Travel Tales & a Bit of Paradise

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This is likely to me my only update for a bit, as I have found an ideal place to hunker down and attend to writing projects that embodies an atmosphere of profound uneventfulness. In other words, paradise found!

I left Arusha yesterday morning on a 7am local bus. A very local bus. Jammed into the last available seat on an ancient and hulking diesel monolith called the Frey’s (pronounced ‘Freyzy’…the local way is to attach a y to the end of many English words, like the school next door to our place in Arusha, Edmund Rice, was pronounced Edmundy Rice), myself and 80 or so passengers bounced and careened our way for 8 hours out to the coastal enclave of Tanga. Buses and mini-buses here for the most part are not large companies but are individually named, decorated and operated—like ships—by small crews of fierce and hardworking conductors who live on the bus and manage not just the transport but the considerable amount of chaos that comes with their large passenger loads and their baggage, livestock and even emotional needs. Many buses and ‘dala-dalas’ (the tiny passenger vans used for more local routes and in which about 30 people can be crammed) are heavily ornate and full of run-down character, plastered with decals stemming from strange western cultural icons (from Mr. T to Barack Obama), English Premier League football stars, and a whole lot of Jesus and—increasingly as we moved towards the coast—Islam. I have seen thousands of buses with names like Faith in God, Screaming White Eagle, The Spider, Mashallah, Chocolate Kiss, and on and on…Frey’s (or Freyzys’) name stems I would think from some previous incarnation as a bus in a more English-speaking land. It was mostly full of friendly but proudly stoic Muslims, the men in smart dress and rounded woven caps and the women in either brightly colored kanga fabric dresses ad headwraps or complete black burkas with only their dark eyes revealed. And lots of chickens. My seatmate was a kindly old Mze (respectful term for an older man) named Muhammed who deals in used car parts and appointed himself as my guide and friend and insisted on buying me bottled ginger soda to share on the ride. I headed for Tanga, one of Tanzania’s larger cities, knowing it would either be an interesting place to spend some days or would provide a good jump off point to other coastal destinations. I knew there was some chance of finding passage on a boat to Pemba Island on the Zanzibar Peninsula (Zanzibar s actually two islands, Unguja and Pemba, with Pemba playing the part of the impoverished forgotten sister to the vibrant tourist attraction that is Unguja) despite contradictory evidence online and in books, and that from there I could book passage to Unguja depending on what I could find out about the cost of being on the island (it sounds as if its impossible to stay there for less than about $40 a night…way beyond my budget). And if not Zanzibar, there were other idyllic sounding places to wander towards to the south, or back in Kenya to the north.

Described in my reading as a pretty hassle-free and laid back place, I found Tanga to be rather brimming with touts and hustlers who made progress towards getting oriented slow and tiresome. I know enough Swahili now to politely and wittily repel these sort, or if need be to tell them to fuck off outright. But the seedy elements in Tanga weren’t taking no for an answer. Combined with not finding a hotel or guest house that felt welcoming or warm, I opted to stash my bag in a derelict ‘swimming club’ (there’s no beaches in Tanga and access to the sea requires buying a daily membership to a swimming club for about a dollar and then using their concrete steps to reach the waters of the Indian Ocean), take a dip, and head back to the station to find passage to someplace else.  My fallback plan from trying to find passage to Zanzibar was to head down a bumpy road to the south to a sleepy little town called Pangani, which sounded like a place forgotten by time and ideal to disappear for a while. Having heard about a quaint lodge on the beach just north of there, called Peponi Lodge, I called ahead and was told I could camp there for $6.50 a night. At the dala-dala ‘stage’ (station) I found that it was rush hour and there were about four hundred passengers trying to get themselves and their luggage onto an inadequate trickle of beaten up passenger vans headed south. The procedure to board one seemed to be to wait—like a sprinter waiting for the shot—for the arrival of a dala-dala bound for Pangani/Pongwe and to then charge at it and literally hurl one’s body into the scrum of people shoving to get into the small side door. In all my travels it was as chaotic and unpleasant of a transportation situation as I have experienced, and my prospects weren’t good given my huge backpack and my unwillingness to essentially physically assault complete strangers, many of whom were muslim women in full formal dress and fierce eyes. This combined with a ring of insistent touts and scoundrels surrounding me, picking at me, trying to ‘befriend’ me, and trying themselves to board a dala-dala to then sell me the seat at ten time its value, made for a good old travel predicament. The drivers of a few of the vans eventually even got so angry at the touts that two separate fist fights broke out, one of which resulting in my least favorite rascal (he was a real serpent and had been a thorn in my side all day) being punched squarely in the face by a very well built and furious conductor. (it should be noted that at not point was any violence or threat of violence directed towards me)

