Morogoro Metro Line

We don’t really have a metro but the transportation system gets us around well enough. We live just several kilometers from the center of town and can walk there easily. It’s a pleasant walk, downhill all the way. I’m starting to know my way around the various shops and where in the market to pick up rice, potatoes, or any vegetables or fruit the wakulima didn’t bring this week. Coming back with things to carry is a little arduous so sometimes I’ll call Eric or James, taxi drivers we’ve gotten to know, and get a ride back with them or just walk up the hill where the view is beautiful all the way back home as this picture that I took walking home today shows.

An alternative would be the ubiquitous piki pikis, motorcycles that offer rides on the back. I’ve never ridden one and plan to keep it that way. I hope that I never see anyone I know on one, either :) Piki piki drivers are, in my opinion, too willing to take risks in order to get somewhere fast. They scoot between lines of traffic and act as if they own the road. Some women passengers ride them “sidesaddle,” which is heart-stopping to me, even clutching a baby in their arms.

In town, walking or taking a taxi is an option but when I leave town and head for, say Mzumbe, I’ll take a dalla dalla. They are small VW style buses that carry people between towns. There’s a crowded and somewhat chaotic dalla dalla stand in Morogoro where you can get a ride to any town within one hundred kilometers or so.

The dalla dalla capacity, in terms of actual seats, is about 20, depending on whether four are crowded in the front seat with the driver. But there is a small “aisle” on one side of the little bus and so people get packed in there standing up and end up virtually in the laps of everyone sitting around them. As precious as seats are under these circumstances, people will give them up to older people or to women with children.

There’s always a “conductor” on the dalla dalla who stands inside the door, manages the crowd, and collects fares en route. Conductors are young men with a kind of pizzazz that often includes “hip” clothing like low slung pants and they and the driver will pack in new passengers as we roll along the road until it’s completely amazing. The dalla dalla “packin’em in” record, when I was on board, is 27 people. I’m sure that record can be broken. Every time I get on one, I wonder hopefully if this is the day we sail on to 28, a cause for celebration. It doesn’t seem humanly possible because, when we had 27, the conductor had to put much of his body out the open window in the side door but I think this could be achieved if small children were added to the pack.

The last time that I rode back into Morogoro from Mzumbe, I was sitting in the very back of the dalla dalla, which is a good place because it’s far from the “packin’em in” aisle. Beside me was a skinny young man sitting next to the back window and when we pulled into the dalla dalla stand, he just folded up his limbs in a mysterious way and exited right out that little back window before I knew what was happening.

For longer distances, big buses are a good option. They usually sell only as many tickets as there are seats and the seats are assigned and relatively comfortable. The Abood Bus Company runs a line between here and Dar and various other places. If you’re on a long bus trip and need to use the bathroom anytime, you are truly on your own. (David Sedaris’ stadium pal might come in handy then). Dar is only three or four hours away, so that’s doable for me. When I rode here from Dar on the Abood bus and struck up a conversation with my seatmate Joel, it turned out that he works in Morogoro and knows Dave! So it’s a small world, even here.

Our House

Here are some pictures of our house and the view around us. There is a second story on the right side of the house and a flat rooftop above that with a rather spectacular view of the Uluguru Mountains. We are planning to eat up there sometimes. When the sky is clear there is also a wonderful view of the night sky from the rooftop, including the Southern Cross, my favorite constellation after the Big Dipper.

Someone asked me what a typical day was like. I wish there were typical days! Every day is unexpected and different and, for someone like me who thrives on routine and familiar pathways, it can seem daunting sometimes. This will change ere the mango rains arrive, I expect. Things have to settle down sometime – that’s the hope that I steadfastly cling to.

But then, I did make bread so the house is officially christened and found enough major ingredients to make granola that was not half bad. The wakulima (cultivators) who bring their vegetables and fruit to our front door are pleasantly persuasive in selling their produce so we have more than enough food. Since our house isn’t finished, we have fundi (workmen) around most days, painting, putting in screens, lights and windows.

And, it turns out that the young woman who helps in the house has a sewing machine so she’s going to sew curtains and anything else we need. The sewing machines here are treadle types that don’t use electricity so that job can actually get done since there is an energy crisis here. There had been an on-line schedule of the “load shedding” when various regions have their electricity cut off but in the past days the schedule has pretty much been tossed and electricity goes out randomly. Dave is getting us set up with a battery backup system for lights and laptops so we’ll be able to keep humming along but it’s a real hardship for shops and businesses all over the country.

And what about the mango rains? The short rains that fall in October and November are sometimes called mango rains because they bring sweet mangoes in abundance in December (just in time for the Christmas stockings!) Right now, we are in the coolest and driest season of the year which runs from June until September. “It’s so cold,” people say, shivering in sweaters and coats. “It’s our winter, you know,” they’ll add by way of explanation. Sure, it’s just freezing out there in the morning when the temperature is down to a frigid 65 degrees! By noon it’s up in the 70s and the sun is shining brightly so I’m still a skeptic on this alleged “winter” in East Africa!

Settling In

On Monday we got the keys to our new home in Morogoro. We’d been living out of suitcases in a hotel since arriving so Monday was a great day!  We’re pretty much settled in now – our clothes are unpacked and hung up but it won’t really be home until I make some bread in the oven. It’s a nice house; sunlit, roomy and airy, generously surrounded by all manner of tropical flora. There are banana trees, papaya trees and coconut, palm, and jackfruit trees. There are flame trees and a jacaranda-looking viney thing and other trees whose names I don’t yet know.  Every now and then we hear the plunk, plunk on the roof of falling coconuts or the occasional jack fruit. This morning, two monkeys chased each other around the trees in the back yard, much as the squirrels used to do in our back yard in Columbus.

I love the night sounds here. At dusk, there’s an instant chorus of soothing cicada-like sounds and gentle chirps of other creatures. I loved similar night sounds in Ohio, too, but they heralded the beginning of the end of summer so they carried their own measure of grief!!  Here, I can listen happily, knowing that the only change of season ahead is from dry to rainy. 

Dave is getting settled into his work, too. He’s working with Sokoine University and the Tanzanian Ministry of Agriculture on USAID’s Feed the Future initiative that aims to improve crop yields and help train the next generation of agricultural scientists here. Sokoine is Tanzania’s agricultural university and Dave’s been working with researchers there for a number of years on another project, assessing the impact of rainfall changes on small farmers on Mt. Kilimanjaro.  Morogoro is a kind of “bread basket” for Tanzania and, so far, has not been affected by the drought further north in East Africa.

I’ve added some maps at the side that narrow in on Morogoro. We’re not that far away!  And looking at the maps reminds me of a surprise on our flight here. Normally, we’ve flown south from Amsterdam over Libya and on to East Africa. But the airspace over Libya is closed to commercial aircraft now so we flew east from Amsterdam and then turned south over the Greek Isles and across the Mediterranean to Egypt.  It was a cloudless day and the view of the Islands with their green hills, rocky outcroppings, and twisting coastlines was simply awe-inspiring. We flew south across North Africa with the Nile River just to our left – a tiny line in the sand below and the only major river in the world to flow north to its estuary.