Joyride

Travelling again tomorrow. It’s going to be real stress free and exciting. Sunday when we reserved our bus seats, the ticket seller said that he doesn’t have the tickets there so he just wrote in his logbook. He never gave the tickets until yesterday, after I hassled him. He promised it Monday then Tuesday, his reason is that we already took a picture of the logbook with our names on it with our celphone, that’s why its enough, funny him, doesn’t he know that the inspector rips the tickets into two after checking it, what if he rips our celphone apart. There are other bus companies available though. Its either Business class comfy, where you ca still breath inside and First class, if you are sitting and breathing at the same time, we opted for the latter, 2 seaters, crosswind type (strong wind crossing inside the bus every time, Krus krus ang hangin as Ate Ofie puts it in tagalog). Travelling to Dar is really exhilarating, the huge bus continuously dodging reckless bicycle drivers and suicidal animals. Every time we experience a hump in the road I just can’t stop imagining that we ran over a chicken, dog or if a really big hump a cow or a Volkswagen. Just pray for their souls instead of sleeping. I always bring my religion with me when I need to step up the bus. Then there is this 60km rough road, really rough road during summer and marshland during rainy season. I never passed there without a car or a truck stuck in the mud or a hole. Mia, one of the volunteers here lost her shoes when she decided to get out of the car to check what’s causin traffic in that part of the road last time. It’s her first time to pass there and I think it would be the last too. Good thing it’s just her shoes, there might be something else lurking beneath those murky waters. Then the worrying of the engine of the bus overheating or anything going wrong. Last time our back tire exploded, good thing it was the back part if it was the front while cruising on that speed, pieces of my beautiful body will be scraped using a spoon in the road for sure. We waited for an hour for it to be fixed then continued, an hour later, the same tire exploded again. Oblivious of what happened or maybe because of the blasting stereo featuring Kiswahili religious songs the driver keeps on going. He just decided to stop when the tape finally came to an end and we are going down a hilly part. He might have thought that God is not with us after the songs ended. Since the spare tire is already used up we waited for another bus to come along to borrow their spare. Took us another 2 hours. Good thing we got out of there alive and arrive after 12 hours, the usual travel time is just 8 hours. The same thing happened to Nelson on his way from Dodoma. They got a flat tire and they don’t have a spare so they need to wait for a long time that the passengers got rowdy. The driver wielding a roaring chain saw seems to unafraid of the others brandishing their small knives and pipes. After people get bloody and all, (no one was cut in two) which is a good thing the police came and arrested the driver. Who drove the bus…that I didn’t get. Anyways during the chaos Nelson keeping an open mind dialled the VSO emergency number……. but there is no signal hehe…We will travel again tomorrow….this will be fun.