R&R - Back to Kibondo

I’d originally hoped to return to Kibondo by way of Bukoba and/or Mwanza (i.e. come down from Kampala through the north of Tanzania) but my plans were thwarted by Tanzania’s fickle transportation infrastructure. (By fickle I mean I could have finagled passage on the freight ferry to Mwanza, but the boat only departs Uganda once a week … on Thursdays. I also could have flown from Entebbe to Mwanza, but the 45 minute flight would have cost about $400 – assuming it didn’t get canceled at the last minute of course. Or I could have caught a bus Saturday that – assuming it didn’t break down of course – would have dropped me in Bukoba late Saturday night or in Mwanza Sunday afternoon … and as far as I know, there are no Sunday buses from Bukoba to Kibondo and the Mwanza buses all depart early in the morning. Please note that you can practically draw a straight line between Kampala, Bukoba, and Kibondo … and yet it was faster and easier to get back to Kibondo by retracing my steps through Kigali, Rusumo, and Nyakanazi. Forget 2-ply toilet paper for the undergrad dorms – if I ever become one of those wealthy Princeton alum, I’m paving the roads in western Tanzania!!!)

The upside of returning the same way I came was that I could sleep on the buses without worrying about missing some part of the region I hadn’t seen before … and believe me, that 9 hour bus ride from Kampala to Kigali goes a lot faster when you aren’t awake to feel every pothole! I ended up taking a night bus out of Kampala (departing at 1am, arriving around 9am), which put me at the Rwanda/Tanzania border early Saturday afternoon (true to Kate-form (and to the amusement of my fellow passengers), I slept most of the way from Kigali to Rusumo as well). I lucked out and caught a ride from the border to Nyakanazi, where I spent the night in this fantastically decorated motel. (A small voice in my head scolded me for falling prey to such blatantly tourist-targeted advertising, but it was hushed by the other voice in my head (the one that wanted to be able to take a picture of it and then tell people I’d actually stayed there). I also assumed that if they could afford to put enormous wooden animals in their front yard, then the rooms would at least have the basics: bed, electricity, running water. You’d think I would’ve learnt to stop making assumptions by now, right? *sigh* Suffice to say from now on I’ll be making sure that water comes out of the faucets before handing my money over…)

The waterless faucets were the first in a series of incidents that had me silently mimicking Dorothy’s “Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore” remark … except swapping the “Kansas” for “Rwanda.” The second welcome-back-to-Tanzania moment came in the form of the bus I boarded the next morning for the last leg of my trip. The next time you see a bus driving down the road, try to imagine what that bus would look like if it were several decades old, covered in graffiti, and carrying about 150 passengers. 150’s actually probably a low estimate – this bus was so full you hardly had to hold whenever we hit bumps (which is saying something since we left the pavement behind in Nyakanazi and the rest of the way was about as bumpy as it gets) – after all, it’s hard to lose your balance when there isn’t actually any room for your body to move. I spent the first third of the trip standing in the aisle (trying to make myself as small as possible so the kid smashed up against me could have more air to breathe), until the guy I was standing next to indicated that I should take his seat when he got off at the next stop.

Cue incident #3. For as long as I’d been on the bus, there had been a little girl sleeping on this guy’s lap. She was still fast asleep when we got to his stop, so I held onto her for him for him while he battled his way toward the door. I figured he had luggage in the hold below the bus, and that once he'd grabbed it, I'd either hand the baby to him through the window or pass her from person to person until she made it to the front of the bus. That type of thing is normal enough here, especially on jam-packed buses or daladalas.

But then he didn't come back. And the bus continued on its way. Leaving me, sitting there, with a baby sleeping on my lap, trying desperately to remain calm (I didn't want to wake her up) about the fact that this guy had apparently decided his baby was better off with a strange mzungu than with him! Fast forward another thirty minutes to another stop where even more people got on the bus, and another baby ended up in my lap. I knew what this one's mother looked like though, and I figured the baby was safer on my lap than trapped in the crush in the aisle, so I was more amused than alarmed by her presence. Baby #1, however, was not as keen on giving up some of her lap real-estate to make room for the newcomer and, upon waking up trundled across the aisle and back a row to her mother. I don’t think I need to describe what a huge mental sigh of relief that resulted in!