Well, today I went on a little road trip to Moshi (three hours' drive one way) with a car full of Tanzanian friends. We all had some business there, and so we carpooled. Moshi is a nice city; I've visited there a couple of times before. It's the city closest to Kilimanjaro, right at its foot, really, but it was too cloudy to get any good views of the mountain today.
We had a couple of stops for car issues: getting gas, checking the oil and adding more, fixing a puncture in a tire, etc. Such is life on the roads here. Fortunately, all the issues were easily fixed and didn't slow us down much at all.
We stopped for lunch at friendly-looking place on the edge of Moshi. Here's another good look at typical Tanzanian food for you--the guys shared a platter of roast goat meat along with ugali. I was really craving chapati (kind of like thick, fried tortillas), so I ordered some to eat with roast chicken and pilipili (handmade hot sauce). Add coca-cola all around, and it's a great meal! Also something nice about Tanzania--a good lunch for five cost about $15.
Above: Beth and I had added air to the tire several times, but it kept going flat again. Albert stopped at Lake Oil to have them fix the puncture once and for all.
Driving back into Monduli, we realized we had just missed a major downpour. We had very little rain on us on our trip, but dark clouds were just leaving Monduli and the ditched were full to overflowing. Just outside of Monduli we came across a place where water was flowing over the road; the car got doused with quite a wave of muddy water as we passed through it.
I was keeping the car (I have a lockable gate, so I've been keeping the Shorts' car that they haven't sold yet until Lewis is able to return to sell it), so we made the rounds of Monduli dropping everyone off. It had just gotten dark by the time Jackson (who lives somewhere nearish) and I reached my neighborhood. I was afraid my road would be a complete mess after the heavy rain, especially as they just did major work to move the road over several feet and straighten it out just a few days ago. When we got there, a gravel truck was dumping a new load of rocky dirt onto the new road, and several guys were out shoveling it out on the road as it began to drizzle again. The old road is still there just to the right of the new road; we tried driving along it so as not to disturb those working, but it quickly became so deep with mud that we backed out of it. I was going to turn around and go park the car at Beth's and walk home from there, but Jackson insisted that we could make it through as soon as they finished shoveling, and jumped out to help shovel. Sure enough, after a few minutes the pile of rocks and dirt was smoothed enough that I made it through with the car.
I think it might need washed, though.
0 comments:
Post a Comment