6. Never Before

Pat and I made our first visit to Moshi the day after Dr Semu gave us the tour of the village. Our escort was Mr Lema, the acting headmaster of Msufini School, who was among our welcomers at the airport. He was a small, gaunt man who spoke in a high, raspy voice. He didn’t seem to be much older than we were, and I couldn’t understand how he had come to be running a school - I wondered, if he was the ‘acting’ headmaster, what had happened to the real one.
Mr Lema took us to the single tarmac road that ran up through the village to the Machame entrance of Kilimanjaro’s national park, and we stood in the dust at its side and waited for a bus to pass. Soon enough a small, trundling ‘dala-dala’ rolled into view and a nonchalant hand of Mr Lema’s raised casually just to hip level brought it to a halt beside us. Peering in through the sliding door of the vehicle, however, I saw that there was no space to be had. There were even a couple of people standing up, who were doubled over and squeezed into the front corner. I cursed our luck that we had been met by a capacity-filled bus, and wondered how long it would be until the next one arrived.
Mr Lema, however, appeared to have a looser understanding of the word ‘capacity’, and ushered us towards the doorway. Some people at the back squashed themselves along to make room for us and I scrambled over bodies and baskets in as dignified a manner as possible to get there, trying to ignore all the stares directed at us.
The bus moved off and between the various packed-in bodies I could see the trees and shacks that lined the road, and one of the local ‘bars’ that even this early in the day had attracted a considerable group of morning drinkers. Dr Semu explained to us during our tour of the area that with no work to employ their time, and the current drought withering their chances of a prosperous year ahead, the village’s men were turning to the local banana brew in increasing numbers.
As we left the village the vista opened up to brown-green fields of sisal which the road cut through on its way to the main Moshi-Arusha road. When we reached this junction, however, our weary bus took one look at the distance yet to travel, coughed, spluttered and died: breakdown. I expected an outburst of complaint from the passengers, or at least a healthy round of ‘tut-tutting’, but the calmness with which they disembarked and sauntered off to the main road to flag down a different bus betrayed the frequency with which this happened. Pat and I were the last to emerge into the dazzling, dusty sunlight, and we joined Mr Lema by the main road where another bus had conveniently just pulled up.
It was on this road that I learnt the true meaning of terror. The tarmac was in a worsening state of disrepair, so that the side of the road on which the vehicles travelled was dictated less by any unanimously agreed highway code than by the random positioning of the potholes. We swung from side to side without a thought to oncoming traffic, and I bit my tongue fiercely to stifle my cries of horror at the imminent carnage.
Before long, however, my reserves of fear exhausted themselves and I was able to relax a little and pay more attention to our surroundings. Our new bus was bigger than the last one and played cool African music with lots of intricate guitar picking and frantic drumming. This provided the soundtrack to a magnificent view of the mountain from my window. Great, soft-shouldered Kilimanjaro sat proudly, quite clear in the morning light, as we motored along below. I was so overawed by the scene that my senses struggled to assimilate the new sights along the way, but as we approached our destination I smiled to see a more familiar sight: ‘In Moshi,’ declared a wooden, painted sign, ‘we drink Coca-Cola’.
* * *
Moshi bus station was a cacophony of noise and colour. Brightly painted patterns shone through the grime that caked the sides of the buses. A music stall was pumping Shabba Ranks, buses were farting black, noxious clouds of exhaust and everywhere people were moving, bustling between vehicles. Porters manoeuvred their laden barrows through the crowds, and those without any custom dozed and chatted at the side of the road. Hordes of hawkers touted their wares of sweets, drinks and clothes, parading cardboard boxes of goods above their heads for the bus passengers to inspect through the windows. They made hissing noises through their teeth to attract the attention of potential customers. Everywhere people were talking, laughing, handslapping, arguing and fighting and it was intense and I couldn’t take it in fast enough.
