News-Record.com

I've mentioned our 15-hour bus ride from Nairobi to Mwanza. It was terrible, as it included one breakdown and several hours over roads so bad that at one point I asked Kenny, "Are we still on a road at all?"

Here's a detailed account by a Peace Corps volunteer of a long bus journey along the same route.

One odd thing was that, anywhere we stopped, even in the dead of night, people selling stuff were immediately outside the bus trying to gin up some business -- food, clothing, watches, whatever. Do people really shop from the bus? These vendors must have thought so.

Of course, many passengers welcomed the chance to buy food, especially bananas or other fruit. After all, we were on a 15-hour trip and there were no stops at McDonald's or Wendy's. Personally, I would draw the line at fish. Not cooked fish. Just fish, fresh from the lake. What are you going to do with a fish on the bus?

Most people in Tanzania get around on foot or bicycle. There's a steady stream of them along the edges of any road. Often they're really loaded down with stuff. A bicycle might have two people and a bundle of wood, or a mattress, or a basket of pineapples. Some of these people ought to enter the Tour de France, because they can really pedal.

But walking and biking are dangerous pursuits. People traveling along the edge of the road are fair game for anyone in a motor vehicle, whose only legal obligation is to blow the horn warning them to get the hell out of the way. The horns are going all the time, and if you're on a bicycle veering into the roadway to pass a pedestrian, you'd darn well better get the hell out of the way. Fortunately, the bicycles are also equipped with horns so the riders can warn the pedestrians to get the hell out of their way.

On city streets, this all becomes very dramatic. Drivers of motor vehicles rule, and they seem to derive sadistric satisfaction from making everyone else dive for cover. It's truly scary to be riding in a cab that is about to run over an old woman. Amazingly, old women in Tanzania are quite nimble. The ones still alive, anyway.

I couldn't help noting an irony on our way back to Mwanza from the Serengeti. Our driver, who took great care anytime animals wandered into our path in the park, showed nowhere near the same consideration for human beings walking or biking along the highway. By this time it was dark and nearly impossible to see people anyway. At one point, an oncoming vehicle with bright lights blinded us. Our driver inadvertantly swerved onto the shoulder. If anyone had been alongside the road at that moment, it would have been deadly, especicially as he was doing about 105 km/hour and wasn't inclined to slow down for anything except a roadblock.

There were actually three of those on the way into Mwanza. Police checkpoints. I guess they were searching for terrorists trying to sneak into the city, although why terrorists would be interested in Mwanza I couldn't guess.

Real terror is riding the dala dala, which is how we got from Andrew's into the city, a distance of about 5 miles. This is a van that, operated in the U.S., would hold maybe 15 people comfortably. Our record was 30. Seating is designed for people no more than 5 feet tall. People without seats crouch over other passengers. Everyone is totally squeezed together. Needless to say, seat belts or child safety seats are not options. In fact, there are no safety features of any kind. The vehicles is stripped down, intended for one purpose: cramming in as many people as possible.

The dala dala is staffed by a driver and a conductor. The conductor shoves passengers in and collects the fare, about a quarter (compared to about $5 for a cab, which we used sometimes). The conductor calls out the stops. Our favorite stop was outside a Coca-Cola bottling plant. The conductor would yell out "Soda! Soda!"

Dala dalas do follow regular routes and run frequently. No matter how full a dala dala appears to be, it will always stop to pick up anyone else who wants to venture in.

Dala dalas are all over the place, the most common vehicles in and around the city. Fully loaded, they can putter uphill at maybe 20 mph. Downhill, it's hang on and pray! I doubt drivers have to pass any kind of test. They swerve around slower traffic any time they think they can avoid a head-on collision with another vehicle by a split second or so.

All routes begin or end at the dala dala depot in central Mwanza. This is a big, dusty vacant lot surrounded by people selling used auto parts, food or clothing. From there you can catch another dala dala going somewhere else. Surprisingly, this system is quite efficient, though uncomfortable and downright frightening.

Oh, petrol costs something above $4 a gallon. When dala dala drivers, and even cab drivers, pull in for fuel, they invariably get no more than three or four liters at a time. Makes sense. When a catastrophic collision could occur at any moment, the last thing you want is a full tank of gas.