So we went out to a village outside of Iringa, Tanzania. The day started with a miscommunication of what time the bus left, so mid breakfast we were interrupted and told we had to leave now. We left our half fill cups of tea and took our chapti to go and headed out the door. We arrived at the extremly busy bus terminal only to find out that the bus we are suppossed to take is fill. So we take off to take a matatu (15 passanger van) to the fill buses first stop where passangers get off and then we could get on the bus. We get to the matatu it already has approximatly 20people in it, and there is 5 of us. Us mazungus think “well we are obviously not getting on this van, its fill” We are quickly proven wrong. We are informed this is the only way we are going to get to the bus at the next stop in time. So we cram in, all of us standing up because there are no seats left. I think well its a really good thing we only have our day packs. So we think now we must be fill – nope, a guy slides in behind me and another guy slides in next to me. So now I am standing bent over at the waist and on my tip toes reaching over peoples heads in a desperate attempt to hold on to something trying really hard not to hit someone in the face AND trying to keep track of my bag.
We finally take off, now Iringa, for whatever reason, has speed bumps every like 500m, so we proceed to bottom out on every single one on the way out of town. At this point I am thanking God that it is still early in the morning and no one is sweating yet. I look over at Joni’s face and her expression says it all “We are going to Die.” We stop a couple times for who knows what, definatly not for people to get off. Because I am still just as crammed. The people around although in the most awkward positions seem to be at complete ease and in fact most of them are laughing and joking around – so clearly this is normal for them.
So again, not really being informed of what the plan is, us muzungus assume we will just get back on the matatu once the tire is changed, we did pay the fill fare – wrong again. All of asudden from around the bend comes the fill bus that we were suppossed to be getting on at the next stop once it had let people of. I’m talking like the stereotypical African bus, old, painted super bright colours, big metal roof racks etc. Well it hadn’t made any stops yet but it stopped for us and next thing we know we are being pushed with the 35 other matatu passangers to get on this bus. Oh did I point out I am wearing a long skirt because girls are not allowed to wear pants or show their knees in the village where we are heading. At this point I didn’t care, I picked up the hem of the skirt and held it up by my head. I had shorts on underneath 🙂 Again standing room only and not just single file down the asile, nope we are two lines down the asile.You literally don’t need to hold onto anything because you are so close to the people on all sides of you that you wouldn’t fall. I am just thanking God that I am able to stand up straight. So we try our best to get comfortable because as explained to us by our translator the village we were heading to was 4hrs from Iringa, and we had only been driving for maybe 30min and who knows where all these people are going.
This is Africa.
