The Road Less Traveled

Over the past two days we've been traveling by "road" to Arusha from Dar Es Salaam. I have quotes around "road" because I never in my life imagined a longer and bumpier ride in the back of a Land Rover as we had for the last two days.

It started off great - paved road between Dar Es Salaam and Dodoma (the official capital where parliament sits). Along the way we saw many, many villages with what seemed like all of their citizens out and about - chatting on the street, selling their goods, or just outside the city hauling large bundles of sticks on their heads or bikes for the fires they would build tonight. We stopped for lunch in a town called Morogoro with a population of around 4 million. Then, we went to visit two farms that are using the Kickstart MoneyMaker Pump - one a farm about 6km from the main road and one was a prison, where they were using farming to teach criminals how to live without committing crimes. Both said the pumps were helping them immensely - the first farmer's crop had increased over 100%!!

A late start and a bunch of delays had us getting to Dodoma at around 9:30pm. After it got completely dark at around 7pm, you started to see each villiage had a couple of camp fires and people were still out on the streets. I have to admit our driver's driving was very scary. He usually came within a couple inches of the cars we were passing AND the people on the side of the road. Occasionally he would speed up when he saw someone, honking and seemingly trying to hit them as if it were a game. That part was not fun!

The second day was by far the worst road trip I've ever been on. The road was just about the worst dirt road I've ever been on and we were on it for about 8 hours. I happened to be sitting in the back of the Land Rover, just above the wheel wells, so I got the hardest bumps. We hit our heads and bounced all over the truck all day, stopping for lunch finally at 3pm. We had left late and unlike in the US, there really wasn't a closer place to stop - no McDonald's at every exit and village! In fact, I haven't seen any fast food restaurants at all in Tanzania yet!

Along the way we saw three baboons, two dik diks, my teammate saw some Vetter Monkeys, AND, you won't believe this, but we saw a black mamba. It was scared by the car, so stood up just like a cobra and watched us. Luckily, we were very far away at this point, so what does our driver do? He backs up, while we still had the windows down, so we could get a better look at the deadliest snake on the planet. Luckily it had slithered away by the time he got close.

I did make it to Arusha safe and sound, but that is one trip I will NOT be repeating ever again. If you have a chance to donate to some kind of African Road Project - do it!

Our team made its first video today - check it out: