Yesterday Part I: Dar “Express”

Ok, talk about adventure! Yesterday lasted about 48 hours so I have to break it into two parts. Pictures will have to wait until my return as I don’t have a way to connect my iPhone.

First I got up at 3:30 for my journey. David, the driver, was ready by 4AM, but I didn’t know that because Masharubu and I were drinking coffee and talking until it was time to leave at 4:30. We said our goodbyes. I’m going to miss him so much with his funny whistles and claps and “salt peanuts” ring tone. I enjoyed listening to the Diane Rheam show and hearing him talk about Jazz. One of his favorite sayings is “Anything’s possible when you’re young and in love.” The day before he made up a new one though – “Monitoring and evaluation isn’t something that you look at through a microscope; it’s something you look at through binoculars.”

As David was driving me to the Ubungo bus station I noticed that there wasn’t a single street light on. I know I saw street lights on the way in on Wednesday, because the Obama signs were hung from them. I don’t know whether it was our route or whether they were just turned off. I had several other thoughts on the way there. Tanzanians call Maputo, Maputo, but in Mozambique it’s pronounced Maputu. Tanzanians appear to be a bit uncomfortable getting tips, but less uncomfortable about overcharging.  They are building a new train line and a flyover in Dar. The flyover will give them an upper deck and lower deck of their main road allowing more traffic to move. Suddenly I realized that I didn’t seem to have my iPhone. Just as I was getting ready to ask to turn around, I found it, right where it belongs. Then I realized that I left the keys to my luggage locks, but I found them in the pocket of my security bag. I am always amazed when I find things where they belong.

We got near the bus station by 4:50. It took us until 5:10 to get into the bus station.  Even at that hour the traffic was amazing. There are traffic police but the just wave for people to move without controlling anything. There were porters lined up with dollys by the traffic jam. While we were waiting I saw a bus trying to park. It took 15 minutes of back and forth and yelling and directing before it was in place. Every car that pulled up the porters would race to be the first one there. There was a peddler selling coffee. There were two men waiting for the same bus as me who bought some coffee. They were each handed a small china cup full of coffee. The vendor waited while they finished it, then he put the cups in some water, swished around, dumped the fluid and went on his way to find more customers.

Waiting for the bus to arrive at Ubungo bus station, Dar Es Salaam

Boarding time was 5:30 but no one seemed worried at 5:37 and in fact more and more people were arriving. An Asian (Indian?) woman wearing a burka asked me if this was the stop for Dar Express and I told her that is what we were told. David, who was hired to wait until my bus pulled away, was cold so I loaned him my scarf which seemed to make him more comfortable. By 5:45 Miss Burka told us that she heard the bus was stuck in traffic. No surprise there. There were a lot of students getting on the bus in uniforms. I realized that I misunderstood why Kilimanjaro Express wasn’t available – it wasn’t that they now ONLY serve students, but as the students are returning from a holiday the bus had already been booked solid by returning students. I’m clinging to my bags as though they are floatation devices and I’m in the ocean. Other people leave their bags and walk around and kibitz.

The bus finally arrives at 5:54. David tells the guy putting the bag in that I am getting out at the stop in Arusha called Kwa Shabani. The steps up the bus are steeeeep. With my computer and purse weighing me down, I’m gripping anything I can to get up. By 6:05 I find my seat and I’m settled. I’m sitting next to a quiet, young girl who tells me her name is Volaria. The bus was supposed to leave at 6. My seatbelt is broken. The bus starts to creep forward while people are still getting on. A newspaper vendo and a watch vendor jump on and walk down the aisles. A woman gets on and I can’t tell what she’s selling. The bus turns around, which seems quite an accomplishment to me. We drive around the back of the lot and stop for a long time. We finally get moving again and shortly later the vendors get off and a woman passenger gets on. I will call her Mouth which you will understand later. We creep a little further and one more person jumps on. Another passenger? No, this is the conductor. He looks like my friend Justice from Ghana so in my mind I call him Justice. It’s 6:18. We pass this enormous pit. I can’t tell if it’s a trash pit. Why there would be a trash pit in a bus station I don’t know. Then we pass some really big puddles. I don’t know why there are big puddles there in the middle of the dry season with no water sources visible.

"Justice" the conductor stands in front
of the door with the hole in it.