Eventually I managed to take advantage of the arrival of a dala-dala at a moment when most other would-be-passengers were distracted trying to board the previous one, and found an impossibly small space to smash my backpack into the rear hatch, hanging mostly out over the road. I then forced my way into the van, to the horror of a large
group of elegantly dressed and very proper muslim ladies (me: enormous, white, foreign, sweaty, grizzled, dirty, them: ornate, elegantly groomed, proper, chaste, fearful). All seats were long gone and I mashed myself into the cluster of bodies standing wherever
possible. The ceiling began at the level of my solar plexus, so I was required to bend my body at a total 90 degree angle, my torso and head hanging over upset looking passengers. Babies cried at the sight of me, I couldn’t help but position my balls, etc, a few inches in front of the wide, panicked eyes of a young muslim woman in full black
burka. To some small success, I broke the ice by describing myself—bowed over completely with back in immediate spasms—in Swahili as a ‘Mzungu Twiga’, or ‘white (as in foreign) giraffe.

The following hour and a half ride down an impossible dirt road, undercarriage scraping on each bump and pothole, was one of the least comfortable experiences I can remember having, but seems to have opened the doors to paradise. With the sun setting I flung myself out of the dala-dala into the fresh coastal air and followed a small trail
through the jungle to ‘Peponi Lodge’. There I found an exquisite refuge of bamboo and rattan bandas (cabins), a beautifully elegant open restaurant and bar (replete with gorgeous décor from bookshelves carved from old wooden fishing boats to antique nets and woven crab traps hanging from the rafters), and a clustering of breezy lounge
spaces, all spilling easily down to a perfect white beach and the Indian Ocean.

Owned by a British-Kenyan couple living in Dubai (and managed by their daughter) and staffed by some enormously friendly Tanzanians, Peponi is far from roughing it or from being in the cultural mix (as I usually like to be). The place is an absolute bubble, with cold beer and beautiful seafood at arm’s reach and so much quiet that it feels
like time has stopped. I fantasize about these places while in the crush of hot and chaotic travel, but can’t always actually find it in myself to get quiet enough to stay for long. In this case, though, it may be just right. I have a huge task list of backlogged writing and other projects that need attention, including articles about the courses in Kenya and putting together a personal website that runs. And while the bandas here are upwards of $40 a night per person, I have my little tent pitched just above the water under a bamboo roof for just $6.50 a night plus an extra dollar a day for electricity. I’m
sharing the place with a kindly retired couple from Toronto, two easy going forty-something’s from Montreal who rode motorcycles here from Kigali, an intriguing and thoughtful anglo-Tanzanian gentleman who now lives in Portland and runs a small NGO in Southern Tanzania focused on sustainable agriculture and micro-finance (bridges will be built!) and a nice girl from Seattle who lives with her Masai boyfriend somewhere
in the interior and needed a trip to the sea. Five minutes after my arrival I was seated at a table with the lot of them, ordering a fish curry, and enjoying a very pleasant evening. I ended it by hiking a quarter mile or so out to the low tide mark for a swim in warm water
full of bio-luminescence, stars above and the distant lights of fishing boats on the horizon. I also got stung by about a dozen jellyfish and palmed a sea urchin with my left hand (I’m still looking for a needle today to perform another surgery to get the spines out).

Anyhow, all of that is to say that I’ve found a very sweet spot here and actually have good reason to stay put for a while and put my head down. The one element that is missing is a good internet connection (I can get just enough service here to shoot off an email but not nearly enough to do what I need to do) but rumor has is it that a similar
lodge down the beach a bit has a solid connection that I can sit and use so long as I order a drink. My only other quandary at the moment is that my external hard drive, containing all my photos from the first month) is on the fritz and claims to be corrupt and unreadable. Hopefully I am tech savvy enough to get it back in working order
without needing to seek urban assistance.

Well. That was more than I planned to write. Sometimes the words just want to be put down. So thanks for getting through it is you did, and lots of love anyway if you didn’t! I’m gonna go have a swim!