Well I have been living in the green land of Chome for a few weeks now, and spent most everyday of the past three weeks exploring and attempting to talk to people. A few days ago I went walking to explore the far side of Chome, with respect to my house to keep entertained. About 15 minutes into the walk I was joined by an extremely drunk middle aged Tanzanian man named either Chini or China…funny because in English his name either meant under, or Chinese. Regardless, it was both a blessing and a curse to have China (I’m pretty sure I heard someone say China so I’m gonna stick with it) by my side for the next few hours walking around. On the up side, I was able to practice my Kiswahili without feeling too stupid about my inability to really communicate because he would often forget what he asked after asking it so my responses were only half heard. Also, he was so excited to be walking with a white dude, that he stopped and introduced me and made sure I greeted everyone even remotely close to the path we were walking on. And the downside was that since I live in a fairly religious, mostly Seventh Day Adventists community, very few people drink in the village, and those that do are known as drunks. And since I was walking pretty far from my house, and the people I was meeting, only were meeting me through China, some most likely assumed that I was drunk, too. So it goes though, not really anything I could do about that. Anyway, we walked and talked for a while, eventually stopping at his home because as soon as we started walking together, he asked endlessly if I would come and greet his mama. Naturally I was not going to bail on him at this point, so we weaved down off the path to his modest little home down near the valley. (As mentioned some other time, Chome is like a bowl in the top of part of the Pare mountains, and the valley at the center is lovely and lush and green and full of corn and secret pathways). We got to his house, which was very much what you might expect a stereotypical African house to be. Wooden framed rooms, with clay packed tightly in between to build the walls, a thatched roof and the floors were just the ground. There were four rooms in the house, each one about 6 feet by 6 feet, and 5 people were living there. Made me feel like a god living in the concrete box with an indoor choo (bathroom…well hole in the ground, but still, cockroach free hole), and a room for cooking. But they were doing just fine was the best part about it. I hung out and talked to his mom and sister as best I could about farming and such in the area, and it took me almost a half an hour to convince the women of the house that I was actually capable of cooking on my own without the help of a Tanzania woman. And even after that I’m pretty sure his mama didn’t believe I was telling the truth but let it go because we could not really understand each other. After eating something that tasted a bit like banana soup I told the family I had to get home, but being the small world that Chome is, I was lucky enough to see China the following morning at about 4 30am…
So I was up in the blackness yet again to head down to Same for the day to eat some meat, have a beer, hang out with some other friends and just take a 24 hour vacation, but I made the mistake of attempting to go on a Sunday. Even though I took the bus down on a Sunday before, turns out that the bus no longer runs on Sundays. Lucky, well sort of lucky for me, I happened to get there early enough to catch the lorry that happened to be traveling down to the Sunday Same market. For those of you not up on your British lingo, a lorry, according to my computers dictionary is: a large, heavy motor vehicle for transporting goods or troops; a truck. This particular truck was something like 20ft by 8ft probably and the back was entirely open except for four poorly welded cross bars and one traveling down the spine of the truck. Theoretically it was put there in order to cover the contents in the back to the truck, but since most often the contents were people, the bars were good for holding on to as we had to stand the entirety of the treacherous ride down the mountain. Along with the 30 or so passengers crammed in the back end of the lorry, there were also a couple thousand heads of cabbage filling the majority of the truck bed. Made for an exciting pitch-black ride down the rock road for sure. Oh and yes, back to my friend China: He happened to be the conductor of this lovely ride, which meant he was the guy hanging on the side of the truck whistling at the driver if someone needed to get off and banging on the side when it was go time again. And lucky for me he was also the man in charge of collecting fees for traveling down the mountain. Where as normally being white I would be charged double, China was so excited that I knew his family that I was in fact given a small discount. Not too bad at all. It was also pretty cool too see just how much it had meant to him that I came and ate with his mama and some of his family. He told about everyone that got in the lorry, in fact, that I was “mzungu yangu” or literally “his white person” haha…
