Kilimanjaro Blues

19. Haven of Peace (continued)

2006-10-11T10:25:00.000Z

The bus, as it turned out, managed to exceed our expectations. It boasted a television and video that hung from the ceiling at the front, and we were treated to a fantastic Hindi musical played at deafening volume. The plot appeared to be very melodramatic, for there was a murder and much blood-letting, but when the tension became unbearable the cast would obligingly relieve it by breaking into a song and dance routine.
The film served the extra purpose of distracting me from the bus operators, who were busy trying to kill us all: they hung from the side of the vehicle; they climbed across the roof; they played overtaking-games with other buses, frequently avoiding collision by the thickness of a coat of paint. All this was conducted with a practised insouciance, slouching coolly in the face of imminent death. It was with some relief that Pat and I disembarked at our destination.
The journey that we had just completed from the coast to Kilimanjaro is of crucial historical importance. There was once a time when the interior and the coast were entirely separate worlds, and it was only in the 1700’s that caravan routes began to be forged between them, firstly by tribes such as the Yao and Nyamwezi heading towards the ocean, and then by traders from the coast travelling inland. Certain internal trading patterns had already developed between different local groups, but the arrival of these coastal traders brought a wave of new goods, people and cultural cross-fertilisation that was to have a significant impact. Kilimanjaro received the full effect of this as it provided a convenient stopping place for those heading further inland - a kind of final service station before embarking on the M25 of the African slavery and ivory trade. Trading caravans of hundreds of men would pass by, and the mountain’s plentiful water and fertile soil supplied enough bananas, grain, vegetables and, of course, beer to meet their needs. In return, the traders introduced such ‘civilised’ items as guns and cloth to the Chagga.
Perhaps the most important contribution that came from these traders, however, is the Swahili language, which had originated on the coast as a result of contact between the Bantu vernacular and Arabic and which was now disseminated throughout the interior by the trading caravans. The word Swahili is cognate with Sahel and means shore, and today it is spoken as a first language all the way up the coast from northern Mozambique to southern Somalia. The standard version, which originated from Zanzibar, is the official language of Tanzania and Kenya and is spoken as a second language by millions. In Tanzania, its importance has been enormous: used as the medium of instruction in primary schools since the 1920’s it has played a crucial role in establishing a unity within the country, and minimising those tribal divisions that can be exacerbated by linguistic differences.
The coastal traders who spread this language as they passed Kilimanjaro heading further inland were not simply on the hunt for slaves, as they could have found plenty of these nearer the coast. The interior’s pulling power came instead from its supplies of ivory, which was in increasing demand overseas - especially in Europe, where it would be carved into such essential items as billiard balls, piano keys, knife handles and trinkets. African ivory was whiter and less brittle than that found in India, and was therefore much more suitable for these purposes, and the traders were prepared to travel far inland to find it. The slave trade was to a certain extent a by-product of this practice, as it provided free porterage for the ivory, and then earned a bonus for the traders at the end, when those slaves who had survived the trip to Zanzibar were sold. As Livingstone put it: ‘Black ivory carried white ivory’.
It was the growth of the anti-slavery movement in Britain and other parts of Europe in the early 1800’s that led to the arrival of the first missionaries and explorers in Africa. Livingstone, for example, claimed that exposing the slave trade was one of the primary motivations for his travel in Africa. It is ironic, then, to see how often explorers had to rely on the slave traders themselves for direction, protection or supplies. In 1867 Livingstone was forced to travel with the notorious slaver Tippu Tip for protection, an alliance that was not well received back in Britain. The explorers also owed a broader debt to the slave traders, as most of their expeditions to the interior and the great African lakes began from the slave port of Bagomoyo and followed the trails that had already been blazed by their slave-trading precursors.It was Victorian England that spearheaded the campaign against slavery, but it took a long time to achieve any success. Even when a treaty was signed in 1847 with the Sultan of Zanzibar imposing severe restrictions on the slave trade, little was done to stem the flow of slaves passing through the island. The British patrolled with three or four warships to catch slave dhows, but this proved as effective as using a sieve to catch water. It was later in the 1800’s that decisive military action was taken by the Germans against slave traders in Tanganyika, and it was not until well into the next century that all traces had been removed.

18. Haven of Peace

2006-10-05T13:52:00.000Z

In Dar es Salaam, the first signs of economic liberalisation and private investment were starting to appear. On one of the main streets a new Standard Chartered Bank was about to open for business, and on our return to the mainland from Zanzibar, Pat and I strode into its shining lobby. We were looking for an Englishman called Mr Tucker, the father of a girl I had been in touch with. It was only when I enquired at reception that I learned he was the boss, responsible for the establishment of this new branch.
‘He’s a very busy man,’ said the receptionist. ‘If you don’t have an appointment, I don’t think you will be able to see him.’
I insisted: ‘But I’m trying to get in touch with his daughter. She said I should come here.’
Eventually, we were ushered down some corridors into the heart of the building. The new furnishings gleamed and urgent staff bustled past us. It was only when we met Mr Tucker that I realised what a misguided idea this had been: he hadn’t even heard mention of us, and his eyes popped to see two filthy, unshaven travellers turning up at his smart bank to see him. I explained that I knew his daughter, and asked how we could get in touch with her. He declared that she was busy and would not be able to see us. It was only a matter of moments before we found ourselves being escorted from the building, back into the heat of the Dar es Salaam streets. Another resounding social success on my part, it seemed.

Although Dar es Salaam was created in 1862, it was not until three decades later that it became the country’s capital. It’s founder, Sultan Seyyid Majid of Zanzibar, had hoped the port would become a starting point for caravan routes into the interior. He spent great sums erecting a palace, a fort and dwellings for his officials there, but then died before he could see his aspirations realised. His brother Barghash succeeded him, but in line with Arab custom of the time was reluctant to continue the unfinished work of his dead brother, and as a result Dar entered an apparently terminal decline. A French priest who visited the town in 1866 summed up its sorry state: ‘Seated at the edge of its lake, like an Arab woman in rags in the ruined house of her dead husband, Dari-Salaan seems to be mourning its isolation and poverty.’
With the arrival of the German colonists, however, the town was rescued from this position. Building work resumed in 1891 and the capital was transferred there from Bagomoyo. Dar has retained its position as Tanzania’s largest and most important city ever since, despite losing its official status of capital to the central town of Dodoma in 1973.
In many ways, Dar es Salaam is a charming and relaxed city. A few roads away from any overcrowded, bustling street there is always an empty, tree-lined avenue, or a dusty museum to escape to. However, it’s name, which translates as ‘Haven of Peace’, is not always so appropriate. Danger can appear out of nowhere, and the day that we arrived on the ferry from Zanzibar, it did.
We were making our way down a crowded pavement when there was suddenly a very definite and tangible change of atmosphere among the people around us. It was as if a sudden air of expectancy or realisation had descended on everyone, and I noticed it several seconds before its cause became apparent. Some of the people started to turn their heads and we looked in the same direction towards a nearby road entrance. Out of it, sweating furiously and running like a demon, came a man wearing a black T-shirt and dark trousers, clutching a knife in his right hand. A few metres behind him appeared an angry mob of people in hot pursuit - it must have been the noise from this group that had caused that earlier wave of recognition on our street. This was a lynching in progress: mob justice on the streets of Dar es Salaam.
The bystanders around us did not wait to discover what this event was all about or what the man was supposed to have done. Without asking questions they tore off after him with the others. One man paused to hurl a brick that he had picked up from the road. The hunted man hesitated for a second, unsure of where to go. Pat and I started to hurry down the pavement in the opposite direction to the flow of pursuers, away from their prey. As we strode down the pavement, adrenaline pumping from the unexpectedness of events, I looked back to see him break past an advancing group of men. He dashed down a side street, the group closing in behind him. It was obvious he was not going to get far. I doubt if he made it to the end of the road, and his chances of survival can’t have been high.

Making a swift exit from the scene of the drama, the two of us walked to the bus station to book our trip home. There are a number of competing bus services plying the route from Dar es Salaam to Moshi, and the discerning back-packer can shop around until he finds a reasonably priced vehicle that looks as if it might actually survive the journey. We were just wandering among the ticket booths at the bus station when one of the operators pulled us into his kiosk, insisting that his bus was the most luxurious we would find. When we saw it, he insisted, we would be convinced and would purchase a ticket to travel with his bus company. Of course, the bus was not there at the moment, but he had a picture he could show us which would be all the proof we would need. He rummaged in the drawer of his wooden desk and triumphantly produced a photograph which he thrust beneath our noses.
The photo showed the crumpled wreckage of a bus lying on its side across a road, it’s windows splintered and smashed. A few people stood to one side of it, looking a little bemused. This was obviously a photograph that had been taken for insurance purposes and was not, I imagined, what he had intended to show us. As soon as he saw the look of incredulity on our faces he took a closer look at the photo himself and shrieked with horror, whisking it away from us with great speed, perhaps hoping that if he removed it fast enough we would forget what we had just seen.
His mortification was swiftly replaced with a gleeful of optimism as he brought out another photograph.
‘No no no!’ he cried. ‘This is the bus. Very comfortable, very cheap.’ He gave an embarrassed cough and added ‘Very safe.’
We duly bought our tickets, and promised not to tell anyone what we had seen.

17 New Year (continued)

2006-10-03T09:29:00.000Z

Visible across the waters from Stone Town is Changu Island, and the next day a local fisherman ferried us all across there in his boat. We landed on what turned out to be an archetypal desert island, with a small beach on one side and slender palm trees leaning out towards the lapping water. Pat hired snorkelling gear for the day and swam out quite a way to find some coral, and the rest of us went for a lap of the island, which took only fifteen minutes to complete. In bare feet, we trod gingerly over pine needles through the wooded heart of the island, and further round were amazed at the ocean stretching away, shining a bright turquoise like some tinted photograph.
I departed from the group to explore the old jail - for Changu Island is also known as Prison Island - a spooky dark building that felt as though it was still carrying the vibes of all its old inmates. I swiftly left and caught up with the others, who were nearing our starting point and had just run into the island’s resident giant turtles. These are enormous creatures, about the size of a plump bean-bag, which are said to be up to 300 years old. They had great wrinkled necks which folded and twisted as they turned their ancient eyes to study us.
It was a scorching hot day, and although I was wearing total block suncream I made sure I stayed in the shade in the afternoon. Despite this, however, I burned my feet as badly as if I’d stuck them in the oven to roast. It was only at the end of the day, as we cut our way through the waves back to Zanzibar in the fishing boat, that I noticed this: I became aware of a slight throbbing in my feet and looked down to see them swelling before my eyes into a pair of pink water balloons. Pat also discovered that his snorkelling in the sun had left him with a back as raw as an uncooked steak. It took a while for the pain of sunburn to set in, so we were OK for the moment, but it was obvious that we would not be too comfortable for the next couple of days.
The evening was our last with the Kiwis, as Pat I had arranged a lift to the east coast in the morning and the others would soon be leaving Zanzibar. We went out for a special ‘farewell’ meal, but I felt increasingly sick - either from sunstroke or perhaps a delayed hangover from New Year’s Eve - and I could only manage a couple of glasses of tonic water. I sat in silence at the end of the table feeling sorry for myself, unable to concentrate on the conversation apart from the oh-so-humorous offers of Konyagi and beer that were periodically made to me. It was a relief when the meal was over and our ‘goodbyes’ were said, and I could collapse into bed.

Pat and I spent our last two days on the east coast at a place called Jambiani, where we stayed in a tiny electricity-less guesthouse on the beach. I had thought that such a paradise existed only in the minds of Bacardi advertising executives: endless, empty white sand, fringed with towering palm trees, shelved gently into a sea of bright, translucent blue. At low tide women from the village paddled out to tend their plots of seaweed, which they grew along grids of string on the ocean floor. When the waters rose, they waded in a curving line by the shore with a fishing net, closing into a circle when they encountered a shoal of fish and hauling their catch to the beach.
An old fisherman took us out in his boat, a homemade catamaran constructed from pieces of sun-bleached wood lashed together with rope. The middle section was a hollowed out tree trunk and we perched on the edge with our feet placed inside. We sailed slowly to the coral reef, and snorkelled above bright, swarming fish that weaved among the waving seaweed and brainlike coral below.
At this time, tourism on Zanzibar was comparatively underdeveloped, and seemed to exist in an easy-going harmony with the everyday life of the villages. Since then, however, the industry has been developed at a breakneck pace: direct flights are now available, whose package-tour passengers are whisked to newly-built resorts on the coast, and an American consortium is said to be planning a $2.5 billion dollar luxury development at the north of the island, complete with off-shore banking and its own airstrip. It appears that the beaches will not be deserted for long.
On our last evening we walked for miles along the still-unspoilt shoreline, kicking the surf and stooping to examine the exquisite shells that were scattered at the edge of the water. Each newly arrived wave flopped lazily over its returning predecessor, landing with a slap on the damp sand. Above, the early moon was a bright curve, like a contact lens lying on its back, and out to sea rain fell in streaks from a distant cloud.
In two days we would be back to the reality of village life, and work would begin in earnest at the school. There were a number of questions that were still unanswered: would our house be ready for us to move into? would the other teachers resent us as much as Mr Lema seemed to? what subjects would we actually be teaching? and, perhaps most importantly, how long would it take for our sunburn to heal?

16. New year

2006-10-02T13:51:00.000Z

Pat and I spent the day exploring Stone Town’s confusing labyrinth of narrow alleys. The occasional smell of spices hung in the air and the walls echoed with the squeals of small, darkeyed children playing in the streets. The whole town seemed awash with the colour of drapes and kikois being sold by crowded stalls and shops, and the air rang with bicycle bells as weaving cyclists announced their appearance around corners with loud ‘trring!’s. An old man wearing a white prayer-hat trundled a wheelbarrow past us laden with sugar cane.
Even the most modest houses displayed traditional, fantastically carved doorways, many of which were carved with inscriptions from the Koran. The vast majority of Zanzibarians are Muslim, and widely distributed posters pleaded with tourists to respect their traditions and refrain from parading around Stone Town in shorts or swimming costumes. In some areas, however, western culture had already made its impact. That evening’s film at the Ciné Afrique was a kickboxing movie called DeathWarrant and the manager had written a breathless poster to advertise it: ‘Van Damme in Bloodsport and Kickboxer he won it all. Now there is no rules, there is no escapes, and anybody’s playing games!’
Many of the buildings had fallen into disrepair and the back streets were littered with rubble and rubbish, but I was amazed at how such a run-down, dirty place could retain its beauty. Each sunlit view that met us had a strong charm, from the Sultan’s palace to some back-alley crumbledown doorway. Independence Day was soon to be celebrated, and many of the more important buildings were being spruced up with a fresh coat of paint for the occasion, giving a faint suggestion of how the town must have looked in its heyday.
We went on a ‘Spice Tour’ with an ancient character called Mr Metu, who drove us out of Stone Town to the spice and fruit plantations, where he explained all their produce to us. We sampled cumin, cinnamon, pepper, cayenne, liquorice, starfruit, monstrously oversized citrus fruits and many others, in an orgy of tastes and smells and juices. Mr Metu maintained a patter of anecdotes, half of which were indecipherable, but all of which were entertaining because of the big smile on his wrinkled animated face as he spoke.
We visited the ruins of the Maruhubi Palace, built by Sultan Barghash to house his harem of ninety-nine wives. It was a beautiful scene: a herd of cows grazed on the grass that had sprouted among the ruins, and incredibly tall palm trees leant over them to frame the picture.
In Stone Town, where a cathedral has subsequently been built, is the spot where slaves are said to have been auctioned in the nineteenth century. Those that made it this far had done so against the odds, for many perished before reaching Zanzibar. Having been either kidnapped or bought for beads and cloth on the mainland, they were forced to march hundreds of miles to the coast, fastened to one another with wooden yokes and loaded up with ivory. Those who faltered through weakness or disease were simply murdered on the spot and their bodies ditched by the track; if a mother had difficulty carrying both her baby and her load of ivory, the child would be snatched from her and killed without a second thought. Livingstone estimated that for every slave that made it to the coast alive, four others had died en route.
But reaching the coast was by no means the end of it. So dire was the prospect of the crossing to Zanzibar, and the future that lay beyond, that the main port of departure became known by the slaves as Bagomoyo, which means ‘Lay down your hearts’. They were squeezed into dhows and remained doubled over for the journey with negligible food and non-existent sanitation. It is said that the stench of corpses, human waste and disease that rose from the hatches when they were opened in Zanzibar, days later, was enough to make men faint.
Those that emerged from the hatches, half-blind from the darkness and unable to move their cramped limbs, were understandably not in the most attractive condition to be sold at the market, but the slave traders did what they could: men were rubbed in oil, and women were decorated with jewellery and painted with henna. When sales were made, the slaves might then find themselves remaining on Zanzibar, to work in the clove plantations, or travelling further afield to destinations such as the Americas or the West Indies.

On New Years Eve Pat and I met up with our Kiwi friends at the Africa House Hotel for evening drinks. It seemed that most of the tourists on Zanzibar had similar plans, for the bar was packed. I found it bizarre to see so many white faces in one place. But I could see why they came here, for the view of the sunset was fantastic: the orange sun reflected on the water in a rippling line that stretched towards us, and the only clouds in the enormous sky perched right beside it on the horizon, soaked in its deep glow.
The evening was predictable in its excess, and began with copious quantities of a Tanzanian spirit called Konyagi, which tasted like a cross between gin and vodka and slipped down a treat. We proceeded from the Africa House to the Jamituri Gardens, an open grassy area beside the ocean, where many locals set up stalls in the evening selling food. There was an abundance of cheap squid and tasty fish kebabs, and the atmosphere was carnival-like, the night air ringing with laughter and chat. Kerosine lamps divided the scene into deep shadow and strong light, illuminating each stall in its own pool of brightness. Boys ran sticks of sugar cane through old-fashioned mangles, collecting the squeezed juice in cups and selling it with crushed ice. The air was warm and sweet, and out to sea the waves played with the light from the stars.
More drinking followed in town, accompanied by a succession of frantic drummers and dancing in the street, until New Year arrived with cheers and singing. The stars glimmered above the rooftops, and wandering through the narrow streets later we were greeted by every Zanzibarian we passed with a warm handshake and cries of ‘Happy New Year! Happy New Year!’

Later that night, unable to sleep and still rather drunk, I left our guesthouse for a nocturnal stroll. I walked through the silent alleys, with high buildings on either side of me and dazzling stars above, past vagrant skinny cats and closed shops with battened-down wooden shutters. A ghostly moonlit church peered above the rooftops, standing watchful.
A century or so ago this would have been a stupid thing to do, for the slave traders often supplemented their cargo from the mainland by kidnapping those foolish enough to walk the alleys of Stone Town at night. The harbour became a dumping ground for the murdered bodies of those who resisted, and is said to have reeked from rotting corpses. Indeed, the smell in Zanzibar from the dead and the dying, from the lack of sanitation and the rampant diseases, was so bad that Livingstone was prompted to Christen it ‘Stinkibar’’.
After a while I realised that I didn’t recognise the area I was in - the surroundings looked so different at night - but I thought that if I kept walking for long enough I would discover my bearings and be able to find my way back. Unfortunately, I had made several random turnings along the way and ended up completely disorientated; but, priding myself on my sense of direction I was determined to work out where I was and how to get back to the guesthouse. I had a hunch that the sea lay to my left and decided to strike in that direction until I hit it and could follow the coast road home. But after a minute or two my hunch changed and I decided I should be heading in a different direction. And so it went on, until I emerged by chance at the opposite end of town from where I thought I was and, finally recognising where I was and feeling slightly sheepish, I headed back to the guesthouse and tumbled into bed exhausted.

15. Spice Island

2006-09-22T10:01:00.000Z

On Boxing Day, I visited Moshi train station to try and book two tickets for Tuesday’s train to Dar es Salaam. I cut a left at the bus station down a slight hill and walked through a small, stony wasteland area, where a group of children were playing on the rubble and some lines of colourful washing were blowing in the breeze. At the ticket office the man told me that there were no sleeper cabins left, apart from one cabin for two that he had kept free ‘for emergencies’.
I had been warned about corruption on the railways and it seemed to me that it was going to take a bribe to secure me those tickets, but when I mentioned that I was a ‘mwalimu’ (teacher) there was a visible change in his attitude, and he asked me where.
‘At Msufini Secondary School,’ I told him. ‘It’s in Machame region.’
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘so you are helping Tanzania,’ and with a flourish he produced the two tickets.

Pat and I spent the evening with three Kiwis, Tracy, Alastair and Rachelle, who were staying at our hostel, and, considering ourselves to be practically locals after the handful of times we had been to Moshi, we undertook to provide them with a guided tour of the town the next day.
But they were less than impressed.
‘It’s a bit of a shithole, this place,’ declared Alastair. ‘And it’s going to be the nearest town to where you’re living? Ha, you guys are going to have a blast - "Hey, it’s Friday night, let’s hit Moshi!"‘
I tried to make them see the inner beauty of the rubbish-strewn roadsides and the exhaust-filled air, but they remained unconvinced.
‘But it’s a great place.’ I insisted, making one final effort. ‘You can even play golf here.’

‘I am sorry, we don’t hire golf clubs any more.’ said the manager of the course when we went to inquire. He gave a big sigh. ‘We used to, but when people got to the ninth hole they would just hop over the fence and run off with them down the road.’
‘Hard luck, mate,’ laughed Alastair.

We went down to the bus station instead (‘My friend! My friend! Where to? My friend, you want bus? Come with me!’) and the Kiwis booked themselves bus tickets to Dar, as they were also planning to visit Zanzibar for New Year. It was both cheaper and quicker to go by bus than by train, but was also, we imagined, far less comfortable, and I lost no opportunity to remind them of the cramped, bumpy ride they would be having tomorrow as we reclined in our own personal cabin on the train.
Our attitudes changed somewhat the next day, when we sat in our cabin, sweltering in the heat and praying for it to start rolling so we could get some breeze coming in through the window. There was a small metal basin in the corner, but no water was forthcoming so I disembarked to buy some sodas for the journey. Sodas in Tanzania come in glass bottles rather than cans, and we were going through crateloads of them; the sun’s heat was so strong that constant lubrication was essential, and as tap water needed filtering or at least boiling, sodas were the convenient alternative. My Coke habit had already worsened into three or four bottles a day.
I returned to our carriage with armfuls of 7Up and Coke bottles, and eventually the train jerked into motion. Further refreshment came from the large pineapple we had bought in the market, which we stabbed apart with Pat’s penknife, but this turned out to be a rather unfortunate purchase because the sticky juices ran everywhere and we had no water to clean it all up. We sat in our cabin, hot and sticky and stinking of sweet pineapple, rolling through the dusty Tanzanian countryside. The scrubland and bush that the track cut its way through was interrupted by the occasional settlement where the train stopped and hoards of kids ran up and down outside the carriages selling fruit and drinks and nuts, waving their produce above their heads and clamouring for custom from the train’s passengers.
Eventually, the shadows of the bushes and baobab trees outside grew longer and longer, until the sun slipped below the horizon and they took over, filling every space and inking in the evening. It was warm and still, and the air seemed to carry the dry smell of sand and pine needles. The train kept rolling, and I leaned out of the window, smoking a cigarette and listening to the rhythm of its wheels against the silence outside.
We had been warned about the danger of theft on trains at night, and so were slightly perturbed to find that the lock of our cabin was broken. We managed to find a way of tying the door shut with a strap from Pat’s rucksack, which was just as well because we both heard someone rattling the handle later in the night trying to get in. Our ceiling thudded with footsteps as people walked around on the train’s roof, and we had been told to keep our window wedged shut with the block of wood provided to prevent anyone coming in. With the windows shut, however, the airless heat became unbearable, so we opted for leaving it open - the risk of theft, we figured, was better than the certainty of suffocation.
It was an extremely slow journey through the night, and the train’s frequent and jolting stops made sleep rather difficult. I spent much of the night lying back listening to my Walkman, but must eventually have I dropped off, for I woke the next morning to find my headphones wrapped around my neck and the batteries flat.

* * *

At 10am we pulled into Dar es Salaam train station, and climbed off the train with our packs on our backs, weary, hot, and envious of the mere seven-and-a-half hours it would have taken the Kiwis to get here. We resolved to opt for the bus on the way back.
It was our first time in a major East African city, and we were as paranoid as a cow in a slaughterhouse. I told Pat the story I had heard about a tourist in Dar who had accepted a Coke from a gentleman sitting next to him on a bench, only to wake up two days later in the middle of nowhere, with no luggage, having missed his flight home.
‘Thanks for sharing that with me,’ said Pat. ‘I feel much more comfortable now.’
We survived the first few minutes without being mugged or knifed, though, and started to relax a little. The difference between Dar es Salaam and Moshi was instantly apparent to me in the range of goods available from its street hawkers: whereas the streets of Moshi had offered wares such as broken watches and rubber stamps, the boys of Dar touted far more sophisticated products. Young men stood at the kerb clutching telephones and electronic toys. A boy hovered at a junction holding, rather surreally, a shrink-wrapped ironing board, which he proffered to the waiting vehicles. The variety of their goods was impressive, but I didn’t see one of them make a sale.

At the port (where a hand-painted advertising sign made outrageous and plainly untrue claims for Serengeti Lager: ‘100% Malt. Pure and Virgin. No Hangovers!’) we bought tickets for the ‘Flying Horse’ across to Zanzibar. In order to pay the requisite port tax, however, there was a strange ritual akin to a rugby scrummage that had to be performed. The man dishing out the stamps for port tax sat behind a metal grille with a tiny hole at the bottom through which the transaction was conducted, and around this hole was squashed a tight group of about twenty people. The idea of the game was to elbow, push, squeeze and feet-stamp your way through them all to reach the window. On about the third attempt I performed this successfully and emerged victorious, waving our two stamped tickets.
The Flying Horse was a large modern ferry, and we sat on the top deck watching the sea roll beneath us. It was the first time I had seen the Indian Ocean and my mind reeled with associations that the name seemed to hold, of trading ships and spices and slaves. It was a rich title, full of tropical beckoning and ancient histories. A flat, graceful dhow cut its way through the turquoise water with a great puffed-out sail and swarms of men on its deck. The sun fragmented and dazzled from the ocean’s surface, and even miles out to sea we passed the occasional tiny lonesome fishing boat, sitting under the cloudless sky. Approaching Zanzibar after a couple of hours at sea I could made out with increasing clarity the buildings that lined the edge of the Stone Town, looking out over the ocean. They appeared old and worn, but still beautiful and dignified, and I grew more excited, thinking of this evocative name and the promise and mystery it seems to hold: Zanzibar.
In 1828, Zanzibar saw the arrival of its most important visitor: Sayyid Said, who was the ruler of Oman, a small state on the south-eastern coast of Arabia. For centuries, migrating Arabs and Persians had been settling and trading on the East African coast; there had been a period of Portuguese rule and terror following Vasco da Gama’s arrival in 1498, but the Portuguese were driven out by their Omani enemies in 1698, and Arab influence had flourished once more. It was with Sayyid Said, however, that Omani rule was firmly established in the region, and Zanzibar was central to his success. He transferred his court and government here, and used the island as the basis for a trading empire which at its peak extended throughout present-day mainland Tanzania, and into parts of Malawi, Zambia, the Congo, Uganda and Kenya. Zanzibari trading caravans, armed with guns, delved deep into Africa and returned with its two most valuable commodities: ivory and slaves.

