19th to 21st of April, 2018.
When I leave the bus, the wave of people coming to me and offering boda-boda, tuc-tuc or something else it pissed me off. They are not even let me pass, even though they can see me carrying the fucking huge and heavy backpack.
In a corner, I stop and try to get my backpacks on in a more comfortable way, when somebody starts to talk to me. Even though he is not offering me something, do you know how much I cannot understand this fascination that they have for us “white people” and why they must talk and greet us when we arrive some place here in Africa. And why they say “Welcome to Africa?” I never heard that in Europe. Anyway, I am not even looking at the guy because I though it is just another young man looking forward to marry a foreign. When I finally look up, I find myself in the presence of what I thought to be a quite old man, around his fifty, so I felt more comfortable to talk with him and ask for some directions.
After he tells me about the museum directions, I walk away just to stop a few metres later to put on some sunscreen. He is passing by when he sees me and we start to talk.
When I explain to him my plans to make camping, he offers me to stay with him or he could ask for an old lady in the library if she could help with a place to stay for the night.
While walking to the library I decide I could trust on him and decide stay in his house. I am planing going to the Museum after the library because they supposed to be near each other. But before that we stop in the garden just beside the library and admire the bay / port while we have some rest.
It is when it happens: luckily, Muji ask me about my passport. As soon I put my hand inside the bag and could not find I remember I left on the bus. When the police stopped the bus for the first time, I thought it could happen again so I just kept it in my back, on the seat. When I got up to leave the bus, I forgot to take it.
Do not ask me how or why I did not get desperate. I did not cry. I could cry when some young guys all wanted to help me back in Uganda but when I lost my passport I did not? I keep asking myself – Why? Why? Why? But that was all.
Back in the bus office they call the driver and after a few minutes of tension, waiting for an answer, the guy confirmed: they found it. I had not lost the passport but just forgotten some where. Now, I would have to wait until the next day when the same bus would bring at the same time (supposedly) the passport back to me. Crazy moments.
Relieved by the good news, we go to Muji’s house: a very simple place, actually a bedroom in a house which he shares with some few people. It is not far from the town but the sun it is killing me! Once we leave the bags there, we go to his sister house, just on the corner: a bigger quite fancy place. His sister, Fatima, and the neighbors are not as kind and friendly as him. By the opposite. I do not know if at the end they are just afraid and worried about their kids (as Muji told me later, some people here in Tanzania are afraid of “white people”) or maybe she simply did not like me but she called another brother with whom I talked on the phone. Apparently she is fine with me after that and I am welcome to her house, where I would actually sleep and eat.
Me and Muji have some Papi (Posho, Ugali…) with vegetables and after we go back to town to see the museum and go around. Going there, he comes with some pep-talk about wanting to get married with a white woman because black women just care about money and not about love. I cut it out any intention of him hitting on me telling him I do not want get married or having kids at all. It is when he tells me his age, which if he is not lying (for some reason) it makes me think that he had a very difficult life as a sailor. He is thirty seven.
Once we come back, Fatima is not in there and I get shocked when one of the kids it is watching a horrible horror movie, which after some bloody scenes skip to some sex scenes (as most of horror movies). Luckily it is just in the beginning. I ask Muji do something or to tell the kid to pause or take out the DVD but he does nothing, so I just get up and turn off the TV before opening the DVD player and take out the disc.
Apart that, there are about five hundred mosquitoes in the room and I am already thinking about putting my tent to could sleep when Muji leave and come back after a few minutes to say that we are leaving. We are waiting for his sister to come back and bring with her the key for the bathroom (which she had locked?) for than I could have shower. Apparently, she is doing that on purpose and he is pissed off with her not welcome attitude.
