Busy as a Bee

Entry via Letter

I have been slack on my blog writing duties lately and for this I do apologize, my student and I visited and brought solar power from Dar, I waged and lost a battle against Tanzanian transportation, and the rainy season has increased the amount of insects grass, and snakes in my area – justifying even more my choice to sleep with a machete at night. Oh, I also planted a garden.

The Solar Adventure began on the week after we closed the school. My student, a teach, and I left by bust at the crack of dawn to go to Dar es Salaam, eager to arrive there before dark. The student had never been to Dar es Salaam and so for 9 hours I was woken up to the sound of – “Mwalimu, look at all those people”, Mwalimu is that the Indian Ocean”, “Mwalimu, why are you so tired – don’t you like riding the bus?” (When he woke me up to ask me why I was tired I very nearly strangled him). We arrived in Dar in one piece, and carried on our business as usual, I left to visit my family in Kilosa and my travel companions left to visit theirs in Dar es Salaam. The fun began when I returned and we left to embark on the solar adventure.

Finding solar panels in Dar is a difficult process, mostly due to the number of people selling fake panels, and also the number of vendors who increase the price by 4-500$ when they see a white person. After a 3 hours long walk through the hot streets of Dar, we finally settled on 3 panels, a battery, inverter, and controller that brought me in a little under my set budget, and then we attempted to lug our heavy cargo through e streets of Dar, not an easy feat. We then packed skill-fully each of the heavy and cumbersome items into one of the already bulging 4 bags my student and I were carrying for the 12 hour bus-ride back home.

As is usual for Tanzania, transportation was the most difficult factor in the solar equation. We laid the panels across our laps for the bumpy 12 hours, and then jumped off the bus in the pouring rain (contents of 1 bag falling into the mud) to unload our cargo at the home of another volunteer, whose village is 40-60 k from my own. We felt that getting off in Ngaga would be easier than waiting until Newala and balancing our parcels precariously for the 2 hour walk down the mountain – though I’ll never know what may have happened if we had gone through Newala, I don know that the Ngaga route was not “easier”.

Ngaga is a village on the junction of 2 roads, one heading to Newala, the other passing through smaller villages until Unveira, a large village 6 k away from my own. Loris – open ended trucks that carry people crammed like sardines on the back – pass through Ngaga through most of the day, on heading to Makong’onda around 3 pm. We waited for this lori at the bus stand starting at noon, but by 3:30 pm and after 2 hours of on and off rain we were becoming concerned. A lori passing to a different village stopped and informed us the Marko lori has passed on a different road in the village before Ngaga, they would not be passing through today, so would have to wait until tomorrow. At this point, after being in the same outfit for 3 days straight (including sleeping) covered in mud and still quite damp and sweaty from the present weather, I angrily began to explore other options to get home. The first car I consulted said they would take me – for 70$. The lori who brought the bad news offered to drop us in Makong’onda, altering their route by 10k, for 40$. Also – we would be riding in the back (uncovered) with the rain in a bed already packed to the gills with other people. My favorite offer was from the people with motorcycles, who said we could strap the solar panels and 4 bags to tone bike, and then the student and I could both ride another bike – again for 40$. I refused both rides in the best interest of the expensive solar panels and accessories-sitting in the front of the restaurant daring someone to come try to take them (when we returned to Mako we discovered my camera was gone), and we waited for anther alternative. At 6 pm, this option presented itself in the form of a phone call, stating another lori was coming around 6:30. We relocated from on stand to anther and waited in the pouring rain with two other women hopeful to get to Mako. We did this until 7:30, when it was too dark to see through the sheets of rain, and hauled the load back through mud to the volunteers home – resigned to the through the lori was not coming (it passed Ngaga 30 minutes later at 8pm).

Day 2 of waiting was begun with a bright spot, as we met a man driving some nurses from one village to anther, who told us eventually he would reach Makong’onda. He told us he would be happy to give us a free ride to Mako, and he would pick up his nurse and pass by in 20 minutes. Sipping our celebratory sodas at the stand, we watched as the land rover approached us then left us in the dust, the driver laughing and waging and the single nurse in the back seat taking a smirking glance as they passed. It was at this point I began doubting my ability to get through the day without causing someone physical harm.

The student and I hopped a ride (with all our baggage) to the near by village where the lori to Mako would turn to the alternative road. We waited there for 2 hours until the lori passed then we hoped aboard, only to find the lori headed back to Ngaga, having decided not to take the alterative road that day. The conductor charge us 6$ (2$ more than it should have been, but hey-it was lower then 40$) and we bounded, bumped, and slid our way back to Mako- where 3 students rant to greet me and carry our load. As we got off the lori the conductor made a near fatal error, telling me that I now had to pay an extra dollar because of the load we had carried. Unfortunate for him, I knew that we had already paid 2$ over the original price, but fortunately for him my student saw the look of death in my eyes-the same look I get right before I kill tarantulas in my home – and he pulled me by the arm away from the conductor who I had begun verbally assaulting . The condo stood shocked and people in the lori shrieked with laugher as the angry white girl yelled in fairly accurate Kiswahili that he was a stupid pig for trying to charge extra money for being a white person. – all while being herded away from the scene by students who were trying very hard not to laugh themselves.

As I sit here writing this story at 9 pm by the glowing light of a solar lamp and not the fickle dart of a lantern light, I find the story slightly more humorous. Slightly.