Brown packages scribbled to who knows where were being thrown over the driver onto the dash into the growing pile. This rusty old bus - one in a long line of many others decorated with old window paint and random American bumper stickers - was already full of people. You should see all those beautiful khanga colors sitting patiently in balding old stained carpet seats, with babies and bags all propped on laps. The sun was rising over the din, through the dirty windows of the old bus. And the bus station - well, lets just say you’re probably better off in times square on new year’s eve wearing a monkey suit and waving a communist flag.
We had been successfully snuck on the bus just like two bags of powder cocaine without being noticed. We sat up front behind the driver, the only mzungus in sight, and watched the scene unfold below. The tops of heads flowed like coffee beans from a spilled bag or flies on a mango, in every direction with no clear path. People doing so many different things at once your eyes couldn’t keep up without making you positively dizzy. Tickets being sold randomly in the crowd scribbling out receipts this way and that. Vendors knocking on bus windows toting bags of bread, newspapers, T-shirts, cashews, random plastic Tupperware, basically anything that could be picked up at a local goodwill store. Buses pulling out into the crowd without warning and without breaking for rivulets of people weaving around the front. Luggage on heads, coins in hand, nothing on the faces as they make their way through the madness. Two buses pulled out at the same time ahead of us, inches from each others bumper and of course 4 or 5 people somehow passing in between. One attempted to turn wide through an opening the size of less than a single lane while the other inched forward at an angle at its side, blocking a stream of people that then flowed around it like water round a rock. The bus reversed and the people leaning against it casually stepped out of its way. The smell of dirty diesel made its way through the bus. Someone threw a cigarette precariously into a mucky pool of rainbow oiled water and I was just waiting for the whole place to burst heads first into flames. Five buses were jumbled at all angles around us within a space of about a two lane highway - believe it. Vendors crowded the doorways and banged on the sides, making kissing noises to attract attention. It took nearly 45 minutes to make our way off onto the highway.
Then we were off and wobbling on our jelly wheels. By the way we were moving in and out of traffic, you’d think we were a Ferrari needing a paint job. If there isn’t a space, pull out and make one. If the person is going too slow in front of you, come in so hot that they pull off on the shoulder to your left to let you through. If there are people walking in the road or in the crosswalks, simply pull forward into them and instead of dispersing in panic they will simply amble off. Except for the stragglers who fail to move in time, and they will simply be inched out of the way by the bumper. Speed limits simply need not apply. The bus door is open 90% of the time, even on the highway and the attendant swings outside of it and yells things as we pass by the villages. All the way from Dar to Arusha, there are only one lane highways. This means a hierarchy of some kind must exist - and that class system is, very simply, the bigger the better. Every square foot of mass a vehicle has adds to its priority on the by ways. If you are smaller, you will receive a short honk and then be expected to move over to the side or be sideswiped. Honk honk. Comin’ through. When passing (and you must pass often), no slowing down is necessary - only swerving into the other lane for a full five minutes and any oncoming, smaller traffic will veer into the shoulder to let you complete your pass in peace. Being the big kaunas on the road simply to the effect of their size, these coast-to-coast buses really get moving, I can tell you. This gives the general feeling that you are actually safer while other traffic is present, regardless of how many near collisions you may need to avoid with these vehicles. This is because when the road is empty, the bus drivers feel the need to make up for all the time they have wasted swerving in and out of traffic. Which leaves you no choice but to strategize what body position might give you the best chance at surviving a bus rollover of this magnitude. And given the rusty shape of the 1970 frame, the odds don’t look so great. In Africa, it seems it really is about getting where you want to go or die trying.
Twelve hours went by, alternating between certain death and peaceful countryside views. Villages upon villages passed by like still frames. Most of the country is green cut with this ruddy red dirt like a rare steak. A woman walking carrying a machete on her head. Huge bags of charcoal wrapped in twine sitting in potato sacks on the side of the road like little travelers themselves. Trash lacing the ditches and burn scars scraping black patches in the grass. Shirtless men sweating in the sun, hacking at the weeds with a scythe on miles of overgrown roadside. A barefoot child squatted in the red dirt playing with an old brown shoe as if it were a toy airplane. Boys playing a rugged game of soccer in the bush with an empty water bottle for a ball.
The lush green grasses and papery banana leaves of coastal Tanzania soon started to run into rolling savanna and the vegetation became squat and irritable. Small rocky hills and ridges rose up from the roll of the road and everything becomame progressively dustier. Miniature, portable looking towns came up and fell away fast like the wave of a hand. Twists in the road that lead to more nowhere. The tall, dark and wispy figures of the Maasai tribe could be seen draped in robes of their signature colors, rich red and purple, and long walking stick. They come into view like distant colorful ghosts, almost always solitary on a long stretch of empty bush land, and then waft around in your memory as gracefully as they appeared to you in life. Sometimes you can see them riding their bicycles, with beaded anklets on their long bare legs and their positively gorgeous traditional wraps flapping like crimson flags in the wind. By the time we neared Arusha, the bush had become dusty, thorny and seemingly endless - an intimidating patchwork of flatlands and dry grasses. And when the base of Kili rose like the thick stump of a huge redwood, its peak shrouded in clouds, we knew we are almost there. We giggled in spite of ourselves as our driver nearly overturned a minibus that is riding the ditch like a sideways caterpillar in an effort to get out of our way. We were certain we would look back on this day and laugh.
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