We left our home in Kigoma, Tanzania on Saturday, October 13th, at 6:30 am. Our plan was to drive about 12 hours to Mwanza, Tanzania, stay the night there, and then drive another 12 hours from Mwanza to Nairobi, Kenya the next day. We were taking Aaron, our friend and fellow-missionary, with us to Nairobi so he could catch his plane back to the States from there. We figured we could make it to Nairobi by Sunday night, and that way Aaron could spend a couple of days in Nairobi with us seeing some sights and having some last minute fellowship with us. Then we would have some meetings with some missionaries from Calvary Chapel Nairobi to glean some information and wisdom to apply to our efforts in Kigoma, before returning home. Well... that was the plan. At this point I have to mention a little refrigerator plaque that some friends of our in the States have. It says, "We plan, God laughs". That pretty much sums up our plans for our trip to Nairobi.
The same week we were supposed to leave I kept getting flat tires. I think I had two that week, plus the one the month before. For those of you who grew up watching "Dukes of Hazard" like I did, then you might remember how Bo and Luke were superfast at changing a flat tire. They prided themselves in it and even timed themselves. So by the time that we left for Nairobi, I felt like one of the Duke boys - a speedy, tire-changing machine.
So, back to the trip.
We left a half-hour later than planned (not bad considering the four kids from 9 years to 18 months), and started off for Nairobi. The first six hours is all unpaved. It's a combination of decently smooth dirt, small to medium washboard dirt, horrendously large washboard dirt that shakes the parts on your car loose, rocks, ruts, mud, holes, and blind corners. Are we there yet?! After only an hour on the road we got a flat on the right rear tire. I'll let you guess which tire had gone flat and required changing two times already that same week... that's right: the right rear! So I pulled over to the right (the wrong side of the road of course) and switched mental gears into "Duke" mode, and swapped out the flat tire for the spare. My family clearly didn't realize my new-found skill as a flat-tire-swapper because they all got out and began having a roadside picnic for breakfast! Within 15 minutes we were ready to go and I was hearding them all back into the vehicle. (The picture below is of Aaron and Jada watching me change the tire. I'm the white leg sticking our from underneadth the car.)
About a half hour later we reached Kasulu, where I pulled over at the first "tire fundi" that I saw ('fundi' is Swahili for expert or technician). If you've never lived in rural East Africa then you don't know what I mean by "tire fundi" and unfortunately I don't have a picture. So let me try to paint one. Imagine a couple or three guys covered in dirt and grease, standing by the side of the road with metallic implements that look like they were carved from the scrap metal left over from the car of the last fool who stopped to get help there. Oh yeah, and of course there's always the air hoses with various forms of electircal and duct tape covering the many holes so that the air can make it to the end, which of course has absolutely no fitting on it so that the guts of the tire's air valve must be "delicately" removed before shoving the end of the hose on for filling. The hose is attached to a 40-something-year old air compressor that barely works being run by a 50-something-year old hand-crank-started generator that coughs and chokes and vomits out great clouds of black smoke so that you have an aromatic ambiance by which to enjoy watching the fundi destroy... I mean work on your tire. So anyhow... ONE HOUR LATER the tire man is finished "fixing" the tire. What this really means is that he spent 30 minutes patching the hole in the existing tube before he looked closer and found a couple of others. And rather than watch him repeat the same painfully slow process multiple times, I avoided the cost of having to sleep in the car in Kasulu that night by providing him with a brand new tube that I had brought as a spare! So 6,000 Tanzanian Shillings later we were off (1,000 for the repair and 5,000 for a lug nut to replace the special locking one for the spare that Aaron torqued so hard it twisted in half).
Back on the road we made our way towards the next landmark/milepost: Kibondo. I was curious to see this place because I had heard such interesting things about it. Namely, that it was located in a physically beautiful location, but that you didn't want to be there past dark, or even to stray too far from the main road during the day. Apparently even the UN workers who are based there have a dusk curfew so they don't get into any trouble with the local thieves, robbers, murderers and other unfriendly elements. Sure enough... it really is set in a beautiful location and seems like a wonderful little town during the day. We paused only long enough to top off the tank for the long haul to Mwanza. So after pouring another bundle of cash down the fuel tank filling pipe, we were off again. (Fuel is about 1,600 Tshs per litre. That currently equates to about $5.30 per gallon or $112 for just over 20 gallons for those of you in the U.S.)
