On my third visit to Tanzania, I finally made it to Mafia Island. A small cluster of islands just off the coast, south of popular Zanzibar, Mafia is known to be less touristy so we all agreed to go there for holiday, and we are so glad we did. Jonah and I began our day at sunrise, walking in the early dawn to the bus stop, where we traveled 3 hours to busy Dar Es Salaam. The dalla to town is popular and the buses are scarce. We had to use elbows to push our way into the moving bus. Tanzanians are patient people, except when it comes to getting on and off a bus, a ship or standing in any line. No one taught them in grade school it is rude to butt, that cutters are not popular, that waiting your turn in line is an unwritten law. Before Jonah and I could take a step towards a mode of transportation, ten Tanzanians would cut in front of us and wriggle into the best seats near the open windows. They do it with sheer determination, heads down, eyes straight ahead, grounded. This I find is also the best way to deal with people at the market trying to rip you off, hold out your money, stare straight ahead and don’t budge, and you will get your fair price. Sometimes I wonder why I came back to this country where everything seems backwards and absolutely upside down.
By the time we reached the third dalla, we were the last two to squeeze into the center seats. I sat in the very back next to a giant mama dressed in what looked like a bridesmaid’s pink satin shirt and skirt with a kanga wrapped around her bottom. She held a big black purse in her lap where she stored her two cell phones and repeatedly changed her SIM card back and forth as she texted this person or got a call from another to talk about the food she had eaten. On my left sat a timid man with his young son of about 8 years old. Next to him sat a young mother who struggled to keep her squirming 2 year old boy with a lazy eye from falling out the window. Jonah sat in front of me, in the fold down seat with no back-luckily there were enough people in the bus they held him up. They tried charging us extra for our luggage and we refused stubbornly and put our big backpacks on our laps, giving us even less room. For 2 and a half hours we rode like this, often stopping for 10 or 15 minutes to drop off or pick up more passengers. 15 minutes into the ride the boy with the lazy eye fell asleep in his mother’s arms, and the other boy sat quiet and still between his father’s legs. I can never get over how calm Tanzanian children are.
The tarmac road turned to a bumpy, winding, dirt one. Rain swallowed us and I feared swerving off the slick mud roads as the dalla roared up and down the hills-at least all these people would pad the crash, I thought. When we arrived at the port in Nyamisati (we weren’t even positive there was a boat to Mafia-we followed Lonely Planet’s directions) we were quickly ushered to the boat kiosk by a tall Islamic man with strange wandering eyes and quick Swahili. “How much?” I inquired? “Wazungu (white person) price, $20” he answered without making eye contact. In the guide book, which is slightly outdated it says the price is $5, so I talked him down to $10, turns out it was $8, so we weren’t that far off.
Most of the passengers had already boarded the boat by this time as it was departing at 2pm, we made it by 15 minutes-the guide book said it left at 4pm-and quickly made our way up the rickety stick ladder onto the deck. Our bags were put underneath and we found a “seat” on the large tarp with all the other woman, who sat stoically without shoes, claiming their space with outstretched legs, children and purses. All the men sat up in the back of the boat or at the bow in the sun. We sat near some Spanish girls in the hot sun, a fraying tarp canopy just beyond us. As the boat left shore and made its way through winding channels out to the ocean I watched as the woman slowly spread themselves out, like melting cheese, until they covered the floor completely with their black burke robes, kangas, scarves and colorful fabric-one giant quilt of sleeping woman and children. They slept on and next to each other, the children quiet and calm, some already asleep. Jonah and I chatted with the other foreigners aboard and watched the sailors, who looked more like pirates, prepare us for sea. The five hour ride was pretty uneventful. The Tanzanians slept, the white foreigners paced the deck in an awkward dance as not to fall off the sides as there were no railings to stop one from being tossed into the dark Indian Ocean. Waves sent salty sprays over the crowds, a few passengers near the sides-the white people of course, not knowing where to sit-got completely soaked, but the warm sun and the continuous wind dried us quickly. The water was relatively calm and we approached Mafia just as the sun was setting into the ocean. (The pictures from the sky are from my volunteer friends who flew there instead of braving the boat) Getting off the boat was way more exciting than boarding. First the luggage came flying out of the bottom and they just held it out and asked, “whose is this, and this?” any bag could have gone anywhere-especially since they all looked the same. Any nice backpack was thrust our way and we passed it on to our white neighbors until we finally found ours. The boat was too big to make it to shore or to a dock, so a smaller hand carved boat made its way slowly out to the now busy with activity boat. All the sleeping mamas had awoken and were frantically gathering luggage, mattresses, heavy boxes, children and pushing their way to the edge to be first on the dingy. It was quite a show to see people leaping off into the dark so they could be first on the small boat, which quickly filled and quietly headed to shore. We waited for the next round and elbowed our way on, trying to keep dry and not lose our bags to the black water. The last 5 feet we walked to shore with rolled pants and tired bodies-if only all Americans would have this opportunity…
