Safari bure

The main road from Dar es Salaam to the Zambian border passes through about 60km of Mikumi National Park, home to buffalo, wildebeest, lion, zebra, elephants and more. So, it offers a free game drive to anyone on the road, clearly something Mrs Scrooge couldn't resist for long. When I heard that Jan, another volunteer from Dodoma, was travelling to a language course in Iringa I asked if I could tag along as far as Mikumi village. We got the bus at 6 o'clock on Saturday morning and around midday we chugged into Morogoro with the motor sounding far from well. We squatted outside the bus compound in the hot sun while they dismantled and reassembled the engine and then continued westwards. We had good seats at the front and once through the park entrance our heads were swivelling this way and that, cameras at the ready. After 10 minutes or so I spotted a modest buck under a tree and after that it was giraffe, buffalo, impala, zebra, more impala, all the way to the park exit. Well chuffed with our haul we got the bus to drop us at the Tan-Swiss Motel where I hoped we might get a discount from the Swiss half of the owners, on the grounds that Jan is also Swiss. No discount needed because the place was very reasonable and also very pleasant, if slightly surreal with the Matterhorn looming up behind you in the dining room. We briefly considered paying $170 for a half day game drive but since the motel had a tethered goat, and rabbits and guinea pigs in a hutch we decided that wouldn't be necessary. We walked the few kilometres into Mikumi village and had our dinner with the tarts and truck drivers in a roadside "grocery". Then came back for a coffee at the motel and Jan was close to tears watching the other guests enjoying rosti and other lovely Swiss stuff.
Next morning we ordered a bajaji (3 wheeler motorbike taxi) which turned up extremely late. It weaved its way through the lorries to the area where the buses stop. Jan was plucked out just before the junction and put on the bus to Iringa.

I waited for the bus the other way, thinking about what animals I might spot this time, and eventually a bus named "Ally's Sports Bus" came round the corner. Judging from the number of people on board the sport in question seemed to be the National Sardines Association of Tanzania, although it could equally have been rugby from the scrum that immediately formed around the door. A helpful company employer locked my bag in the hold so there was nothing for it but to join in. I felt very sorry for the old and frail and mothers with babies as I wrestled them out of my way and squeezed on board, joining the hundreds of other passengers wedged vertically in the central aisle. The lucky bastards sitting in seats didn't even have the decency to stay awake through the National Park. Still, maybe it would have been worse to have heard excited cries of "TEMBO!" and "SIMBA!" while unable to move, with my face stuffed in someone's armpit.
Anyway, I was relieved to get to Morogoro in one (slightly compressed) piece. I celebrated by taking a bodaboda (exciting motorbike taxi) to the Commonwealth War Cemetery which was a really beautiful place, much bigger than the Dodoma one, and yes, there are German graves there.

King and Country

Crossing the railway just South of the Jamati (as in Jamatini) and the Anglican "Cathedral" you see a familiar dark brown sign: Commonwealth War Graves Dodoma Cemetery. Following the sign you come to an immaculately tended oasis of orderliness and calm, sudden in the surrounding dusty urban sprawl. The gate is locked but a notice tells you to ring the office - in Nairobi - for the "key". It's a combination lock. elaine-in-dodoma, aka Mrs Scrooge, saved the cost of an international phone call and climbed over the low fence. Nearly all the graves are from WW1, mostly South African soldiers, their gravestones engraved with the Springbok emblem of the regiments. Some are "A victim of the Great War known unto God".
Tanzania, German East Africa as it was then, saw some action in the First World War. A dashing German General called Von Lettow led the British a merry dance as he retreated, with an elite band of African Schutztruppe but heavily outnumbered, across 4000km of East Africa, finishing the war undefeated. The campaign furnishes the usual mix of heroism and farce. There is also a lovely post script. Quoting from the Footprint Handbook to Tanzania: In 1964 the German Bundestag finally voted the funds to settle the back pay owing to the Schutztruppe at the surrender in 1918. Over 300 veterans, some in faded and patched uniforms presented themselves at Mwanza. Only a handful had their discharge papers. Those who didn't were handed a broom and taken through arms drill, with the orders given in German. Not one man failed the test.

Surprisingly there are three or four German graves, marked with the Iron Cross, in the Dodoma Cemetery including Leopold and Edmund von Breitenbach who died within weeks of each other in 1916. I have heard that enemy soldiers also share the Commonwealth graveyard in Morogoro and maybe others in Tanzania. It also seems that the Commission took over an existing civilian graveyard in Dodoma as there are a few earlier graves including a very imposing one:
Hier ruht Friedrich Frech
Sektionsingenieur bei Ph Holtzmann + Cie
geboren 20 VII 1852 in Stuttgart
gestorben 23 XII 1909
Opposite the gate at the far end is a square stone monument with inscriptions in English, Arabic, Hindi(?), and Urdu(?): God is one His is the victory. In memory of the brave Hindus, Sikhs, Muhammadans who sacrificed their lives in the Great War for their King and Country.
On either side of this are some World War II graves including some Moslems. The other Second World War graves are just inside the gate: Eight South African Airmen all dated 4 August 1940.
In the far left hand corner is a row of 14 African graves, some of whom have only one name. eg Buried in this plot S34 private Simoni.
African Native Medical Corps 14th July 1918.
John the gardener came and unlocked the gate while I was there and I congratulated him on keeping the place so beautifully. It is the cleanest, neatest place I have seen since I arrived here. It's just a pity you have to be dead to get this level of service.

