Tanzania

This is Tanzania and prices are lower. We get a great beautiful room with tv and hot shower for 6 USD. The food is only rice, greens and chicken. But the greens are spiced up with onion and garlic and the chicken is in a tasty soup. Less fun for Christian, being a vegan sometimes.

Christian: For me it’s not a problem. I know a lot about nutrition and what a human body needs. Of course it would be fun to be able to choose any food I’d like, everyday on the trip, but I knew this beforehand. This is another world and it will be another food experience. Food is fuel. I need it to survive and to keep going. Of course, I too enjoy food, but it’s a want and not a need to have the vulgar variety we have back home. Fredriks comments and, I don’t know what to call it, maybe disability to let this go, is actually a bit tiresome at times. I’m satisfied, but he goes on saying things like “oh, you must eat more”, “it must be hard not getting to try everything” and so on. It is not hard. It feels great having a clean conscience and not exploring other living beings for my own egotistical needs. This is my base point. People with a different view far too often forget to take this in and it just looks like they don’t want to understand.

The language barrier with our host gives me an extra trip back to the border. He said there is no possibility to buy internet top up in the next coming 7 days on our trip. So we need to get it at the border. I hitchhike easily with a truck each way. Then I get us some internet top up for the phone. And also find out that I can get it in any bigger village along the way.

We cycle about 80 km this day. The roads we have heard about beeing bad are ok, sometimes good tarmac. Sometimes big potholes filling the whole road. Trucks and cars are scarce but they drive all over the road to find there better path around the holes. Some parts of the road is only dust and clouds come with every vehicle, so thick we have to stop. But the nature is great. It is far less people living in Tanzania comparing to Uganda. It is great. We are happy seeing people again. And outside the villages the savanna and big hills or small mountains are beautiful. In late afternoon we have each a broken spoke!! Not again!! And Fredriks wheel is really not straight. Ahhh!!

But we stay positive and work as a team. With this we also have three flat tires on the same wheel. A little annoying. But it’s nice to be two if we stay positive, which we do.

We cycle the last bit of the day and meet a guy cycling. He looks younger but he is 20. He hints that he wants money for school but doesn’t ask for it. Which I find nice. So I talk to him in Swahili as much as I can to use him as my teacher. See I really don’t like to give out money to people without them giving me something in return. So he teaches me how to count to 19. I later pay him 30 cents for the lesson. Then I ask if we can stay at his place as paying guests. He is happy for it. He has a student apartment which we get to share, while he sleeps at a friends place. So its nice.

Christian takes the quite hard bed. I sleep on our camping mattresses on the dirt floor. He also provides shower water and he and his friends have dinner with us.

His student room is 4 USD per month (which we pay him for this night) and his school is 80 USD per year.

A quick visit to the bathroom and a lot of cockroaches.

Now it is time to sleep.

The next day we do another good cycling day. The nature is beautiful, the roads are dusty. In the villages we see Marabou storkar.

We buy great, freshly roasted peanuts from kids.

Since we have had no internet connection these last days we just cycle. So from Kigali we did 60 km on the half day, then 110 km, 80 km yesterday and today 29th of jan we did 110 km. This is not bad since the roads are off and on hilly and today was all dirt road.