Imagine how history would have hung in the balance if, on that portentous day in 1828 when Sayyid Said first arrived on the island, he had been refused entry for failing to possess a Yellow Fever vaccination certificate. Such was the fate that befell Pat and me when we disembarked from the Flying Horse. Although modern day Zanzibar is a part of Tanzania, it employs a degree of autonomy which allows it its own government and administration, and anyone arriving at the port must pass through immigration as though entering a different country.
‘No Yellow Fever certificate, no entry,’ explained the immigration official, succinctly.
‘We have them. Honestly,’ I said. ‘But we’ve left them at home, near Moshi.’
The official stood in silence, sizing us up. I wondered if it was going to take a bribe to get us through, or if we were going to be sent back to Dar es Salaam.
‘You are living in Moshi?’
Remembering our encounter at the train station I gabbled ‘Yes! Yes! We are teachers, we are helping Tanzania!’
Without another word, he waved us past. Teaching was proving to be a remarkably useful occupation.
‘And we haven’t even done any yet,’ pointed out Pat.

In an alternate universe, Sayyid Said stood exasperated before the immigration official; he was a forceful, powerful man, not used to having his authority challenged. ‘But this is outrageous! The vaccine for Yellow Fever will not be invented until the next century! How can you expect me to have a vaccination certificate?’
‘No certificate, no entry,’ repeated the official.
Sayyid Said fingered the sword at his side and adopted a menacing tone. ‘Listen, my friend. Do you know how I succeeded to the Omani throne? I knifed a pretender at a palace reception in 1806. I would strongly advise you not to mess with me.’
‘I don’t care if you knifed a whole army. You’re not coming in.’
‘You obviously don’t realise who I am. I am Sayyid Said, the Imam of Oman! In 1840 I will settle here and become Sultan of Zanzibar, and thanks to me this island will gain enormous wealth and fame: I will encourage clove plantation and build Zanzibar into the world’s largest clove exporter! I will bring Asian capital to finance trade and exploration on the mainland, and Zanzibar will prosper from the rewards!’
‘Oh I know who you are,’ replied the immigration official. ‘You will develop the ivory trade, and be responsible for the decimation of the mainland’s elephant population. You will promote the slave trade, and profit from the misery and death of my African brothers.’
Sayyid Said stroked his beard and decided on a different approach. ‘But do you know what will be the result of all my deeds? In the twentieth century, Zanzibar will develop a vigorous tourist industry! Travellers from around the world will be enticed by the exotic image I will bestow on it: they will all long to visit the ‘Spice Island’, as it will be known; they will want to see the old slave market in Stone Town, and walk among the ruins of my descendants palaces. And do you know what this means? We will require many immigration officers to check their visas, to stamp their passports, and to demand their Yellow Fever certificates. And I think you, my friend,’ he tapped the official with the hilt of his sword, ‘and your descendants, will be just the men for the job.’
And so, thinking of his grandchildren and those beyond, the immigration official waved Sayyid Said through. For jobs would be hard to come by in modern Zanzibar.

14. For what we are about to receive

2006-09-21T10:04:00.000Z

The following day, which happened to be Christmas Eve, we headed across Arusha to the bus station, and were approached by a tout asking if we wanted to go on a safari.
‘Which company do you work for?’ Pat asked.
‘AA Tours’, he replied.
‘Um, I think not.’
Boarding our so-called ‘luxury bus’ for Moshi, we found the only vacant seats to be at the back of the vehicle. The reason for their availability soon became apparent: they were directly above the rear wheels, and every bump in the unsurfaced Moshi-Arusha road sent us into orbit near the ceiling. My spine shuddered and crunched with every impact, and I was sure that I disembarked a good few inches shorter.
We called in on Dr Semu to wish him a merry Christmas and tell him of our new plans, which were to go to the village for Christmas Day and then to Zanzibar for New Year. He didn’t see why we would want to go Zanzibar.
‘They are all Muslims there,’ he explained to us in a tone of warning. ‘They eat with their hands. Ugh, it is a dirty place.’ We thanked him for his advice, which we knew we were going to ignore, and asked about the house in the village that we were going to live in. Dr Semu was happy to tell us that it was currently being cleaned and would shortly be ready for us to move into.
That evening the two of us booked into a guesthouse called the Green Cottage Hostel, which, although it was neither painted green nor surrounded by greenery, and was certainly not a cottage, was very pleasant and welcoming. We had been surprised to find a Chinese restaurant nearby, whose main custom seemed to comprise of tourists celebrating ascents of Kilimanjaro, and we treated ourselves to a memorable Christmas Eve meal.
Christmas Day would also not be forgotten quickly, it was so alien from our usual festive routine in England. Taking one of the few operating buses to the village we arrived late, having missed the first hour of the church service, and so joined the overflow outside the church. Before long, we had attracted a congregation of our own: a large group of children, huddled around us, wide-eyed to see such unusual specimens in their village.

‘It is very, very good to meet you at last.’ said Mr Kwayu, the head of the school’s Parents Committee, after the service. He shook our hands vigorously. ‘As you can see, I have returned from my seminar, and you must, you absolutely must, come and eat with my family.’ To eat Christmas lunch with a local family was an unexpected treat. Mad little Shirou was on great form, and we ploughed our way through a spread of rice, chicken and bananas.
Before we ate, Mr Kwayu, who had discovered that I was a Theology graduate, asked me to say grace, which completely stumped me. Everybody bowed their heads in expectation, and I recited the only grace I knew - my old school grace - and tried to invest the inadequate and woefully brief words with as much solemnity and meaning as I could: ‘For what we are about to receive...may the Lord make us truly thankful...Amen.’
It was refreshing to have a proper talk with Mr Kwayu - here at last was someone who could give a straight answer to a straight question. This came as quite a relief, because the rest of the Chagga people we had met had proved to be fairly skilled in the art of bullshitting. He seemed very intelligent and had clear, concrete plans for the school, including the organisation of the new library. He gave us a copy of the English syllabus and assured us that although our house had not, in fact, been cleaned and prepared for us it definitely would be by the time of our return from Zanzibar.

Each time Pat and I travelled to Moshi, the bus seemed fuller than on our previous visit, and on this occasion even the bus operator conceded that there was no more room inside. So we ended up riding on top, clinging to the roof-rack with white knuckles. We raced along, trying to open our eyes against the rushing wind and ducking to avoid overhead branches, with a green blur on either side and tarmac streaking beneath us. It was Christmas day and I was sitting on the roof of a bus in East Africa, flying past banana plants with Kilimanjaro at my side and the temperature in the nineties. My grin was broad enough to tickle my ear lobes.

* * *

In booking my climb up Kilimanjaro I have been deliberating for days which route to attempt: Machame, which is harder and known as the ‘The Whiskey Route’, or the busier tourist route from Marangu, which is known as ‘The Coca-Cola Route’. In the end, I felt obliged to opt for The Whiskey Route because it leaves from the village where I lived four years ago, but I was not looking forward to it. An Englishman I met in Moshi described it to me as ‘An absolute nightmare’.
‘It’s so beautiful,’ he said, ‘but you need to be bloody stubborn, and bloody fit.’
The former attribute I possess in great quantity, but the latter is significantly lacking, so I was relieved when the tour operator in Moshi said to me:
‘I am sorry, you cannot climb the Machame route. There have been bad forest fires on the western slopes of the mountain in the last few days. That route is impassable. But I have a group going up the Marangu route - you can join them.’
And so I find myself in a minibus bound for Marangu with my climbing companions: an Australian called Bill, a German called Stefan, and two Dutch sisters, Madeleine and Jokelyne.
At the gate I have enough time, while the tour operator pays our park fees and assigns our porters, to take encouragement from the age and decrepitude of many of the other tourists waiting to begin their ascent, and then we are off. The track that leads up through the forest from the gate is gentle and wide, and for the first few minutes is crowded with tourists, until they settle into their respective paces and disperse along its route. It feels less like the beginning of a heroic attempt to scale Africa’s highest mountain and more like a Sunday School outing.
‘It was never like this for Hans Meyer,’ I mutter.
As if to confirm this, Bill announces:
‘Piece of piss! It’s easy-peasy! You see,’ he calls towards the distant peak of Kibo, ‘I’ll be up there, no worries. You don’t scare me, you big ...’ he struggles in vain for an appropriate insult, ‘... you big mountain.’
The oft-repeated catchphrase on Kilimanjaro is Pole-Pole - pronounced Polay-Polay - which means Slowly-Slowly. This is the secret to a successful ascent, and even at the beginning of the climb, where the altitude is not significant, it is wise to keep to a slow pace. It helps the body to acclimatise as the altitude increases and to conserve its energy for the harder work to come.
‘And after all,’ said our guide, ‘you have all day to get to Mandara Huts, and there is little to do when you arrive, so enjoy the walk, and go Pole-Pole.’
I take his advice and allow the rest of the group to charge ahead, until I am entirely alone, surrounded by thick forest which disappears on either side of the track into tangled darkness. Before long I am rewarded by a family of black colobus monkeys, who emerge from the undergrowth and treat me to a private audience of monkey play, scampering around on the track just a few yards ahead of me.
I waste no time recounting this smugly to the rest of the group when I catch up with them during their lunch break.
‘Aren’t they brilliant!’ says Jokelyne, rather denting my self-satisfaction. ‘We saw millions of them!’

On Mount Kilimanjaro, the varying levels of sunshine, rainfall and temperature that exist at different altitudes have combined to form five distinct zones of vegetation. The first is the arable land at the foot of the mountain, which we drove through to reach Marangu Gate, and the second is the rainforest in which we are currently munching our packed lunch. This receives 2,000 millimetres of rainfall per year, and the unique climactic conditions have resulted in a number of endemic trees and flowers, with fantastical names such as the Macaranga Kilimandscharia and Impatiens Kilimanjari.
As if giving a demonstration, the clouds unload a quick shower upon us, and we all pull on our waterproofs. Bill is the exception, declaring ‘I’m just gonna wear my T-shirt. It’s the only time it’ll get washed!’

Later in the afternoon, when we are just above cloud level, the forest opens into a large clearing to reveal the Mandara Huts, huddled together on the side of the mountain. These are cosy wooden structures that just about accommodate four bodies, as long as no more than one of them of them is standing up at any one time. Having huts of any size to sleep in seems to rather undermine the romantic idea I am trying to cultivate of climbing Kilimanjaro, and for a moment I regret not being able to take the Machame Route and camp out in tents. But then Bill returns from the small supplies hut saying ‘This place is my dream come true: the beer is cheaper than the water!’, and I concede that the tourist route does, perhaps, have its advantages.

13. Homo Touristus (continued)

2006-09-11T08:37:00.000Z

The guesthouse that Prince Kili had booked us into was not the classiest of establishments. In the morning Pat went to take a shower and a young boy who had seen him leave the room crept in through the door. He approached the table stealthily, his eyes widening at the valuables we had carelessly distributed there. He was unaware of my presence in the second bed, so I had the element of surprise as I sprang up, screaming a string of invective. This advantage was swiftly lost, however, as I tripped in the mosquito netting and sprawled in a tangle to the floor. By the time I had disengaged myself, cursing, the culprit had long fled, empty-handed . He was, I assumed, the same villain who had stolen my watch from the shower the previous night. Considering the punctuality that we had encountered so far in Tanzania, I had decided that this was probably no great loss, but our passports and travellers cheques would have been a different matter.

Prince Kili had arranged our safari through an Arusha-based company called AA Tours, and their representative was only forty five minutes late picking us up from the hotel, which by our recent experiences was not bad at all. He drove us to the AA Tour offices, where we waited for them to collect the other travellers on our safari. This turned out to take longer than anticipated, because, it was explained later, their car ran out of petrol half way, but eventually the other members of our safari were assembled: two Americans, Geoff and Charles, and an English girl, Kate. The AA Tours man gave us a sheet with our itinerary on it for us to peruse.
‘Hold on. This can’t be right,’ I said. The schedule for the third day of our ‘Three Day Safari’ simply read ‘Drive back to Arusha.’
I approached the man at the desk. ‘But we’ve paid for three days seeing the animals, not two days seeing the animals and one day driving back again.’
Kate joined in with my complaint. Soon enough a full scale argument was in swing, with all of us demanding that the third day was spent on a game drive in Ngorongoro Crater, and eventually the man capitulated and altered our itinerary accordingly.
‘Swine,’ muttered Kate. ‘He’s just trying to save on the park fees.’
The drive to Lake Manyara took longer than expected due to a breakdown on route, which, I was not surprised to learn later, would not be our last. The driver Sunguru and the cook George set about changing the tyre, but having done so seemed to have difficulty getting the jack to go down. It was obviously a problem they’d had before, though, because they knew what to do: Sunguru climbed into the driver’s seat and stepped on the accelerator, and the vehicle started to rock back and forth on the jack, until eventually it had enough force to drive right off, the back wheels landing on the ground with a thud and sending stones spinning up behind them.