Mpwitompwito

= pandemonium, hysteria.

A Romanian friend once put me straight about my language skills."You may know some words, Elaine, but you cannot speak Romanian." Now I'm tackling Swahili. I have a one-way Swahili-English dictionary nicked from school, a Lonely Planet phrasebook and people all around me speaking Swahili, in addition to the TV and radio. It shouldn't be that hard. You probably know more Swahili words than you think:
Safari=journey
Jenga=build
Titi= breast
Baisekeli you know
Pancha= puncture (I learnt that one early on)
Steshenimasta=stationmaster.
Bwana, in church Jesus is always called Bwana, which sounds fairly amusing.
I try to learn a few words a day, just flicking randomly through one of my books. The dictionary throws up some strange ones:
dongoa: lumps of dried mud falling from a wall.
matubwitubwi: badly cooked porridge and also mumps.
kindumbwendumbwe: children's game of humiliating one who wets the bed.
nyaraf: avoid contact with a person because of his filthiness/disgusting habits.
Even though Swahili is 100% phonetic, Lonely Planet includes phonetic pronunciation. So entries in its little dictionary read for example:
Mungu moon goo God.
The phonetic bit is in a different colour but it doesn't show up too well in the low light levels we often have here. So I confuse the last bit of the phonetics with the start of the definition. For example:
milele: mee-lay, lay forever,
kikapu: kee-ka, poo basket.
Quite a few words end in -ge so there's a whole chunk of pink lexis, eg
kidonge: kee-dohn, gay pill.
lengelenge:---gay blister.
bunge:---gay parliament.
ndege: ---gay aeroplane, leading to
kampuni ya ndege:---gay airline,
kizunguzungu cha saa kutokana na kusafiri kwa ndege:---gay jet lag.
Neatly, the word for gay itself ends in -ge,
msenge:---gay, gay, homosexual.
You can also see from this short selection how many dungudungu, katikati, pikipiki type words there are. Pilipili means pepper and pilipili hoho means chilli pepper. Pachipachi means the space in between two thighs. Hmmm! Talking of in between, Swahili grammar involves a lot of prefixes and infixes producing some very long words where it's hard to tease out the pronouns, prepositions and stuff. Or if you prefer: "Swahili has an agglutinating morphological structure." Er....right.
One good thing is that every word is stressed on the penultimate syllable as in Tanzania. Tanzanians themselves think that we pronounce it Tanzaynia.
For many Tanzanians Swahili is their second language anyway. The local tribe here are the Ngogo who speak Gogo. So, a lot of the kids I teach have had to learn Swahili, because Primary School is in Swahili, and then English, because Secondary School is in English (luckily for me). And if I attempt a few words of Swahili the whole class falls about laughing. Mpwitompwito!

Bullet Mother

Apart from taxis, and exciting back of MOTORBIKE taxis (which I haven't tried yet) public transport in Dodoma is the DALADALA. Same idea as MATATU in Kenya, DOLMUS in Turkey, MARSHRUTKA in Ukraine etc. They have fixed routes, go when they're full (to bursting), pick up and drop off anywhere. Petrol-heads may want to know that they are Toyota Hiaces, or an indistinguishable other Toyota minibus. In fact I estimate that 99% of cars in Tanzania are Toyotas.
Here, the daladalas all start from beside the Jamatini (don't know what that is? I'll tell you sometime) in a seething, jostling, hooting, shouting, banging mass of vehicles, passengers and hustling daladala conductors, on a bare patch of ground beside the main road. Destinations are printed on the front eg JAMATINI NANENANE or JAMATINI CHANG'OMBE. They also all have a name or slogan painted on the windscreen or side, or on the back window. Some are in Swahili - BABU KUBWA = Big Grandad or I suppose - Great-Grandad

which probably refers to the age of the vehicle. Some are just plain nice - JOLLY FRIENDS, GIVE ME 5, BABY QUEEN. Many are inspired by the two main religions here, Christianity and Football. Sometimes it's just the name of the team; LIVERPOOL, BARCELONA, CHELSEA, MANCHESTER UNITED, the most popular. Or a player: poor little LIONEL MESSI runs continuously the 6 km to Mipango and back. God and Jesus fuel a fair few daladalas: POWER OF GOD etc. I thought one was brilliantly called THE SPIRITUAL RATTLE till I saw that the B had been partly rubbed off: SPIRITUAL BATTLE - slightly disconcerting, as are PUT YOUR TRUST IN GOD, FORGIVE AND FORGET and PRECIOUS BLOOD. As my friend Shaun said, Blood and Public Transport should be a forbidden combination. THE WAY IT IS and I'M SORRY are at least honest and SHOW ME THE WAY disarmingly so. But my favourite is BULLET MOTHER. One last one: ALONE IS BETTER THAN WITH BAD FRIENDS. I'm not so sure. I'd be more than happy to see some of my bad friends if they fancy a trip to Dodoma.

Baisekeli

I've been hiring a bicycle from one of the security guards at the Nam Hotel and yesterday he agreed to sell it to me for 110,000 shillings added to the 46,000 I have already paid at 2000 per day. It's a robust, sit-up-and-beg (hate that term for some reason) Chinese-built machine with 3 Sturmey-Archer type gears. It's the same as most bikes here except for the gears which put it in a superior class. In general cycling is pleasant and safe. The back roads are very quiet(traffic-wise I mean,there's always music) so you can dodge from side to side seeking the shade or avoiding the pot-holes in the tarmac roads and sand pits in the dirt roads. Lorries, buses, and NGO 4x4's hurtle along the main roads, but on either side there is nearly always a very broad stretch of flattish ground where pedestrians and mostly non-motorised traffic circulates, free from any restrictions of Highway Code or rules of any kind. In these sections you can go anywhere, any way, any speed. I tried to work out the protocol for passing on-coming traffic when you are on the wrong side, left or right? I've come to the conclusion it's just a free-for-all. Find the smoothest, firmest path and stick to it, only edging across at the last minute. My dithering almost caused some major spills at first. On my commute to work I'm one of the only single occupancy bicycles. The others usually have at least one passenger on the back carrier and sometimes two schoolkids on the back and one on the handlebars. Then there are the freight bicycles. I divide these into WIDE LOADS, eg doors, rolled-up corrugated iron sheets or lengths of piping, and TALL LOADS, eg four stacked crates of Pepsi. Maintenance is no problem.

Open-air bike repair shops are every few hundred yards under the trees, always with a nice big stirrup pump being vigorously worked up and down. Riding after dark is fun. There are only two sets of streetlights in Dodoma and I haven't seen them switched on yet. So unless it's a very short trip I usually opt for the Dalla-dalla at night. And that's another story.

Show Time

The Swahili for eight is NANE, confusingly one letter different from the English nine.(For further confusion with Swahili numbers I refer you to Mr Modest Stout of "Bexley-on-Heath"). Anyway, Nanenane means 8/8, 8th August. This is Farmers Day, a National Holiday in Tanzania. In the week before, all the major towns have an Agricultural Show, and the Dodoma one is in full swing, building up to a glorious finale on the 8th. The venue is a permanent showground a few kms East of town.In fact NANENANE, being one of the major public transport destinations, is painted on half the minibuses rattling about the town. (Post on Dodoma's public transport "system" to follow; when I've sussed it). So it was easy to get there and I paid the 500 shillings entrance fee (2500 shillings = £1). Africa's ubiquitous jiggy, jazzy, happy music was pumping out at ear-bursting levels from the various stands. Nearest the gate were the mobile phone companies, keenly promoting the world's favourite product. Then everything and everyone was represented, from the Prime Minister's Office to a dusty heap of second-hand shoes. The agricultural element included little plantations of tea, coffee, grapes (my oenological research continues) and sisal. I was told there was a small zoo and sure enough I heard a tremendous ROAARRR! ROAAARRRGGH! which turned out to be a recording from the loudspeakers at the Tanzania National Parks stand. When I found the lion he was snoozing, with his feet up against the bars of his rather cramped cage, admired by a three-deep crowd of locals. The giant tortoise was relatively lively, enjoying all the attention; the black mamba scarily so, in his rather flimsy glass case. The dusty lanes thronged with schoolchildren in their smart English-prep-school-circa-1950 uniforms, all clutching armfuls of brochures, there were also families, and parties of VIP's, making things unpleasant for the hoi polloi as they brum-brummed round the site in their 4x4's. I stopped for a Safari Beer and a plate of tasty-if-tough grilled meat at the Mama Love Chakula Stand, then headed home.

Where??

Pub quiz question. What is the capital of Tanzania? Answer: Dodoma.   Bet half of you thought it was Dar es Salaam.   Dodoma is one of those "Let's move it to the middle of nowhere" Capitals. A smallish town with attached parliament, Dodoma is literally in the middle of nowhere. If you've heard of some places in Tanzania - Zanzibar, Kilimanjaro, Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater, they are all at least 8 bumpy bus hours away. But who cares? Dodoma is very pleasant - wide shady streets, no traffic jams, sunny by day, cool by night, and surrounded by fertile land,  filling the markets with mountains of veg, exotic and normal, and fruit ditto, including, significantly, grapes. Dodoma is the centre of the Tanzanian wine industry. I am undertaking some painstaking research in this field. Tasting notes to follow.