Back to his place, I am concerned about where I would sleep since his bedroom has just one double bed. He tells me I would sleep in another bedroom with a girl who is not there but at work. Two lovely women help me to have a shower and prepare myself. After that, we have some Chapati with tea and because I am too tired I could go to sleep. It is around eight o’clock. The other girl, Mauna, would come back from work after ten o’clock. At that time, I am awake by a few people in the room (and now I have the feeling that they maybe could be there for a while, just looking at me, like looking the “white person” sleeping…) who introduce me Mauna and give me a sheet to covered myself.
In the middle of the night something weird happen: I wake up with her pulling the whole sheet to herself.
Next morning, before she leave to work, again she wakes me up to say goodbye. I have already told you this before but here we go again: sometimes, here in Africa, even when people have good intentions, they do not actually know how to act and be kind, so they can even be rude in a European / Occidental point of view. But is actually because they do not know how to behave differently.
I am awake again around 8.30 a.m., this time by Muji. He tells me has washed my t-shirt and I do not like that at all. In the end, I have to leave the house with my t-shirt still wet.
After some bread with tea, when we are almost leaving, luckily, his neighbor offer us a lift in his car.
While we are waiting for the bus with my passport, we to to a Photo Studio to print the picture of us which Muji want to carry together with some other photographs he already has.
We wait and wait and wait and for long hours and no sign of the bus. It should arrive at eleven o’clock, as the other day, but it just come around two o’clock. We are waiting for some good three hours and for the whole time I am trying not to get mad with Muji insisting in a way for me to do my travels without have to hitch-hiking. It is difficult.
When I finally get my passport and we go to have lunch (Papi with some vegetables) I think that it might be better to stay with him for another night and next morning, very early, go to the road. But when I ask him, he says that “those people” (who really?) might say something. I do not insist and decide try to reach Chalinze (half away from Dodoma) and if I even get stuck in Tanga, I would make camping.
A few cars stop but all of them or just going to the next village or are thinking that I want to go to the bus station. And actually, I have the impression that some of the other ones, which are not stopping, are thinking that I am just greeting them with my thumb up because they have just made the same sign back to me.
Anyway, after some half an hour, a couple stops and when I tell them my story, the man, who say to be a Reverend, offers me to pay a bus ticket in the next morning to Dodoma. He knows a place where I can put my tent for the night and next morning I could leave. I do not know why but for the first time I decide to accepted an offer like that. Drivers had already offer me bus tickets or to pay for the taxi they were using and bring me with them and I have never accepted but this time I took it.
They drive me to a Guest House which belongs to the church: this huge and beautiful green place, with just three bedrooms for guests, where I see and take some pictures of lovely monkeys: the same ones I have missed in the Hostel in Mombasa, the ones with the blue balls.
I put up my tent and Moses tells I could have dinner there and around 8 o’clock he would come back to check me out and bring me the ticket.
Apart from the mosquitoes (which are everywhere) everything it is great. I have a shower in a room available and the dinner, smashed potatoes plus sauce and vegetables. It is delicious!
When Moses comes back, we talk for a while and he sounds like a nice man with a great family: Pauline (his wife) and the three kids Michellin, Sara and Ana. He tells me a little about the history of the place and how himself had had some volunteer in the church a couple of times. He gives me the ticket and tells me a driver would come to pick me up in the morning. He also gives me 10 thousand Tanzania Xelins, which I could not refuse according to him and Pauline. We say goodbye with the promise of keep in touch.
Next morning, after preparing all my stuff and taking a picture of the tent, I leave with Charles around 6.30 a.m.
At the bus office, I feed myself with the bread and two donuts I had bought last night. I full filled the bread with peanut butter.
When a small bus arrives and everybody run away to get a seat I thought that it could not to be truth. There were even some people standing up. Could we travel the whole way to Dodoma in that bus? After a while I figure out and remembered what Moses had explained to me last night: the bus station it is a bit out of town, so we need that small bus to drive us until there.
The right bus it is already there waiting for us but unfortunately it is not that comfortable and good as the one to Tanga. The space between the seats it is pretty small. At least, my seat it is at the window. Thank you so much, Moses!
