Africa via Overland Truck

Thur, Mar 5, 2010

We crossed into Tanzania today and we’ve finally begun to see scenery that feels like Africa. The country seems more prosperous than Malawi and Zambia, with tin-roofed brick homes and flowering shrubs and trees planted around foundations and through the towns. We’ve passed miles of corn fields and sunflower fields. Mixed among the corn are renegade sunflowers, leftovers from last year’s harvest. In some ways it reminds me of Guatemala… the sight of houses lost in the corn with only the roofs visible. No land is wasted – the crops come right up to the house.

Goats fill the sides of the road, hidden by the tall grass. They are little things, but they seem to be resilient and must be well adapted to living here. People also line the roads, all of them walking to somewhere. We see them in town and out in the middle of nowhere. All of them with a destination, often many miles away. We see schoolchildren in the early morning, dressed in their school uniforms, walking in groups, laughing and waving to us.

The very little children love to see our truck go by. The come running from the fields and their houses and the tall grass, materializing out of nowhere, waving and squealing, jumping up and down trying to get us to wave to them. To the children, we are a novelty and they seek nothing more than a smile and a wave and a shout of hello. To the adults we encounter on the crowded streets of the towns, we are a commodity – someone to whom something, anything, can be sold. They rush the truck, holding cardboard boxes overhead stuffed with cans of soda and water, cookies and snacks. Or they hold basins aloft, filled with bananas or mangoes. If you need something, they will find it for you, and often for very little money.

Our driver, Dave, is very good at negotiating the narrow roads and crowded byways. It is not an easy task, and he has the longest days of all. As mentioned above, the vendors crowd the truck every time we’re stopped in traffic, and other vehicles squeeze between with just inches to spare. Of course, the vendors are experienced at this, so the vehichles brushing their shirts don’t even elicit a glance backward. When we begin moving again, he’s always careful to pull out slowly so they have time to move aside. So far we’ve only hit one chicken on the road, and that’s the extent of our road damage. Given the numbers of people and goats and chickens we roar past, that’s pretty amazing. We have had several days of 10 hours or more on the road and he is at the wheel nearly all of that time. Our tour leader, Sarah, will take over for a few hours in the mid-afternoon so he can have a rest, but he certainly does the lion’s share of the work. I feel very confident when he’s at the wheel.