My Epic Spring Vacation, Part I

This story will be told in dribs and drabs, since it's long and I don't have much typing time. Here goes:

My trip to Gombe Stream National Park.

Things started off well enough. I arrived in town, bought my bus ticket, and enjoyed my evening away from the village as usual. This is a two-day bus ride with the stop stopping during the night and arriving the next day. The next morning I arrived at the bus stand before 11am, as I was told, to wait for the bus to pass through Dodoma from Dar to Kigoma. I waited and waited some more. They kept assuring me that it was coming, just wait a little longer, it's just a little late, ok, it's really late, but wait. By 2pm I was getting very surly with the office staff and they decided to swap my ticket for one on another (less reputable) bus that they thought would arrive sooner. Both buses show up at the same time: around 3:30. This is more than long enough to make sure that we won't make the preferred stopping point as planned. I get on the bus and it is PACKED. Even the aisles were full of suitcases, sacks, buckets, it looked like a vilage bus without the chickens. So I sit precariously perched on the variety of things in the aisle as the bus speeds out of the station. I don't have a seat. Finally, one of the staff talks someone who is getting off soon into giving up his seat for me: in the very last row.. This is the worst place to sit on a bus. Any time you hit a bump (constantly on the unpaved sections that are most of the road) those in the back row get the most impact and can hit their heads on the ceiling and generally get thrown around like a rag doll the whole time. At least my neighbors were friendly we were finally on our way. The woman next to me was playing music on a laptop. She started singing along to the video of We Are the World (original 1985 version). I sang along too. I don't know if she noticed me singing, but it amused me. The bus keeps driving on. People are asking to stop “to dig some roots”, aka a bathroom break (actual bathroom not required). They don't stop (not even for food) until 11, at which point we've all got to go dig some roots. I found myself a lovely little shrub, and another women thought it looked nice too. When she saw me already there, she asks, “Are you a man or a woman?” I thought this was obvious but I tell her I'm a woman. I guess she didn't want to share a shrub with a dude. We finally stop somewhere around 3 in the morning. Some of the people next to me got off the bus and I curled up for one of the most uncomfortable naps of my life.

Two hours later we're moving again, but not for long. At about 8am we come to a bridge that's gone out with a semi truck stuck in the middle of it. The bus returns to the last town to wait it out, along with every other bus going that way. It's a long wait. Finally around 5 we get word that they've arranged for a bus to pick us up on the other side of the creek. We start unloading the bus for the swap. This is when I learn that back in Dodoma, when I gave my bag to the bus employee to put it in the luggage bay, that it was already full. In a moment of sheer brilliance, he decided to put the bag in the office, despite the fact that I was clearly getting on the bus. So my luggage is gone. Luckily I knew enough to keep my passport and cash on me, and I had a pocketknife, my mp3 player, phone, and camera. Basi. But my anti-malarials, clothes, hairbrush, and binoculars are MIA. We unload the bus and carry everything across the creek to the new bus. The bus continues on until about 8pm, where it stops for the night. This time we stopped early enough to be able to buy dinner and get motel rooms, which I did. Cold chipsi mayai and a buggy room. Next morning (we're now on day 3) we leave at 5am. In the early afternoon we stop in a lovely decent sized town and I decide that I HAVE to get off this bus. So I do. I wander around a bit, find a nice cheap hotel, walk around a bit, shower (I've been wearing those clothes for 3 days at this point) and sleep. The next morning I hopped a daladala to Kigoma town.

To be continued...