Home » Tanzania Mozambique » Eastern Africa - part 1

August 22
Mocambique
I travelled alone for the first time in ages. North to Pemba, but soon met up again with some Spanish friends and Niklas from Sweden who is a really big ska music fan and has his own web fanzine.

Eastern Africa - part 1

Stevemonty
2005-09-23 18:53:09

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food to sell or huge piles of chopped wood to make into charcoal to sell.

Electricity is either non-existent or completely unreliable so that even tourist resturants cook on charcoal which just adds to deforestation problems. The Aid development business seem to have very little positive effect and in most cases merely makes Africa's problems worse through creating complete dependence. Here in Mozambique the government is even taxing the Aid companies on the property they rent and trying to tax their salaries too. Can you blame them completely when maybe 50% of their GDP is payed out servicing loans to the developed world. While debts and charity exist then government corruption will also follow and real democracy will never exist until governments are made responsible for their own country.

The area I am in is very, very isolated, partly due to the 25 year war halting development. For my bus to the border I was woken up about 3am. I'm not sure exactly when because my watch was pickpocketed about a month ago. We drove around in an open pickup for maybe 40 minutes picking other people up from various places in town. Then drove in uncomfortable cramped conditions in pitch black along a sandy deeply rutted single track. We stopped briefly for the toilet during sunrise by a brand new nice looking church. It amazes me that people should build such expensive structures among such poverty. By 7 am we'd passed through customs, a shed and was on a dhow sailing across the river to Tanzania. I was carried out the other side to save getting wet.
Tanzania
Jambo, hakuna matata (Hello, no problem in Swahili). Hectic minibuses revving engines loudly and sounding horns at 7am in the middle of nowhere. Why? It's always the same they must waste loads of petrol and we always go to the petrol station once weve waited for the bus is full to fill up with gas.

I travelled onto friendly, pleasent Mtwara where I rested a night. Ate some curry and 5am the next day caught a rough coach to Dar es Salaam. This area has not been developed by the government and the road shakes you constantly, trying to throw you off your seat making me permanently holding on with muscles flexed to take the bumps. The seats were also too small for me and I had to sit sideways to stop my knees from digging into the seat in front. The bus left late and then stopped for ages until the whole corridor was full of passengers too. So it was then hot and overcrowded too.

We had delays all the way including stopping to mend a puncture because they had no spare wheel. Then we were we just an hour away from Dar they decided to stop in a village for 2 hours because it was not safe for passengers to arrive in Dar in the middle of the night. It was too cramped in the bus so I went outside and slept on the road for an hour, by the side of the lorry and next to some other people.

I am now in Dar es Salaam (haven of peace), got money, eaten chapatis, taken a siesta and feeling good again. I still love it here. Tomorrow I catch a ship across to Zanzibar island.