Mafia is a place where you might find a tropical resort for honeymooners or extremely rich tourists. It’s were you also might find pirates, fisherman mending nets, coconut plantations, fish markets, and hand carved boats. We stayed in the main town, not too far from the port, where budget campers can afford a few days on the island. On the other side is a marine park and just to get into that part of the island costs $20, an area we had to avoid due to these costs-we skipped a day of snorkeling in the reefs because of it. Our group was made up of our roommate Sandra, from Holland, another Holland VSO volunteer named Frouke, and her friend Petra, visiting for the holidays, and a wonderful family from England-Martin and Yasmin and their 13 year old son, Matthew, who have been in TZ for almost 18 months working also with VSO. We arrived for a fish dinner to find two young Austrian girls had also joined our group as they were also traveling for the holidays. The sprawling Cliffside area that would be our home for the next four days had six bandas and a shady area under large trees for camping. We stayed in our tent only one night, since Jonah’s tent is super small and it was about 90 degrees in the tent! The bandas were pleasant-somewhat clean, buggy, but with a fan and nice beds. Monkeys, dogs, bush babies, millipedes, giant snails, and large busy clumps of red ants were amongst us.
On Christmas Eve all ten of us walked to town accompanied by one of the campground dogs who refused to let us out of his sight, and made our way to the Hakuna Matada restaurant, where we had a lovely dinner of tuna steaks, rice, chips (French fries), and really yummy mango ice-cream. Because we were such a big group, the kitchen had trouble accommodating us, so we ate dinner around 10:30. But it was great to share Christmas with so many great people. The next day we piled into a motor boat with the hopes of swimming with whale sharks, but never saw any. The next day a group went out early without us and saw a lot, so Jo and I ran to the beach, got our own boat and took off for the turquoise waters promising the largest shark on the earth. Whale sharks aren’t actually mammals, nor are they dangerous. They have no teeth, and like a hump-backed whale they eat only plankton and small fish filtering them through their large toothless mouths. Whale Sharks can live to be 150 years old and grow up to 30-50 feet long. The first one we saw was a baby, and was probably about 10 feet long. They are beautiful creatures, with dorsal fins like a shark, white spots and dim long yellow streaks along their silver bodies. Their heads are square and their mouths are enormous. It was absolutely terrifying to jump into the water next to them, but once you got over it, it was amazing.
Since I was a little girl I have had a reoccurring dream of swimming next to whales. The sky is always dark red and yellow and it is very peaceful as we glide through the water. I have had this dream so many times.. if there is any water in my dream, the whales will be there. Swimming next to a Whale Shark was the closest I will get to this dream. We spotted about 5 in total, each time the boat turned and motored towards their surfacing Jaws like flag of a fin, then spilling backward into the water with our snorkel masks and fins we would seek them out and swim alongside them until they dove deep and disappeared into the murky depths. It was like nothing else to swim next to a creature that large-the picture above water does it no justice. They are eloquent and swim at a reasonable pace that we could keep up with. They make no dramatic movement and as long as you stay away from their large tail you are relatively safe. The only one that made me really nervous was the last fish, as he was over 30 feet long. He was beautiful, with schools of small fish clustered just below him, using him as protection, long thin silvery fish swimming between me and him. Jonah and I mostly had the large whale sharks to ourselves as most of the other boats were returning to shore and one was filled with Tanzanian Indians who didn’t know how to swim. Our guide told us the whale sharks have been around Mafia for the last 30 years and like the island as there is not a lot of coral reef around and they can feed in the open water. We were very pleased after not spotting any of them the day before and after only an hour went home smiling. Our friends did some scuba diving as they are all PADI certified and saw amazing fish, turtles and coral reef.
