21 November 2013
Another weekend went by without posting a blog. That was because I was travelling and
attending meetings and enjoying time with friends and so writing a blog took
second fiddle. Last Thursday (14th)
I went to Dar es Salaam, leaving here by Mohamed Trans Bus at 6.00 a.m. and
arriving on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam by 1.00 p.m. The trip was fine up to here, with only one
stop along the way, for bathroom and breakfast.
Then as we started getting into traffic, everything came to a standstill. There is a lot of building and repairing of
roads going on, widening the road as well as building some sort of rapid
transit train system, and everything and
everybody keeps wanting to get somewhere at the same time the building is going
on. After some time of sitting in traffic
that was completely stopped, our bus driver jumped up, went out of the bus, got
on the back of a motorcycle that was on the side of the road, and off he
went. Before too long, he was back,
having scouted out a way around/though the jam, and we managed to get to the
station within the next half hour. We
got into a taxi to take us to the hostel at the Tanzania Episcopal Conference,
and then sat in the taxi for another good length of time waiting to leave the
bus station. The taxi driver maneuvered around
stopped traffic and back streets and we made fairly good time until the last
couple of miles, where again there was a jam with nothing moving. Finally our driver was able to get off the
road and take some back paths and we made it to TEC, sweating profusely and
grateful to be out of a “moving” vehicle.
This isn’t a good month to go to Dar es Salaam, since the heat and humidity
is awful and it really wasn’t pleasant.
However, it was good to see the Maryknoll Sisters from all over the
country and we had an air conditioned room for our meetings, so all was
well. I came back here on Sunday,
leaving Dar es Salaam at 6.00 a.m. and arriving in our house by 1.00. That was good time and my only complaint was a
headache, since there was no coffee to be had either before leaving or on the
way.
Dar es Salaam has changed so much since I lived there in the
70’s. Then the population was so much
smaller and cars were few and far between.
Now the population is almost 4 ½ million, and I swear most of them are
on the road all the time, either on foot or bicycle or motorcycle or car or van
or bus. And don’t forget the truck
traffic, with huge trucks and trailers hauling cargo to and from the port in Dar
es Salaam travelling all over Tanzania as well as Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and the
DRC. Hopefully when the building and repair are
finished the traffic problem will be eased a little. Talk about energy and life, however – lots and
lots of that.
No comments:
Post a Comment