Slowly, slowly we’re creeping along and finally at 6:41 we leave the station and are on the road by 6:47. I start to look around the bus and notice that there is a sizable hole in the door, the rear view mirror is held together with a rubber band and much of the fabric is frayed. I’m really appreciating this cloth that I bought at Costco fearing that it was a rip-off. It’s designed to hold moisture in, so I wet it at Masharubu’s house and it stayed damp for hours and hours. I put it around my neck and am  feeling fine. We stopped at another bus stop at 7 and picked up a few more passengers. I’m not sure why but Mouth has to give up her seat and sit in a floor spot next to the driver. She doesn’t look at all happy about this. The fellow who got her seat doesn’t seem to mind.  A fellow selling biscuits gets on at the same time but he doesn’t leave the bus. At the time I thought he was trapped and would be annoyed, but later I discovered that vendors seem to do this all the time – essentially short bus hitch-hikes to move from one bus station to the next and back again.

The steep steps up the bus.

Justice the conductor goes around the bus asking for bus tickets to be shown and I point out that I have to get out at Kwas Shabani and ask him to point it out to me because I won’t know it. He says he will.

The bus begins making a bing, bing, bing sound and begins going very, very slowly. None of the other  passengers look concerned I think maybe it’s a radar detector or something (but cars are passing us like crazy.) The binging stops and we go back to speed. This repeats about three or four times and then we pull over. THAT’s when things begin to get interesting. The driver and Justice get out and a bunch of people run for the bushes to pee. I start hearing the sound of banging near the engine. This is not looking good.

A bunch of people start going outside to see what’s going on and the tone and volume begin to rise. One woman seems to naturally rise to be a spokesperson for the group; we’ll call her Patti. She starts yelling at the driver in sentences that start in English and switch to Swahili. “The exact point is (Swahili Swahili Swahili!) This is unacceptable (Swahili Swahili Swahili!)” I was told that Mouth was making threats to burn the bus and break the windows.

The rear view mirror is held
together with a rubber band.

There was a box of sugar cookies that were on the dash. Apparently Justice was supposed to hand them out as refreshments further along the trip. As we had been waiting for about 45 minutes already, one woman took it upon herself to open the box and have a few of the packages. Others start following suit. Eventually Mouth starts walking down the aisle with the box asking people to help themselves and she was saying something like “compliments of Dar Express!”

Broken down on the side of the road.

One of the passengers, a man wearing a yellow shirt, who I will call Undercover, began making gestures and sounds that I interpreted as peace making. He was standing between the increasingly angry crowd and the bus driver. Patti whipped out her phone and started making phone calls.

By 10:30 a police officer on a motorcycle arrived. I couldn’t tell what he was doing but Patti seemed very happy that the police were there to notice the poor situation that we were in. She was complaining that she had paid for a luxury seat.  Miss Burka pointed out that this isn’t even the bus that we were supposed to get. When we looked on our tickets we are supposed  to see the license plate number of the bus that we are scheduled to have. I looked on my ticket and the bus was not the one we were on. At one point, Patti points to the driver and loudly proclaims, "We don't LIKE you any more!"

While I was in the project car in the previous two weeks it seemed as though there was always at least one time that we passed a bus with people standing around looking dejected. I thought to myself, I’ve become one of those people!

The police officer leaves after staying quite a while but our situation has not changed.

The hours pass and we try to find spots of shade that are not too uncomfortable. A Maasai is tending his cattle and watching us from a small distance. There is a mud shack that has no roof that several of us sit behind for a while. I notice that several of my fellow passengers have long and elaborately painted toenails. They have elaborate designs that I’m only accustomed to seeing on fingernails.

Another Dar Express bus pulls up and I think we are saved, but they take off again. Patti continues to make phone calls and to talk about luxury and damages. Mouth talks a lot about the group acting in unity. Miss Burka starts talking about the group walking to the police station. There was a woman from Britain with a young, handsome Tanzanian who seemed to not know each other well but they were practically attached at the hip so I thought of them as one person who in my head I called Couple. 

I got the impression that several of my fellow passengers were embarrassed that this was happening to a tourist. A woman introduced herself to me. Her name was Victoria. She seemed very much to want to be nice to me but didn’t know what to talk about.  I tried to remain optimistic and say that this is all part of the great adventure that I’m on. At first Miss Burka seems a little offended and says, “To you this is an adventure, for us this is our everyday life!” Patti said, “No she is just trying to be cheerful. She is making lemonade out of lemons.”

It was amazing how this group of people would bunch up into groups and get to know one another in a way that we never would have normally. I was concerned about the children who were there without supervision. The students kept mostly to themselves. There were some very young children who seemed to be cared for by an older sibling. There was also a man with two women and a tiny, tiny baby.

