Wednesday, 2nd May 2007

To: Gairo

Gairo is almost, but not quite, Dodoma. Boarded the killer bus at 5:30 a.m. (yes, you read correctly - yaawwwn!), headed for Dodoma. Well, it didn't actually become a killer bus until about 6:00 p.m., just after we left Morogoro, and it started raining. Shortly after that, at one point, the bus driver maniacally drove off the road to the left and his 2 left tires were on the shoulder, off the road, and it was raining, and I screamed. I couldn't help it. It wasn't a calculated scream. It was just one of those things where you think, "I'm about to die, what should I do? I know ... SCREAM!" So, before I had a chance to weigh over my actions, out came the scream. People looked at me. They seemed to think that my scream was more strange than their bus maniacally driving off the road.

But then I calmed down. But then it happened again - off the road again! This time, I said, "Oh, Jesus!" Or, I might have said, "Oh, shit!" I don't remember exactly. I was wondering whether our bus driver was drunk. After it happened for the third time, I even started asking my fellow passengers whether they thought he was drunk. A man across the isle from me tried to calm me by saying, "Don't worry. His tires are just slipping."

Do you think that calmed me? No, of course not! O.k., maybe he's not drunk, he's just driving way too fast on slippery roads, with bald tires. At this point, it was really raining hard, and it had even become dark. Sometimes, the driver was weaving into the right-hand lane (lane for on-coming traffic), and other times, he was weaving off the road. I kept asking the driver to please slow down. He didn't seem to be listening. His conductors seemed to think that his driving was perfectly reasonable. My friend across the isle kept saying that I should be calm, though by now, I did notice that some of the other passengers were looking worriedly out the front window.

I finally said, "I've got to get off this bus! It's a killer machine!" (I didn't say the "it's a killer machine" part, I just thought it - I didn't want to scare the other passengers, who generally seemed just fine with this driving.) But now it was dark and we were in the middle of nowhere. If I got off here, where would I go? But I didn't care. I'd rather be food for the wolves or whatever is out there. I started saying, "Please stop the bus. I have to get off." Finally, we came to the town of Gairo, and they stopped the bus and I got off. To my great shock, no other passengers followed my lead. Maybe they all thought it was really important to get to Dodoma, just because that was what they'd started off to do. I, however, decided that Dodoma could wait until tomorrow.

When I walked to the only decent little guest house in town, to my dismay, it was fully booked. I had seen another guest house, but didn't really want to go there because I was worried that I would have rat company during the night. Mind you, I get rat company at Annet's house too sometimes, and that doesn't bother me so much because she always teases me about it, but I didn't really want the rat company when I was all by myself. So, the receptionist of this nice guest house, who was a very nice young man, told me to wait because the owner should be there soon and he might be able to help me. So, I waited. And had a coke. And bought the receptionist a coke. And, what the heck, when his wife came out of her room, I bought the receptionist's wife a coke too. And we waited.

After half an hour, the owner came. He was really nice when I explained that I really liked his guest house so wasn't there anything we could do? In the end, he went home and picked up a mattress. Brought it back to the guest house and set it up in the reception area for me to sleep on, with nice clean sheets, on a nice clean floor. Aaahhhhh, how nice! But then things got better. The nice receptionist gentleman said that he couldn't have me sleeping in the reception area, all by myself, so he offered up his apartment (with his wife and daughter, Happy), while he took the reception area. So, I slept the night with the wife and Happy. At first, the wife and Happy were sleeping on a little bed, right next to the main bed. But they didn't have a mosquito net and I worried about Happy, who was only about 2 years old. So, I lifted up the mosquito net and gently pulled Happy under, and the wife seemed happy with that and didn't object. So, I was sleeping with this little 2-year-old and worried and hoping I wouldn't roll over on her. But I needn't have worried. That little kid took up a lot of space! At least 3 times during the night, I woke up, right on the edge of the bed, about to fall off, and Happy was right there by my side so I couldn't move back over. I'd have to gently push Happy over and then I'd get back in the middle of the bed. But, a couple of hours later, I'd find myself back on the edge of the bed, and we'd have to do it all over again.

All was o.k., though. At least I had a nice clean place to sleep.

Oh, and guess what? When the owner came back with his mattress last night, guess what he told me? That a bus had just recently had an accident, just outside of town, it had tipped over. He'd heard about it in town. I'm not saying that it was my bus because I'm not sure - but what if it was???