It took about six days and several bus rides to travel from Matema in southwest Tanzania to Bujumbura, Burundi. Sorry there aren't many photos to accompany this post but as you read, I'm sure you'll understand why I wasn't snapping pictures.
Matema to Mbeya
I was planning to get up around 4am in order to catch the first dala dala at 5am but my digital watch suddenly decided it no longer wanted to cooperate. My watch was my only alarm so my backup plan was threefold: go to sleep early, set my mental alarm, and drink a lot of water right before bed. It worked and I woke up around 2am. It was a long morning but uneventful and I made it to Mbeya a little before noon.
Mbeya to Mpanda
I knew this would be a long bus ride and I was not mistaken. To catch the 6am bus, I used my threefold approach again and ended up wide awake around 1am. Unfortunately, I don't have a snooze button so once I'm awake, it's too risky to go back to sleep!
The bus was crammed full. In a row of three seats, there might be three adults, a couple of babies and/or toddlers, luggage, and the odd chicken, plus the aisle was absolutely jam packed with standing passengers. How these people managed to stand for the duration I'll never know. The bus stopped frequently to pick up more passengers from the side of the road.
We had to switch buses in a town called Sumbawanga which made me think of that 1990s band, Chumbawumba, and their nonsensical but catchy song, “Tubthumping.” Ali, the conductor on the new bus, took a shining to me and made sure to tell me to look for wild animals when we passed through Kitavali National Park. Unfortunately, we were so far behind schedule by the time we got there that it was pitch dark out and I ended up sleeping through most of the park. The 12-14 hour scheduled ride took about seventeen hours. I already knew which hotel I wanted to go to in Mpanda but Ali said it was a five minute taxi ride away. Instead he took me to a clean guest house just a short walk from the bus stop and in the center of town. It was close to midnight by the time I was ready for bed and turned out the light.
Ali had said he wasn't scheduled to return to Sumbawanga until noon the following day but when I got up the next morning he was gone, having to work the 6am bus after all. I spent the day catching up on sleep, reading, and buying my bus ticket for the following day.
Mpanda to Kigoma…but really to Uvinza
My watch was working but I didn't dare press any buttons, like setting the alarm, for fear it would die completely on me so I used my tried and true threefold approach to wake me up. I guess I hadn't figured out exactly how much water to drink as I always seemed to wake up at 1am. At least I was at the bus stop in good time for the 6am bus. Unfortunately, the bus itself wasn't. Nope, and there was still no sign of the bus at 9am.
I found a woman who spoke a little English and asked if she knew what was happening. She said the bus might come at 10am. Hmmm. She found a man who spoke better English and asked him to keep me informed. This guy had euro symbols all over his belt, so I nicknamed him Kaka Euro (kaka means brother in Swahili). Kaka Euro was either a leader or a rabble rouser–I couldn't tell since I don't speak Swahili! He was always at the center of a shifting group of people, yelling and arguing. He lead a charge of a dozen passengers to the police station two or three times and he argued intently with a guy from the bus company several times. I chose to stick near the original woman I had spoken with because I wasn't sure if I wanted to be associated with Kaka Euro! The woman, who I just called Dada (sister), helped me order lunch around noon. It was something I had never tried before: a french fry omelet with ketchup. It came in a plastic bag and a toothpick.
I was starting to fall asleep because it was so hot out and I'd been awake since 1am. I was about to tell Dada I was going back to my hotel and that I'd just try to catch a bus tomorrow when the bus suddenly appeared! It was 1:22pm, over seven hours late. Kaka Euro told me the bus wouldn't leave for awhile yet because the conductor was in jail! He had had the conductor arrested because the conductor refused to refund the passengers' money if the bus didn't leave for Kigoma today! By the time the conductor was released and the bus had been loaded with passengers and luggage (and chickens), it was after 2pm, but the first hour was spent going from the ticket office to the bus station to the gas station, so we didn't actually get on the highway until 3pm, a full nine hours late for an 8-10 hour bus ride. Sheesh.