One of the times that I sat by the bus to get some shade there were a group of students sitting behind me. One of them started leaning against me for back support. I didn’t mind at all, but it was amusing to me. Another young student comes over to me and almost in a whisper says, “My name is Upendo, I would very much like to call my mother.” I had to get her to repeat herself several times before I understood and then I had to tell her that I wasn’t getting any cell reception. Couple ended up being able to help her. Which was a good thing because her mother kept calling back.

Several hours have passed now and we were getting no updates, nothing was changing, it was around this time that Patti said that someone on this trip has a jinx. She was still trying to make calls but she said that no one at Dar Express was answering the phone anymore.

A fellow comes by holding this black chicken. The chicken looks as mellow as can be -- just hanging out there. The fellow is  standing around with a couple of other guys. Eventually I realize that he’s trying to sell the chicken. He spoke to a number of passengers and people were saying that the price was too expensive. He eventually sold it to Victoria and cut air holes into the now empty biscuit box and there goes the chicken now added to the luggage pile.

Vendors kept arriving and leaving selling some food and drinks as more and more hours passed. At one point the police officer returns, talks to a few people and then Undercover who, as you might have guessed turned out to be an undercover police officer, gets on the back of the bike with him and they take off.

Justice opens the luggage doors and several of us, myself included pull our bags out of there since it is clear that we will not be using that bus again. The passengers also help themselves to the cola that was stowed there. I believe it was for us anyway. I’m not sure why they were holding out. Of course, none of the bottle openers are twist off here. So while I keep seeing people drinking I don’t see how they got the bottles open. I ask Couple and he offers to take it off with his teeth. I am shocked and tell him that will ruin his teeth. Eventually he hits the bottle on the side of the plastic soda bin and that does the trick.

More and more time passes and rumors keep coming. It’s hard to understand them because I have to keep asking for interpreters. Patti says that she was told that the bus was just leaving Dar Es Salaam for us now. Miss Burka says that they still had not found a bus. The driver and Justice seem to be hiding. From my point of view we’re ok as long as they are in sight because they have to find a way home too.

Couple ask me if I’ve heard anything and I tell them the rumors that I’ve heard. They decide that the replacement bus is going to come by three in their own form of optimism.

Some of the children – mostly the students, have started to be put on buses headed back to Dar Es Salaam. I decide to call Masharubu to find out if anyone in his large network has connections to important people at Dar Express. He told me that he does not but he would call around.

At 3:30 – seven and a half hours after we stopped. Undercover shows up in a minibus and takes us, in two trips, to the police station at Chalinze. Miss Burka and another woman inform me that they are taking a bus to Morogoro and they invite me to join them. I am afraid to do this as I believe that there is more safety in numbers. I think it is safest to stay with the bigger crowd. Most everyone had gone to get something to eat, but I wasn’t hungry since I had packed a peanut butter sandwich, several maandazi, and a few tangerines that I had been slowly consuming throughout the adventure. My priority was a toilet. I asked at the police station if I could use the choo (toilet – pronounced chō) and had the pleasure of getting my first squatting toilet experience. I succeed without covering myself so I was relieved in more way than one.

I had begun texting with James and Dennis for ideas. James is very discouraged. He tells me that Kituo Cha is so far away from Arusha. The buses are not allowed to travel past a certain hour and there is no way we can get to Arusha tonight. He suggests that I either try to come back to Dar or to get a bus to Morogoro as Miss Burka did. I know that I have adventures scheduled for Sunday that I didn’t want to miss so I’m bound and determined to move forward. Standing by myself next to the big pile of luggage in front of the police station I begin to feel just the slightest bit weepy, but I manage to keep it together.

The second group of passengers arrived in the minibus and Couple were on board. I asked them where the driver and Justice were and they told me that they had stayed there. They were drinking when they left them.

It has begun getting dark and people have returned from dining. Again the conversation groups form. The papa of the tiny baby says that he has spoken with people at Dar Express and they have told him that a bus is on the way. Undercover keeps coming out now and again and speaking in Swahili and when I ask what he said I’m told that it’s nothing new. Patti says that the replacement bus is fictional.

My battery on my phone has begun to get low so I think that it would be best to conserve power. I make one call to David risking that I will make him worried, but I wanted him to know that I wouldn’t be contacting him from Arusha when I thought that I would. Then I turned the phone off for as much as I could.

