Today we took a side trip to see the ancient Chagga Caves
and Marangu Falls Kinukamori and it was wonderful, but the highlight of the day was how we got to our destination.
I can officially say that I’ve survived my first (not
Janet’s first) daladala ride. For
anyone who was in the military and has experienced the joys of riding in a
“cattle car” you’ll sort of understand what it’s like to ride in a daladala. It is a van-taxi designed to seat about 16
people, of course here that number seems to be more of a suggestion than
anything else. The interior looks like
it is mostly riveted metal bars placed strategically to inflict maximum damage
to passengers in the event of a crash.
This morning we walked to town and met our guide for the
day—one of the GHTA translators, Rahimu.
We walked to the bus station and jumped into the daladala. It wasn’t full yet so we actually got a seat
right away. The ride out to the base of Kilimanjaro
in Marangu where we were heading is about an hour outside of Moshi—the cost for
this ride is 1500 Tanzanian Shillings or about .95₵ each. The van stops in a rather random fashion to
pick up people or
occasionally drops someone off. After
about 20 minutes we were up to around 22 or 24 people (it was hard to get an
accurate count because we were so crammed in you couldn’t see everyone) and I
thought it was getting pretty full so we probably wouldn’t be stopping much
unless it was to drop someone off. I was
wrong. The van continued to pick up
people until we had around 28 or 29 on board.
During all of this there is the attendant, a guy who stands on the side of
the van hanging out of the sliding door’s window yelling and asking if they
need a ride, shoe horning them in and somehow remembering who has paid and who
hasn’t. He didn’t collect any money from
us until around halfway to our destination—and then only gave me the change about
15 minutes later.
The roads here in Tanzania are truly interesting. There are speed limits which no one seems to
pay any attention to so to deal with this problem the government places large
speed bumps and rumble strips at random intervals on the main paved roads. In theory drivers would drive the speed limit
between them slowing enough to go over them without damaging their vehicle. What actually happens is they floor it
driving as fast as possible then slam on the brakes over the bumps and then hit
hard on the accelerator again—over and over.
Sometimes, for the smaller speed bumps, they don’t even bother to slow
down. We managed to make it safely to
our destination in spite of the crazy driving.
Now you would think that I’ve experienced the daladala so
there really isn’t much to add. I was
wrong! After a really great tour of the
area we headed back to Moshi. This time
when we got in our daladala it was already nearly full and Janet and I had to
squeeze in to the front seat—well, actually it was more of a bench in front of
the first row of seats. When we got in
I counted 12 just in the first row/bench area.
There were at least another 18 more people in the next rows. Yes, that means we had around 30 people in a
van designed for 16. Again, I thought
they can’t possibly fit anyone else in here.
The attendant continued to push and squeeze people in until he could no
longer close the sliding door and then he and a passenger hung outside the van
holding on to one of the bars located just at temple whacking height (yup,
whacked mine several times). Then there
were two more passengers hanging off. Then three. By now we are so far north of 30 people in
the van that all Janet and I could do is laugh.
Janet looks at me and says, “no one back home would believe this.” “Well” I say, “You do have a witness.” I would love to have pulled out my camera to
take pictures but to say that would have been a bad idea would something of an
understatement (and there was no room for me to maneuver to pull it out of my
backpack anyway). Finally, after about
half an hour of this people started getting off until we were down to about
16 people when we finally pulled back in to Moshi. Definitely an adventure!
No comments:
Post a Comment