Arusha and then south

Back with friends at their property staying in their guest house, well off the road. It will be a pleasant place to rest, write and visit among the trees in the heat of the afternoons. After unloading all the luggage that evening we walk out to a local bar for  beers and chipsi mayai (French fried potatoes in an omelette) , a common meal around here.
The pikipiki(motorcycle) drivers open up as they race up and down the road making for difficult conversation. The daladala’s (minibus) choked with passengers returning from town, dropping one or two in front of us, all turning to stare at the sight of wazungu’s (white people) in the neighbourhood. And a constant stream of people walking both ways either side of the road.
Morning comes with the call to prayer and cocks crowing, a bucket ‘shower’ wash-up and discussion of what the day might bring. As it turns out, a lot of bureaucratic negotiations and waiting. Over the next few days things do get sorted out, we visit a few restaurants, buy some supplies  from an amazing store downtown Arusha - Gohils  and separate our luggage for the trip to SwagaSwaga.
Looming above us to the north Mt Meru influences the weather dramatically. Each morning the sky overcast and cool, by noon warming up enough to remove our shukas or sweaters and venture out to explore the neighbourhood.
The main roads are paved but in between there are dirt tracks winding their way through the neighbourhoods. Rutted and narrow they are “shortcuts” and have tiny businesses selling notions, fruit and what the locals might need instead of making their way out to a main road. Our host takes us on a bumpy tour of them in his attempts to avoid the chaos on the paved roads. The daladalas backed up, dropping off and picking up along the roads with pikipikis racing both ways on both sides of the road and in between. Along with taxis, safari vehicles, big beer trucks and delivery trucks.
Most things sorted we head out early one morning to Amarula Camp in Kondoa district. There is now a bypass road avoiding the crazy traffic downtown Arusha which takes us south and west through new development expanding the city. To my right  I spot a hill  with half it’s side being excavated. I imagine in a few months it will cease to exist. Below it there are caves being formed by the removal of soil. And below that large chunks of what appears to be the surface above having fallen once undermined. Not exactly the safest work environment.
These new roads make the journey smooth, we are waved through all but one police check and even that one takes only moments. Along the road, Maasai boys stand at attention as their herds wait to cross to water, women washing clothes, colourfully draped on the surrounding bushes, palm frond rug weavings hung from trees to attract buyers and miles and miles of open plain dotted with acacia. Corn and cassava, sunflowers and pigeon pea beside the shambas and bomas, cement constructions in the towns and metal roofs glinting in the distance.
We stop in Babati for lunch and then  drive up into the hills. The swathe taken away on either side of the road makes for better views as we proceed, black rubber all over the road from tires skidding on descent with warnings of the steep slope and tight corners. I miss the old red road although not the bumping and swerving. Some settlements have not changed much, others have grown although it's hard to say. At one point we leave all the settlements behind and are in a wild forest, densely packed trees climbing up the hillsides on both side of the road. Later we pass women sitting beside their clay pots for sale and frequently bicycles with water jugs slung across both sides.
Coming out of the mountains we have a great view of the valley and then the plains beyond the hills. The descent is steep, lined with candelabra cactus, some in bloom their tips yellow like they’ve been lit up, the road black with skid marks and signs indicating runaway lanes.
At Kolo we turn left onto the red clay road, dusty, familiar. I’m anticipating our destination. To the right  through the trees below the mountain, the river bed, dry of course and we descend  through a switchback that allows a view of the camp still green after the rainy season.
It’s anti-climatic. So familiar, but changed over the last couple of years, the Terminalia trees losing leaves, their seeds a bright red, the acacia dropping green bits in a circle around itself. The cottage comfortable in it’s familiarity but damaged by the weather.

Elke makes us dinner, we sit by a fire and later when our hosts return from visiting in the village I  sauna Finnish style, then sit out under the stars.

Crossings

The trains and track infrastructure in Germany make it possible to travel across the country with ease. Almost every small city connects with the rest of the country, the track itself designed for high speed with cement ties; a few wooden ones in the more obscure and less populated communities.
The countryside slips by  fast at 221 kmh from the flat landscape south of Berlin through long tunnels emerging into rolling terrain; farms and forests, villages and always near the cities, klein gardens beside the tracks,
Efficient, timely and orderly we reach our destinations and make our connections with time in between to find the correct platform, then haul our unwieldy baggage aboard, stowing it occasionally in the aisles when the train has no accommodation; regional trains ferrying commuters, the trains filling at one stop then emptying two stops later.
Sometimes there is old rolling stock sitting idle in the yards of stations, inspiring thoughts of restaurants, mini villages and other possibilities for the utilization of these long narrow well roofed ‘structures’. Shipping them negates any advantage…
Done with the train we take a taxi; up, around and over  Stuttgart to a hotel near the airport. In the morning we are ferried to the plane after being corralled with our fellow fliers, then on to Zurich where the observation deck provided  a brief respite from the ferrying and corralling.
On the plane most of folks sleep in between meals on the flight to Nairobi. The monitor on the bulkhead shows our progress in a revolving sequence including elevation, speed and times. Out the window we follow the coast of Greece then over the Mediterranean making landsight over Libya with  Tunisia way off to the right, a line of sand along the coast stretching back to mountains in the deep distance.
Cloud cover soon takes over and Elke spots a ginormous thunderhead building.  We’re at 33,000 feet or meters (hardly matters this high). This is the beginning of the dry season and those clouds are likely sucking moisture, not dropping it. Turbulence soon appears.
Stamped passports, luggage collected. Our driver holds up a sign with Elke Cole and away we go along with a couple of women who are staying out in Karen at a backpackers. They appreciate our assistance in getting there.
Downtown Nairobi, breakfast and wander through the market, a smoothie in a high end coffee bar, more exploring .
Luggage up on the roof of the bus, waiting, and then into the traffic. At one point I spot old (in this case) decrepit looking passenger railcars lined up waiting for trains that will likely never come. The Chinese have taken charge and built new lines and brought in their own rolling stock, making obsolete the existing infrastructure which looks unmaintained. We cross various lines  on our way out of Nairobi, the ties obscured with accumulations of debris growing all manner of weeds, the rusty rails all that’s visible except where the constant traffic shines them up.
 Arriving at the border a fellow on the bus, the only other mzungu skips the leaving Kenya line and goes directly to Enter Tanzania. We follow the pattern standing with the rest of the passengers wanting to get this over with and on to Arusha and beyond. He ends up being the least of our time restraints as the bus that arrived behind us, loads and leaves.The sun setting across the horizon red in the dust. Maasai ladies attempting to interest anyone in their wares, elaborate beaded jewelrysome of which is elaborate and beautiful. Darkness falls and our driver enters the vehicle with much body language and guns the bus down the hill not waiting for the guards at the gate to open it fully, giv’ener through goats and folks lining the road to make up for the lost time… Or maybe the traffic laws are different in Tanzania?

