Let’s bring Sauna into Africa

In Dodoma I just fill up diesel and continue eastwards. Somewhere on halfway to Morogoro the omnipresent Tanzanian police decides to stop all traffic along the road. Not only along this very part of the road but along the whole route from Dodoma via Morogoro to Dar es Salaam. Yeah, do you get what I’m writing? THEY MANAGE TO FREEZE THE WHOLE TRAFFIC ON 450 km OF "HIGHWAY"! Here they call it highway but from "western" perspective it is just a rural road with one driving lane per direction, comparable to a standard German Bundesstraße. The point is, that especially the part from Dar es Salaam westwards is probably one of the most frequented roads of whole southern Africa because via this road Dar feeds not only Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Burundi and Rwanda with precious goods on stinky trucks but even Congo and South Africa receive Asian stuff by this connection! I bet you have never seen so much mixed, hectic traffic like you find here. Let’s not talk about the suicidal bus drivers ...

So, "all traffic has to move off the tarmac in order for the president to pass". What? Usually the president would fly to Dodoma but not this time. For two hours I wait and have nice chats with all truck drivers in my gang of paralysed vehicles. They hide chickens under the trucks making their trailers sound like moving farms, well-concealed by Maersk or Hamburg Süd containers, hihihihi. The president passes in a platoon of 20-40 noisy, shiny, blinking cars, accompanied by a military helicopter. Some of the bullet-proof Land Cruiser 200s carry anti-air equipment and others oversized sensor arrays. And they drive faster than allowed!

I pass a highway bridge over Kiegeya river which must have simply disappeared with the last flood 2-3 weeks ago. All vehicles drive down into a filled river bed and up again. Pfff. Morogoro is as appealing as Mordor. Just erase it from the map. More fuel stations than inhabitants and they constantly add new stations. It gets late and I desperately search for a place to stay. No campsites around, no simple guest houses. There are mountains nearby but - again - probably not traversable and I don’t want to loose daylight by getting stuck in mud while crawling up steep hills and this arterial road by night brings death!

I continue 50 km to the village of Bwawani where Google reveals the Ngerengere River Eco Camp. Remmy tells me on the phone that actually his camp is 17 km further in the bush and not directly near the road as it is marked in Google. He will await me in Bwawani. Funny that this call is my last possible because it sets my phone balance to 0. In Bwawani it gets dark and no way to contact Remmy. I am about to ask strangers in the village for the directions to his virtual camp when he calls back. He is just around the corner, next to the road, having some beers with his friends, and now also with me. Perfect! He prefers his beer lukewarm. A Maasai leaves our table and pays all beers. Oh, these Maasai, you have to see them when they walk along the road! They are mysterious, fancy and beautiful. Saw the first ones around Iringa as they are quite eye-catching in their traditional robes. They are slenderly built and taller than many other Tanzanians and show distinctive facial features. They say that the Maasai are the last tribe still sticking fully to their original tradition while being wholly “integrated in the regular society”. One of 120 tribes in Tanzania?

Today we heard rumours of the first case of COVID-19 in Tanzania and this is why president Magufuli travelled by car and stopped in some villages on the way to talk about the current situation. He allegedly also suspended two hands full of responsible people in the roads department for letting the crucial bridge over Kiegeya river degrade so much that it couldn’t withstand the ongoing rain falls. All people at the table are very fond of their president and say that he even rejects invitations from European countries in order to save the money for local investments.

Remmy manages his Eco Camp which is integrated into a local community. From time to time he hosts different volunteers and tourist groups there but today I spend the night at his home with the family. He has four kiddies with one son living near Bielefeld and the other, Lenin, spending the evening with us. Mommy prepares delicious supper, yay! And I get my own room =)Les mer