My assigned seat was in the dead last row, which was not dissimilar to being in the last car of a roller coaster. We felt all of the bumps and accelerations much more intensely than the rest of the bus and had to hold on so as to not go flying! Everyone in my row had a different strategy for holding on. I held the seat in front of me with my arms crossed in an X as this helped my arms fit in the tight space and kept my daypack securely on my lap. The woman on my far right leaned her head against the seat in front of her like you see in the crash position on airplane safety cards. The man next to me was wedged in so tightly due to a young man sitting between his legs that he couldn't move even if he wanted to. Another man gripped the rails of the overhead luggage rack like monkey bars. Still, despite our precautions, we all got some air time!
After a few hours, enough passengers got off that I moved to sit next to Kaka Euro.
We pulled into Uvinza around 9:30pm, still about five hours from Kigoma. There was a lot of commotion, none of which I understood. Dada explained that the bus would continue to Kigoma in the morning and that I should follow her to a guest house. We stop off to pick up dinner–another french fry omelet with ketchup in a plastic bag. For some reason, this ketchup tastes a lot like ketchup chips, which I love, and these eggs were soft and fluffy so this omelet was even better than the one I had at lunch. This guy could be a short order cook in a Bronx bodega, preparing egg and cheese sandwiches for hungry high schoolers. (Note that the green fork is my own. I passed on using the toothpick this time.)
My room was reasonably clean. There was no running water so the extension cord bundled in the sink didn't worry me. I was sporting a good layer of dust and dirt, so I took a cold bucket bath and got into bed. I was debating whether or not I should read when the power went out. I took it as a sign to go to sleep!
Uvinza to Kigoma
Dada banged on my door at 5am. The power was still out so I used my trusty headlamp and got ready in just a few minutes. Many people had spent the night on the bus, including lots of children and babies. It was a bit after 6am by the time the bus rolled out of Uvinza and we arrived in Kigoma about five hours later.
Once I checked in to my guest house, I tried to clean up as best I could. My backpack was covered in dirt and I wasn't much better!
In town, I walked to Lake Tanganyika, the largest lake in Africa. It was nice but it really just looked like any other lake!
I passed an empty lot where some goats were grazing. The goats all suddenly started to make their terrible bleating sound so I looked up and saw a zebra was casually strolling onto their turf to eat!
I realized I hadn't seen any white people since Matema when a white couple walked into a store and I did a double take. I had gotten so used to being the only mzungu that it now felt like my stage name!
For dinner I had yet another french fry omelet at a bar next to my guesthouse since it was the only thing on the menu. As I ate, I watched a Barclay's Premiership match on TV with about forty very passionate and football-crazy Tanzanian men.
Kigoma to Bujumbura
I was excited today because I would finally reach my destination! To do so, I got a dala dala to Manyovu which was less than two hours away, but I had to wait for the dala dala to have enough passengers to leave. This took close to two hours in itself! Luckily, I learned how to wait for share taxis to corral enough passengers when I lived in Uzbekistan so it wasn't a big deal.
Next I took a motorcycle taxi the last few kilometers to the Tanzanian immigration office. When I told the immigration officers I was traveling around east Africa, one of them asked if I was going to the Congo. I said I wasn't planning to and he said something to the effect of I wasn't going there because I was concerned about safety. Really, it's because I think I am going to enough countries and I'll save the DRC for another trip, but he started to say that as long as I have Jesus in my heart, I should be ready to die. There are few things I hate as much as discussing religion with strangers but I couldn't seem to get out of this conversation! They all kept insisting I should be ready to die at any moment, even right now, until finally I pointed out that my mother would be really sad if I died right now. They all have mothers, too, and that did the trick. I got my stamped passport back and left!
I got in a share taxi to cross into Burundi. There was a small road sign that read, “Burundi,” and the paved road turned into a dirt one. The sudden change made me think of that cartoon snowing the American side of the border as hot and sunny while the Canadian side was covered in snow and ice. Anyway, I got my three day transit visa for Burundi and the taxi took us to the market where I caught a dala dala the last few hours to Bujumbura. It was a scenic ride along the coast of Lake Tanganyika as we passed through fishing villages and people walking along the road on their Sunday best on their way to church. One last taxi ride from the bus station to my hotel and I had finally arrived in Bujumbura!
