Mzuzu - Iringa
The first stage of my journey was on the midnight bus from Mzuzu. This bus crosses into Tanzania and drives all the way to Dar Es Salaam on the eastern coast in one lovely 27-hour trip... But, despite my love of spending long hours on hot, crowded buses, I decided i'd break my journey in a Tanzanian town called Iringa - a mere 17 or something hours away.
When the bus arrived, I climbed on with my backpack to look for my seat - the one I had booked, paid for and been reassured was reserved for me. After a thorough look in the dark, which involved clambouring over several people asleep in the aisles and a futile conversation with the bus driver, it became clear that I would be joining the aisle-dwellers and should prepare myself for an uncomfortable and sleepless night.
After 5 long and sleepless hours sitting on my backpack on the floor, we arrived at the border crosing to Tanzania. The border crossing in fact wasn't due to open for another hour. We were early. The first bus journey that i had experienced that had arrived not just on time, but early - and there was absolutely no benefit to anyone at all!
Once the border finally opened, I crossed out of Malawi and into Tanzania very smoothly, at least after the obligatory Ebola temperature test, form-filling and dollar-paying was completed. Back on the bus, the driver made a big deal of finding me an available seat to sit in, in a manner that suggested he expected some thanks. He didn't get any.
We were soon on the road again and, as was more natural, running behind schedule...so my arrival in Iringa approximately 2 hours late, was of course no surprise at all.
As you can probably imagine, after getting off that bus, I couldn't think of anything better than getting on another one, so went straight to the bus station to buy a ticket for one the following day, before heading to the guest house i'd booked for the night.
Iringa
When Jan, Lonneke and Bobby were setting up The Greenshop, they went to visit a project in Iringa called Neema Crafts and Guest House. The project has been established for many years along the same principles as The Greenshop - i.e. to empower and enskill local deaf and disabled people and to create training and employment opportunities for them. Today, Neema has an extensive craft worksop, cafe and guesthouse which provides work opportunities for over 100 deaf and disabled artists, craftspeople, chefs, hospitality and customer services staff. It was also where i'd booked myself to stay for the night.
Despite my late arrival, I still had time to have some food in the cafe and compare signs with the deaf cafe staff (Tanzanian sign language is of course different from both Malawian and British, and like Malawian, differs depending on which school it is taught in) and to visit the craft shop downstairs. I'd love to have had more time there to visit the workshop in action, but it was great to be able to see some of the beautiful clothes, jewellery and gifts that are produced there, if only briefly.
After a comfortable night's sleep in a bed - rather than a bus aisle - I woke at 4.30am to make my way to the bus station once more. There I found my bus and - to my relief - a seat on it!
Iringa - Moshi
As bus journeys go, it didn't start off too badly. For the first half, nobody sat next to me, so I could spread out over a double seat, which was complete luxury after the previous trip. A couple of hours in to the journey, our route took us through a National Park where zebra and giraffe grazed at the side of the road - a slightly surreal, but beautiful sight from a bus window. Sadly, all good things must come to an end and after four or five hours, we reached a petrol station and were asked to change bus to one that was waiting there for our arrival and was already pretty full. I spent the second half of the journey sandwiched between a very large lady and a very sweaty man..which wasn't ideal. So it was with much relief that I finally stepped off the bus eleven hours later, in Moshi.
Moshi
When you step off a bus at most South or East African bus stations, you are immediately engulfed by a whirlwind of people - generally men - who all want to 'assist' you with something, for a fee. So it was that on my arrival at Moshi, I was surrounded by insistent taxi drivers, transport or tour ticket touts and local guides - all wanting my custom. After some equally strong insistence on my part, accompanied by some slightly ropey Swahili, I was able to escape the Moshi pit (ha!) and wander off undisturbed to find a taxi to take me to my hostel.
Moshi is a sweet little town in the North of Tanzania, that sits in the shadow of the incredible Mount Kilimanjaro. As my journey had gone so smoothly (it's all relative!) up until Moshi, I decided to stay in the town for a couple of nights to relax and explore, before heading into Kenya and Nairobi.
After spending my first day pottering around the town, eating Masala Dhosa in an amazing local Indian restaurant and drinking lots of local coffee (and other appropriately named drinks), I decided to hire a local guide and head out of town.
Marangu
My guide Harrison and I caught a 'dalla dalla' (local minibus) from the bus station...
I don't think this one's quite full yet...
...and headed out into the countryside.
After just over an hour, we had reached our destination - Marangu.
Marangu is a beautiful village on the lower slopes of Kilimanjaro, traditionally the home of the 'Chagga' tribe and of great coffee. Once out of the dalla dalla, we made our way up a hill, shaded by lush vegetation, to visit a small coffee plantation.
It's fair to say that my first 6 months in Africa had been a pretty big disappointment as far as coffee went. I had expected to be drinking some of the best coffee I had ever tasted as so much amazing coffee is grown on the continent, but in many places i'd struggled to get anything other than tinned brown powder that wasn't even pretending very hard to be coffee.
But, thanks to Harrison, I was about to drink a very special cup of coffee indeed. It was just going to take a while...
Well worth the wait!
After our lovely visit to the plantation, Harrison and I left for a steep hike downhill to the local waterfall to eat our lunch. Both being quite big snake fans, we were very happy to find a lovely green one on the way as well as an angry fresh-water crab guarding the path to the waterfall!
Moshi - Nairobi
My third and final bus day started with an early wake-up - of course - followed by far too many hours in a hot bus. Thankfully it was a very comfortable bus with windows that opened and with quite a bit of space...at least until we picked up and squeezed in passengers from another bus that had broken down! The border crossing was fairly smooth and all was going relatively well until we hit the infamous Nairobi traffic. Three hours after arriving on the outskirts of Nairobi, we eventually reached our central destination. During the long journey, I had got chatting to a local lady who was worried about me turning up in Nairobi without a taxi booked. Without me knowing, she had kindly arranged for her taxi driver to meet me from the bus and drive me to my hostel, which was very sweet and a lovely way to end my trip.
Interesting facts
- The unit of currency in Tanzania is the Tanzanian shilling. There are approximately 3,300 tanzanian shillings in a british pound
- Mount Kilimanjaro is 5,895m tall - which makes it the highest free-standing (not part of a range) mountain in the world
- Time is counted differently in Swahili because East Africans count the first hour of the day (1 o'clock) as the first hour after sunrise, rather than the first hour after midnight. To them, the day starts when the sun rises, which kind of makes sense if you think about it. 7 o'clock in the morning British time is therefore 1 o'clock Swahili time and half past 3 becomes half past 9. Confused?!
- There are no ' Moshi Monsters' in Moshi, Tanzania - or at least none that I saw. ..
- This is a ridiculously long blog post considering it only covers 4 days!
Language - kiSwahili
- Hello/Hi: Jambo
- Coffee: Kahawa
- Bus: Basi
- 10:15am: saa nne na robo (quarter past 4...)
:)
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