Over the last few million years, the hidden depths beneath the earth’s crust have been particularly busy in this part of Africa. As well as spewing forth the volcanoes of Meru and Kilimanjaro they have also, further to the West, made Tanzania’s contribution to one of our planets most extraordinary features: The Great Rift Valley, a beautiful scar across the face of the continent. This runs from Turkey down to Malawi, passing through Israel, The Gulf of Aqaba, Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania on the way, while a western rift occupies parts of Zaire, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and, again, Tanzania.
‘It’s fuckin’ huge, man,’ said Geoff. ‘I mean, it’s visible from space. There’s no missing this baby.’ He leaned round from the passenger seat, his arm slung across the back of the neckrest. ‘You’ve got movements in the earth’s crust, right, tectonic movements. When they compress, you get mountains, but when they move apart they riiip that shit up.’
I like the word tectonic. It comes from the Greek for carpenter, and I imagine a temperamental old worksmith in the bowels of the earth, bashing around the plates above him with his hammer; when he creates two or more parallel strike-slip faults, the crustal rock in between sinks and the result is a rift valley.
He started bashing around beneath this stretch of land around 40 million years ago, during the Eocene period. But the ensuing geological changes did not create a single, neat valley. They caused thousands of fractures and step-faults, a splintering mass of fissures and cracks; it is all of these in composite, and the plains, escarpments, volcanoes and lakes among them, which make up the Great Rift Valley. And it was into this that our decrepit Land Rover crawled, in search of Lake Manyara.

As soon as we entered the gate to the national park, Charles produced an enormous pair of binoculars and a well-thumbed bird book.
‘I’m a bird-nerd. What you English guys would call a twitcher.’
‘We would?’ said Pat.
‘Wow!’ exclaimed Charles, unhearing. ‘A hammerkop! And look, a ground hornbill!’
Like a boy in a sweet shop, Charles could not turn his head fast enough, there was so much to catch his eye, and he provided a commentary for the rest of us that was far more knowledgeable than our guide’s occasional utterance of ‘Over there. Bird.’ We saw an incredible variety, from big ugly maribu storks, scrawny vultures and soaring eagles down to the tiniest, brightest kingfisher whose colourful feathers I could see gleaming in the sun through my binoculars. As we drove along the dirt tracks that crossed the park we encountered baboons, impala, giraffe, zebra, and majestic, ponderous elephants moving gracefully through the bush.
One elephant crossed the track in front of the car, and turned to look at us with his old eyes. His dry, leathery skin was creased and lined with fine shadows by the afternoon sun, like a relief-map of some vast, dusty land. He seemed to wink at us, then turned and disappeared into the trees.
The hippos were relaxing in their pool, with just their nostrils, eyes and backs protruding above the water’s surface, farting and belching away, and giving enormous yawns.
‘I can see why they’re tired.’ I said. ‘It must be exhausting lying in the mud all day.’
‘No, it’s not tiredness.’ said Charles. ‘When they open their mouths like that, it’s a sign of aggression.’
I took a step backwards.

The lake itself was shallow, due to the current drought, and a million flamingos waded in the warm alkaline water, feeding on the algae that flourished there. A flamingo on his own is a fairly ridiculous sight, with its out of proportion body parts and extravagant colouring, but put thousands of them together and you have a stunning vision: a vast mass of subtle pink, with each bird a graceful component of a soft, shimmering whole.
As dusk fell we headed off to the nearby campsite where George cooked us up some soup and stew, and the rest of the evening was spent at the nearby ‘Red Banana Bar’ for extensive sampling of the appropriately named ‘Safari’ beer.
The following morning I was relieved to be making an early start for the Ngorongoro Crater: the cramped tent I shared with Pat had been fumigated to such an extent by our upset stomachs that remaining inside it was no longer an option. We left Mayara behind us and drove for hours through scorched, barren countryside, as elegant, rugged and red as the traditionally-dressed Masai who herded their cattle along its roads.
Traditionally, the Masai tribe regarded cattle as a gift from God, as they provided all the requisites for living: food from their meat and milk, leather from their hide, spoons from their ribs. Cow’s urine was used for cleaning implements, and dung doubled as polyfiller when repairing the Masai’s huts.
‘Man, they love those cows,’ said Geoff.
The relationship between the Masai and cattle is as strong today, but life is harder now, and many have to supplement their pastoral lifestyle by posing for tourist photographs in traditional garb. Once feared and respected for their ferocity in combat, they are now reduced to bobbing up and down by the side of the road and charging the passing safari vehicles to snap them.
Of course, the Masai were never really as savage as their reputation claimed. They had good PR men in the form of the Arab traders, who exaggerated the Masai’s bloodthirstiness in an attempt to keep out the Europeans and protect their own role as brokers. But it is depressing nonetheless to see them lining the road, pleading with the tourists.

Our destination was one of the largest caldera in the world. Two million years ago a fierce volcano erupted, surging upwards to around the height that Mount Meru stands today. But it lacked the momentum to sustain itself: the pressure dropped and the upper portion of the cone slumped back, caving in on itself. The base of the cone that remained formed an amphitheatre which now acts as a natural sanctuary to a host of wildlife, and the Masai called it Ngorongoro, which means ‘extra down’.
We drove around the crater’s vast, dry floor like an ant crawling across the bottom of a bowl. The sun shone brightly, and the odd cloud shadow dappled the ground and surrounding hills. Three demented ostriches ran in a line through the low, dry grass and a jackal trotted along, looking around him suspiciously. In a clearing of their own, two pewter-coloured rhinoceroses lay in the sun, leaning against one another. Several kilometres away, nearer the crater rim, a trio of lions succeeded in ignoring the surrounding posse of safari vehicles.
The Rift Valley has been dubbed ‘The Cradle of Mankind’ since Mary Leakey found the first hominid fossil in the Olduvai Gorge in 1959, not far from where we were now. The hominids were erect apes, of which there were two kinds, Astrolopithecus and Homo, and it is from the latter that man evolved: Homo Habilis gave way to the larger, more intelligent Homo Erectus, who in turn was replaced by Homo Sapiens. Both Erectus and Sapiens spread to Asia, and from there humanity made its way to Europe, the New World and Australia.
And now, Sapiens’ distant descendants, Homo Touristus, crowded around Africa’s most majestic animal.
‘You’ll find the lions easily enough,’ a backpacker in Moshi had told me. ‘Just look for all the other Jeeps.’
A dozen telephoto lenses zoomed and clicked, like the paparazzi at a premiere, but the lions remained oblivious. The male, who was nearest to me, flicked his tail. His side rose and fell with his breath, like a soft pair of bellows. He didn’t have to move an inch: just lying there he exuded charisma and held his spectators in awe.

It is a common mistake to assume that because the oldest fossils have been found in the Rift Valley at Olduvai Gorge, this must have been the birthplace of humanity. It is easy to picture the gorge as a literal Eden, a womb from which man emerged, blinking, into the sunlight of the plains. But he may, of course, have existed at an earlier time at some other site where we have not been fortunate enough to have clues of his presence preserved for us.
I prefer to ignore this possibility, for I like the idea that I am passing through the land of my earliest ancestors. And the extreme and varied environments of the Rift Valley surely represent a perfect training ground for the rest of the planet. As Sinatra’s earliest ancestor must have grunted, ‘If I can - make it here, I’ll make it - anywhere ...’

That night we slept out on the crater rim, with a guard to protect the camp from any wandering animals. In the morning Geoff and Charles, who had booked a six day safari, set off with George and Sunguru for the Serengeti, and we were collected for our last day by a different driver in a different vehicle, both of which were hopeless. The car had a broken roof and the driver, Louis, was a surly, rude man who seemed resentful at having to be there at all. It also turned out, when we were stopped by park officials, that he had not paid park fees for the day, and so had to report to their offices to pay a fine. We went for a morning game drive to the parts of the crater that we had not visited yesterday, and Louis sulked the whole way, refusing to answer our questions about the animals.
The journey back to Arusha was no smoother. We suffered two flat tyres, and just as we were resuming our journey had to stop and swap vehicles with another ‘AA Tours’ car that we passed heading in the other direction. It was on its way to the crater, but was in an even worse state than ours and didn’t look as though it would last the trip, so they decided to transfer their passengers to our car and leave us with theirs to return to Arusha. Just swapping cars would have been easy enough, but they also wanted to transfer petrol between the two vehicles, which they attempted to do by siphoning it through a piece of tubing. One of the men sucked on the tube until the petrol started flowing through, and then hurriedly inserted it into the other tank.
In order to get more petrol out, however, they decided to tilt the car so its fuel would gather in the corner of the tank and be easier to siphon. They reversed it into a rut until it leant to a sufficient angle.
‘And now it is stuck,’ explained Louis when we questioned the delay. ‘We must wait for someone to come and tow us out.’
The whole situation was a joke, and provided much entertainment for me and Pat and for half of the nearest village, who gathered at the roadside to watch the show.
Just before reaching Arusha we suffered another flat in our new car, and I pulled out the cigarettes yet again while Louis got to work. I never failed to be cheered by the name of Tanzania’s principal cigarette brand, ‘Sportsman’, a title only slightly less ironic than Malawi’s ‘Life’ cigarettes (‘Enjoy LIFE!’ the advert reads, ‘Smoke LIFE cigarettes’).
Once the tyre was changed our car refused to start, but we pushed it along the road until the engine stuttered to life, and eventually we arrived back at the ‘AA Tours’ office, where some tension developed because we all refused to give a tip. Kate seethed at the man behind the desk, listing her complaints, but all he had to say was ‘Do made sure to recommend us to all your friends, yes?’
‘You must be joking!’ she exploded. ‘I’m travelling all the way down to Zimbabwe, and everybody I meet on the way I’m going to warn not to book a safari with AA Tours.’

12. Homo Touristus

2006-09-06T09:25:00.000Z

The next morning I was not in the most energetic of moods. I had been kept awake for most of the night by a group of drunken Americans who had ran amok along the echoey stone corridors of the Y until the early hours. They would have gone on until dawn if it hadn’t been for a mad German, who had left his room, slamming the door with the bang of a small explosion, and yelled with all the force he could ‘IF YOU DON’T FUCKING SHUT UP I’LL KILL THE FUCKING LOT OF YOU!!!’ From then on there had been silence for the rest of the night, and I was able to fall asleep, thankful that the Christian consideration for others on which the YMCA was founded was still thriving.
A dilapidated Land Rover arrived, only an hour late, to drive us to Mount Meru. At the time, a large stretch of the Moshi-Arusha road was being resurfaced, but rather than laying down the new tarmac as they tore up the old surface, or dealing with just a short section of road at a time, the workmen had instead opted for breaking up the road for miles and miles and then going all the way back to the beginning to lay down the new surface. Unfortunately, it was now the middle stage in this process, between the ripping up and the laying down, so we drove for forty minutes along a rocky dirt track that bounced us around in the back and threw up choking dust.
Momella Gate is where the park fees were paid and the guides are arranged. It is compulsory to have a guide with you when hiking in the national park because of the many animals roaming around the place, and the man who was appointed to us, called Darren, carried an old rifle slung over his shoulder in case we ran too close to any of the less friendly species.
Trekking across the plains to the foot of the mountain I felt a bit of a fool: we had with us an entourage consisting of Darren our guide, one porter carrying my pack, one porter (who was also the cook for this trip) carrying Pat’s pack , and another man carrying all the food for the next three days. When we booked the trip I hadn’t questioned whether we would need porters or not, but just went along with what was suggested. Now, however, I was starting to regret it, because although carrying my own pack would have made the climb much harder, I at least wouldn’t have felt such wimp, walking along with the fellow beside me carrying my gear. I also wouldn’t have felt so guilty, watching what should have been my sweat running down his face. I calmed my conscience by telling myself that I was creating employment and contributing to the economy, and after about an hour I no longer needed even these worthy justifications, because I was exhausted enough to be extremely grateful that I wasn’t carrying the pack.
The plain that we crossed before starting the climb itself was littered with giraffe only a couple of hundred yards away, just standing and wandering around, their yellow-brown bodies bright in the sun, and I could see a couple of buffaloes in the distance. Once we had climbed to a higher level we stopped for a lunchtime snack of samosas and sat watching the animals below, and I was amazed at their beauty and grace as they wandered unconcerned across the park. Further up we passed into a wooded area, and the clouds downloaded a five minute deluge of rain on us, but we soon dried off under the sun that replaced them, and pressed onwards up the fairly steep gradient.
Arriving at Miriakamba Hut I thought I had entered the scene of a massacre: a number of apparently lifeless bodies lay flung in random positions across the bunks and chairs. These were a group of Austrian climbers, who had just descended from the summit, using every ounce of energy to do so. One of them raised his head an inch to nod a greeting, and then let it fall back onto his pillow with a thump.
Pat’s inquisitive nature and his interest in fauna and wildlife made relaxing at the hut an impossible option for us. Instead, he suggested a little exploration of the area before darkness arrived. In theory you are not supposed to go anywhere in the park without your guide, but we didn’t plan to go far and were sure we could look after ourselves. We delved into a lush, damp forest and descended a steep slope, jumping our way down between the trees. The dense undergrowth teemed with life and noises, giving the impression that the vegetation itself was alive, an animal in its own right. I had never seen such fecundity and insect activity, and I was reminded of a dramatic description written by the explorer and journalist Henry Morton Stanley, who had been dispatched by the New York Herald to track down Livingstone, in his book ‘In Darkest Africa’ in 1890:

‘Lean but your hand a tree, measure but your length on the ground, seat yourself on a fallen branch, and you will then understand what venom, fury, voracity and activity breathes around you. Open your notebook, the page attracts a dozen butterflies, a honey-bee hovers over your hand; other forms of bees dash for your eyes; a wasp buzzes in your ear, a huge hornet menaces your face, an army of pismires come marching to your feet. Some are already crawling, and will presently be digging their scissor-like mandibles in your neck. Woe! Woe!’

