Thursday, September 27, 2012
The Knight Riders
The long and lonely ride in the dead of night through the heart of nothingness.
Pitch black save for a sliver of moon and man made fires to keep sad people warm.
A worn and rutted road, shattering serenity through the clatter of metal and glass as we groan onward like enfeebled and bitter old men.
The night reveals nothing but its cold emptiness in the search for just a glimmer of familiarity.
But distant, tiny stars in the sea of dark sky shine our way home.
Friday, September 21, 2012
Part 4: The Long, Long Bus Trip
 |
| Lusaka to Dar es Salaam |
The Gentle Giant
When I look up and see my seatmate for the 40-hour ride from
Lusaka, Zambia to Dar es Salaam, my heart sinks because it is a young man the
size of famous National Basketball Association star Shaquille O’Neill.
I curse my luck given that the seats on these buses are
already built for passengers averaging a much smaller size than me much less
the giant to my right. In a flash
I imagine the endless hours of road travel squished into my seat between the
window and this mammoth of a fellow.
“Hey man,” he says as soon as he sits down, his massive hand
outstretched to shake mine and a big grin on his face. We shook, my hand dwarfed by his, and I
immediately breath a sigh of relief.
“Shaq”, as I am privately referring to him, is clearly an
extraordinarily warm individual and within a few minutes, I am struck by his
intelligence and command of a range of complex issues related to development,
economics, and politics.
It doesn’t take long before we’re laughing and joking and
carrying on like old friends.
Granted, many of the people I’ve met along the way have been friendly
and outgoing, but Shaq was an exception because of how well we seem to
connect. Over the course of our
trip, I learned a great deal from him including that his real name is Kuda.
 |
| Shaq attack |
----
One of the more interesting things Kuda shares with me is
how he and his fellow Zimbabweans struggle to make a living. Although he is a well-educated and very
bright guy with experience working for the UN and in other professional jobs,
he makes the long, long, LONG trek from Harare to Dar es Salaam on a monthly
basis in order to make a few extra dollars as a trader.
Out of all of the roughly 60 passengers on the bus, not only
am I the only mzungu (white man), as usual, I am virtually the only one who is
just a passenger and not a trader.
Most of the others have already been on the bus since Harare (I got on
in Lusaka, which is a 12 hour ride north of Harare, Zimbabwe), and are going to
Dar es Salaam in order to buy goods, import them back into Zimbabwe and sell
them on the black market.
The bus is tall and has a very large space underneath the
seating for cargo. The hold has
been completely hollowed out in order to make as much room as possible for hard
goods. Kuda explains how people make the 60-hour bus ride – with only brief
stops along the way – in order to buy a variety of goods in Dar es Salaam and
bring them back across 3 borders and sell them back at home.
 |
| Fellow passengers/survivors |
The only way this makes economic sense is that the goods
being imported are smuggled over multiple borders to avoid paying import
duties. The profit margin for
these traders is based on 1) the comparative strength of the US dollar in
Tanzania (Zimbabwe is a dollarized economy), 2) the avoidance of duties at the
borders, 3) and the sale of the goods back in Zimbabwe on the street corner or
out of their homes where they can avoid sales taxes and other overhead.
 |
| Chickens ride underneath |
When the traders arrive in Dar es Salaam, they have about 24
hours to shop for the goods they are going to bring back into Zimbabwe (the bus
parks and waits a day to return).
Upon arriving back at the bus, the bus company determines the value of
their goods and charges each trader a fee for transporting and smuggling them
back into Zimbabwe. This fee
includes the cost of bribing the litany of border officials, traffic police,
weigh station managers and anyone else along the way.
 |
| Lonely road |
In addition to the cost of the goods and the smuggling fees
to the bus company, the traders have to factor in the cost of their seat,
one night in a hotel in Dar es Salaam, and food and drink along the way. After all the costs are calculated, the
profit margin is very small, and the toll it takes on the body, mind and spirit
to spend 120 hours on a bus over only 6 days is intense.