The stalls which lined the bus compound sold detergent and cosmetics and tubs of skin-lightening cream, and their wooden shutters bore paintings of women with bright make-up and hair that was curiously straight and glossy. Mr Lema warned us to watch out for pick-pockets in the crowds, and vigilance was also required for the bus drivers, who appeared to be afflicted with a sight deficiency that prevented them from seeing pedestrians. Their life-threatening driving could not have harboured any malicious intent, however, because the evangelistic slogans on their buses revealed them to be highly religious men. My favourite was the short and simple ‘God is Great’.
We managed to escape the melee unscathed and Mr Lema led us down the pebble-dust roadside past countless stalls and hawkers selling clothes and cigarettes and boiled sweets and broken watches, most of them with no custom, just squatting in the dust with their wares spread out on rags or mats beside them. We came to the market and descended some steps to reach the ramshackle stalls and shacks. All of these, including the passageways between them, were covered with cloth and sacking to guard from the sun. It was cramped and dark and dusty, and the illusion of being underground was broken only by the occasional shafts of sunlight that pierced the makeshift roofing. I felt as though I had walked into the set of an Indiana Jones movie.
At one stall sat an extremely old man with a face of deeply wrinkled parchment, whose stand offered a pitifully small amount of produce, presumably grown on his own shamba. There were a handful of chillies arranged into three small groups, some little bananas and about eight tomatoes piled into a pyramid. Lema bought a couple of bananas for us to try, which were sweet and slightly floury. I didn’t see how much money changed hands but it was probably a fraction of a pence and it might have been the only sale he’d made in ages - he looked as though he’d been waiting for an eternity. But he gave us a big shaky smile and his hidden eyes twinkled, and we thanked him with our new vocabulary, “Asante sana”.
Outside the market there were boys selling thin plastic bags, printed with crude likenesses of Mickey Mouse and Rambo and the Malboro cowboy. We walked past them and through the centre of the town, where I grew sweaty and dusty in the roasting sun. Eventually we entered a restaurant for lunch, and although its atmosphere was clammy and still it was instantly cooling to step into after the intensity of the rays outside.
Once again, though, there was the peculiar feeling of being the only white face around. There were usually a few ‘Wazungu’ around Moshi, as it was the starting point for tourists planning to scale the mountain; it was not unusual to see hardy travellers huffing their backpacks down the road in search of the YMCA, with that slightly bemused and open expression worn by those just arrived in an unfamiliar place. However, rather than aiming for the tourist dollar, this eating place was obviously a locals’ spot, serving traditional dishes such as the stiff, maize-based porridge Ugali, and walking into it I could somehow sense a recognition of our arrival among the diners. This was nothing explicit - no silence crashed down on the room when we entered - but there was a definite acknowledgement of our entrance, perhaps a change of tone in the general hubbub. It was interesting because I had never experienced it before: never before had I been out of the ordinary.
Mr Lema ordered some chicken and baked banana for us, which was surprisingly tasty. I paused briefly to consider the chances of an upset stomach - the dirty, fly-infested room that we ate in suggested that hygiene was not a top concern of the proprietors - and then polished off the entire plate.
Conversation with Lema was a struggle. We asked about life in the village and whether the rainy season, which had been so erratic recently, would eventually materialise, and about the running of the school and the performance of the students. He answered our questions in his dry voice with an air of reluctance that I found hard to put down to shyness or uncertainty. My overwhelming impression was simply one of unfriendliness. His civility towards us was unable to disguise the fact that he was only here as a matter of duty, because he was so deputed by Dr Semu. As I sat at the warped old table, scraping my plate and looking round the room, I was still excited by all the new sights and sounds, but at the same time there was a growing concern in the pit of my stomach that the reaction of the village as a whole to our arrival may concur with that of Mr Lema. Dr Semu had assured us that everyone was very excited and happy to have us teaching at the school and living in the village, but if Lema’s response was anything to go by then it seemed a grudging acceptance was the best we could hope for. Still, as Pat reassured me when I suggested this to him later, it was early days yet.
After lunch a repeat performance of the morning’s bus ride, minus the convenient respite provided by the breakdown, returned us to the village, and we alighted beside the track to the Aishi Hotel. Mr Lema set off in the opposite direction, saying that he had some business to take care of, but assuring us that he would return and join us later. He never came.