The 1000 Day Holiday

Well, it has to be expected.

The Train was due to depart Tabora 9pm. It didnt arrive at the station till 12:40am. and didt depart till 1:40am.

However, we weren’t kept unamused. They played very loud techo thru the PA system. Such classics as the Venga Boys and others.

All in all, a nice ride tho, and much more comfortable than the Buses.

Dodoma is the Capital. Although not much actually happens here. a quaint small town, thats been planned. So everything is really spread out on grid style streets.

Patric the German gains quote of the Day status.

I was looking at a fruit and vege stall. And exclaimed at the size of their enormous avacados.

He said “you can’t buy that”.

I asked why not

“because it doesn’t taste good unless its cooked”  

Kirsten (german) & myself just looked at him. Hes even a Vegetarian!

Also, found a market where everyone brings 30L plastic buckets full of their home brew maize beer. Foreigners never go there, so we were quite the entertainment. lots of people coming over offering samples of their brew.

Some were really rough. however I settled on a Tamarillo infused version. Patric a standard maize flavour. 1Litre for 50cents.

Limited ourselves to one round. Not sure if the alcohol content would sterilise the ditch water or whatever it was made from. (No problems a couple of days on – What are the symptoms of Typhoid???)

with my fandangled calculator watch. (sorry, youll have to wait for a picture)

yesterday while stranded in the middle of nowhere on the bus i did some calculations.

2.5 years of holiday = 78840000 seconds, or 912.5 days, or 21900 hours, or 1314000 minutes, or 78840000 seconds
Ive been travelling 20,773,740 seconds so far (as at 10:29 yesterday)

leaving just 58,066,260 seconds left.

or 96,777 minutes

or 16129.5 hours

or 672 Days

or 1.8 years

Tempting to push it out to make it the 1000 day holiday I think

Note: this is not a moan/whinge, Just for my recollection of details, and some of it was enjoyable!

• 5:30am Check in. Somethings up. My bus is the only one without internal lights on
• 5:45am Departure time. They are attempting to push start the bus. (unsealed, uneven, rocky bus park)
• 6:20am. Success, congratulations the 60seater bus has an engine!
• 6:22am. Realise there is a 1 of 2 windows missing from the frame beside me. And its cold & dusty
• 6:30am. Success, using my pack clipped to the curtain, and wedging myself against the remainder of the curtain. its stopping most of the wind.
• 6.38am. Eveyone in the back of the bus is moved to the front 1/2 in the aisle. The conductor says this is the way its done in Tanzania. We are at the weighbridge
• 6:44am. Bus doesnt sound ok. loud clanking. Bus stops on the road
• 6.50am. Theres guys underneath, striking metal no metal.
• 7:15am. look out my window, and the bus driveshaft is being loaded into a matatu. along with all the bus staff. It drives away. Is this included in the Travel time allowance of 6 hours?
• 7:40am. Wish I’d charged my ipod. battery is low.
• 10:04am. D Joints for driveshaft arrive on a matatu. Still need the actual driveshaft
• 10:40am. RIP ipod
• 11:15 Salvation, a guy with sugar cane is cycling past, and someone stops him (yes someone had to stop him. This is not india!).
• 12:20. 10c well spent for 1hrs entertainment trying to eat raw sugar cane + juicy goodness
• 12:25. Apparently the drive shaft has been made. Just waiting for it to arrive.
• 12:45. Twende! (lets go). The bus is push started in 4 attempts.
• 1pm We leave the tarmac.
• 1:01pm. I realise the reason why there is only 1 window in the frame. All parts of the frame vibrate independently to each other and the wall of the bus. The other  window has obviously previously imploded.
• I didn’t know glass could withstand such violent vibration. If i had a decibel meter, i would have verified. but my guess the glass was creating ~90 to ~110db banging when vibrating. At a max distance of 40cm to my ear.
• Concerned that the glass is going to shatter, and slice my arm to bits, when in the middle of dusty nowhere!
• Thinking of how I packed my earplugs in my pack (under the bus)
• The ‘road’ is made of dust. like sand, but finer and easily airborne. Everything is covered in red dust.
• 5:45pm. We arrive in Tabora
• later on realizing my travel pack (earplugs) was in the bottom of my day bag all along.DOH! Priceless