Not that it was needed, but I have yet another reminder of
how hard life still is for so many people here, including those who are smart,
educated and hard working.
 |
| Bus interior |
Still Life in Rapid Motion
The bus lumbers, sometimes careening, along the thin two-lane
road, overtaking all manner of traffic from massive trucks hauling earth moving
equipment, to the small 150cc motorcycle with a family of three on board. Although the roads are shared by man,
vehicle and beast alike, the huge bus rarely slows down in a relentless drive
northward. Time is money.
 |
| The very long road |
Its such a long ride that there are actually 3 different
drivers who rotate every 6 or 7 hours.
There’s also a cargo manager, 2 mechanics, and 1 guy handling the bribes. Every seat on the bus generates
revenue, so the staff sit on sacks of rice in the aisle or on a thin mat on the
floor up front near the driver or on the hard stairs at the exit or, in one guy’s
case, just standing for hours upon hours.
Every 30 miles or so, there is some kind of required
stop. It’s either a traffic
officer who is supposed to verify the vehicle has the proper paperwork and that
it’s road worthy. The stop consists
of an officer clad in fresh white uniform sitting under a tree waving down the
driver. The bus slows to a slow
roll and one of the bus workers jumps out while it’s still moving to hand the
officer a few bucks and then jump back on the bus that never came to a full
stop.
It’s nice the bus wants to get where it’s going quickly, but
then I wonder what the bus guys are trying to hide by bribing the people who
are, in theory, entrusted with ensuring the safety of road travelers.
 |
| Fresh fruit |
At one weigh station stop, dozens of people coming running
up to the side of the bus to sell drinks, snacks, belts, watches, loaves of
bread, pre-paid cell phone cards, etc.
This is usual at most stops frequented by buses. At this one, most of the vendors are children
who have a strong reaction to the mzungu.
I chat with a few of them from the window and I try to negotiate to buy
some popcorn and a picture. After
a little haggling, the boy agrees.
I hand down my money and he gives me the popcorn, but instantly turns
and runs of so I can’t get a picture even though that was included in the
price. I shout after him and he
simply turns and expertly gives me the finger. Nice to see some useful gestures have made there way to
youth of rural Tanzania.
 |
| Saleswoman |
Night falls. It
is striking how dark it is outside.
There are no streetlights or lights in the small clusters of tiny mud
hut and thatched roof homes a short distance from the side of the road. Nothing at all other than the
occasional cooking fire. Every
once in a while we would drive by a fire along the roadside that somehow got
out of control. You could feel the
heat from it through the window as we speed past.
 |
| Fire |
After 12 hours, the bus stops at an outpost in the middle of
nowhere. We are truly off the grid
in the rural and desolate area a few hours south of the Tanzanian border with
Zambia. The bus refuels and
everyone gets off to find food in the dozen or so stalls and shops. Bustling with riders of a few different
buses, a couple hundred people jostle in the dimly lit area to find something
appealing before being hurried back onto the bus.
 |
| Pit stop |
Twenty minutes later, we are on the road again. As people eat, the bus manager turns on
the huge TV at the front. As the
opening credits of the movie start up, I pray to myself that it is anything but
a Nigerian film, which are just uniformly awful. Fail.
The movie is indeed Nigerian, which means it has a painfully
low quality in every respect, lots of scream crying, long scenes of people
looking menacing into the camera, a horrible electronic music soundtrack, and
over-the-top drama.
I wish I could recap the ridiculousness of the characters
and the intertwined multi-faceted love pentagons involving a wide-array of
relatives, friends, and household employees. I also wish I could say that I didn’t become completely
glued to it after about 30 minutes like a car crash.
The film was SO ridiculous, that the entire bus would often erupt in loud and boisterous laughter when characters were at their most dramatic and serious. Nice to know I was not alone in seeing how crazy the whole premise was. But when the DVD froze halfway through the movie, there was a collective shout of disappointment from the bus and calls for the bus manager to get it fixed so we could see how it all turned out. Luckily it eventually started up again, but after watching it my brain felt like your stomach does after eating at McDonald’s.