Fortunately, we survived these dangers unscathed, and arrived on the crater floor of Mount Meru. But we had just crossed a little stream when Pat, who was facing me about ten metres away, suddenly crouched down low with a startled look on his face and gestured frantically for me to get down. I laughed, assuming that he was joking, but turned my head just to check that there really wasn’t anything behind me. It was then that I saw the buffalo, about twenty metres away, staring at me through a matted fringe. I ran as fast as I could towards Pat, crouching low as I went. As I reached him he said ‘It’s OK, it's gone,’ and I turned to see that it had trotted off behind a rocky hillock.
‘Thanks a lot for running towards me,’ said Pat. ‘If he’d charged we’d both have been done for.’
‘My pleasure,’ I said.
We decided that coming down here was probably not the most sensible idea, and started back up the steep slope to the hut. As we were making our way up through the forest, however, I felt a sharp bite on my arm and pulled my jumper back to reveal a huge reddish ant clinging to me. I brushed it off, but then started to felt similar painful nips all over me. I lifted my trouser legs up to find that some of them had worked their way down inside my socks and were tucking into my ankles and feet, and I tried to scrape them out with my fingers, all the while shouting ‘Ah!! Get off!!’ There were red ants and larger, darker ones. In the end I had to take my shoes and socks off to get rid of them all, and then start on those that had found their way under my top. They were remarkably persistent. I flicked one from my nipple, which stung with pain, and tried to brush another from my stomach that did not want to let go and had to be grasped firmly between forefinger and thumb before I could pull him off. In the end I managed to clear them all away and Pat and I rushed up the rest of the slope and out of the forest before any other creatures could get to us. It seemed that Stanley may not have been overstating his case, after all.
I should, however, have been thankful for my luck: there are some types of ant in Africa that are so tenacious that their heads will detach from their bodies before they are prepared to release their grip on your flesh. I was also fortunate to have played host to only a handful of ants - to have trodden on a nest would have brought a whole army upon me, a fate that befell Livingstone on one occasion: ‘Not an instant seemed to elapse,’ he wrote, ‘before a simultaneous attack was made on various unprotected parts, up the trousers from below, and on the neck and breast above. The bites of these furies were like sparks of fire and there was no retreat. I jumped about for a second or two, then in desperation tore off my clothing, and rubbed and picked them off seratim as soon as possible.’
I nursed my own bites back at Miriakamba Hut, where our porter had brewed up some tea for us. Staying at the hut for the rest of the evening started to look like the better option after all.
From our resting point we could make out the dark outline of Kilimanjaro, sitting forty kilometres to the East, and below us the Momella lakes shone like puddles. As afternoon turned to evening the clouds stretching away from us started to turn a mellow orange, and up above where there was no cloud cover the bright stars began to emerge, one by one. We sat with the other climbers around a fire under the stars, talking and smoking and drinking tea, until long after the night had established itself completely.

Our hut resounded all night to the sound and smell of upset stomachs, our dinner having unwittingly created a veritable orchestra of farts and burps which built to a crescendo as the night progressed. We emerged in the morning into thankfully fresh air in time to see the sun rise from behind Kilimanjaro in the distance. A thin band of cloud caught the subtle fire of the morning light and stretched it out across the whole sky.
We set off early for Saddle Hut, 3,570 metres high and about two and a half hours away, with the views improving further and the large crater floor now quite a way beneath us. It was a steep climb, which unfortunately resurrected an old rowing injury to Pat’s leg. By the time we reached the hut it had become evident that he couldn’t go on much further, so he decided to wait at Saddle Hut while I pressed on to the summit. The going became progressively harder as the air thinned out due to the altitude and the gradient increased, and my heart beat like a maniac, thudding upwards into my Adam’s apple. There was a steep climb to ‘Rhino’s point’, and I made my way along a knife’s edge of rock and volcanic ash, with a sheer drop to the crater floor on the left and a steep slope of scree and ash to the right. By this stage I was above the clouds and I could see down through the gaps to the land stretching away in the distance: in one direction lay Kilimanjaro, and the lakes dotted around on the green land of the national park, and in the other was a the barren, yellow landscape of the Masai Steppe, with the occasional hill rising up like a little molehill. I was on top of the world.
I shared the peak with two Germans and a Kenyan and we huddled round at 4,500 metres, looking down onto the perfect ash cone that rises from the vast crater floor below us. It was bitterly cold and after a couple of minutes the clouds enveloped us and it began to hail. All I needed was some Kendal mint cake to make this mountaineering moment complete.
After an obligatory victory photograph I made a speedy descent with the Kenyan, called Dave, wanting to reach Saddle Hut before dark, and we practically shattered our kneecaps running down the scree slopes. By the time we arrived I had been on the go for eleven hours and my leg muscles felt as though they had been soaked in acid, but this pain magically disappeared when one of the Germans produced a bottle of Glenfiddich and some fine cigars from his rucksack. We sat in the flickering lamplight, passing round a steaming bowl of hot water and whiskey, puffing away and talking into the early morning.

Arriving back at Momella Gate the next day we had a long, unscheduled wait for the Land Rover that was supposed to be collecting us, and we spent some of this time in negotiation with our entourage over tips (‘My friend,’ one of the porters said to me with the broadest of smiles, ‘it is not enough’). Just as the light was starting to dim and we were making plans to stay the night in the porters’ huts, we heard a ‘phut-phut’ noise and a decrepit VW van bumped its way into view. This, it turned out, was our lift, as the Land Rover was being used for something else. The reason they were late, they explained brightly, was that they had broken down for four hours on the way here. We waved their excuses aside and piled in the back, exhausted and happy to be on our way.

11. Wazungu (continued)

2006-09-05T09:21:00.000Z

The following day, we bade a temporary farewell to our new friends in the village. We had decided to use the time before term started to see more of the country, and hoped that by our return our house would be ready for us to live in.
When the dala-dala to Moshi pulled up beside us I couldn’t see any possible way we could fit in with our two rucksacks, but we were pulled in nonetheless. The conditions inside were so cramped that our previous bus journey into Moshi seemed like a chauffeur driven limousine ride in comparison. All the seats, which lined the side and the back of the bus, were taken, of course, as was every available cubic centimetre of space in the rest of the vehicle. The low ceiling forced those who were standing to double over, twisting into the most bizarre contortions in order to fit around one another and fill every gap.
When I was younger I had a puzzle in the form of a three dimensional wooden egg that was composed of a number of differently shaped pieces. There was only one way that the pieces could be arranged around one another to form the complete egg, and when this correct combination was achieved there were no spaces - just a solid set of interlocking components. I thought of that egg for the entire half-hour journey, and tried to ignore the armpit under which my head was wedged.
Towards the end of the journey Pat, whose head was lodged within speaking distance of mine, though at a slightly different angle, said ‘You know, I keep expecting Norris McWhirter to stick his head in the window and say "Congratulations! You’ve got the Guinness World Record! Most number of people in a minibus!"‘ I started to laugh, but stopped when I realised there was no available air to breathe.
Arriving at Moshi Bus Station we unfolded ourselves out of the vehicle and took deep, welcome breaths of the diesel polluted air. Once our limbs had unstiffened and regained mobility we tracked Dr Semu down at the coffee bar and the three of us ventured forth to the immigration offices. He had agreed to help us get a residents permit because, although we did not, according to him, need one to teach at Msufini, it would enable us to pay for safaris at a cheaper rate in local currency, rather than the tourist rate in US dollars.
The first rule that seemed to apply at Moshi immigration offices was that the customer must be kept waiting for at least twenty minutes before any attention can be paid to him. So it was that we stood in the main office while the woman on the other side of the counter studiously ignored us as she shuffled papers and busied herself doing nothing. Eventually she lifted her eyes slowly and asked what we wanted. Dr Semu explained that we wanted to apply for a residents permit, and she told us to wait, and disappeared to another office. A further statutory twenty minutes passed and we were ushered into a large room with a single desk, behind which sat a huge, uniformed man. He was chatting quite amicably on the phone as we took a seat opposite him, but as soon as he hung up and turned his attention to us his manner stiffened into a haughty aloofness and his tone dropped a couple of degrees centigrade. It was obvious just from looking at him that he was the chief at Moshi Immigration, and it was apparent from his bearing that this was a position he had enjoyed and grown to fill over a long time. He was a rather scary character, and I was more than happy to let Dr Semu do the talking when we were asked what we wanted.
Once told, his refusal was curt and dismissive. A resident’s permit was out of the question, he said. He doubted whether we would qualify, and claimed that even if we did the process of application was so long that we would not receive one in time for our safari - or even, for that matter, before our time came to leave the school.
‘There is, however, one way I might be able to help you,’ he said. ‘I could, as a favour, issue you with a Special Pass, which would enable you to pay for your safari in Tanzanian shillings. This is not something we normally do, but I could do it for you - just as a special favour, you understand.’
This sounded more than a little suspicious. ‘Would it cost anything?’ I ask.
‘The cost would be one hundred dollars for each Special Pass. It lasts for two months, so whenever you travel in Tanzania in the next two months you can pay the local rate for hotels. It is just the same as a residents permit.’
I judged that although $100 was a lot to pay, we would probably save more than that through the discounts it would entitle us to. I was dubious about where these dollars would end up, but knew better than to ask. Dr Semu encouraged us that it was the best thing to do, and we decided to go for it. Interestingly, we were not permitted to pay for this pass in travellers cheques, but had to pop out to a Bureau de Change and return with cash. In return for this we received a small official form declaring itself to be a Special Pass, and an unintelligible stamp in our passports (after, of course, waiting twenty minutes for the man with the stamp to see us).

The two characters running the safari company, ‘Prince Kili’, were young and laid back to the point of horizontal. They sprawled across their chairs, with suspiciously red eyes and doped-up drawls. It was obvious from meeting them and looking around their small untidy office that this was a cowboy set-up, but they came recommended by Dr Semu and, more importantly, raised no objection to our Special Passes.
We booked a three day climb of Mount Meru, followed by a three day safari at Lake Manyara and Ngorongoro Crater, and they proposed to collect us from the YMCA in the morning. With all that arranged we thanked Dr Semu for his help and set off with our packs to book in at the Y, pleased to have arranged everything successfully and feeling ourselves on the brink of new adventures.

10. Wazungu

2006-09-04T08:27:00.000Z

The following morning, I was excited at the prospect of moving into our own house, which we had been told would be ready today. By lunchtime, however, no-one had come to confirm that this really was the case, so we decided to walk down and see for ourselves. One-thirty in the afternoon may not be the most sensible time of day to go for a four mile walk when living on the equator, but we were feeling increasingly frustrated at not knowing what was going on, and so set off through the banana plantations to find out. I could remember the way from when Dr Semu drove us around the area on our first day - you just find the tarmac road and follow it down the hill.
It was not long before we attracted attention - there were few white faces seen around here, so it was not surprising that we caused a stir among the children. Some of them seemed rather scared and just stopped what they were doing to stare at us walking past. The majority, however, were surprisingly confident and ran up to us, pointing and laughing and crying ‘Wazungu’, which means ‘White men’. We tried out our limited Swahili, which the children found hysterical, and they repeated their only English phrase, ‘Good morning teacher’, which became a sort of chant for them, despite our attempts to point out that it was in fact afternoon.
It was all good fun, but before long began to wear a bit thin. The further we reached down the hill the bigger the pack of children walking behind us grew.
‘I feel like the bloody Pied Piper’ said Pat.
Their shouting and chanting took on an increasingly mocking tone, which was made worse by the fact that we couldn’t understand the things being said. The laughing and pointing, to start with quite amusing, began to make me feel rather paranoid and its persistence started to grate as I grew more exhausted and stressed under the relentless sun.
We passed the occasional adult along the road, some of whom smiled and said ‘Jambo’, others of whom just looked at us silently. It felt humiliating to be seen being laughed at by all these children, so we came up with a strategy to disperse them.
‘Ready?’ I said under my breath. ‘One, two, three.’
We stopped dead in our tracks and whirled around to face our protagonists with a menacing growl. It got the reaction we wanted: the laughter was cut short, the pointing fingers were dropped, the little eyes widened in terror and they all turned and ran screaming to a safe distance.
‘Excellent.’
Unfortunately, this desired effect did not last for long, and most of the children tentatively returned and started laughing, waiting, I think, for us to whirl round again. I felt as though I was caught in an absurd game of Grandmother’s Footsteps. Eventually, however, some men who were standing on a nearby shamba saw what was happening and barked instructions at the children, who promptly dispersed. We waved our thanks, and I resolve to get to grips with Swahili so I wouldn’t feel so helpless in situations like that.
Arriving at our house there was remarkably little sign of activity. We crossed the garden and approached the building, calling ‘Hodi?’ No-one answered, and we peered through the windows to find that everything was exactly the same as when we visited with Dr Semu the previous week. It was disappointing, when everyone had assured us that it was being cleaned up and painted, but somehow I was not surprised.
The house had obviously been standing unoccupied for a long time, and was caked in dust and grime that would need a good deal of scrubbing. I wondered if they would let us clean it ourselves - at least then we would know it was getting done.

