On the road again

To get to Bukoba, on the west side of Lake Victoria, second largest freshwater lake in the world after Lake Superioryouareinferior (that was a little shout-out to the excellent singer/songwriter Rae Spoon), you have to drive an hour and a half through rush hour traffic in downtown Dar es Salaam with our most excellent driver Remmy (Mchaga man) who taught me how to count to ten in Kiswahili (moja, mbili, tatu, nne, tano, sita, saba, nane, tisa, kumi) and also how to say, "Are you crazy??" to the driver next to us. "Ni wewe kachaa??"

When you get to the Julius Nyerere Airport, named after Tanzania's beloved first president, you have to eat awesome samosas with pili pili sauce and wait for garbled Kiswahili over the tinny loudspeaker and try to pick out the word Mwanza. When you hear it, or think you hear it, you walk past multiple air conditioners spewing out moist, refreshing air, into the tunnel and into your Precision Air Boeing 737. If you're sitting on the right side of the airplane, you will see Mt. Kilimanjaro in the hazy distance. If you're sitting on the left side of the plane engrossed in Aiden Hartley's epic African war correspondant saga The Zanzibar Chest, sipping cold Sprite, you will ignore the oohs and aahhs and continue reading about his time in Rwanda. (heavy sigh)

When you get to Mwanza, you will walk through arrivals and because you're a punctual, rule-following whitey, you'll go directly and proudly into departures (where you will be asked to remove your flipflops for security, but told you can keep your half full water bottle) and then you will sit in a small, crowded security area nearly two hours before your flight, wondering why you didn't explore a bit of Mwanza right outside the door instead of sitting here with nothing but English-dubbed Indian soap operas on TV.

Then, when you're lulled into a stupor by your own deep, coursing thoughts about African history and colonialism and your hands are greasy from spicy peanuts a woman will walk into the area and say a bunch of things in Kiswahili and hopefully you'll recognize the word Bukoba and you'll leap up and join the queue heading to the second leg of your journey, across the giant lake and so far north you're nearly in Uganda.

(Pause, there's a crazy big flying bug in my room and I need to deal with that. Samahani. It appears to have nestled into a light fixture up high on the wall. I think I'll be OK. Maybe it eats mosquitos. Maybe it eats mosquito nets. Great. Can't unthink that. OK. Everything's alright. I just killed it with a New Yorker. Flushed it down the toilet and noticed another one flying around the bathroom. Got that one with a flip flop. Noticed another one in the shower stall. Can't do it. That's enough bloodshed for one night.)

So here I am in Bukoba, land of big flying bugs. It's lush here, in the mountains. I had to put a shawl on to eat supper outside. First time I've felt "chilly" since I arrived here. I hear it goes down to 18 at night this time of year. Positively freezing to the locals who wear jackets and hats. Looking forward to meeting some inspiring volunteer Canadian teachers and doctors and nurses and another Kenyan microcredit advisor helping out a coffee cooperative. Fresh local coffee tomorrow. Wow.

Meantime, here's what a lot of toilets look like in Tanzania. Mom: look away. This is not for you. Have you looked away? OK, everyone else: this is called a squat toilet, for obvious reasons. It's not so bad really. Makes me think of camping.

And here's our favourite take-out joint in Dar where they make that crazy scrambled-eggs-french-fry-barbecue-chicken-veggie-and-hot-sauce concoction I've been telling you about. Tanzanian poutine.

Alrighty, time to clean up the millipede I killed by accidental stepping upon and it's into bed, under the net. The bugs are my friends. Om. The bugs are my friends. Om.