The Road to Kilimanjaro

I am writing this from Moshi, Tanzania, a small town at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Well – let’s be honest:  I’m lying in a twin bed, encased in mosquito netting, reeking of DEET, being meticulously watched by two rather odd looking Daddy Long Legs who are currently holding court on the ceiling.   

There’s a daily shuttle that runs from Nairobi to Moshi via Arusha.   We were (barely) on the shuttle by 8am, and on our way by 8:30.    The ride was advertised as a six-hour journey (insert Gilligan’s Island theme song HERE), but that time estimation clearly doesn’t take into account potholes or roadwork.   Let’s put it this way – we arrived in Moshi shortly after 5pm.   It was a long day.

You know that moment when you get on a bus – or a plane – and it looks for a few minutes like…just maybe…no one will sit next to you?   You get that unbelievably righteous “Thank God…I deserve this” feeling.   And as soon as you get it, someone sits down!    That’s what happened at 8:25.   A very pleasant-looking but also very large Muslim woman with a beautiful head covering sat down next to me.    It was fine…until I inhaled.

WOW.

My nostrils went on an instant strike.

The smell was terrible.  

How could this beautifully dressed woman have such a stench?

Part of me wants to spend a year going door to door in Nairobi, dropping deodorant on peoples’ doorstops. 

I turned my head to face toward the window, hoping to avoid any airflow from her direction.   It worked a bit, but I couldn’t sit like that for a six hour drive!   Talk about a neck cramp!

Dami saved me 20 minutes later.   We stopped and a hotel for an additional passenger, and she immediately asked the smelly woman to trade seats with her.  I am forever in Dami’s debt for instantly putting my nose back in business. 

The rest of the ride was thankfully relatively stink-free.

With the exception of the distressing moment when I realized there was no bathroom on the bus, the first two hours of the drive were relatively uneventful.  

Looking out the bus window, I felt remarkably like I was driving through the middle of Nevada.   Well…Nevada with the possibility of seeing giraffes and zebras.   

The ground was dry and dusty, and tufts of small brush littered the ground.  

But the birds!   I’m not much of a bird person, but every bird I saw looked like it had just flown straight out of an imaginative child’s coloring book.     

They’d perch on the flat-topped acacia trees that would appear every so often. 

As we drove, the acacia trees became more and more frequent – to the point that the view looked like God had reached down in a moment of frustration with a giant machete and cut off the tops of all the trees with one quick swing.  

Why this visual popped into my head I’m not really sure, but as I was thinking it the shuttle lurched.   We’d hit a giant pothole.  

It was about this time that the roads really started deteriorating.   Every few miles, we’re run into a giant cement pipe lying in the middle of the road next to a hand-painted sign reading “DIVERSION.”   The sign was invariably tilted, as any good sign should be, at a 45-degree angle.  

Well put.

The road would end, and we were relegated to using a side dirt road for up to many miles at a time.   If the whole thing wasn’t so entertaining and the scenery so fantastic, I’m sure I would have been ill.

After about the third hour, we started seeing Maasai.   

Intellectually, I know that the Maasai exist and that some still live in tribal conditions, but I guess I didn’t really believe it until I saw it.   As we drove, we started seeing tall, spindly-looking men with shaved heads wandering along the side of the road, following herds of goats, cows and donkeys.    

On their feet were straps attached to what looked like pieces of tire from a golf cart.  

They walked with a slight bent, and most had silver dollar-sized holes in their earlobes.   They were wrapped in brilliantly colored sarongs, and had equally colorful scarves wrapped around their shoulders.  

Each man carried a bamboo walking stick – sometimes tucked behind one arm, sometimes carried behind theirs backs as though they were hanging from it.   The sticks came in handy – if a goat stepped away from the group, the stick would wave in the air until the goat stepped back in line, looking as guilty as a goat can. 

What was amazing was how far from anything we would see them.   These men were miles from anything, and I can only wonder how many miles they cover in a day.

Not all that much closer to the village “centers,” we started seeing some Maasai women.   They walked along the side of the road, too, but usually in pairs (as all women prefer to do).   Large baskets or buckets sat perfectly balanced atop each of their heads.    Most of these women also kept their heads shaved, and nearly all the women had so many ear piercings, so much jewelry and beading hanging many inches from every bit of their ears, it made western women with two or three ear piercings seem ridiculous.  

