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D_DAY!
28.10.2001
MOSHI
I honestly thought that I could quietly slide away from Zanzibar. I had had a party to say goodbye to the Swahili Divers staff and thought that was the end of it. But my conservationist, aid working, do gooder, liberal friends in Zanzibar found out that I was en route to Dar es Salaam and took me out to dinner. This was very kind of them because I was horribly sick. The same illness that had dogged me during the Fronter evacuation was still with me.
I wandered Stone town in a daze and let slip to some girl that her boy friend was shagging half of Zanzibar. She was not amused. I thought it was common knowledge! So I slunk off to the Zanair office to hide, and while I was there, annoy them.
"You're going across Africa" Shouted Carl the boss.
"Yes I told you last week"
"I thought you were joking, don't you do any work?" Carl was still almost shouting.
"Yes, sometimes, now I came to say goodbye"
"Piss off then, see you in three months"
"Yes thank you Carl, I am glad that our friendship hasn't changed over the last three years" And I flew out of the door.
Then I had to face my goodbye dinner. Luckily the offended girl wasn't there and the evening passed very pleasantly. Davy the mad Australian pilot was the last in; he regaled us with some hair raising stories about flying, and then told us that they all happened recently.
The next morning Ben (the Swahili Divers manager) and I flew to Dar es Salaam Airport and caught a taxi to the house of my friend Pip.
"Hello Raf, here's my key, treat it like a hotel, see you for dinner maybe, byeeeeeeeeeeeee" and she was gone.
I wandered around Dar buying bits and pieces and tying up loose ends.
Two experiences forced me to realise that I was back in Africa, not on some paradise Island 40 miles off her coast.
As I was having my new Lassa tyres fitted by the road side , I heard the cry "Mweezi" go up. Men dropped their tools and raced across the road. A man was being held by a group of people. Within seconds his shirt had been stripped from him and half hearted punches were thrown at him, incredibly he managed to keep moving and parry some of the punches. As the procession moved further up the road I saw some sticks being raised above heads to bring pain down on the unfortunate thief. The idea behind beating a thief is that you take out all your pain and anger for all the things that you have lost to thieves on the one man that the crowd catches. Having just lost $7000 in the company safe, I had to resist the urge to go over with a truncheon to give him the good news.
"Don't worry my friend" , said the benign Indian garage owner, misunderstanding my fascination with the scene. They will not kill him. They will just thrash him nicely and teach him a lesson."
"Let them kill him I don't care"
"NO no brother, they will just beat him"
When I calmed down I carried on working on my truck, I remembered the last thief beating I had seen in Kisii in Kenya. It had been a totally different and much more violent affair. There the thief had been soundly thumped by a crowd, only to have the mob's leader systematically beat him with a scaffolding pole. I was sickened. Only after living in Africa did I understand that in a society where the police do nothing , if a man is caught red handed retribution can only be swift and painful.
The second experience was as I was driving home from the Airport a car flipped over seconds before I arrived. Again a crowd gathered immediately. The car had been almost crushed and the people were
still inside. I drove a hundred yards down the road and looked back. I fingered my powder fire extinguisher. I had no desire to see someone burn to death. As I looked, the crowd were trying
desperately to free the passengers. Just as I came to the conclusion that I would have to take my tool box back and help cut them free, the crowd rolled the car over and prised open the doors. In
Europe I would have gone along to administer first aid, but then I remembered I had left my huge first aid kit with latex gloves in Pip's house. And so I waited to see that others were helping the
victims and then I drove on.
Both of these experiences sobered me. I thought long and hard about the coming months ahead, and I was glad that I was being joined by some good people in Nairobi.
On the morning of Sunday the 28th of October I finished loading the Weasel and said good bye to Pip. She waved me off from her doorstep and I trundled along to the Port listening to Bruce Springsteen. Cisca the Dutch girl (Role: European) was waiting. She hopped in, I refuelled in Libya street and we bumbled off down the Mogorogoro road.
I was happy to leave Dar. This expedition is leaving at an interesting time. American Aircraft are bombing Afghanistan, The British High Commission in Dar es Salaam is closed for "operational reasons" and there are large numbers of Paramilitary Police deployed at the British and American buildings in town. The American politicians talk of bombing Iraq or Sudan. Sudan is the third country on our route. If I spent too much time thinking about the journey I probably wouldn't go.
We motored our to Chalinze, and I tuned into Radio One Dar es Salaam. They re-broadcast a BBC World Service program called "From our own Correspondent" . A reporter was saying that he watched the
bombing of a Taleban tank by American Aircraft. "But " he went on to say "the Northern Alliance troops are not impressed…they remember the Russian bombing, the Russian planes just dumped their bombs
in the rough area of their target. They killed everyone. That is what they say in needed to move the Taleban"
I have just finished reading "The Great Game" a history of secret service and wars in High Asia. I wondered, as I drove whether anyone else in Government had read this book too. It tells of misadventure after misadventure in the high Pamir and Hindu Kush mountains. We turned right, and continued up towards Mombo and I re-arranged my opinion, maybe crossing the Sahara wasn't such a silly idea after all.
On and on we drove, over the rolling hills of the coastal district. The Weasel was happily able to cruise at 100 kmph As I rounded a bend a man stood in the middle of the road. Thinking he might be a robber I prepared to run him down. Then I saw his Police Cap. He signalled to me to slow down.
"What do you have to say to this" He asked. He showed me the ancient speed gun. It read 92KMPH. I remembered a book called in search of Will Carling, where an ex Army officer had got off a Ghanaian speeding charge by promoting a Land Rovers inability to speed.
"No No no constable, I said in my smoothest lilting tone, "This is a petrol Landrover, we could never do 92 KMPH. This has a maximum speed of 80. " Which just happens to be the Tanzanian national speed limit.
"Oh so you were doing 80?"
"I suppose so, this is an old truck"
"But this is a 50 zone" He stated incredulously. I couldn't believe it, I had admitted to my guilt and confirmed it. How could I be so stupid. Now I was doomed. I had one last card to play.
"Constable, I don't remember seeing a sign saying 50"
"It is there, somewhere. Perhaps by the school" He explained patiently. "NKWAZI!" he shouted, calling over his boss.
"This man says he didn't see the sign and was doing 80" He rattled off in Swahili. I looked blank and stupid. Something I do well. I was just about to say "it's a fair cop" and hand over the required fine when the senior policeman looked at me and said very slowly:
"If you are in a built up area you must, by law, slow down to 50"
"I am so sorry, If I promise not to do it again next time would you let me go?" I pleaded " Do you accept my apology?"
"Yes of course said the senior of the two" and they both beamed with huge smiles and shook my hand.
"BUT" he warned ominously "control your speed!"
"I will indeed sir,"
I took his advice, slowed down at all villages, and subsequently avoided numerous fines; for the police were hiding behind many a bush that Sunday.
As we zoomed along the road, the countryside changed from coastal vegetation to semi arid scrub. The sun seemed more powerful but the humidity of the coast was gone. At korogwe I noticed that the alternator was not working too well , the odometer was broken and that the exhaust was bubbling. So we decided to press on to Moshi and have them all replaced. So now you find me at
Chuni's Garage in Moshi waiting for the mechanics to finish so that we can be on our way.
Behind me is the mighty snow capped Mt Kilimanjaro and in front of me lie the plains full of thorn trees. I would hope to be in Arusha tonight and Nairobi on the 30th or 31st.
For more technical bumf hit the Reports page.
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