Trip to Amani

While we were in Tanzania we took the opportunity to visit various places, and one of these places was Amani. Meaning 'Peace', this is a reasonably difficult place to get to, and were were lucky that Mo & Jo were prepared to take vols with them when they went anywhere interesting.

The following is from my diary, but I have made it perhaps more readable. Oh maybe I should add that Mo had a passion for collecting snails, and we were always conscripted into searching for them too - it is more interesting than it sounds!

Mo & Jo, together with Duck arrived to pick us up at 6:00am and we began the journey to the East. Past Kilimanjaro Airport was new territory for us and there was much for me to take in, because I am always interested in topography, plants, animals culture and all! But I don't want to fill this up with a description of the landscape.

The road to Moshi had not been rehabilitated yet and was a myriad of potholes and the vehicle could not be driven fast. This makes the journey interesting because all vehicles pick their own path that looks the smoothest - this means you may be on the wrong side of the road and oncoming vehicles may be on 'your' side. The Impression I had of Moshi was that the town was smaller than Arusha and slower paced, but then we did not go right in to the shopping centre.

The futher East we travelled, the drier the landscape became, and the vegetation changed with it.

We passed the village I now know well as Mwanga, and on to the village of Same, where the Elephant Motel is situated. The Elephant Motel was one of those tourist ventures set up, but seemed not to have attracted much business. Locals were unlikely to use it (because of the cost)and tourist traffic was infrequent. Everything was clean and tidy, and the service good. We were the only folk there and in fact any other time we went there, there was nobody else. Sometimes I wonder how such business kept going - well I do know, but that's something else to tell later. Heads of various antelope and gazelle adorned the walls, something (fortunately) you don't see too often.

Breakfast was an omelet and a cup of tea at a cost of Tsh 800/- each which was a very fair price.

It was always inspiring to see Mount Kilimanjaro, though she seldom lifted her skirts of cloud, and over the years we tried to photograph her; sometime with success, other times not. Later on our trips to Ngarenanyuki we saw her better.

I fell in love with Baobab trees early on, and there were many of them just before Mwanga and beyond, after Same though the vegetation turned to Acacia and other dry land bush up on the slopes of the Pare Mountains. So to our left rose the Pare Mountains and to our right were plains covered in what I call scrub, but is classified in Tanzania as forest, and according to my geography teacher, savanna, forest where you can ride a horse among the trees.

By the way, the road was sealed but narrow and in good condition, from time to time lorries were broken down on the side of the road; or crashed - likewise buses and worthy of note, there were only a few private vehicles and slightly more project type vehicles.

After we had passed Same, the vegetation reflected the drier nature of the land and shorter Acacia species grew. There were sisal plantations which always seemed to be neat in their tidy rows. Areas of deafforestation where evident, caused by the charcoal trade.

I can't adequately write about the changing landscape, but to me it was (and still is) enthralling. Many tell me about the boring trip to Dar es Salaam - never to me - it is certainly a long way but there is so much to take in. The areas to the North became more mountainous, collecting more rainfall. therefore becoming more clothed in forest. Even on the very steep slopes there is agricultural activity, cropping mainly maize and beans. And there were houses up there, some grouped into small hamlet- type villages.

We followed the railway line and were cautious crossing it,though we saw no trains.

There were no road signs as such, but on most shops a Coca Cola sign provided the name, and I guess, getting about you had to be resourceful. The road forked, to the East was Tanga and to the South was Dar es Salaam - we took the East fork towards Hale and Tanga. Buses travelled fast and the drivers are belligerent - something to address later too!

The soil became redder the further East we travelled, so did the houses made from the soil (mud brick). Some had a whitewash plaster, and rain splash made the bottom half of the walls red as well. I noticed Kapok trees (pic left) - huge with strong horizontal branches; there were still a few mattresses made from this product, but it is seldom used these days. Plenty of Mango trees and some citrus orchards also Cashew nuts! Red soil makes good burnt bricks, and is a good income for the youth - but, (always but) burnt bricks need fuelwood to fire them and this contributes to deforestation. I will discuss this another time.

The area obviously benefited from more rainfall because there were rice paddies, coconut palms, and the common fruit trees like mango & orange; plenty of banana too! And those big football sized Jack Fruit, good to eat but smelling like vomit - you have to get past that first!

The turnoff is at the village of Muheza (actually you turn off there to go to Pangani, the short cut taking a lot of time). The road is rough and gradually winds its way up quite steep mountains which are clothed in rainforest. Is this jungle? Some of the large trees have huge fluted butts and there was a plantation of Teak. Most of those trees though were unknown to me. The area though was well populated and people were walking along the road or working in their fields, there were some small villages as well.

At Amani (well the whole area is known as Amani but this is more where the research area was established) there was a clearing, standing were some old Arucaria trees - several different species - and soon we pulled up at the Rest House.

The Rest House is an old German place, now owned by the Tanzania government - some may say it is a little run-down, but it is clean and very comfortable. Our room had two single beds - those narrow ones - with frames that carried mosquito nets.