I snapped so many pictures out my window that I think I drove the rest of the bus crazy.     

By 1pm we reached the Tanzania border.   Getting out of Kenya was no big deal, but once we drove through, quite literally, the big steel gate that marked the entrance to Tanzania, things got weird.

At the immigration office, we got in line at the Visa Application counter.    An angry looking man sat behind the glass who would bark every so often at his colleagues.  

Dami presented her Nigerian passport, and was told that the fee for an entry visa was $50.    $50?  

All the guidebooks said that the visa would cost between $20 and $40.

Emily and I felt badly for Dami – sometimes presenting a Nigerian passport can be problematic and cost extra.

Then Emily and I went to the desk.   The angry man told us the fee would be $100 per person.   WHAT???

Oh – and it had to be in cash, using only US Dollars, and the Dollars had to have been issued no earlier than 2004. 

WHAT?????

“No,” we said, “we only want a single entry visa.”

“No – you get a multiple entry visa.   $100.   US Cash only.” 

The immigration office wouldn’t even take the local currency!

I could feel my blood beginning to boil.

The cost was probably really about $20, and the additional $80 was likely just the requisite tax on being American.   This is a tax that I’ve come to expect, and the tax rate varies by day and depending on the person overseeing the transaction.

I hate feeling powerless, and yet I really had none.

Thank God I had a stash of US currency with me.   I’m not sure what would have happened if I’d shown up with only local currency. 

We handed over $200.   What we got in return were our passports back, and a regular stamp on our passports.   The $100 bought us some chicken scratch next to the passport stamp that said something about it being good for one year.

By the time I left the immigration office I was so angry I could hardly see straight.   But there was nothing to be done, and I had to force myself to let it go.   In the scheme of a large trip like this, $100 is nothing.

Hey – at least they let us into the country. 

We still trudged back to the bus looking and feeling rather defeated.

The terrain changed significantly once we crossed the border.   The scenery became much more lush, much more mountainous.   We continued seeing Maasai all the way to Arusha, and on occasion were able to glimpse their living quarters – small stone or mud huts. 

I was expecting somewhat expecting Arusha to be a booming metropolis.   I feel like I hear enough about it that it would at least have a couple large buildings.

I was very wrong.

When we first pulled into Arusha, I thought we were driving through a slightly larger village than usual.   The main road was paved, but everything else in sight was dirt, and there were dilapidated shops built from old pieces of aluminum siding along the road.   Ads for Kilimanjaro and Seregeti Lager were hand painted on everyone building, and palm trees were everywhere.   I almost felt like I was driving through Central America. 

It was Dami who first saw a sign indicating that we had arrived in Arusha.  

I was shocked by how underdeveloped things were in the city.   People were everywhere, though, and they were a mix of women with baskets on their heads, men in Maasai sarongs, muslims, and people wearing T-Shirts and jeans. 

We stopped briefly in Arusha to drop some passengers, and then continued on to Moshi, a smaller town located at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro. 

It was cloudy, but 15 minutes outside of Arusha I realized that the large dark cloud in front of us – that seemed to take up the full horizon – wasn’t a cloud at all.   It was Mt. Kilimanjaro looming over us.

It was a weird feeling – it’s something I’ve wanted to see for years  - and to suddenly know that it was right in front of me, to FEEL it in front of me and yet not be able to see it – shook me a bit.

Kilimanjaro rises nearly 20,000 feet in the air, and it has a more authoritative and commanding presence than any mountain I’ve visited.   

I kept hoping that the clouds would clear so I could get a good view, but I was short on luck.   I could only see the bottom, but even the bottom revealed its enormity. 

We arrived in Moshi shortly after 5.   It’s a small, run-down town, the center of which is marked by a 20-foot Clocktower that prominently displays the words “Coca-Cola” on each of four clock faces.

We checked into the Kilimanjaro Crane Hotel – it was $55 for a room with three twin beds, mosquito nets, and a continental breakfast.    We were exhausted, but not so exhausted that we couldn’t go for dinner at one of the local recommended restaurants.    We dined at “El Rancho,” which, naturally, serves exclusively Indian food.

Riiight.

And now we’re off to sleep.    The goal is to get up at 5:45 to see the sunrise over the mountain.   Hopefully we’ll be able to see it!