From the house we walked further along the track to have another look at the school. The new library building at the top of the hill afforded the best views: on one side the ever watchful mountain loomed over the lush vegetation of the banana plantations, with tendrils of cloud softening its sides, while in the other direction the dusty brown plains stretched into the distance, shimmering in the afternoon heat.
I was surprised to hear movement in the library building. A very upright gentleman with greying hair and spectacles emerged, who was equally surprised to see us. He seemed to know who we were, though, and came over to introduce himself in very good and carefully pronounced English.
‘Ah, hello. You are the Oxford boys.’
We introduced ourselves to him and he continued. ‘Good. My name is Mr Uronu. Yes. I am the Civics teacher here, you see.’
He was dressed in a light blue safari suit and wore a little white sunhat perched on his head. We stood chatting in the sun and I learned that he was another of Dr Semu’s brothers and had seen us the previous day at the confirmation celebrations. He told us a little about the school and then turned and gestured towards the plains.
‘You see the land down there? It is very dry. We have not had a proper rainy season for two years, you see. It is very bad.’
‘When’s the next rainy season due?’ asked Pat.
‘Maybe in a few weeks it will rain. I don’t know if it will, but I hope so. If you look out there beyond those trees, that is the school land. We grow our own maize, but for the last two years, nothing.’
Mr Uronu showed us around the school, and took us into the new library, which was so new, in fact, that it did not contain a library at all, but was simply an empty concrete building. He told us that Mr Kwayu had big plans for the library here and hoped to have it functional by the beginning of term.
In the same building as the library but walled off into a separate room was the staff room, where we came across the Physics teacher, Mr Johansen. I couldn’t help smiling when we were introduced, because he looked to me like the original 70’s funkster: he had an enormous afro, and a flowery shirt with huge collars, and wore a cool pair of thick-rimmed spectacles. To top it all he had one of the biggest smiles I had ever seen, with more large teeth crammed into his mouth than I would have thought possible. Unfortunately his English was not good, or at least he was not used to our pronunciation, and we had great difficulty holding a conversation with him, despite speaking with patronising slowness to be understood. It didn’t seem to matter, though, and his grin did not fade.
The four of us stood in the small staff room, and looked through the window to the bottom of the valley, where the river Makoa ran.
‘Ah yes,’ said Mr Uronu. ‘The river Makoa. Ma-ko-a. This is where we get our water for cooking the school lunch. The students carry buckets up the hill before assembly.’
‘Do you know what subjects we’ll be teaching when term starts?’ I asked.
‘Straight from the mountain, you see. It’s very good water.’
‘Ah, I see. And do you know what we’ll be teaching?’
Mr Uronu looked uncomfortable, as though sensitive to being asked direct questions.
‘Well, this is an important issue.’ he said. ‘And we will need to discuss it fully, yes. Before the term starts we will have a big staff meeting, very big, and I think there we can discuss your lessons. Yes.’
When we decided to head back to the Aishi Mr Uronu offered to show us a short cut that avoided going along the tarmac road, so the three of us said goodbye to Mr Johansen and set off in the direction of the mountain along a rutted path. We walked through a rabbit warren of interconnecting tracks that cut their way through the undergrowth, and passed houses dotted in little clearings among the banana groves. Between the properties ran an intricate network of tiny irrigation channels, which are a famous feature of Kilimanjaro, carrying water from its streams to distant shambas, and as I stepped across these flowing ditches I recalled their significance in the development of life on the mountain.
After settling into the area, the Chagga had become remarkably adept at irrigation and learned to grade channels along the slopes so skilfully that they could appear to be carrying water uphill. Perhaps unsurprisingly, their original motivation for developing these techniques is said to have been a love of alcohol, for the crop eleusine, which is used for liquor brewing, could not be grown outside the rainy season without artificial watering. But whatever the original cause for their construction, these channels are essential to the mountain and its people, carrying its lifeblood from its main veins to the further reaches of its body.
They can also be said to have played a part in the development of chiefship on Kilimanjaro, for the building and subsequent use of these vast and complicated irrigation networks required a great deal of organisation, which the early chiefs provided. Many furrows were operated under a timeshare system, with different people drawing off the water on different days, and disputes frequently arose over abuses of the system. Such arrangements needed an authority with which they could be regulated and enforced, and it was the emerging chiefships that supplied this.
The Chagga’s love of alcohol can therefore be seen as a surprising force for good. As the administrative officer Sir Charles Dundas wrote in the 1920s:

‘The cultivation of Mbeke, a much condemned industry, has been responsible not only for a remarkable skill in artificial irrigation, which as time goes on will be of inestimable benefit, but it has directly promoted social development of a relatively high order; hence the Chagga tribe presents the unprecedented instance of economic and social welfare vigorously furthered by the vice of alcoholism.’

As we crossed these furrows on tiny makeshift bridges, Mr Uronu explained to us how the land was divided into districts and regions and sub-districts and villages and so on, but I found it hard to follow, as all the different named areas that he pointed out to us seemed to blend into each other. The houses were spread evenly throughout the bush in all directions, rather than concentrated in certain places, so it was hard to distinguish between the different designated areas.
Eventually, we popped out onto the tarmac road just opposite the turning for the Aishi Hotel. Mr Uronu assured us he would see us before term begins, at the big staff meeting. He shook our hands, said ‘Goodbye then. Yes.’ and was gone, back into the vegetation.

9. We are your parents (continued)

2006-09-01T13:36:00.000Z

It was the same pick-up that arrived at the hotel the next morning, driven this time by Mrs Kwayu’s brother-in-law, who had been one of our welcomers at the airport. We had just finished our usual breakfast of pawpaw and boiled egg, and were chatting in the dining room with Frau Christiansen when he arrived, announcing that he had come to drive us to Moshi, where we were invited to a ceremony for the confirmation of Dr Semu’s son.
During the journey I asked him if we would be moving into our house today.
‘Soon, soon,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow. It is almost ready.’
Arriving at Dr Semu’s house we found the ceremony already underway. There were several smartly dressed people in the garden, sitting in silence on wooden chairs in much the same fashion as the wedding in Machame. Pigeons kept landing with a dull clanging sound on the corrugated iron roof of Dr Semu’s concrete bungalow, adding percussion to the music that blared from the window. The song was a hymn, played on a slightly out-of-tune organ over a tacky boom-thump bass and drum machine. To maximise our listening pleasure, the tape from which it was being broadcast was slightly wonky, but fortunately the guests appeared completely unbothered by it.
The three of us found some chairs towards the back of the gathering, and I sat next to a gentleman with good English who explained the nature of this celebration to me. The confirmation ceremony was to confirm the vows of allegiance to God that were made at Baptism on the child’s behalf by his Godparents, but in Tanzania the occasion’s social significance in a man’s life seemed to be far greater than in England: it brought with it a recognised transition into manhood that seemed not dissimilar to the Jewish Bar Mitzvah. This was a momentous occasion, attended by all members of the Semus’ family and various dignitaries from the area, and it would be celebrated by the eating of a large traditional goat cake.
While this was being explained to me I somehow formed a vague expectation of some novelty cake being presented, with a picture of a goat in fancy icing or something. I should have expected what was coming, but the heat or the music distracted me, so that I was taken completely by surprise when, a few minutes later, there was wheeled around the corner of the house an entire roasted goat, complete from its head to its hooves, kneeling on the platter from which it was to be served. Its little snout wore an understandably pained expression. There were ‘aah’s of appreciation from the crowd, and stifled ‘ugh’s from Pat and me.
Dr Semu’s oldest brother stood before the platter smiling proudly, and gave a short speech in Swahili which seemed, roughly speaking, to be about what a special day had been reached in his nephew’s life, and what a splendid goat we had to commemorate it with. What then followed was conducted with the solemnity of a ceremony, and with the full attention of all the guests. Strips of meat were carved from the side of the animal and Dr Semu’s son carried them on a plate to the most important and elderly members of the gathering, who he then proceeded to feed, placing one piece of meat in each of their mouths. It was an interesting ritual to watch, until I realised that he was coming round to where Pat and I were sitting and had apparently identified us as qualifying for this personal attention.
We were trapped. There was nowhere to hide, and sixty pairs of smiling eyes were fixed on us. Dr Semu’s son stood before me and lifted a particularly large piece of goat from the plate. I smiled weakly and opened my mouth to receive it. I could see out of the bottom of my eye little gristly hairs still protruding from this chunk of flesh as it was placed in my mouth. It was hard to chew and topped with a thick layer of fat that made me want to gag, and I returned all the inquisitive looks with a grimace that I hoped looked like an appreciative smile.
After about a minute of chewing I realised that my teeth would be unable to pound and tear this mouthful into anything more swallowable, so I took a surreptitious swig of coke and gulped down the lot. I paused to make sure it was not going to reappear, breathed a sigh of relief at having avoided disgrace, and turned to Pat, who had just done the same and gave me a relieved glance. For the lunch that was served I made sure I stuck to rice and boiled banana, and everyone sat around in the usual silence, listening to the Whitney Houston that had replaced the organ music.
Had this ceremony been performed a hundred years ago, it would probably have been not a celebration of Christian confirmation, but a traditional Kisua ceremony, which used to be performed by the Chagga tribe of Kilimanjaro to ensure good behaviour in their children. It was thought that the particularly wild behaviour of Chagga children when they reached the age of around twelve was attributable to an unruly spirit, and the rite that was enacted to curb this spirit involved the slaughter of a goat. The arrival of Christianity to the region has rendered many such traditions obsolete, but it was interesting to see that a goat is still slaughtered to celebrate a confirmation. As I plucked a goat hair from between my teeth and attempted to wash the fatty taste away with fizzy drink, I noted the perseverance of such Chagga traditions.

9. We are your parents

2006-08-29T08:33:00.000Z

The evening before I begin my ascent of Kilimanjaro, I have the same aftertaste of Mbege in my mouth. I drank it this afternoon for the first time in four years, and discovered that I still can’t abide it. But the very taste has brought my memories of those first days in the village into sharper focus.
I spend a couple of hours wandering around Moshi, allowing the sights and sounds to prompt a thousand forgotten experiences. It is a pleasant way to spend the evening, for I concentrate on remembering the early days of our stay in Tanzania. I don’t allow my reminiscences to get ahead of themselves, so they do not reach the bad patches. Tonight of all nights I need to avoid bad memories. The climb begins in the morning, and I need my sleep to be as undisturbed as possible.
As I return from my walk to my guesthouse, I pass the office of Bumaco Consultants, and remember the visits I used to make there when things were getting desperate. It was the office of Mr Kwayu, the chairman of our school’s Parents Committee, who we would often turn to for help. It feels strange to stand there again in front of its faded sign. I try the door, wondering if he will be there, but it is locked. Everyone has gone home for the evening. I decide to do the same, and head down the dusky street towards my guesthouse.
* * *
Mr Kwayu had been away at a seminar when we first arrived in the village, but his wife had introduced herself to us and kindly asked us for dinner. She collected us in their pick-up one evening, just after darkness had fallen. To reach their house we drove along a series of long and bumpy dirt tracks that rocked and swung us in the car. The route was illuminated by the headlights to only a few metres and we drove for twenty minutes in this cocoon of dusty light. There were hints of men’s silhouettes beside the road, occasional voices heard above the churning engine, suggesting some vast night community that we were passing through like a beacon. We rattled our way across a delicate wooden bridge above the river Makoa and eventually arrived at their small, proud concrete house. It was guarded by spiky metal gates, which seemed incongruous in the middle of the bush but were in fact testament to the night-time danger of the place.
Inside, a thousand children swarmed through the rooms.
‘Surely these aren’t all yours?’ said Pat.
Mrs Kwayu smiled, a little bashfully. ‘Ah, no. Many are nephews and nieces, staying with us. Some are friends’ children. This one is ours.’ She patted a passing boy on the head. ‘And this one, I think.’
‘You think!’
Mrs Kwayu just laughed. Her face, which normally wore a rather sad, tired expression, was transformed by a bright smile, but soon afterwards returned to its normal, slightly troubled countenance. She seemed so worn out by her extended family that she could no longer tell which children were actually hers.
It was hard to understand the cause of her fatigue, however, for most of the work was done by the oldest boy, Frankie. He had to open the gates to allow us in, carry all the large plastic buckets of water from the pick-up to the house, and then slave away in the kitchen over our dinner, under the shouted direction of Mrs Kwayu in the living room. In contrast, the youngest member of the family, called Shirou, was utterly spoilt and seemed to have free reign to run rampage over the house. He was an adorable two-year-old with big saucer eyes and rampaged with the hyperactive energy of an overexcited puppy. When he wasn’t rushing up to repeatedly shake our hands he persisted in running around the room headbutting all the cushions, and then rolling about on the floor wailing like a banshee, until just as suddenly stopping and climbing calmly into his mother’s ample lap for a cuddle. My repertoire of silly expressions and face-pulling, that could usually be relied upon to keep a young child mildly amused for thirty seconds or so, was met by such unlimited rapture and hysterics that I begin to wonder if this boy was in fact extremely sarcastic.
The children did not join us at the table for our dinner of chicken and rice, apart from Shirou who munched away in silence. We talked to Mrs Kwayu about the grocery and clothes shops she ran in Moshi, and about our school, which her daughter Isaria attended. Most importantly, we learned that the house that we would be living in was being cleaned and painted and would be ready for us to move into in the next day or two.
By the time we were helping ourselves to sweet coffee from the flask on the table I could hear my bed calling me from the Aishi Hotel. The hot weather and early mornings had been taking their toll, and I was relived when Mrs Kwayu said she’d better be driving us back.
‘Before you go,’ she added, ‘you must understand. Once you have been invited to an African house the door is always open, so you should call in whenever you want to. We are your parents in Tanzania, now.’
‘That was a sweet thing to say,’ I said to Pat once we were back in our room.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but you’ve got to wonder, having seen how she kept Frankie working in the kitchen, whether being her son is really an attractive proposition.’

