In the Hill Country

Now that I know where I will be living, I can say that it is absolutely beautiful and well worth a trip.  It’s not even THAT far off the beaten track, at least in the sense that two very touristic cities, Moshi and Arusha, are just down the hill and therefore only ½ day away.

I had a grand time visiting my site.  It IS hard to travel in Tanzania:   bad roads, dirty crowded buses, distances made long not by kilometers but by many many small villages that must be traversed slowly, slowly.  If the bus drivers weren’t afraid of running over a walker or bicycler (and sometimes I wonder if they ARE!), then the many wicked speed bumps, some erected ad hoc by village residents to provide selling opportunities, will quite do the trick.  So, it was 7 hours on an uncomfortable bus to go 300 miles from Morogoro to Same (pronounced SAM-aye), then, overnight in a guestie (2 beds, a toilet, plenty of water in buckets and quiet; no fan, no towel = about 6 bucks), then after breakfast the next morning, a small bus up the hill for 4 hours, about 35 miles, over kidney bruising bad roads to Sambweni, where 1 of my 2 PCV hosts live.  I stayed with Autumn for 1 night, then walked with the other PCV, a guy named Jeff, to his house, in Ivugu, about an hour away, and spent 2 nights there. The day before the transfer to Gonga and my school, we walked back to Sambweni, had dinner with the Village Chair, and spent another night. 

The Pare Hills are not that high, topping out at maybe 8 or 9 thousand feet, and Same is probably at 3.  But once you leave the dry and dusty plain, and start ascending the hairpins that lead you farther and farther up and into the hills, the more remarkable they become.  The dirt is red, and the hillsides are terraced from near the top to the bottom of the valleys.  Red, handmade stair steps down and down, each with its planted crop of ginger, maize, beans and bananas. Along the windy road, houses and dukas cling, there are not many naturally flat places and where there are, is a village.  And at every inside fold of the road is a spring.  Water gushes out from broken granite rocks and spills out over the road and then into handmade irrigation channels.  And down and down it goes, and the hillsides and valleys are lush and tropical and green and gardened.

The people are the Mpare, who once lived side-by-side with the fierce Masai as cattle keepers on the plains.  But a long time ago they moved up into the hills (they still don’t have close relations with the tribe that sent them packing generations and generations ago.)  There they became farmers, keeping cattle only occasionally, for milk.  They speak, and prefer, their own language, Kipare.  Do you see the root?  Same, Mpare, and Kipare all spring from the tribal language, which the villagers slip into soon after the customary Swahili greetings.  Nobody speaks more than rudimentary English.  Thank goodness for Jeff’s and Autumn’s accomplished language skills.  I hope I can do as well as they have after 8 months in the Pare’s.

While I was there, I attended a funeral, which seemed familiar with food, visiting relatives, and quiet reminiscences.  I also went to a wedding, at which there were gifts, dancing, drinking and lots of flirting between the segregated boys and girls.  So pretty typical, although there was no burial at the funeral and no bride and groom at the wedding.

As you can surmise from this itinerary, there was a ton of walking, and none on sidewalks and little on roads, and always either up or down.  The paths that run between gardens are frequently traversed by irrigation channels, so that you jump over streams from rock to rock, up and down.  I am actually quite proud of my knees, and that I didn’t break an ankle.  And the views were worth it.  We could see to Kenya in the north, and we could see Lushoto, in Tanga, to the east.  The stars and full moon were incredible. 

On Thursday, the 6^th day of my trip, Jeff arranged for us to have, ahem, unauthorized transportation from Sambweni to Gonga, where my school is.  Piki piki’s (1-passenger motorcycle taxies) are strictly forbidden by the Peace Corps, on account of how dangerous they are on the rocky, slippery roads.  But our alternative was to spend twice as much money, with chancy outcome, trying to hire a Land Rover taxi, or taking a bus back down to Same, spending the night, and then riding another bus up into the hills on another road the next day.  I would have walked to avoid that alternative.  The trip was uneventful until the very end, and we arrived shaken but not stirred at my school late Thursday morning.  I may have a small scar on my leg, as a souvenir.

Gonga faces a little north of where Sambweni and Ivuga are, and is a little drier, and not as extensively farmed.  Still, it boasts a big hospital (50 beds and an operating theater), and a thriving village, bigger than either of Jeff’s or Autumn’s.  Dindimo Secondary School is out of town about a 30 minute walk, and has a flat enough spot on campus to make a football field, and a beautiful spring-fed creek.  The school is well established but has low enrollment, only about 185 students.  I will teach all four forms of English and perhaps some lower form Math and Biology.  They have a full science lab, although it seems to not have much equipment, and a computer lab with 8 or 9 working computers.

My first impression was that it was quiet.  After the barking dogs and loud speaker muezzin and Christian prayer meetings of Moro, this country living seemed peaceful.  My house is much too large for me and I will try to explain that a little better when I move in.  Jeff and I went to a faculty meeting and ate lunch (chai and lunch are provided on campus for teachers and students alike, something I’m happy about.)  Then I walked to town and met a nurse at the hospital, and walked back.  We went out to dinner with the Headmaster (another hour of walking) and went to bed early, as a Land Rover taxi would pick us up at 2:45 in the morning Friday to take us back to Same, down to the highway where we would catch a bus to Moshi.  Land Rovers in these hills and on these routes operate very similar to dala dala's.  When we arrived at Same, there were 12 people and their stuff in the 5-passenger vehicle.

Then it a town party, touristic and fun, with lots of area PCV's and all 10 of the members of my class who will be assigned in the area.  But I was tired.  My feet were blistered, and all I wanted to do was shower and be clean.  Still, Moshi will be my Banking Town while I teach in Gonga, which means I can go there to get money, receive packages etc., and not be charged with a day off against my PC leave.  So I was happy to see that it is walkable and has a huge American-style supermarket, full of exotic things like cheese, packaged pasta and canned sardines.  And wine.  I had a delicious Indian dinner, savored my first espresso drink in 2 months, and got glimpses of Mt. Killimanjaro, which towers over Moshi from 70 miles away.  I also met a Tinga Tinga artist whose work showed me, for the first time, how exciting those paintings can be.  I had always thought them a little naïve and they are, but incredibly entertaining, too, when I finally really looked at a good one.

Then, on Sunday bright and early, it was back on the bus.  As we rode east by south past the Pare Hills on our way back to Morogoro, I looked up and saw them, really.  How beautiful they are.  How lucky I am to be here.