The movie has ended and most passengers are asleep including
Kuda who has virtually collapsed onto me like a tree being blow down onto the
roof of a small house. I jam my
elbow into his side and he just grunts and occasionally says groggily, “sorry
bro” and shifts a fraction of and inch and then ends up back where he was. I give up.
 |
| Shaq asleep |
Just when I thought the ride couldn’t get worse, the blacktop
disappears and turns into a deeply rutted dirt road. Amazingly, Kuda doesn’t wake up despite the bone shattering
bumping and clattering of the bus as it passes over this seemingly endless
stretch.
Having given up on sleep, I am thankful for the Kindle,
glowing in the dark and distracting me from the ride. Adding to the struggle is the conflict between the terrible
smell inside the bus, and opening the bus window and subjecting myself to the
very cold night air.
To top it off, as I rest my head on the windowpane, the
light from the Kindle illuminates a cockroach heading towards me. Adding to my dread is the fact that I
am pinned between the window and Shaq who is fast asleep and hopefully dreaming
of large women (another Fanta for the person who knows that reference).
Into Tanzania
 |
| 20 hours in and 20 to go |
We arrive at the border at around 4AM. It doesn’t open until 7AM, so we just
have to sit and wait in the cold.
Once we can pass through on foot, we go through immigration and Kuda
takes me to a small restaurant on the Tanzanian side for breakfast. The border stop takes hours as the bus
manager negotiates passage for the smuggled goods underneath.
While we’re waiting, I talk with the other passengers. I learn that everyone calls me “Mr.
White”, albeit with some affection and disbelief. In addition to my skin color (or lack thereof), my fellow
passengers are incredulous when I tell them I am not married. My status as an oddity increases
dramatically.
 |
| Hams |
After another day filled with endless traffic stops/bribes,
warm Fantas, hours of Kindle reading, and Kuda crushing me, we enter our second
night on the bus. At one point, we
pull over and stop when the driver sees that a bus broken down on the side of
the road is one of the other buses from his company.
 |
| Twin Towers |
It is around 10pm, very dark and cold, and the driver and
mechanics from the other bus are huddled around a small fire to stay warm. All of the passengers have already been
gradually picked up by various passing vans. The crew from the broken bus has no food and expect to be
waiting for days in the middle of nowhere until a new part to fix the bus
arrives.
 |
| Tron Bus |
A couple of them board our crammed bus to ride with us the
rest of the way to Dar es Salaam and get the part they need. Others remain behind to stand
guard. We gather up food from
passengers on our bus and leave it with them. After a few minutes, we continue on.
Dar es Salaam at Last
The bus pulls into the city at around 2AM. We exit stiff, grumpy and tired. I go with Kuda and two others to a
nearby hotel to crash for the night.
The only way to describe my hotel room is to picture the move “Being
John Malkovich” and the office where John Cusack’s character worked. It was half a floor in a building where
you couldn’t stand upright the ceiling was so low. My room was truly a closet with a bed in it. At this point, it hardly mattered and I
collapsed into bed.
 |
| Yah, whatever |
The next morning – only a few hours later – Kuda and two of
the other traders are up and already heading out to shop for the goods they
plan to bring back and sell in Zimbabwe.
I wander with them through streets looking at things to buy when a team
of pickpockets try to steal my wallet.
A haggard mzungu laden with two backpacks is an easy and obvious target.
I say goodbye to Kuda, hopeful our paths will cross again,
somehow, somewhere, someday. I will miss talking about the economics
of smuggling, Bob the A-hole president of his country, horrible Nigerian
movies, and arguing with him about chalupas at 1:30 in the morning.
Kuda said one thing in particular during our many hours of
conversation that will stay with me.
We were sharing our personal stories and lamenting our failures and
regrets. I asked him, with an element
of self-interest in answering the question for myself, how he manages a hard life
fraught with so many challenges and disappointments. After a pause he said: “we are all soldiers. We get back up again.”
Well said, Shaq.
Godspeed.
Monday, September 10, 2012
Part 3: Lusaka, Zambia
 |
| Harare to Lusaka |
After about an hour, reading my book and sipping on the
gloriously hot Nescafe (instant coffee), its time to board the bus to
Lusaka. It resembles a
Greyhound. Tall, two rows of two-by-two
seating, with a large space for luggage storage underneath.