8. You wait! You will see! (continued)

2006-08-25T08:33:00.000Z

‘Today there is a wedding’ announced Mrs Mbowe the next morning. ‘In Machame, further up the mountain. Would you like to come with us?’
‘I’d love to.’ I said. ‘But we don’t know the people. It seems a bit cheeky to gate-crash their wedding.’
‘No! Anyone can come! You don’t need an invitation, you can go with me and Frau Christiansen. Karibu Tena - you are always welcome.’
She was right: the service was a remarkably casual affair and no objection was raised to our conspicuous white faces at the back of the church. The bride’s entry in a simple white dress was not met by the awed hush and gasps of appreciation it would have drawn at an English wedding. Instead the general hubbub continued until the priest, dressed in starched, white Anglican robes, started his Swahili booming and the service began.
Even when the ceremony was under way, the congregation apparently felt free to come and go as they pleased. Latecomers strolled in - one man only a few minutes before the end of the service, fingering the rim of his hat in his hands as he looked for a place to sit - while at various points in the service a few of the guests who had apparently grown bored with the proceedings, or perhaps suddenly realised they had come to the wrong church, simply rose from their pews and sauntered out without so much as a backward glance.
The congregation stood for the first hymn and were accompanied by a small brass band, led by a talented trumpeter who punched out the tune in confident blasts that drowned out most of his less able colleagues. The crowd split naturally into multiple harmonies producing a rich and beautifully ragged sound. It was nothing like the tight shrill of the British congregations I was used to, and seemed to carry much more spirit. It was a comfort, however, to discover that ‘the growler’ was in fact a world-wide assembly-singing phenomenon: in just the same way that in England you could guarantee a large group of singers would inevitably include at least one person with the sense of melody of a cement mixer, so was there an old woman in the church whose idea of singing was a sort of gravel mantra chanting. She grumbled along below the level of the tune, but instead of spoiling the hymn actually highlighted, through contrast, the beauty of the rest of the singing.
When the time came for the collection, everyone filed to the front of the church and placed their donation in the note-filled basket. I noticed that Pat and I received a particularly dirty look from the priest when our turn came, and I felt paranoid about this until realising that, not yet used to the Tanzanian currency, we had both in fact given insultingly small amounts. I felt awful, but it would have been even stranger to go up for a second time, so I just sat in my pew and hoped that no-one else noticed.
Once it was all over and the newlyweds were leaving the church a high-pitched shrieking broke out, shattering the quiet murmur of the congregation.
‘My God, what happened?’ I asked. It sounded like someone rolling their ‘R’s while being tortured.
‘Nothing.’ said Mrs Mbowe. ‘It’s just the women over there, with the confetti. This is a common noise here. The women make it when they are excited.’
The entourage of banshees climbed into a pick-up and followed the couple down the hill, whooping and trilling into the distance.
The reception was held at the home of the bride’s family. Most of the guests assembled on a large open space near the house where there was music playing, but we were privileged to be invited to the more select party in their garden, where chairs had been set out in rows and the more distinguished guests and family were congregating. It was a slightly peculiar gathering. There were several people there, sitting around and drinking the bottles of soda that had been distributed, and yet hardly any of them were actually talking to each other. As time passed I felt increasingly uncomfortable, and decided this must have something to do with the particularly English habit of construing any silence as an awkward one. At such a gathering in England people would feel obliged to fill the silence by ‘making’ conversation, usually smalltalk of little value other than not being silence. Here, however, the guests were entirely comfortable just sitting with their own thoughts.
Mrs Mbowe broke the silence: ‘So, how do you find Kilimanjaro?’
‘It’s awesome.’ I said. ‘So rich ... and beautiful ... I had no idea ...’ I paused, struggling to find adequate words, and Mrs Mbowe laughed.
‘Everyone who comes here feels the same. You feel as though you are the first person to lay eyes on it. But, you know, this mountain has seen many people come and go. They say that first of all there were pygmies living here. Then, only a few hundred years ago the Wachagga arrived - you know the Wachagga were a sort of composite: originally we came from different tribes around Tanzania, and we came and settled on the mountain.’
Mrs Mbowe took a pull on her soda bottle, warming to her history lesson. ‘Then there were the trade caravans passing through, sent by the Arab traders on the coast. They came inland looking for ivory and slaves and they often passed through here.’
This took place over a hundred years ago, but Mrs Mbowe talked as though she remembered it well, her eyes half closed in recollection. ‘Also, of course, the missionaries and explorers arrived, men like Rebmann and Hans Meyer. And then, in 1895, the Germans established a protectorate over Kilimanjaro. So, Tanzania was a German colony until the First World War, and then it was Britain’s turn, and then, in 1961, we achieved independence. And now you Britons are back again, to teach at Msufini!’ She rocked on her chair with laughter. ‘And you are very welcome!’
After a while a calabash of banana-brew, known as mbege, was passed around. This concoction only takes a couple of days to make and involves boiling the bananas with a flour made from sorghum, and leaving the mixture to stand and ferment in a big plastic barrel.
I was reluctant to take a swig because, even apart from the health risks of such communal sipping, the beer looked grey and rancid and foul, but my curiosity got the better of me. I took an experimental gulp and then tried to prevent the disgust from the sharp, noxious taste from registering on my face. ‘Mmm, very nice,’ I lied. Pat was either better at feigning appreciation or else had seriously deficient taste buds because he took two long slurps from the calabash and later brought it back for more. It was the staple diet of some of the men around here, but must, I thought, take some getting used to. The bitter aftertaste still lingered in my mouth later in the afternoon as we drove back to the Aishi Hotel.

7. You wait! You will see!

2006-08-24T08:40:00.000Z

Despite the lack of guests, Mr Mbowe had, rather optimistically, employed a ‘hotel consultant’ to improve his hotel’s efficiency and teach its staff the best way of looking after those non-existent customers. She was an old German lady called Frau Christiansen, with a softly lined, birdlike face and a shrewd pair of eyes that peered through small spectacles on the end of her nose. She had been here for a month already, but so far the visible extent of her achievements seemed to have stretched only to typing out several copies of the restaurant’s menu, a fairly redundant measure, considering the limited range of food the hotel had in stock. I was interested to learn another outsider’s impression of the area, but found Frau Christiansen to be somewhat less than enamoured of the local population.
‘Ugh!’ she exclaimed to us, out of earshot of the staff, ‘These Tanzanians! Nothing is organised, nothing is reliable, everything is difficult! You wait! You will see!’ Her complaints against the individuals in the hotel soon extended into such a diatribe against the country as a whole that I began to wonder why she had come here in the first place. It was true that she had to contend with a number of frustrations and inefficiencies, such as problems of supply to the hotel, and the continued perseverance of the hotel manager to systematically disregard every instruction she gave him, but her griping took on such an air of intolerance that it simply served to strengthen my resolve to immerse myself in the culture and community of my new home. I did not expect things to run smoothly, but I hoped I would not be driven to the level of bitterness that Frau Christiansen seemed to have reached.

This apparent aversion of Frau C’s to the indigenous population was not all-inclusive, however, because a genuine friendship had grown up between her and Mrs Mbowe, and they were often to be found chatting away in the luscious hotel grounds. Mrs Mbowe was the second wife of ‘The Man’, the first having died and, in fact, been buried in the hotel grounds. As well as enjoying the status and respect automatically accorded to her by her marriage, she was also a powerful figure in her own right as a successful and influential businesswoman. Unlike her husband, however, Mrs Mbowe did not wear her position and power so heavily as to cloak her humour and personality. An engaging character with a big smile and a quick laugh, she was very welcoming to the two of us, falling in no time for Pat’s charm and wit. In fact, she was the first Tanzanian we had met with a sense of irony, so for once our ice-breaking quips were met with laughter rather than blank stares.

In the evening we accompanied Frau C and Mrs Mbowe on a short walk through the banana plantations. It was that time between bright afternoon and dusky nightfall when the sun eases itself carefully onto the horizon and the lower sky turns through soft, pastel gradations of colour, as a soothing prelude to the stars. The four of us walked along the paths, the banana plants deepening into a rich green around us. There was little talk, except to point out certain plants and insects, and it was a quiet, reflective stroll.
My thoughts were of home and the people I was missing, and of how I could possibly convey to them all we had seen and done in the last two days. The most fertile imagination back in England could not capture the tone of the chirping crickets, the ribbed, smoothed-hessian texture of a banana plant’s torn leaf, the long-necked flapping silhouette of the bird flying home above my head.
It was peculiar to think that only three days ago I was in London, completely unknowing of this place. Having removed myself from the habitual and unquestioned parameters of my life I could feel myself growing smaller and smaller as I contemplated the magnitude of what lay outside it. The vast sky, deepening into twilight above me, seemed to belong to a new world.

6. Never Before

2006-08-23T08:35:00.000Z

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.

5. Tanzanian social suicide (continued)

2006-08-22T08:05:00.000Z

The house that we were to move into belonged to the same man who owned the Aishi Hotel. His name was Mr Mbowe, but such was his importance in the region that everyone simply referred to him as ‘The Man’, as though no further identification was necessary. Everyone was petrified of him and we were told to be extremely complimentary when introduced. His wife, warning us of his withering stare, did an exaggerated impression and said ‘When he looks at you he puts his eyes out, like this. Even the cat runs and hides!’
Dr Semu introduced us to him in the afternoon and the four of us sat out in the hotel gardens and had a very tense, awkward conversation. Mbowe was a large, greying man, impassive and bespectacled. He managed to conduct the entire conversation with monosyllabic utterances. His hotel was absolutely gorgeous, we told him. ‘Is it?’ he replied. Yes, I said; people must travel from very far afield to come and stay here. ‘Of course’. And so our little chat progressed, with Pat and I trying to ingratiate ourselves with our host, and he attempting to speak in paragraphs of no more than two words. He sat extremely still, moving only to lift a succession of whiskies, delivered by the waiters at regular intervals, to his lips. An aura of utter authority surrounded him. Dr Semu, sitting on the other side of the garden table, seemed to quake with fear.
It was Mr Mbowe who insisted we stayed at his hotel free of charge for our first few nights in the village. He treated this as a mark of respect to us, thereby adding to my image of him as a kind of ‘Don Corleone’ figure.
‘You have any problems, you come to me,’ he advised us, and I could imagine Marlon Brando delivering the lines in exactly the same manner.
One of the main purposes of this afternoon’s conversation, according to Dr Semu, was to secure Mr Mbowe’s permission to live at his other house in the village. It seemed that some agreement had been reached between him and the Parents Committee, but needed confirmation. The problem was, the cat appeared to have taken a firm grip upon Dr Semu’s tongue and it seemed as though he would never get round to bringing the subject up. When we were drinking coffee with our welcoming committee the previous night they had discussed which one of them was to broach this matter with "The Man", and each one of them had appeared strangely reluctant, offering some spurious reason or other for why he would be unavailable for such a meeting. It was only now that we realised why: they were all terrified. In the past half-hour Dr Semu had been transformed from a fairly laid-back dude into a fidgeting wreck, and I could only surmise that he had been reduced to this nervous state by the sheer presence and reputation of Mr Mbowe.
At one point we were invited into Mbowe’s bungalow to see the photos on his wall, displaying various successful business ventures. One that was a few decades old showed him sitting in a small helicopter, and another captured a handshake between him and close personal friend, ex-president Nyerere. The chairs in Mbowe’s living room were draped with colobus monkey skins, which he proudly told us he had a special government permit to own. I only hoped that his elephant-feet footstools had been similarly licensed.
As we were returning to the garden Dr Semu whispered to us that now was the time for us to ask whether we could live in his house in the village, and I was relieved that he was finally going to get round to it. Once we sat down, however, we simply reverted to the same awkward parade of small-talk, and it became obvious that Dr Semu was as reticent as before to raise the matter.
I was just wondering how much longer this could possibly go on, when Pat decided to bite the bullet himself and said ‘Actually, Mr Mbowe, we were just wondering whether you possibly wouldn’t mind if we lived in your house in Lambo while we were teaching at the school.’
Suddenly, there was silence. Even the birds in the trees seemed to have curtailed their song in surprise at the audacity of this request and anticipation of the response it would bring. Dr Semu’s eyes widened, and there was a heavy pause.
‘No’ answered Mbowe.
My heart took a nosedive to the bottom of my stomach and I studied Mbowe’s stony features intently for some sign that he was as angry as he sounded. Our first day in Africa, and it seemed we had already committed a major faux pas.
Fortunately, things were not as disastrous as they seemed. Pat’s convoluted way of asking the question had confused things, and Dr Semu intervened to explain that what Mbowe meant by his characteristically brief reply was no, he didn’t mind if we lived in his house. We had not angered Mr Mbowe - in fact we learned later that he rather liked us - and so Tanzanian social suicide had, for the time being at least, been avoided.

Dinner that night in the Aishi hotel was our first opportunity to relax properly. Meeting new people in such an alien environment can be an exhausting experience: you are anxious to make a good impression and not offend anyone, but the very foreignness of the culture means that you are never sure of how to achieve this, so there is a continuous background worry that you’re not doing the right thing.
There was no such worry this evening, however, because we were the only two people in the dining room. In fact, we were the only two guests in the entire hotel and remained so for the whole of our stay. Mr Mbowe seemed more concerned with the status of having a hotel than with actually attracting any guests. It was like a theatre that no-one could afford to go to, where the actors continued to perform every night to an empty house. The staff of fifteen went about their respective duties with Pat and I the sole recipients of their attentions.
It had understandably thrown them a bit to have actual guests to look after. Earlier in the day the manager, Johnny, had approached us to discuss the evening’s dinner.
‘Would you like mutton or chicken?’ he asked.
‘Oh, a bit of mutton would be lovely,’ I said. At this reply, though, he was crestfallen, and looked at us sheepishly.
‘Ah...there is no mutton.’
‘Oh...well...chicken would be nice.’ His face relaxed into a relieved grin and he went off to make the preparations.

