It is a nice morning. Instead of buying internet credits for the phone I find a great european style café. Swedish prices but also a menu with latte!!
I do internet all morning, four ours of internet, blogging, many arrends.
I am a litle tired the evening before and when Luise, the midwife, asks if I can come to Zanzibar and look like her husband for some days. I decide that if the train schedule fits, I will go. She tells me that travelling on her own as a girl is very difficult when she constantly has to explain she is married and her husband is at home. Of course she is not. But here it is just very odd being her age and not wanting to get married. In Zanzibar it is actually even worse because of the sex tourism.
Many white women come there and young black men make a living as there boyfriend during the vacation. So Luise is a target and can not sit alone even for a minute before someone comes sitting close and even starts to touch her hair or face. She chases one away and another one comes.
So back to me, I am in one town with a train, going express to Dar-es-salam twice a week.
Dar es-salam is next to Zanzibar. And many people on this trip have been feeding me a lot of good pictures of this paradise.
I leave the bike at the guesti I am staying at. I ask about the timetable for the trains. My host does not know, but after going around asking a bit he finds out one of two express trains in a week goes today at three or four. Perfect, then I should go.
As the optimist of time I am, I leave with a bus at 14. They say it goes direct to the station. It should take about 10 minutes. After about five stops in 15 minutes I feel a litle stress. In every stop the Toyota bus stops and looks for more passengers. So I ask again how many stops left? How long time? About 20 minutes. I ask if there is another bus going direct. It is just in front. I get on that one. I sit down. The guy next to me is also going to Dar-es-salam. Great! The minibus makes a few stops, in another 10 minutes when I ask how long time to the station. No worries, relax, only about 20 minutes. I get off and find a motorcycle taxi. In ten minutes he takes me to a deserted house with broken windows in an half empty village. This cant be it. He points at the sign on the house with the name of the station. Really? Did I miss the train? But it looks like no one has been here for a decade. This cant be it. I pay him and walk to the village bar and motorcycle taxi hang out. I ask and there is som loud discussion if the train has come or not or if it is going today and when, in swahili. Finally the one with some poor english skills explain that the train is late today coming from the capital, but the train which I want to go with will wait for it to come. The thing is also, the express train does not stop here. So I take a another motorcycle taxi back and further. This guy has understod I am in a hurry. No misstake judging from the speed. I tell him I will borrow his helmet which is sitting on his head but not buckled. Only one he sais as I take the hard plastic shell and put on my head. Apparently the foam part is his protection, along with a knitted red hat. I adjust my part a bit and feel a sharp screw in the top of my head. Ouch, I take my scarf and put in it and now it feels better. I look up and the drivers foam helmet has flown of now on the big road. We go fast, but all instruments are broken so...we just drive and it goes fast.
I tell him to be carefull a few times when he criss crosses between the vehicles. We get there to the station. The train is there.
And late a couple of hours. Yes!! And there is Christian. Ha ha! He has apparently stayed in this village beeing sick and waited for this train a few days.
It is a nice clean and fairly new train. Better then our comune trains in Stockholm. I also get a first class sleeping compartment. Outside is the great landscape of the forrests and mountains.
Later we pass through a national park and we see gasells and in the river (in the picture) we see hippos.
Arriving Dar-es-salam I get scamed that the ferry is gone and I can only take a flight. So I buy the 44 USD flight and take a fast motorbike taxi. This one is crossing three red lights on the way and because of traffic jam he is more going against the traffic then with it. But we get there. If I die in Africa it probably want be from a snakebite.