On Christmas Day we did a small gift exchange with a game and ended up with some pretty nice gifts. Each night we all ate together and throughout the days we played lots of card games, drank cheap beers and walked on the ocean beach. It was a great holiday.
Getting home was a little rougher. We woke at 5:30, walked to the port, loaded onto a small boat with too many people, got stuck, unloaded half of us into another boat, pushed off, loaded us all back in the motor boat, and headed to the big boat. We did manage to get a good seat, which was fortunate as the water was choppy, the sky black and the rain ever threatening until the end of the journey when it opened on us and people fled under big blue tarps. Getting off the boat was the same circus act of people pushing and line cutting to get down the slippery wet stick ladder-one British kid fell-it looked quite painful-I got serious and kept telling pushers to wait in line. Everyone flocked to the three waiting Dallas, wrestling in their luggage and sweaty bodies. We finally got into one-Jonah pushing and shoving with the best of them as I went to look for food as we had eaten nothing all day. All I found were some bad biscuit-like cookies called Glucose Biscuits and I had to buy 5 packs and a water cause the guy had only a small amount of change for my large bill. Back inside the dalla Jonah was trying desperately to protect my seat as a 15 person school group was trying to all get on the full dalla. They managed to shove them all in, in an awkward pile and since they were small kids, it kind of worked. I ended up with one half on my lap, causing my left leg to fall completely asleep. One girl vomited out the window, others slept on top of each other. We counted and there were about 35 of us in the Toyota van for a long 2 hour drive. In Dar we made it to the wrong bus station, were ushered to a small bus, which I was told never to ride unless you have all day to get home, which we did not as it was already about 5 and close to getting dark. There was only one seat left, so Jonah stood as I dozed in the seat next to him. Suddenly a loud bang like a gunshot sent me jumping from my seat. Flat tire. We pulled over onto the shoulder and there we waited for another hour and half before it was fixed. Luckily there were trees to pee in, a mango stand nearby with ripe juicy mangoes to eat and the sun was setting so it was actually cool and comfortable. Most of the ride home I sat on the busted tire in the back until we finally made it Morogoro at 9:30, 15 hours later from when we had started that morning! Sandra, that darling of a roommate, had made dinner, and I sat dizzily at the table still feeling like I was on a boat or a bus, my mind swaying like the warm ocean waves that crashed over our boat earlier.
The best news is that Morogoro and the school received a substantial amount of rain. As you can see by the pictures we have lots of fruit coming on and the gardens look great. The kitchen Jonah designed is finished and looks great as well! When we returned we splurged and bought ourselves butter, vodka and olives for martinis and hope to drive (sober of course) out to the school to watch the full moon come up on the New Year and then take ourselves out to Indian food and end the night with a cocktail or two.
I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and holiday and I wish you all an amazing New Year. Be safe and make good choices! Thanks for taking the time to read about my adventures. I miss you all a lot and am holding up ok-this trip seems more emotionally challenging than last time. It’s really hot and the people here can be pretty tough and demanding. Morogoro is a rough town, and not as welcoming as Arusha, which I miss, despite all its craziness. Tanzania in general is a challenging place to be and as much as I love traveling here, it only reminds me more of the beautiful place and people I am lucky to be blessed with back home. I am also thankful for Jonah who has been amazing and is doing a great job of keeping my spirits high and helping out a lot at the school. I am glad he is here! I am also thankful to be blessed with Sandra as my housemate, Polly as my director and SEGA School as my place of work.
Be well and have fun!
Love Linz