We walk to Haubi

At Amarula campsite in Tanzania every once in a while someone would mention Haubi, a small town nestled in the mountains to the east and south of us. It had a lake! Amazing to consider in this dry environment. And a Sunday market!
Hamisi, one of our workers said he'd ridden his bike there to visit his father from the Pahi side, so I thought it couldn't be too far. One of our goals at the camp was to investigate possible day hikes around the vicinity for our visitors.  Our time at Amarula was rapidly coming to an end so we arranged with Hamisi and Daniel to guide us there one Sunday in September.
  Our host Seppo was visiting and drove us early to the turn, off the Kondoa road. As he drove away the numerous folks waiting for the bus to Haubi peppered Hamisi with questions. "Who are those white folks and why are you walking when you can take the bus?"

The road was rough; loose rock, steep and dusty from months without rain.  Soon we took a"shortcut" following a well worn path traversing a wild and undulating landscape. Off to the right and behind us a village  perched on a rise in the distance. Ahead brush, the odd tree and far away to the south as we climbed we could make out buildings in Kondoa.


When it rains here it is torrential. We descended a few times into canyons of eroded clay and stone, crossing narrow channels carved deep into the earth between hoodoo like columns of dried mud.

Then up and out through scrubby bush and herbage. Incredibly in the midst of this we passed a woman, just sitting, waiting. For what I know not, seemingly, in the middle of nowhere.

  Back on the road dump trucks filled with people passed us by on their way to the market. They all seemed pleased to see us, waving and calling out as the truck lumbered past swaying and straining up the hills. Not long after we walked across a wide sandy river, the tire tracks churned deeply into ruts. I wondered how they managed when the river was running.
Occasionally we'd pass or be passed by young women draped in layers of colourful cloth, Kangas and Kitenges flowing behind them, mist like, baskets in their hands.
Climbing still we passed through a small village, Hamisi again explaining  our purpose to the assembled men at the roadside.

 Not long after a few of those men caught up and walked with us awhile through more extreme looking landscapes till suddenly before us the lake appeared. Some settlement all around, the town visible at the far end at the foot of the hills.


 Walking on we found a fig tree loaded with fruit. Although apparently not so attractive to the locals, we nevertheless enjoyed a sweet treat and a break in the shade before continuing on.

 Down below to the left the lake was choked with weed and reeds so no swimming to cool our sweaty bodies. By this time the road had become quite crowded with people returning from the market. As we turned a corner near lakes end, there before us, a sea of people, booths and buses, trucks, donkeys, dogs, goats and chickens, coloured cloths, racks of western style clothing, pots and pans. I walked past a fellow sitting behind all manner of hardware, hinges, doorlocks, bolts and screws, car and bicycle parts spread out on the ground. And almost everyone there staring at us.
 The whole way we'd been anticipating some food and a place to sit to enjoy it. Where we finally ended up was more like a cave than a cafe and no chips mayai.
That brief interlude passed and we continued on around the lake walking back towards Pahi, passing a woman carrying an enormous clay pot on her head.
 Turns out Haubi is a source of homebrew, made in these giant pots. I wanted one! Sanity prevailed and we walked on.... and on... and on.
 The road continues into the hills but at the river Hamisi turned us right.

 Erosion has an amazing face, the steep walls of sandy clay cut by years of roaring river,  the bed wide and hard enough to drive on. We  walked down broad avenues, around corners into grottoes and canyons, past cliffs and islands eventually climbing onto a plateau up what looked like a driveway.
 On one side farmland stretched right up against the rising hills. On the left, steep drops into narrow canyons choked with vegetation.  Proceeding through this valley the path became narrower, the drops on either side more precipitous and I realized no one was driving in or out from this side!
Ahead the vast Masai steppe was visible from our vantage point in the hills. The trail, no longer a path, traversed one hillside to the other, up down and around loose rock and boulders through Miombo forest.

  It was remarkably red and green, the trees beginning to leaf out in anticipation of the coming rains.

 Stopping to rest we were passed by parties of young men and women, then family groups from very old to young with a troop of donkeys, not impressed, veering off the trail to avoid us.

 

 Down, down through scrub and forest, sliding over rock faces, around more boulders then coming around a corner on the road,  way off in the distance, we spied Amarula camp. Elke called Seppo for a ride and as the land leveled off we walked into  Pahi.
Quite a spectacular walk, we decided next time we'd do it in two days. Maybe then we could try the homebrew?