I hand over my ticket and place my backpack underneath, remembering all the tales about luggage disappearing the moment you take your eyes off of it. Comforted upon seeing it shoved behind a crate of sugar packets and evaporated milk, I climb aboard.
 |
| Harare Bus Terminal |
When I bought my ticket the day before, I strategically
pre-selected a middle seat in the very last row of the bus in order to maximize
my chances for legroom. Fail.
By now I should know that any mode of transport is going to
be jammed well beyond normal limits.
This bus was to be no exception.
There are 30 rows of seats four across and the row in the very back,
which is six across equaling 126 seats.
By the time we set off there are roughly 150 people, 7 of whom are
sharing the back row with me in the middle.
------
Being the only mzungu (white person) often has some
advantages. After a short while and a lot of curious looks, people tend to ignore you. At first it’s slightly off-putting because you can sense how
out of place you are, but as soon as you start to engage someone, the floodgates
are opened. It is then you that
you appreciate the ubiquitous warmth and friendliness for which most Africans
are well known.
I’m sitting next to a young fellow from Zambia. After a few days of holiday in Harare,
he’s heading home to his wife and child.
He works in one of the Chinese copper mines. To my right are two brothers. One of whom is mentally challenged and clings to his
brother. In front of me is a mother
of 5 children who is going to Lusaka to buy dresses and women’s clothes to
bring back to Harare and sell.
We chat throughout the trip. Some people sleep or look at the window. As we roll by
stunning, expansive green and fertile fields, I am reminded of how Zimbabwe was
once the jewel of Africa’s agricultural crown. After Bob took over, productivity cratered and the country’s
endless fields remain uncultivated and overgrown with weeds. In a few short years, the country went
from providing food to the nations of Africa and far beyond to becoming a net
importer while once productive fields remain dormant. (See previous post
regarding Bob and my invitation for his lips to embrace the naked backside of my
swimsuit area.)
After a few hours people start snacking on whatever they
brought with them, universally offering what they have to one another including
me and then staring wide-eyed to gauge my reaction.
The young miner to my left sitting next to the window buys a
small bag of what look like tiny apples – each no bigger than a pea – from a
vendor outside the bus when we stopped at an intersection. He offers me one and as I try it I
notice out of the corner of my eye everyone around me watching. “It’s good,” I say as I struggle to
hold back the intense urge to pucker my face because of how tart it is. “Have some more,” he says, and not
wanting to be rude I take a small handful. I regret I had nothing to contribute but, honestly, I’m
pretty sure they didn’t even take notice or care.
------
At the Zimbabwean border with Zambia (they call it the
“Zim-Zam”), we have to all disembark and go through a customs check and an
immigration line. Virtually all
such African borders still involve a dizzying amount of paper. Throughout the border
hall it’s a chorus of stamping of ink blotters, passports and forms in
triplicate. If a fee is to be
paid, as in my case, the border agent has to write out two separate receipts by
hand.
Once we’d all weaved our way down through the twisted bowels
of the Triplicatous Stampasorous and came out the other end, we re-boarded the
bus. As I settle into my seat, one
of the guys who had been next to me that I’d spent a fair amount of time
talking to gets my attention from outside the bus. He’s not continuing on to Lusaka. Suddenly he hands up an ice cold Sprite toward the window
and I politely decline. “It’s a
gift,” he says, smiling. “Thank
you for coming to Africa.” I take
it and thank him. The bus pulls
away and he waves goodbye.
A few hours later and we are at the outskirts of
Lusaka. One of the first things to
catch my eye is the massive “Great Wall of China Casino” on the edge of
town. The sign is in Chinese first
and English second. Not surprising
given how deeply vested China is, and has been, in Zambia’s mining sector. As we go deeper into the city, there
are signs of Chinese culture everywhere including restaurants, hotels catering
to Chinese visitors, and even Chinese herbal health stores.
By the time we pull into the Lusaka bus terminal, dusk is
settling on the city. Mercifully,
I find my bag right where I left it underneath the bus. I chose a cab driver among the two
dozen shouting for my attention, and we head off towards the other side of
town.
Once again, I have not pre-arranged accommodation, so I ask
the driver to take me to a backpackers place near town. Lusaka is just a stopover on my way to
Tanzania, so all I need is a shower, a good meal and a night’s rest before
getting back on the road.
