazing views, saw the lights of Arusha by night. We were also shown some owl eggs – I hope the owl comes back – which is apparently something very few people see. Jongo was excited about that. We decided to walk back to Ngaramtoni after it seemed that Kinyonga was going to take us on the same walk we did in March. It was very interesting walking through the Massai settlements, seeing how people create elaborate patterns on their mud hut walls, being screamed at by children not quite stunned into silence by the sudden appearance of wazungu. We also saw a huge tree that on closer inspection was made up of many thin branches reaching up to the sky, and great ariel roots reaching back down to the ground to spread the girth further.
On Tuesday we got a lift to Dar with Attiba, someone else working for TechnoServe. It was great to travel by car – just by being a few feet lower down than on a bus we saw a lot more. And the fact we set of rather late meant that we saw the sun setting as we were driving past the fantastic Pare and Usambara mountains. We are going to have to do a bit of treking up there.
We found out that on Wednesday morning there was a rather nasty bus crash outside Arusha in which 25 people were killed. A coach headed to Dar collided with a Coaster bus heading to Moshi – some sort of crazy overtake mistake, combined with fog. The roads here are the biggest threat to life going. We are always seeing cars in ditches surrounded by massive crowds, sometimes helping, sometimes just gawping. The first people on the scene of the accident were theives who had rushed from Arusha to see what they could find. What one of them found was a large Masaai who didn’t much like the fact that this guy was going through the pockets of corpses. So what did the Masaai do? He pulled out his knife and beheaded the thief! Grizly.
Also grizzly was the murder at the Eland Hotel the week before. Glad we live out in the sticks – well, kind of…
Back to Dar – went along to the new cinema to see if the new Matrix film was on here as well. It was. But Barclay’s bank had block booked all the showings before 10:30 for the first two days. Great. Attiba and I decided to check out the 10:30 showing, while Yuki opted for bed, saying she would be so pissed off if it turned out to be a load of bollox. Well, of course it did – terrible… Overlong action scenes, dreadful awful extras. Believe it or not, worse than the last one. At least I know…
This weekend we will check out Bagamoyo.
dunxd.com 