Dangers of the daladala

Last week we made the trip to Lindi. The daladala should have taken two hours; long enough for some, but the expectations here are of another order. When we arrived at the bus stand at 7.30, that familiar feeling of being out of place washed over us like a rash. Two white wazee carrying too large and too expensive a hold-all, gingerly avoiding the russet puddles from overnight rain, peering into empty buses, looked a soft target for ‘helpful’ daladala boys.

After a surge of excitement as we bumped down the road, we soon stopped and two ample women squashed onto the ledge behind the driver’s seat. Where there is just room for one set of knees, here three were accommodated. I spent the next hour with my knees cushioned in a warm, soft bubble wrap of a lady’s thighs. The little girl, face peeking from a garishly coloured scarf, spent her next hour with a look of petrified fascination. When two wiry, muscly men replaced them, I forced a smile.

The visit to Lindi was to be brief; a short talk to the hundred or so head-teachers, gathered there for a two day meeting of the region’s schools. The entire meeting was conducted in English, in a wooden hall, perched on a stony bluff overlooking the Indian Ocean at Lindi bay. We were given jipati and soda, a prompt speaking slot and a bumpy bajaj back to the bus station. After a re-run of the jostling and one-upmanship of the boys working the buses, we managed to catch the slow bus to Ndanda. The fast bus covered the eighty miles in about two and a half hours. Ours was to take four, stopping at overgrown lay-bys, where small mud houses poked through the cassava and banana plants and an old man in plastic sandals, a richly embroidered white kufi, holding his flapping skirts, waddled, in the most ungainly fashion, avoiding the mud and the detritus to struggle on to the empty bus. The bus was empty but for two hungry wazungu, bouncing about on the back seat, waving at curious children and smiling a gentle refusal at the offers of maize, coconuts, samosas, nuts, water, oranges, bananas and every size and shape of dried fish. My hunger got the better of me and I munched on nuts and maize for most of the way. We saw many strange sights but perhaps the most intriguing was the small man, wearing vest and sandals, wheeling a tractor wheel, twice his size, on the main road, down a very long hill, risking life and limb every time a vehicle passed. We wondered which was stranger- that he had the strength to wheel it up the hill prior to rolling it down the hill; whether he was returning to or taking it from a three-wheeled tractor; or that he had access to such a large tractor in the first place. Certainly, it would not go unnoticed in this neck of the woods.

Ndanda, or rather the Benedictine complex at Ndanda, is a strange place. Green, cool and often with a dampness in the air that with the food, the landscape and of course the architecture, you’d be forgiven for believing it to be Bavaria. The electricity sockets make no allowance for fifity years of British rule and are doggedly German. Stranger still, seems to be the effect of very obvious European patronage and benevolence. Unlike Mtwara, where we Europeans – particularly old British ones on bicycles - stand out as curiosities; in Ndanda, the European is the source of skills, of employment, the best healthcare, the best secondary school and doubtless the purest water in Tanzania. This is perhaps part of the reason why five young boys, the ring-leader daring to be cheeky, mimicked us with a “gibbledy, gabbledy yackety yak” and turning to his friends with a boastful grin, said,

“Good afternoon,” and made to shake my hand.

Such forward behaviour from young boys – without a shikamoo or a “Good afternoon, sir.” is most uncharacteristically rude and, as I approached him with a stern face, his confidence ebbed and, with it, so did his friends.

Our journey home was uneventful. Four hours, with the roof leaking on to the seat next to me and a young boy made to sit there. I’m not sure which made him feel more uncomfortable, sitting next to me or his damp backside. As we passed the salt flats near Mikindani they were sweeping the remnants of glass from a lorry-load of soda and an entire bus load of people was trying to pull a daladala out of the soft salty soil in which it had become embedded to its axle.

Bus travel is the only option for over ninety per cent of the people here and the dangers are common and obvious. I walked back from town with Malubiche the other day and he stopped momentarily pointing down at a concrete slab.

“Someone died here yesterday, killed on the back of a piki-piki, hit by a daladala as it sped round the corner.”

Unremarkable and unmarked, the incident was barely worth the comment, but we stopped for a moment then walked on.