Going back up to mountain after a day or two in Same was hand downs the most ridiculous experience I have had thus far. And considering my rides prior to this one included black eyes, vomit on my foot, and broken glass, this one was impressively wild. So…since I was traveling back to Chome on December 23rd, there were tons and tons of people trying to get to the village. Due to the fact that there is only a single bus, and some days a truck, this meant there was not enough space for everyone to go, even with the remarkable human packing abilities of Tanzanians on busses and cars. So when I arrived at the bus pick up spot for Chome the Lorry was sitting and waiting, and after talking to some of the villagers I found out that although the bus was coming it was already full and that meant that even though more people would squish on, the 100 or so people all trying to get to Chome would have to figure something else out. So, everyone started putting their belongings into the back of the truck bed that was already stacked up with a few thousand pounds of rice, corn, and different flours. I climbed out the side of the truck with a friend of mine because the back of the truck was a mob of people pushing each other to get a foot up on the truck. As I said before the truck is something like 20 feet by 8 feet, if not a little smaller, has metal sides that rise about 2 feet from the base of the bed, and then there are crisscrossing bars that rise up another 5 feet from the base. Stretching across the top of the sides are four cross bars, and there is one bar that cuts down the middle of the cross bars acting as a sort of spine. At first glance all seems well and good. And as about 70-80 people got on the lorry it seemed like they were going to all hold. There were sort of two layers of people after the dust had settled. There was a layer of people sitting like sardines on the floor with the bags of starches, and then there were the people hanging out to the bars on the top level. I was up against on of the walls so I shifted up and sat on the side of one of the walls dangling my feet on the people on the bottom level. It was pretty impressive the number of people on this thing. I would say that with the amount of food and other goods, maximum 20 or 25 people should have fit on that truck. They managed a solid three times that. We took off up the mountain. All seemed fine for the first hour and a half as we were not going on terrible roads and had not started the ascend, but once we started to climb, things started to fall apart… quite literally. Starting in the back the first cross bar completely snapped due to the immense amount of weight put on it from hanging and sitting people. The loss of that one bar was devastating for the outer metal shell as a whole, and piece by piece it fell apart until there were no longer any cross bars at all. With the lack of cross bars, the already packed sardine bottom layer got that much more crowded pushing on the sides of the bus more than before. And without the support from the cross bars, the sides of the truck too could not hole. So first just a section on the back right side, then the entire right wall fell off. Mind you were are on cliff side with no more than a foot between wheel and 1000-foot roll down the mountain to the base. Not safe haha. Anyways, with the wall gone everyone has to sort of hold on to each other so we don’t lose any good villagers. But all the holding has anchored on the last remaining wall, which shortly after the cliffside broke off, wall number two went also. Just about at the same time the engine decided it was carrying far to much weight and the truck stopped altogether. So I decided to grab my bag and take off walking, as it seemed pretty likely I would be tossed off the cliff if I elected to stay anyways. I got home in a few hours, and the truck arrived a few hours after me looking rather defeated.
One last truck story I guess since I’m already talking about them. Down the mountain after the holidays, same problem, too many people now trying to get out of Chome…so this time I decide to go with the up front position. My feet were on the hood of the truck and my butt was on the first crossbar. This was the only crossbar that did not break so I decided even though I was putting myself a position similar to riding a roller coaster without any sort of harness, it was better than sitting in the sardine pit, especially because it was still pitch black. I made it down, no broken bars, no broken bones, just two extremely sore butt cheeks along with about 1000 bugs in and around my face.
All and all here are the recaps of my rides up and down the mountain:
• Eyeball smashed on my headmasters head, and broken glass in my lap
• Harmonized singing, and a seat- best ride yet by far
• Standing for 3 hours on thousands of heads of cabbage
• Standing amongst far too many people returning to Chome, and getting thrown up on shortly after starting the hour and a half accent. Made for sticky, smelly feet and Chacos
• Ride down in a nice mans car…made the mistake of holding a baby when an mother joined us, and two times in a row ended up with vomit on me. This time on my neck though, not in my Chaco…I’ll consider that a win for some reason.
• 70 people, and far too much other junk in a lorry fit for maybe the junk it had in it plus a maximum of 20 people…all the poorly welded bars snapping one by one due to the force of to many hands pulling down on them, both walls of the lorry also snapping providing no barrier between people and massive cliffs, and then an engine breakdown leading to a few more hours stuck on the cliff side.
• On the hood. Rough times for my behind. My face was a human windshield, collecting far too many spattered bugs.
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