First entry from my Iringa trip

August 10

I'm rather pleased with yesterday's trip. Spending too much time in Dar has given me the impression that Tanzania is one big, dusty, overcrowded urban environment. Dar is a huge city. We traveled almost 30km from the city center before we were officially out of the city limits. The view out the window slowly changed from urban to peri-urban to scattered settlements dispersed in the bush. It's hard for me to describe what the countryside is like here. I haven't seen landscape anywhere in the US that is similar to what is found here. The only tree I recognized is the baobab, with the iconic swollen, silver trunks and bare branches towering over other vegetation that looks stunted and pale in comparison.

Most of the land we passed through was either flat or covered in small, gently rolling hills. The flatness made the mountains looming in the distance appear so much taller since there was nothing to diminish the view of them. The land was practically flat right up to base of the mountain ranges, where the earth would suddenly jut skyward into steep, craggy peaks. The city of Morogoro, where we stopped for lunch, has just such a backdrop. The city is small in comparison to Dar, but is the fourth largest urban area after Dar, Mwanza and Arusha. We ate at a Swahili restaurant and I had the usual fare of fried fish, rice, beans, greens and a banana. I was positively stuffed from all the food. I made the mistake of ordering soda water—my second choice after the restaurant didn't have bottled water—which caused my stomach to swell with gas bubbles that made me feel ill until several rounds of burps released the pressure. While we were eating, a large, well-armed motorcade drove past the restaurant. I asked Edison who traveled in such style and he said it was either the president, VP or prime minister. That's probably the closest I'll ever get to a leader of a country.

It took us about two hours to reach Morogoro, and our driver, Rama, said it would be another four hours to Iringa. It would normally take us less time, but part of the route goes through a game park with a strict 70 kph speed limit. While in the park we passed by warthogs, zebra and several kinds of antelope. After the park, it was flat for about another hour, then we started to head up into the mountains. The mountain roads are similar to driving through East Tennessee: they are very narrow and full of tight curves. They are, however, in rather poor condition and most drivers seem to interpret lane markers as suggestions only. At one point, we passed a tractor trailer that had flipped over, probably from taking a curve to quickly. No one appeared hurt, but neither was there anything around that would help them move the truck from out of the middle of the road. Luckily it was only blocking one lane and we were able to pass through. At the top of another mountain was a group of young men selling roasted maize. They practically threw themselves in front of everything that came by, from passenger cars to giant trucks, waving a fistful of partially burnt corn. We each bought a cob, including the driver, who ate with one hand and steered us down the winding road with the other. That was a bit scary.

The road flattened out again as we drove closer to Iringa, though we were surrounded on all sides by boulder covered mountains. Iringa is positioned at the top of one of these mountains. The final climb was surprisingly precarious. The speedometer indicated that the vehicle never went above 40 kph, but it felt like we were still going too fast up the curves, especially with all the bicycles and people crowding along the road. Our hotel turned out to be at the Lutheran Center and is quite luxurious by African standards. My small room contains a TV with 6 channels and a flush toilet. The bed has a mosquito net, but I think the weather is too cold this time of year for the buggers to be out. Hopefully all my bites will heal this week so I can arrive back in Dar as a fresh source of food for the little f***ers to feast on. I really hate mosquitoes.

This morning I got up early, took a long hot shower and ate a big breakfast. I was reading in my room when Edson knocked to ask if the ride had upset my computer in any way. I booted up and found that everything was fine. I asked if something was wrong with his computer, and he said that “some files were missing.” This turned out to mean that Microsoft Office and all of his documents had mysteriously disappeared. It looked like the computer had somehow reverted back to factory settings. This didn't seem possible and despite the fact that Edson appeared calm, I could tell he was trying not to panic. It's hard to run a four day workshop when all your notes are gone. After poking around for a while and finding nothing, I told him to reboot the computer. When it finally came on again, all the files were there. I have no idea what happened, but this is two days in a row when a Vista computer has acted strangely in my presence. (Yesterday morning, Sally's new laptop appeared to be having hard drive trouble and wouldn't boot properly.) I have to wonder if a new Vista update isn't causing some kind of trouble.