Lunch was ready for us, because we were expected. A very good meal of chicken & chips! Refreshed we walked along a track that followed a water pipe (6") and I thought we were in more or less uninhabited, bushclad countryside - not so we soon met people and I spoke with some and found they were returning home after a day in the fields. I called the forest cover 'bush', which is is to me but rather it was rainforest, but not overgrown and thick as can be imagined. In a clearing, which was each side of a small gully there was a house bounded by a neatly trimmed hedge; the clearing was a neat subsistence cropping farm. The stream in the shallow gully provided clean water and a small dam was set up with a bamboo 'pipe' fixed so a bucket could be easily filled beneath it. Below this are were large flat rocks, worn over the years because this is where the family washed their clothes. We spoke briefly to the owner and he was pleased we liked his small farm (shamba).

As we neared the top of a ridge, we saw many more small farms and enjoyed the view and meeting some of the folk there. But it was time to retrace our steps and return for our evening meal of rice and beef stew.

Saturday morning I rose early as usual and was dismayed to find the kitchen did not open until 7:30 and I liked my early morning brew of tea. Oh yes! Tanzanian Green Label tea is one of the best! I decided to walk around the village in the hope of finding somewhere to take tea, however the village was quiet at that hour. Back at the Rest House, I found the kitchen staff preparing breakfast and they rewarded my morning greeting with a brew! I was all smiles! Breakfast was an omelet.

We climbed into the Toyota and drove past the tea plantation - actually we stopped to take a photo of the tea pickers, but they did not want their photos taken, so we didn't - I found this unusual. I began to feel queasy as we past by the neat tea plantations which were obviously run very efficiently.
The road was in good order, though still the red soil - probably slippery when wet!

When we stopped for another general view and an opportunity for the others to take photos, I had the sudden urge to vomit - right there beside the car - and my bowels actually loosened a bit without permission! I felt yuk!

Anyway we proceeded on to a snail hunting spot and as soon as we stopped I had the sudden, unstoppable urge to fertilize the bushes - dysentery of the watery kind! I felt very sick (my diary has more colourful language than I'm prepared to write here). I walked a little trying to take an interest in the trees, but had several quick detours - going at both ends now I was! I found a place in the sun and had a snooze.

Back at the Rest House, lunch had no appeal for me and I remained on my bed while the others went to do their thing. That night Mags suffered stomach pains and twice headed for the toilet - but she did not vomit. My visits to the toilet coincided with tremendous thunder and I feared waking the whole household!

There is a soda in Tanzania - Bitter Lemon - often taken with Konyagi, this was of great help to me any helped me rehydrate. Mags stayed in bed all day Sunday and my strength started to return and I ventured for a couple of walks. The best was to a Botanical Garden, established 1902 and over some 300 acres. I found it very interesting. I still felt poorly but I had stopped vomiting and my bowels were no longer involuntary!
I had thought this bout had come on very suddenly, but in rereading my diary, there was warning the day before we left - I had been feeling queasy in the stomach.

Jo took a photo of me walking through the forest holding hands with an old fellow that I had met. Tanzanian society differs from that of NZ in so many ways and touching is one of them - it is very natural to hold hands in a way that shows nothing other than a warmness to each other.. Worthy of remark, I found a spot by a creek where what we call African Violets grew naturally, and it was from here stock of the plant was used to propagate for general use.

It was decided that we travel on to the coastal town of Tanga on Monday morning. The trip was short and the landscape different and interesting. The road verges were being kept clear of growth by men welding slashers. The was a large cement factory belching smoke, so there must be a supply of limestone there.

Tanga is a busy little city and my impression was that it is greener than Arusha - probably more frequent rainfall. There were monkeys in the trees.

We had a cup of tea at a motel, and we thought that it would be a good place to spend the night, but there were no rooms available, so we went to 'The Inn By The Sea' which was , shall we say, less well kept. We were the only customers there, but the staff did the best they could and our rooms while not very modern, were clean. How were we to know? There was a lot of noise there at night! Almost constant foot traffic down the hallway. The place was a brothel and there was the giggling and other stuff that the imagination conjures up! No wonder the staff were not used to serving the likes of us!

We had a picnic lunch beside the sea, and realising this was my first view of the Indian Ocean, I climbed down the rocks to touch the water. I had a thrill to see first Dhow and remenbered Sinbad, and saw a man wearing a coolie hat!

We went to the Amboni Caves, (not Duck, he went to town - the brothel may have intrigued him - I don't really know) made of limestone with stalamites and stalagtites, they were very big! The guide charged us Tsh2000/- but Jo did not want to go in there and I was more than surprised Mags did! Truly the caves are magnificent, and there are two species of bat - my first real close contact with them - a bit smelly but! One group of the larger species flew, fluttering, past us, maybe for 20 seconds! Hundreds of them! Then the bloody guide swithched off his torch! Well that was scary, freaky too and a bit risky. It was dark and we couldn't find our way out of there if we had to!

We stopped at a limestone quarry, as always Mo looked for snails, but I was interested in the patterns the blasting had made of the rock face because I had experience blasting rock in my forestry days.

Our trip home was one of retracing our steps and enjoying what we saw, but we came on a huge crash between a bus and a train - 70 people were killed! We saw only the aftermath and the dead and injured had been taken away. We had to wait about an hour for the road to be cleared and one man approached me wanting to go in partnership with me to buy the wreck if the bus. He wanted to make jiko's out of it - they are those small charcoal burners used to cook on. I did not take up the offer.

Mama B was pleased to welcome us home and we slept soundly recovering from our bout of stomach trouble but looking forward to continuing with our projects.