We had to get up and away real early in the
morning as the trip to the airport, although only 13 Kms away, was right
through the early morning traffic in Dar and I am sure by now you have a slight
inkling of just how chaotic that is.
So it was a planned 6.30 start but it started
off pretty slowly as Steve and Andrea had their watches still set to SA time
and were just getting up as we were standing at the taxi ready to leave. I must
admit they were up in a flash and after Andrea had had her..... Wait for it.....Coffee!!!
they were ready to go with the final departure time being 7 o'clock. We were
only due to take off at 10.30 so there wasn't really too much of a problem as I
doubt the plane would have left without us. There were 7 of us in the 10 seater
plane.... Plus we had allowed 3 hours to get there... Still it was nice to rub
it in a bit!
Anyway we started off with three in one taxi,
Ernest, Kim and I and the others with Lucas, the taxi driver that had taken
them to the Zanzibar ferry and back again so by now he was their real mate. We
drove straight into the crush of the early morning traffic with our driver adding
“ie” to nearly every word he uttered. "we
are going to go left ie here and right ie there". Most of the locals speak
quite good English but they almost sing the extra "ie" onto everything
they say which is very amusing to listen to.
So the journey began, you could almost write a
whole book on just getting to the airport in peak hour traffic which lasts from
6 in the morning to 12 at night, 7 days a week. Have you ever seen four cars
abreast fit into a two lane road... Well, they manage to do that with easy in
Dar. There are cars going in every direction and as Kim so aptly put it"
right of way is determined solely by the level of intimidation. When you get to
a cross road, you just have to ease your way in so that nobody can get past you
anymore and then you just shut your eyes and go. On top of it you have these
dam motorbikes. Our driver was telling us that there are a minimum of 6 deaths
a day in Dar from motorbike accidents. Nobody wears a crash helmet and they
just weave in and out of the cars with anything up to 4 passengers at a time...
Kids too, who sit there quite oblivious to the fact that they come within
inches of certain death every few minutes.
We sat at one traffic light for a full 20
minutes... We thought that at this rate we should have left yesterday!!! When we eventually did get through that
particular traffic light we understood why... There was a lady standing in the
middle of the intersection with a bright red baton. She was waving it in the
air like she was the Queen waving at her subjects, who the hell knew whose turn
it was to go was a complete mystery. After that the traffic began to
flow again and we passed some very smart shopping centre with all the SA shops
in it like Mr. Price, Woolworth's (not food of course) and Game, just sticking
out like a fish out of water.
Then came the short”ie” cut“ie” and we turned off the main road... Our driver said if we didn't
take the short cut it would take us another three hours to get to the
airport...pays to go with a local.
Now the fun began, we went into holes in the
road that were so bad that the pavement, which still existed in patches, was
higher than the roof of the car. I kid you not. Can you imagine how long it
takes for a hole to get that deep and what it is going to take to get it repaired?
I am sure when it rains you would need a snorkel on your car and on each
passenger just to get to work. Needless to say the houses down the side of the
hole were in the most appalling condition with some of them having no doors or
windows, just dirty pieces of material strung across the cavities.
We crossed on a bridge built in better times
over a river which is now being used as a rubbish dump. Everyone just hurls all
their refuse over the edge and I suppose waits for rain to wash the whole lot
out to sea and then they can start dumping again! At no time during this
journey did the cars, trucks and motor bikes ease up, just this constant flow
and jostling to see who could get into and out of the whole first. It appears
many people knew of the short”ie” cut”ie”.
Then we hit the area which is known as the meat
quarter. In all my travels I have yet to see anything that tested my confront
more. There are herds of goats just standing in patches waiting to someone to
come and buy them and then slaughter them right then and there. It is enough to
make you a vegetarian for life. Then a
little further on there are rows and rows of fires where you can buy or braai
your meat and the crush of people all milling around is too much to confront. I
felt myself wanting to slip into my own little world and hum a little tune of
Doris Day's " please please don't
eat the daisies ". There was one intersection where we were completely
grid locked with every bus, taxi, car and bike trying to push through. Everyone
hooting and swearing. Eventually some guy hopped out of his car and started to
direct the traffic and thankfully it moved again before I went into a swoon!
We popped out of our short cut and onto the main
road again and arrived at the airport at 9 o’clock... One and a half hours before departure. I however got the BB
award of the day as I had been nagging everyone about their passports and not
to forget them... And guess what! I mistakenly brought two of Ernest's
passports and not mine, so I instantly became Ernest Corbett the second and can
you believe it, I got through on that and didn't have to go back via the
shortie cutie to fetch my passport. Hurrah for Africa!
Our flight left on time, the plane was a caravan
and forty minutes later we arrived at Azura Selous.
We had a wonderful greeting at the airstrip with
all the bells and whistles of a five star lodge. You step out of the plane and
back into a modern Karen Blixen’s “Out of Africa".
We can get used to
this!
I must say the ladies are looking extremely well but the men are starting to look a bit like "papa Smurfs". :-)
ReplyDelete