4. Tanzanian social suicide

2006-08-21T09:54:00.000Z

The next day gave us our first view of the surroundings and I was dumbstruck by their beauty. Expanses of large-leafed banana plants and rich brown soil gave the area a lush, fertile look, although we were told that the poor rainy season has in fact resulted in meagre crops. At the bottom of the hotel’s grounds the river Weru-Weru cut its way through the land, rushing over rocks and boulders, and beyond, the dark green of the undergrowth was sprinkled with incandescent flowers of flame trees, bougainvillaea and frangipani.
But all this merely served as foreground, drawing the eye upwards towards the towering, snowcapped peak of the highest mountain in Africa, Kilimanjaro.
In November 1848, Johannes Rebmann, the German missionary who was the first European to sight Kilimanjaro, journeyed through the land of the Chagga tribe, and wrote in his diary:

‘This morning we discerned the mountains of the Jagga more directly than ever; and about ten o’clock I fancied I saw a dazzling white cloud. My guide called the cloud which I saw merely ‘Beridi’, cold; it was perfectly clear to me, however, that it could be nothing else but ‘snow’.’

Back in Europe, Rebmann was ridiculed by the Royal Geographical Society for his claim to have seen snow at the earth’s equator; his name was pilloried and his mental health was questioned. Only after corroborating visits to the mountain by the Hanoverian nobleman and explorer Baron Carl Claus Von der Decken in the early 1860s was his credibility restored.
The incongruity of Kilimanjaro’s ice-caps still carries an impact today, especially contrasted with the dry, dusty land that stretches away from its foothills. They confer a majesty on the mountain, like the white collar of a monarch’s robe. Staring up at it for the first time from the grounds of the Aishi Hotel, I found it easy to appreciate the mythical status accorded it by those living on its slopes.
When Rebmann first sighted the mountain from Teita he fell to his knees and recited a psalm. Von der Decken’s reaction, by contrast, was to crack open a bottle of champagne. I could relate to both of these responses, and was still standing there, dumbstruck, when the motor of Dr Semu’s VW Beetle interrupted my reverie. He sounded his horn and called out to us:
‘Get in! I have come to give you a tour of your new home!’
We drove away from the Aishi and rattled along bumpy tracks, and I was surprised to find that the village was not the nuclear cluster of huts I had expected, but a more sprawling affair. Each house or hut needed land around it, known as a ‘shamba’, on which to farm, so the buildings were fairly spread out, connected by a maze of paths through the surrounding banana groves. Poverty was widespread, and even those who were able to earn any money through employment or agriculture still needed to grow their own food.
‘Fortunately’ said Dr Semu ‘this soil is very fertile. It is volcanic, you see, from Kilimanjaro. You could plant a walking stick in the ground, leave it overnight, and in the morning it would be sprouting leaves. Really!’
He gave a wry smile, and sighed. ‘But now, I am afraid, there are many problems. There are too many people living on the mountain. The population is growing too fast and there is not enough land, and now the people cut the trees down to make more land; it is not good.’
We wound our way along dusty tracks past banana plants and spreading acacia trees. Along the village’s single tarmac road people were just sitting, standing, doing nothing, with bare feet and ripped, dirty clothes. It was a peculiar feeling, passing through the scene in the car as though floating in a bubble, and I was unnerved by the silent, steady stares we received from the people we drove past.

After a while we came to a fairly large concrete house, set back a little way from the track in an area called Lambo, which Dr Semu said would probably be for us to live in. It was a single storey building with a flat roof, and although we had no key to let us inside we could tell from peering through the glassless windows that it was bare and empty of any furnishings. However, it did have running water and was a considerable step up from the mud huts that most people lived in. I could see us being quite comfortable there.
A little further down the track was Msufini School where we would be teaching. Its four concrete buildings sat on a small hill with a fine view over the land, and housed a total of six classrooms. I was startled to find that each of these contained well over fifty desks, and I struggled to envisage them full of students, with me at the blackboard. We had managed, in a masterpiece of planning, to time our arrival at the beginning of the Christmas holidays, so it was a relief to know we had time to make some preparations. The area where we would be of most help was in improving the pupils’ English language. This was no longer as well taught at primary school, with the result that although secondary students might know their subjects well, they still had some difficulty expressing their knowledge in English. I was only beginning to appreciate the expectations that the village had of us and Dr Semu did little to lessen my sense of inadequacy at the task before us. He turned to me with a smile and said:
‘The lives of these students are in your hands now.’

3. Darkness

2006-08-18T13:44:00.000Z

There was a moment on the aeroplane when I took a mental step back from my immediate concerns about what movie they would be showing and when the drinks trolley would arrive, and surprised myself by posing a far more fundamental question: Well, how on earth did this happen? I found myself flying to Africa for six months with very little understanding of how the situation had arisen. While my friends were progressing from university into smart new jobs, I appeared to have strayed down a different path. It had led me to this plane, where I sat next to Pat and sank into a deepening anxiety attack.

At the airport there had been too much bag-weighing and passport-hunting for me to give much thought to what I was embarking upon, but now, staring out of the cabin window, I had no check-in procedures to distract me from the ugly truth that I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

I consoled myself that at least I had good company. Pat seemed the perfect companion for such a trip. He was as ill-prepared as I was but at least he was self-possessed enough to take it all in his stride. He wouldn’t reach the levels of panic that I could feel myself succumbing to. Or so I thought, until I looked across to see him biting his finger nails with a determined ferocity and mumbling under his breath. I distinctly heard the words ‘oh bugger’ and ‘what have I done?’

There was good reason to be nervous. Pat and I had little travelling experience to draw upon, and we were hardly the most practical people on the planet. Having just graduated in Classics and Theology respectively, most of our recent past had been spent with our heads buried in abstract books in the Bodleian Library. Remarkably, it was only now occurring to me that Tanzanian village life might represent quite a change from the rarified atmosphere of Oxford’s dreaming spires.

The TV monitors hanging from the ceiling periodically flashed up a map covering Europe and Africa and displayed with a red trail the distance that we had covered so far. They served as a constant reminder, as we edged our way down the map towards East Africa, that every minute that passed was a minute closer to the unknown. I had written to Dr Jonas Semu, my vague contact in Moshi, informing him of the date of our arrival, and he had said in his reply that he hoped to be at the airport to meet us. It was only now, as we faced the prospect of disembarking in the middle of nowhere at 10pm with no transport or accommodation, that I realised I hadn’t told him the number or arrival time of our flight. The stewardess gave me a strange look as I muttered a prayer of hope that he would be there.

* * *

Touching down at Kilimanjaro airport, we looked from the plane into complete darkness, but this, it turned out, was because the electricity at the terminal had cut out. Most of the passengers were staying on to fly up to Nairobi, so only a handful of us disembarked into the sweltering night. Thick black air enveloped us, ringing with the trills of a thousand crickets, and within moments my shirt was plastered to my body with sweat. Once inside the tiny terminal the only illumination was from men with torches and little electric light generators, which gave the place a foreboding atmosphere, throwing crazy shadows everywhere and generally adding to the air of confusion. Everything was strangely silent, apart from the whirring generators and the large flappy insects that bumbled around our heads and tapped against the glass of the bright lights.

The large-bellied customs man peered closely at our letter from the school declaring us to be voluntary teachers. He appeared to be deciding whether to make trouble for us. When he raised his eyes from the letter, however, they settled on the rastafarian behind us in the queue, who he seemed to find more deserving of his attention. Without another word he waved us through and began to rifle his way through the rasta’s bag.

Beyond the glass doors to the arrival hall a sea of dark faces was barely visible in the gloom. I felt a tightening knot of fear at the prospect of passing through them, into the unknown, until a hand reached out from the mass, clutching a piece of paper which it pressed against the pane. In shaky capitals were scrawled our surnames, and somewhere behind it, in the throng, stood Dr Semu.

Passing through the doors we discovered that not only had he managed to make it to the airport to meet us, he had brought with him a whole welcoming committee, consisting of the school’s headmaster, the vice-chairman of the Parents Committee, and the brother of the chairman. The chairman himself, they informed us apologetically, was unable to come. I was surprised by the big deal they had made of collecting us from the airport, and it was the first inkling I had of the importance and significance they seemed to attach to our arrival at their school. There were handshakes and nervous smiles all round, then we headed out to their waiting pick-up truck, threw our bags in the back, and set off through the night, with brilliant stars overhead and our first glimpse of East Africa the dusty side of the road caught in the headlights.

We drove for an hour, making stilted conversation about the school, and arrived in Machame region at the foot of Kilimanjaro.

‘The mountain is hiding over there,’ said Dr Semu, gesturing towards the darkness. ‘She is shy. Perhaps tomorrow she will show herself.’

We pulled up outside the area’s only hotel, called ‘The Aishi’, where it appeared we would be housed until more permanent accommodation could be arranged. By now the exhaustion from a sleepless night followed by a long-haul flight could no longer be held at bay by our nervous energy, and after a brief farewell from our hosts Pat and I made it up to our room. We managed to rig up our Mosquito nets without too much trouble, but anybody watching would have known we were new to this game: it was only after we had both climbed into our beds and tucked the nets in around us that we realised one of us still had to switch off the lights.

2. Newly returned

2006-08-18T13:42:00.000Z

Four years later, standing on the balcony of my guesthouse in Moshi, I look across once more at Mount Kilimanjaro. Its outline, clear against the pale morning sky, rises from the west to the snow-flattened peak of Kibo, curves down in a gentle saddle, and then thrusts up sharply into the jagged peak of Mawenzi before sloping off again into the foothills to the east. It is quite apparent why it is referred to locally as ‘The Sleeping Elephant’.

The years that have passed since I lived in Kilimanjaro’s foothills have not dulled its image in my mind. The hours I spent gazing at the mountain from the roof of our house have imprinted on my memory the curve of every glacier and the shadow of every ravine, and I have found my mind returning to these details often. Perhaps because my experiences here went so badly awry, my memories of them have proved particularly resilient. Now they have drawn me back here to see the magic mountain again.

Over the years I have developed a range of excuses to explain why, despite living in its foothills, I never attempted an ascent of Mount Kilimanjaro. First I say that it was far too expensive; then I add that it is actually highly dangerous, and point out that people die on the mountain the whole time, but that the tourist industry chooses not to publicise this fact. Then I conclude by explaining that it is not really a challenging climb, and that the difficulty comes not from the terrain, which is largely a straightforward stroll, but from the altitude, which is entirely random in who it afflicts.
There is truth in all these excuses, but none fully accounts for my reluctance to scale the mountain. The real reason is that when I lived here Kilimanjaro took on a special significance for me that I was afraid of destroying by climbing it. I imbued it with mystery. I embraced the local legends that anthropomorphised it and I believed in its powers and magic. For me, Kilimanjaro took on a personality, one of awesome might tempered by an extreme benevolence. I worried that such a romantic vision of the mountain would be hard to sustain after tramping up it with hundreds of sweaty tourists clutching video cameras.

But these were difficult, and rather peculiar, beliefs to explain to friends in England, so I usually said ‘Oh no, I didn’t climb it. Way too expensive, you know.’

And now, newly returned to Moshi and standing on my guesthouse balcony, there is still a part of me that wonders if I am doing the right thing. For today I begin my ascent of Mount Kilimanjaro.

I remain there for some time, watching the mountain’s glacial peak brighten in the strengthening sun. I wonder whether its altitude will provide me with some perspective on the events that passed when I was here before and help me understand what it was that went wrong. As if in preparation for the climb and the memories it will evoke, I cast my mind back four years to my first arrival at Kilimanjaro.

PART I - 1. Never sleep again

2006-08-18T13:38:00.000Z

Godi’s scream began as a low, strangled gurgle. It was soon followed by a sort of guttural rasp, and before long he warmed to his theme and graduated to a full throaty yell. The stone walls of our house were kind enough to amplify this further, and each new scream was complemented by the slowly fading echoes of his previous efforts, like some horrific backing-group of babies from hell. The hole above my door provided the sound with convenient access to my room, where, having rattled through the night-time corridors of the building, it proceeded to explore the corridors of my mind, thrashing its way around my skull and mocking me with shouts of what sounded like ‘YOU WILL NEVER SLEEP AGAIN!’

It is harsh to blame an eleven-month old infant for his outbursts, especially one who is suffering severely from worms and is neglected by his overworked mother. But over the sleepless weeks infanticide had begun to appear an increasingly rational and attractive option. Living with an African family was not quite matching my romantic expectations. Earlier in the day I had caught a gaunt, sunken reflection in a window pane in town, and had been shocked to find it was my own.

As I lay on my foam mattress, staring at the soft lattice-work of moonlight on the mosquito-net above me, I attempted to shut out the baby’s screams, and considered my situation. I debated whether the delicate scales of experience, which balanced the problems and dangers of living here at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro against the manifold delights and beauties of the area, were starting to tip in the wrong direction. I wondered what, if this was the case, I could do about it.

These thoughts served to pass the time while Godi screamed, but I came no closer to finding any answers. Only the arrival of dawn brought relief, when I climbed the stairs onto the flat roof of our house and gazed up at Africa’s highest mountain, stretching to the heavens above me. Kibo peak was clearly visible through the parted cloud, shining white and orange and blue in the morning light and as usual in these moments the sight of it comforted me and gave me strength.