Sunday, September 19, 2004
Saturday, 18 September
It was good to be away for two days, and it feels good to be home again. Since the school was closed this week I decided to visit Kim in her new site, outside Bukoba on the other side of the lake. Bukoba is a nice enough town, with a nice restaurant at a hotel on the lakefront and a good cafe for snacks and breakfasts. Then, the usual shops, central market, dusty streets and the everlasting refrain from the residents: “give me money.” The climate is cooler than Mwanza, which feels good, and the dry season has ended there. We had rain for a half hour or so every morning and coming from Mwanza, it looked like Oz with all its lush greenery.
Kim is really out in the boondocks. Miles and miles of nothing to reach her site. Broad valleys and fantastic vistas, with only occasional houses along the road surrounded by bananas and more bananas. I have never seen such a huge area, green and lush, so devoid of people. How can this country be so poor with all this land just waiting to be used?
I had no trouble taking my bike on the overnight ferry – just locked it onto the rail. A guy at Bukoba said I should have had a consignment sheet for it but he was happy when I gave him 1000 shillings. But my “easy” 40 km bike ride from Bukoba to visit Kim and Becky in Kanyigo was more like the ride from hell. I am glad I did it, but have no interest in doing it again. They said there were hills all around Bukoba.
Hills, shmills, I ride hills every day here on the way to Mwanza. But whoa... This road to Kanyigo was something else. Long, steep, and mostly without the downhill reward because you just don’t want to go very fast on rutted dirt roads. And forty kilometers is only 25 miles – should be an easy 2 hours, maybe 2.5. Well, it was something between 3.5 and 4 hours of hard work. Fortunately I was wearing good quick-dry hiking clothes, because I soaked them and resoaked them on that ride.
But without the bike ride, I wouldn’t have met Charlie. Charlie was this patrician old black guy who, when I stopped for directions, insisted that I join him for a cup of tea and information about the area. Turns out that he wants to turn his flea-bitten poverty stricken community into a tourist attraction. He has visions of giving cooking lessons in “the authentic historic African manner” and displaying the old style of building houses and a nearby waterfall, and he showed me a report that tentatively agreed that maybe there were a few possibilities provided that he had the support of his community.
I agreed to return on Friday before returning to Mwanza for his promised tour and to sample his authentic food, and then I even talked Becky into coming along with me.
The waterfall was actually quite impressive, and would be the good terminus of a 45 minute hike. Everything else was not quite ready for prime time, shall we say. The authentic ancient house was very impressive inside, but had a rusty metal roof. We pointed out that tourists would not accept this as an ancient house with a corrugated iron roof. He assured us that a renovation was “planned,” but later we bumped into the owner who clearly has issues with Charlie, zero interest in spending anything on the house, and wanted only to implore us to give him money. Pretty generally everyone we met seemed to have an issue with Charlie, including the village chairman.
The women had indeed cooked a meal for us while we were at the waterfall. Typical rice and beans with spinach and mashed bananas with Fanta or Coke on the side. Good, but just like you get everywhere else, here. Charlie assured us that they hadn’t followed his instructions, and if we came back tomorrow we could have the real stuff. Sure.
I ended by taking digital photos of everyone, and they were delighted to see themselves in the little monitor. Then, they wanted Becky and me to sit down to listen to them. Which we did, with Charlie translating. Clearly Charlie was not giving a literal translation. He was translating how much they wanted to help to develop the tourist idea, and they were saying “Give us money, give us money now.” (Fortunately I had just taken Charlie aside and given him 6000 shillings for the food and his tour.) I started to reply and wanted to thank them and then give them a supportive business rap, but Charlie was mistranslating only how we thought his tourist idea was the cat’s meow. Fortunately at just about that time the daladala came by and we had to run for it, waving good-by. We rode off to waves and smiles and asante, asante, karibu tena (thank you and come again).
It was good to be away for two days, and it feels good to be home again. Since the school was closed this week I decided to visit Kim in her new site, outside Bukoba on the other side of the lake. Bukoba is a nice enough town, with a nice restaurant at a hotel on the lakefront and a good cafe for snacks and breakfasts. Then, the usual shops, central market, dusty streets and the everlasting refrain from the residents: “give me money.” The climate is cooler than Mwanza, which feels good, and the dry season has ended there. We had rain for a half hour or so every morning and coming from Mwanza, it looked like Oz with all its lush greenery.
Kim is really out in the boondocks. Miles and miles of nothing to reach her site. Broad valleys and fantastic vistas, with only occasional houses along the road surrounded by bananas and more bananas. I have never seen such a huge area, green and lush, so devoid of people. How can this country be so poor with all this land just waiting to be used?
I had no trouble taking my bike on the overnight ferry – just locked it onto the rail. A guy at Bukoba said I should have had a consignment sheet for it but he was happy when I gave him 1000 shillings. But my “easy” 40 km bike ride from Bukoba to visit Kim and Becky in Kanyigo was more like the ride from hell. I am glad I did it, but have no interest in doing it again. They said there were hills all around Bukoba.
Hills, shmills, I ride hills every day here on the way to Mwanza. But whoa... This road to Kanyigo was something else. Long, steep, and mostly without the downhill reward because you just don’t want to go very fast on rutted dirt roads. And forty kilometers is only 25 miles – should be an easy 2 hours, maybe 2.5. Well, it was something between 3.5 and 4 hours of hard work. Fortunately I was wearing good quick-dry hiking clothes, because I soaked them and resoaked them on that ride.
But without the bike ride, I wouldn’t have met Charlie. Charlie was this patrician old black guy who, when I stopped for directions, insisted that I join him for a cup of tea and information about the area. Turns out that he wants to turn his flea-bitten poverty stricken community into a tourist attraction. He has visions of giving cooking lessons in “the authentic historic African manner” and displaying the old style of building houses and a nearby waterfall, and he showed me a report that tentatively agreed that maybe there were a few possibilities provided that he had the support of his community.
I agreed to return on Friday before returning to Mwanza for his promised tour and to sample his authentic food, and then I even talked Becky into coming along with me.
The waterfall was actually quite impressive, and would be the good terminus of a 45 minute hike. Everything else was not quite ready for prime time, shall we say. The authentic ancient house was very impressive inside, but had a rusty metal roof. We pointed out that tourists would not accept this as an ancient house with a corrugated iron roof. He assured us that a renovation was “planned,” but later we bumped into the owner who clearly has issues with Charlie, zero interest in spending anything on the house, and wanted only to implore us to give him money. Pretty generally everyone we met seemed to have an issue with Charlie, including the village chairman.
The women had indeed cooked a meal for us while we were at the waterfall. Typical rice and beans with spinach and mashed bananas with Fanta or Coke on the side. Good, but just like you get everywhere else, here. Charlie assured us that they hadn’t followed his instructions, and if we came back tomorrow we could have the real stuff. Sure.
I ended by taking digital photos of everyone, and they were delighted to see themselves in the little monitor. Then, they wanted Becky and me to sit down to listen to them. Which we did, with Charlie translating. Clearly Charlie was not giving a literal translation. He was translating how much they wanted to help to develop the tourist idea, and they were saying “Give us money, give us money now.” (Fortunately I had just taken Charlie aside and given him 6000 shillings for the food and his tour.) I started to reply and wanted to thank them and then give them a supportive business rap, but Charlie was mistranslating only how we thought his tourist idea was the cat’s meow. Fortunately at just about that time the daladala came by and we had to run for it, waving good-by. We rode off to waves and smiles and asante, asante, karibu tena (thank you and come again).
