Apparently, I am 'The White Devil'

We stayed in Iringa for two nights. Other than the quibble with a guest house staff member who returned our laundry wet one hour before we had to catch a bus, the whole stay was quite enjoyable. We hit up the
markets, my personal favorite, where we could walk among the mounds of sculpted grains, dried fish, spices and other food stuffs. As I mentioned in the last post, relative to Zambia, local and foreign foods abound in Tanzania and we do not hesitate throwing down the shillings. On the favorite food list: grilled meat (nyama) served streetside over charcoal, indian dives that prove to be anything but, samosas-samosas-samosas, fries congealed together with egg (chipsi mayai) and kachaimbala (veggie medley with lemon juice). Also a nice find in the Iringa market area - craft goods. It of course is a bit touristy, but it is nice to dig through these wares and try to find something that strikes you. Much of it is repeated from stall to stall and town to town, but there are always those few diamonds in the rough. Further, it is also nice to see some effort thrown in the general arts direction - another stark contrast to Zambia.

We are making a delibrate crawl to the Serengeti as to make sure we can get a chance to see the 'real-Tanzania.' It seems many visitors fly into the internationally recognized highlights (Mt. Kiliminjaro, Serengeti, Zanzibar, a Masaai photo-op and Ngorongoro Crater) and then promptly leave. These, of course, are sites not to be missed and we are doing our best to also cover them, however, tourist-frequented areas tend to alter the character of a people and place. I guess you can't blame them, everyobody has to make a living, but we would like to see a bit of Tanzania not quite as affected by the lure of the dollar, pound, or euro. Our "crawl" became a bit extended, however, when we realized our Iringa-Dodoma bus was consuming nearly a full day and we were no closer to Dodoma. The only route to Dodoma proceeds via Morogoro - who knew. Thus, our sore asses easily convinced us that it might be a nice place to visit.

Morogoro is similar in size and friendliness as Iringa but has a totally different feel. That, combined with a nice, cheap hotel that served free omelettes, twisted our arms into two nights. We attempted to climb to the top of Lupanga Mountain in the nearby Uluguru mountains. A stern and suspicious group of park officers in town combined with a steep 'entrance fee' deterred us from taking the legal way up and we tried to blaze our own trail. I don't think we are the first foreigns to find the park quite so uninviting - scanning the registry, only 6 foreigners had paid the fee in the last 1.5 years. Walking out of town for a few miles into the villages at the foot of the mountains we were easily distracted by the daily life of the Morogoro 'suburbs' and thus not able to find a trail before the day grew too late. No worries, it made for a great day of walking - good pictures, I upgraded my crappy sunglasses for another pair of crappy sunglasses with some kid for about $1 and we found some really great filter coffee on the walk back to Morogoro.

Morogoro ticked off another first on the list for me - a visit to a Tanzanian hospital. For four days I have been getting strange headaches and neck-muscle soreness - not my normal fair, ever. The average malarial medicine only has a 95% efficacy rate. Since I have had well over 20 mosquito bites I thought my number might be up, so we stumbled around in the dark looking for the hospital. The whole thing was quite interesting. At first glance of the hospital, your initial reaction is "nope, no worries, I feel completely fine. ok, see you later." However, despite the dilapidated hospital and little spoken english, the whole thing turned out to be surprisingly efficient. After about 45 minutes and $1.70 I found out I did not have the malarial parasite (notice the "no parasites seen" on my 'medical chart below). Of course, I must temper my praise of the hospital, for I would be a bit more worried if I had to go there for a life-threatening injury. As for the headaches, they subsided two days ago. It turns out the side effects of mefloquine (lariam) can also explain my symptoms, in addition to the vivid, wacked-out dreams I have been having over the last 6 weeks.

Next stop was Dodoma, the capital, or should I say armpit of Tanzania. Apparently, the government made Dodoma the capital a few decades ago but neglected to realize most of the officials did not want to live there and that it had an inadequate water supply. Although there are a fair number of inhabitants, the city definitely has a abandoned and forgotten feel. Many of the occupied houses/huts/shacks are marked with a large spray-painted red "X" and the letters "UA." We were not able to figure out what this means. We guessed that they were places to be demolished, but that, along with the planned construction of the rest of the capitol, were also forgotten. As for our accomodations, atleast the sign by the front door assured us that it was a morally upstanding place. We left early the next morning. Babati was a better payoff the next day, not to mention a welcome stop after a rough 7 hr bus ride. Although a bit of a rundown town, it did not lack in character or friendliness. That night we walked out of town down the long dusty road with beers in hand searching for Babati Lake. In the dark, a passerby clearly identified two out-of-place white people and directed us to royal beach. After a careful walk led by a little 6 yr old kid who decided we needed a guide in order to skirt the cranky hippos, we found Royal Beach Hotel on a pennisula jutting out into the lake. There was no beach to be found but we had some good star watching. A streetside bar serving up fried chipsi mayai made for a perfect ending to the evening on the walk back.
The bus to Arusha was a little interesting. Driving across the Maasai Steppe one can see Maasai herdsmen in their distinctive colorful blankets with their cattle spreading off into the distance. A funny incident on the bus ride itself also deserves a note as another 'first.' We were sitting in the very from seats at the entrance to the
door making us the first thing a boarding passenger would see. At one stop, a local tribal woman got on with her baby and her eyes immeditaley met mine. At which point, her face filled with fear, she exclaimed something in Swahili and then nearly pushed over one of the bus hands to get off the bus. The bus attendants then just pointed at us and laughed along with the front half of the bus as we pulled away. In broken english, one of the guys explained to me that she was terrified of white people and decided walking would be better than riding with the 'White Devil'. We felt bad, but couldn't help but laugh.

From Babati, it was on to Arusha, the tout-capitol of the world. If you are ever feeling lonely, just walk out into the streets of Arusha and whisper 'safari.' I promise, within seconds you will have all the 'friends' in the world. Fortunately, we were able to deflect most of these guys and settle up on a safari that we had been scouting for the last several days (now having a cell phone has aided this maddening process). So far, the safari package we got seems all on the up and up and priced well ta' boot - we'll see...