We go to a couple of places but they are full for the
night. The one I settle on has no
more single rooms, but they have plenty of space in the 10-bed dorm. Fine. I am beyond the point of being choosy.
 |
| Kitchen |
The dorm is one large room with 10 bunk beds around its
periphery. There are only a couple
of people in it. The bathroom is
outside and across the courtyard.
I take a cold shower in a small room like a closet. Luckily I packed a shammy since
accommodations here don’t come with a towel.
It’s chilly so I dress warm and go to the little restaurant
on the compound for dinner. A
number of local dishes are laid out in warming pans. I am drawn to a large pan of green cylindrical things that
look like pasta and smell delicious.
The chef tells me its chiloli – fried grubs. I consider it for a moment only because I hear my stepbrother
Kip’s voice in my head saying, “Do it.
Do it. DO it.” But I have
the fish instead (sorry Spaz), which was amazing.
 |
| Snapper |
-----
I manage to sleep fairly well in the dorm. The next morning a cab takes me back to Lusaka bus
terminal. I have some time to wait
for the bus to Dar es Salaam, so the cab driver and I sit and have coffee and
talk. When we’re seated, I ask him
why the coffee vendor and all of the other customers were laughing at me and he
said it’s because I don’t take sugar with my coffee. Tough crowd.
The terminal takes chaotic to a new level. It’s broad daylight but it’s still very
unsafe. Between the swarm of
vehicles moving in and out and throngs of people, theft is common and violence
frequently breaks out between rival bus companies jockeying for customers.
Before the cabbie leave, he deposits me with the employees
from the bus company I am supposed to be on. They are waiting at the empty bay for the bus to arrive so
they can unload and reload it with cargo.
They give me a small wooden bench to sit on with them as I sip my coffee
and observe the goings on at the terminal.
 |
| Waiting |
 |
| Lusaka Bus Terminal |
Young guys who get a commission for each passenger they get
on a bus aggressively go after customers.
I saw several fights break out between rival companies, each claiming
dominion over the other's passenger. On more than one occasion, I saw the pool
of bus guys rush a smaller, weaker guy and literally push him
kicking-and-screaming onto a bus.
Apparently, as soon as they know what direction you’re headed and they
think you can be over-powered, you’re getting on the bus they want you to be
on. But when a prospective
passenger shows up with a load of cargo, that’s when things just get ugly.
An older woman pulled up in a taxi and had a porter from the
terminal take her sack of rice out of the trunk. They were walking toward
the regional buses and the bus
company guys jumped on the porter forcing him to drop the sack of rice. They then dragged the sack and put it
under their bus, essentially giving the old woman no choice but to buy passage
on their bus. She resists, but as
the men crowd around, they force her onto the bus and finally she
acquiesced. And the porter, the
lowest rung in the terminal hierarchy, never got paid for his troubles.
-----
My bus finally pulls in and the flurry of activity
begins. Haggard passengers descend
from the two-story bus, stringy porters fight to unload the cache of cargo from
underneath, and food vendors rush in to sell to the tired and hungry.
 |
| Saddle up |
The cargo bay resembles the aisles of a warehouse store with
huge pallets of everything from coffee, sugar, milk, Fanta (nice), truck tires,
generators, diapers, etc. I come
to learn that it’s the cargo that earns the bus company more money per
trip than the passengers, but more on that later.
I pre-purchased my ticket and this time I picked one near
the front by a window. I ascend
the stairs to the second level to stake my claim. The seat is not at the very front near the driver, but is
the first seat near the bus stairwell.
After about 90 minutes, the bus is re-loaded and ready to
start the 1,500 miles toward Dar es Salaam. It’s estimated to take 40 hours with no stops other than for
the essentials. My
confidence in my ability to handle almost anything is rapidly receding as I
contemplate just how long that is.
In my seat ready to endure the long ride, my steadily increasing
trepidation turns into pure dread as soon as my seatmate arrives. One look and I can only think that
karma has dealt me a serious blow.
NEXT POST:
Forty Hours to Dar es Salaam
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