The Attack of the Mianzini

We were driving down to the highway. There were two roads we could use. One was a horrible, bumpy, narrow road. The other, Mianzini, was horrible, but less so. You need to understand that both are 1 to 2 lane roads full of ruts, potholes, speed bumps (Poor Debi gets motion sick even when I am driving 10 km/hr - that's about 7 mph for you metric impaired ones.)

It started out as the usual terrible road, then we got to where a bulldozer had deposited some boulders in the middle of the churned up road. No problem. Just drive around them as we are driving a four wheel drive Land Rover.  Then there were narrow strips of navigable loose dirt in  a morass of  tree stumps, boulders, deep trenches, and piles of dirt.  We were past the point-of-no-return so we followed where cars tracks lead us. At one point, we were in a deep, steep hole with the way out being a 45 degree left turn.  I was stuck and just killed the engine when I tried to lurch out of the hole. The vehicular spectacle drew a crowd so there where helpful people who pulled three large rocks out from in front of my tires, shooed the following car back from my rear bumper so I could get a minuscule run at it and corrected my tire angle.

We bounced out of the hole and across to the other side of the road where another driver was awaiting his turn to run the gauntlet. I swerved to the right just in time to avoid crunching into his door. Instead of smoothly going past, I planted the right front bumper against a stump.  The other driver pulled around behind me but couldn't get totally past me until I moved forward. I couldn't go forward or back.  The spectators jumped into action, got the other car out of my way, and coached me around the stump.  We scraped through other tight spots, finally getting to the highway. I vowed it would be a cold day in......  well, a cold day in Africa before I drove on Mianzini again. Mianzini means "in the bamboo trees," but should mean "in your worst nightmare."

Equatorial Africa is COLD

I was not expecting Arusha to be this cold.  We are 3.3 degrees south of the equator for crying out loud.  I did not expect it to be cold.  I have been here before and don't recall Arusha as being cold.  I recalled Ngorongoro Crater rim as being cold, but that is 7,500 ft and, of course, Kilimanjaro was cold at 19,343 ft.

Arusha is up at 4,500 ft on the foothills of Mt. Meru and it is "winter" here so daytime highs are just over 70 and it gets down to 50 at night.  I have to wear a fleece sweater to work where I switch to a white coat. I am just on the cold side all morning since we start hospital rounds with the hospital interior temperature being as low as 60.  Furnaces are pretty much non-existent here. The windows are these louvered arrangements that don't really close and are usually open anyhow for infection control purposes.  Gotta keep the wind blowing through the hospital to blow out the TB bugs.

We have traveled a bit at the lower elevations where it is warmer and dryer.  Somehow that feels more like Africa

Dirt Roads

The attached photo shows my commute to work. Yes, that is a one lane dirt road.  So far that hasn't been a problem since there is so little car traffic.  There are some motorcycles (pikipiki in Swahili) and lots of pedestrians. This road, to my surprise, is on Google Maps and is their recommended route from my house to Selian Hospital. The road is much rougher in most spots than what you see here.  It is the shorter way to the hospital and much more scenic than the highway.  Corn fields, banana groves and native forest.  Occasional glimpses of Mt. Meru.

The two dirt roads to the paved highway used to be just as rough, but the city recently graded both of them and widened one of them.  Both of them can be one lane roads due to narrow spots or cars parked on the road.  They are, for the most part, 1 to 2 lanes wide with the wider spots being filled in by parked vehicles and road side vendors. There are pedestrians on both sides and crossing the road and motorcycles going wherever they please at a high speed.  The result can be chaos.  People, push carts, and livestock block your path in addition to having to take turns going through the one lane parts.  Even the wider sections usually involve driving frighteningly close to the oncoming traffic on your right side (Yup, we drive on the left side of the road here.) and pedestrians, etc on the other. One swerves back and forth over the entire road whenever possible in order to drive over only the smaller rocks and potholes.  It is initially disconcerting to have the oncoming traffic swerve directly in front of you until you realize that they are just avoiding a pothole and will swerve back just in the nick of time to just barely miss you.  You need to know that this vehicular ballet tempo is adagio, not presto. Top speed is around 15 mph and usually the speed is under 10 or even 5 mph.