Birthday, Bukoba, boats and buses!

I definitely had an Easter weekend of fun!

It all started on a my Birthday.  The girls from the flats had put a Birthday Banner outside my flat door just to make sure that everybody knew it was my Birthday.

 One of the girls in my class shares my Birthday so they bought in a huge chocolate cake for us all (and I made brownie for the adults). So I can’t complain about going to work on my Birthday when you get lots of cake!

When I got home from school there was just time to pack and grab something to eat before Suzie and I were off on our adventures to Bukoba, on the over night ferry. It was definitely a weekend of ‘What do we do now?’ moments, they started at the ferry port. 
We got out of taxi and walked into a huge open space full of people with no signs telling us where to go. We just followed the crowd which luckily got us to the Ferry. You would think getting onto a ferry would be easy, but no! We had to look like lost white people and be shown the very weird steps that we had to climb up.

We were shown to our cabin and we watched the ferry leave with the beautiful sound of the horn (which we can hear from our flat in the evenings so you can imagine how loud it is actually on the Ferry). We settled down in our bed and slept to the roar of the engine.

 We definitely didn’t need an alarm clock as the extremely loud horn was sounded at 5am as we pulled into the stop before ours and gave us both the shock of our lives! 

 When we arrived in Bukoba we found our hotel and spent the rest of the day, catching up on sleep, exploring Bukoba town and  having a very local  lunch of rice and beans. In the evening we enjoyed a lovely dinner in a near by hotel. As we finished we realised there were no taxis to catch home. We were trying to decide what to do as a piki piki (motorbike taxi) driver pulled up and shouted ‘lifty’…….the second ‘What shall we do now?’ moment. We tentatively, but in not very ladylike way, got on the bike. Yes three of us on one bike! There was a lot of grabbing on for dear life, shrieks as we whizzed around corners and slightly worried looks as we zoomed up totally the wrong road. We did get back to the hotel eventually and gave the piki piki driver an amusing end to the drive as we both practically fell off the bike with our feet still caught on the seat.

The next day we had organised a cultural tour of the local area. It started with a trip to the iron works …… well lots of men standing around doing not a lot showing us what they had made. We tried our best to look impressed…. I did buy a dog bell to be used as a door bell which made the trip a little more worthwhile!

 We then drove to the hills above Bukoba and hiked down a hill to a beautiful waterfall. 

This is what the guide stopped and showed us first and I was not very impressed that I had to now walk back up the hill just for this.



It was ok because after slipping and scrambling down the hill we saw a much more impressive waterfall.

Then the guide announced, ‘If we climb down the other side you will have a much better view but it’s a bit over grown’. Overgrown was an understatement. We pushed our way down the steep slope through the thick bush leaving me with bugs down my top and lots of scratches. After nearly falling into the river, as I slipped stepping over a very wide space between rocks, I did get a great view of a pretty impressive waterfall. I wasn’t appreciating it’s wonderfulness so much as I dragged myself back up through the bushes.

 

This was the path through the forest to get to the waterfall.

Next we were driven through the hills of Bukoba that could have been somewhere in England if it wasn’t for the Banana tree plantations and the sunshine! We were taken to a house of a villager who was going to cook us lunch Haya (The local tribe) style. She welcomed us into her house where we sat on the floor covered in dry grasses.  The food was yummy and was washed down with delicious passion and lemon grass juice.

 

This is chewing coffee that we were given to chew on to freshen our breath before the meal. They are Coffee beans that are cooked with spices. You crack the shell and take the bean out to chew. As you can imagine I wasn't a big fan but had to keep smiling when the delicious coffee taste filled my mouth!

Using banana leaves as a plate. She tipped the savoury banana and beans out from the large pot.  It was served with  yummy spinach and peanut sauce and a tomato stew. There were also 2 sorts of yams, casava and potatoes to go with it.  

These were very small and sour tomatoes.
They were suppose to lower our  blood pressure
 but we weren't very impressed!

After eating we were shown how to prepare and cook green savoury bananas and where they made a alcoholic drink from bananas in tree trunk carved in the shape of a canoe. We did sample some too! It was brilliant experience that gave us a little insight into what living in the rural village would be like.

This was the house we ate in.

This was the spirit made from bananas.
 She was pouring us a bottle for the others to taste back ate the flats.
 It cost us less than a pound!

It rained all day on the Sunday so when we ventured out in the drizzle Bukoba was like a ghost town, Tanzanian avoid coming out when it rains. When the sun did come out in the afternoon I think the whole of Bukoba was down at the beach on the lake. We got lots of attention and caused much amusement as we sat doing some people watching. 

We had had a good weekend but we knew that the next day we had a 6 hour bus journey which neither of us were particularly looking forward. We left the bus station at 9am (It was suppose to leave at 8….. Never a good sign!) squashed into our double seat that was made for one and a half people. We were squashed but could have coped for 6 hours. Oh no! That would have been far to simple. After 4 hours the bus stopped and we were spouted a lot of swahili that was later translated for us to mean the something to do with the gears was broken, we weren’t going anywhere. Everyone would have to squeeze on the nearly full bus that was coming along in about 20 minutes. 

After lots of stares as we stood waiting at the side of the road, the bus arrived. Tanzanians push to get on a bus that they know they have a seat on so you can imagine the pushing and shoving that went on getting on to this bus so they weren’t stranded. The only way we were getting on this was to forget we were polite and British and join in with the pushing. After lots of hands in the face and knees in backs I was on the bus………but I had lost a shoe under the bus! I decided I was not going any further until I got my shoe. I got some evil stares as I stopped any more people getting on the bus and shouted 'shoe' whilst pointing enthusiastically under the bus. Someone eventually took pity on the silly white girl pointing and picked it up for me. My shoe was saved and we did get a seat on the bus even if I was so squashed that I had to hold my shoe because there wasn’t enough space to put it on. We were on our way to Mwanza again….. Phew! 

So we thought. A couple of hours later the bus stopped again and everybody got off the bus. We had no idea why but followed the crowd as we have learnt is the only thing you can do. We discovered that the bus was getting on a ferry  to shorten the journey. However on that particular day one of the ferries had broken down so our bus was probably going to be sitting there until about 10pm as the ferry only fitted a few vehicles on at a time and there was a lot of vehicles. We could wait for the bus or go on by foot and find some other way of getting to Mwanza. It had already been a long day so we opted for the 'no bus' option and decided we would play the smiling white girls card on the other side to get a lift the extra 60km to Mwanza.

As we stepped off the ferry we really didn’t know how we were going to get to Mwanza and how much it would cost but within a few minutes there were some random men shouting ‘Mwanza’ at us from a shabby looking bus. They said it would only cost 2000 shillings (Less than a pound) to take us, so what did we have to loose. There were no seats left on the bus but they very kindly let me sit on the very large gear box next to the driver. I had a great view all the way back to Mwanza and a very hot bottom! 

Our 6 hour bus journey had turned into an 11 hour adventure filled with lots of worrying, funny (yes there was inappropriate laughing when all the locals got off the bus to use the toilet otherwise known at the very tall grass by the side of the road!) and ‘What do we do now?’ moments. We were very relieved to see our flat and our toilet!

It had certainly been a Birthday and Easter weekend to remember.