A young man to whom I had not spoken previously begins to hang around me. He is a student and getting ready for some very important exams and asks for me to pray that he does well. He and I go back and forth every once in a while when Undercover comes out to make an announcement and find that there’s nothing new. When he comes out I run to stand close so that I can hear and then realize how ridiculous that is since I can hear but can’t understand. So student and I return to the base of the flag pole where we had been sitting. It’s now very hard to see anything because it is so dark. Suddenly we hear laughter and cheering from near the entrance of the police station. We run to find out what has happened and we are told that a bus really is on the way and it is currently at the position where we had been stuck before picking up some luggage that was left on the bus and it will be here within the next half hour.

Sure enough, by 8PM the bus arrived and we piled on very happy to see it. Apparently they got a special permit to allow them to drive past the limit. I sat down next to a largish, buck toothed man who, in my head I started to call Buck. I regretted that move since there was a seat next to a small child that I had not taken because I assumed he had an adult joining him. I was wrong. My seat belt is broken.

We made another stop on the way and  three woman and a small child got on. How they knew there was a bus coming at that hour I have no idea. One of the women sat in the seat next to the child that should have been my seat. Also Justice came on board at that time. Patti shouted out to him, “We missed you!”

So much time had passed that I spoke to him at one point and said, “You remember that I am getting out at Kwa Shabani?” “Yes” “And you’ll let me know when we are nearly there because I won’t know it?” “Yes”

We are back on the road and I am relieved. Finally the ordeal is over. Since you can see that this post is not close to finished you can tell that it is not.

We pull over at a bus stop called “Highway” at 11PM. We are told we have 15 minutes to use the choo and get something to eat. I’m still not hungry, but eventually I decide that I’d better use the toilet while I can. It turns out that it’s got stalls and stalls – all squatting type.  So I get more experience and then get back on the bus. It feels as though it’s been about 15 minutes now and suddenly the bus is filling with smoke and burnt oil smell. The driver and Justice have opened the engine cover which is inside the bus and the bus is getting unpleasant. I don’t like that they’re doing this and then the side compartment comes open.

After about an hour Patti starts passing around a notebook asking people for their names and numbers and she plans on getting compensation for all of us. A fellow named Joey and I spoke for a while and he taught me a little more Swahili and was pleased with how much I had already learned. Meanwhile, several large buckets of water have been poured over the engine from the inside and I see what appears to be parts being manufactured on the spot using some pvc and a knife.

I moved from group to group again, showing anyone who would look Talia’s artwork and pictures of my kids. I’m not sure I’ve felt more homesick in my life than at that moment.

Upendo was very excited to teach me Kiswahili

Upendo , who you may remember was the whispering girl who wanted to call her mother, comes off the bus and now greets me loudly and confidently as though I’m an old friend. She and I sit together for a while and she wants to teach me Swahili. She tells me how very proud she is to be Tanzanian and wishes me Kirabu (welcome) many times. Eventually I get on the bus to see if I can nap. I can’t get comfortable so sleep evades me.

Finally at 1:30 we start moving again! I don’t know how long we were going. I kept trying to sleep but couldn’t manage it. The road is filled will speed bumps so if I started to feel as though I was about to sleep, I would get startled back to consciousness quickly. The bus pulled over three more times for a look at the engine, but each time was pretty brief. Everyone else seemed as though they were comfortably sleeping. Buck stretched out so that he was taking about 1/3 of my seat so I was basically leaning over the aisle. I notice that not one passenger had reclined his or her chair.

Several times the bus had to turn off the main, paved road and move onto a dirt road. A dirt road in a 4x4 is pretty easy. A dirt road in the back end of a bus is torture. The dirt roads were actually in good condition, but still bumpy and noisy. Every time we turned onto a dirt road I would just grit my teeth until the bumping stopped. Once back on the paved road it felt luxurious.

At 5:45 one fellow on the bus apparently decided that no one needed to sleep anymore. He began talking loudly on a cell phone and then speaking really loudly to his neighboring passengers. No one else seemed to mind and no one shushed him.

By 6:10 we reached Moshi. I know we are only about 90-120 minutes from Arusha so I risk annoying Justice to remind him that I’m getting out at Kwa Shabani. He nods feigning patience.

At 7:45 I got a call from Frank – my host in Arusha. “Are you wearing a cap? I think you have missed your stop. I have seen a Dar Express go past and I think it must be you. Give the phone to the conductor.”  The bus is stopped at this point letting out passengers and I hand the phone to Justice. He says a few things and then tsk tsk and hands the phone back to me. He says, "Your friend will meet you."

We go one more stop and Frank comes up to me with a sign with my name on it and a big hug. I don’t know if I’ve ever been more relieved in my life. The driver brings us to Frank's house and we get in by 8AM. It has been 26 hours since the journey began.

Part II will come as soon as I can.