From Kibondo we continued on another hour and half or so until we FINALLY came to the tarmac at a town called Nyakanazi. This is where the tarmac (pavement or asphalt to those in the U.S.) begins and continues on east all the way to the capital of Dar es Salaam on the coast. There is also one leg up to Mwanza and on to the Kenyan border and later one leg up to Arusha and on to the Kenyan border. The route to and through Mwanza is the best and fastest and the one that we took. (By the way, any decent map of Tanzania or even East Africa will show most, if not all, of the names of towns I've mentioned so far. I bought one at Barnes and Noble for $10 or $12 last year).
In Nyakanazi we passed through or fourth or fifth "police check". By this time I've learned to just pull up and start greeting them in Swahili and telling them where you're from (Kigoma) and where you're headed (Mwanza) and ask them something like "how much further?" or "what's the road like ahead?" Using this method we have never been detained or delayed more than 20 seconds or so – though I’m regularly mistaken for some Afrikaans guy from South Africa that apparently knows every single policeman in Northwestern Tanzania! Once we got onto the tarmac I was finally able to speed up. I was actually going over 70 kilometers per hour (that's around 44 MPH!). It sounds funny, but it felt really fast to me at first. Slowly my confidence in the car and the road began to grow and our speed grew in concert with it. Other than the ridiculous amount of police stops along the way, we were able to maintain over 100 kph for quite some time.
That's when it happened. That's when the beautiful sound of BFGoodrich All-Terrain Tires singing for joy on the tarmac suddenly produced a sour note! I had been warned that the tarmac near the town of Kahama was bad, but because I've never driven across Tanzania I didn't really have a point of reference for what “bad” means. NOW I KNOW. Several kilometers before Kahama the tarmac began to get rough and broken up in places. It appeared somewhat patched, but by no means was it truly repaired. I tried my best to pay attention and swerve around potholes and large cracks and bad patches without losing too much time (since we had already gotten behind schedule by almost two hours). I was doing pretty well for a while, but then the fatigue of getting up early and doing so much driving got the best of me and my mind began to wander. I know you know what I mean. When your eyes are wide open and you don't really feel tired, but your mind has simply left the confines of your physical head and travelled half-way around the world thinking about things you can't even remember later. So my eyes were open and reporting danger ahead, but my mind wasn't open for receiving instructions. When it finally came around my conscious mind realized that just ahead was an enormous pothole that couldn't be swerved around and avoided. In shock and horror I immediately applied the brakes and told everyone to hold on. Keeping the brakes on through the pothole would destroy many parts on the car, so just before the hole I let off. I was also able to swerve a little bit so that only the right side (driver's side here) would go through it. And go through it we did. Unfortunately, this 8 foot wide, 3 foot across, 6 inch deep "pothole" wasn't really something you are supposed to go "through" at almost 90 kph (around 55 mph). The right side of the car took an enormous impact in both front and back, and my countenance turned from tired-but-content to adrenaline-filled-but-angry-and-depressed. I immediately sensed that something just wasn't right with the car now... go figure!
After that incident, the road actually got much better. It was practically brand new and well done. Unfortunately, the Tanzanian government decided to put a speed bump at the beginning and end (and sometimes in the middle) of any stretch of roadside land that has even a single building near it. So even though the roads were great, we had to watch for speed bumps EVERY FEW KILOMETERS. It really was ridiculous and ate up a lot of time. And often the sign to warn you about the bump was missing or misplaced, so the same car and suspension that had already impacted a huge crater in the ground earlier, was now being confronted with "out-of-the-blue" speed bumps the size of curbs. Let’s just say that the suspension didn't like that any better that the potholes.
After a few of these curb-sized speed bumps I noticed that the indicator light was on that represented the spare tire door was open. I pulled over to open and reclose it, figuring that it had been jarred loose by the impact. When I opened the door, the latch that held it shut fell to the ground. It was broken in half. So I drove slowly for several kilometers until we came to an area with a few shops along the side of the road and I bought some red string. Using the string I secured the spare tire to the car by tying it to the roof rack and we were off again, now over two hours behind schedule.
The rest of the drive to Mwanza was relatively uneventful. I drove very cautiously, yet trying to hurry as much as I could so we could make it there by dark. It was a balancing act between speed and sensibility because the car was now making noises and the steering wheel was wobbling side to side so much that I had to consciously focus to keep it straight.
Stay tuned for Part 2, coming soon.
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