I walked by a pair of backpackers--husband and wife--who were also kicked off the train. We politely made small talk--discussed the misfortune of the entire situation, made various hypotheses of what would happen next.
They took out their handy-dandy guidebook and sat down to make some plans.
I looked back at my luggage. Good Lord, I was supposed to be on a train for the next 48 hours. I'd never even heard of Mbaya until a half hour before. I didn't know if there was a hostel close by. I didn't know if the town was dangerous. I didn't know anything. I didn't have a phone, a guidebook, access to internet, nothing. I knew that we would have to take the bus--but there's not much one can do about that at 11:30 at night.
I thought, Well, looks like we're sleeping in the station tonight. Guess we can take shifts.
The backpackers left.
I continued to sit down. It was either sit outside or sit in the train station. We sat outside. Ashley (the peace corp worker) talked to a couple of the Africans close by.
The backpackers meandered back.
"We got a partial refund from the ticket window," they said.
It was a relief. Partly because we would be getting some money back, partly because it gave us something to do other than just sit.
As we were getting our refund back, Ashley saw Derrick, the owner of a lodge in that town. She had stayed at his lodge before. He agreed to give us a ride to his hostel, as well as very good rates for rooms that night. It was a sweet sweet three and a half hours of sleep we got that night.
We got up at 5:00 the next morning to try to catch a bus headed to the Zambian border. We stood by the side of the road and waved our arms anytime a vehicle approached. Around 5:30, a large van stopped. We cramped ourselves in between Africans and bags of corn and miscellaneous other luggage. We made various stops, and Africans got on and off. We were the only white people on the bus.
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| After the Africans who were sitting next to us finally got off, Sam and I got Sean to take a picture of us before more people got on. |
Nakonde is CRAZY. Nakonde is where you've got to try to hold on to your luggage extra tight because people will try to grab it out of your hand and expect you to pay them for carrying it. Nakonde is where you'll have five different Africans yelling at you to exchange money with them and about three more yanking on your arm trying to get you to buy a SIM card. Nakonde is where "No" doesn't really mean anything unless you yell it. I gave up trying to be polite within the first two minutes of being in Nakonde. Nakonde just reeks of white people getting ripped off.
Being a girl and being white and being so obviously new to Africa are all serious disadvantages when it comes to getting through Nakonde. It was bad on the way back as well, but for some reason, my first time through was so much more bewildering.
We finally made it through customs and walked through the gap in the fence that divided Tanzania from Zambia.
Ashley was such a huge lifesaver throughout this trip, and here was no exception.She knew what was fair to pay for a bus ticket from Nakonde to Kasama, not to mention the fact that she was so much better at the entire bargaining game.
She found somebody who knew somebody who was driving to Kasama. She walked with us to the van, made sure that it was legit, and took a quick picture with us before going back to find her own bus. We never talked to or saw her again.
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| Sean, me, Ashley, and Sam inside the van that would eventually take us to Kasama. |
While we waited for our bus's departure time, we went to get some lunch. A random African tagged along with us, and somehow we ended up paying for his lunch. At least the conversation was interesting, I suppose.
A little before ten, we got on the bus. For some reason, they had a Shania Twain tape playing very loudly over the speakers. At first, it was so amusing that I thought it was really great. After they had played it for the seventh time, I was pretty sure that I was never going to willingly listen to Shania Twain ever again. Occasionally, they would switch the music up with a some African gospel tuneage. That got old pretty fast too. Eventually I got to the point where I just tuned it all out.
About four hours into our journey, we turned onto a dirt road.
We stayed on that dirt road for the next four hours. Halfway through, we heard a loud pop and realized that we had blown a tire. Everybody piled out while they changed the tire--occasionally, vehicles would whiz past, blowing up huge clouds of dust. But by that point, we had given up on staying anything resembling clean, so it wasn't even a big deal, no worries.
It was dusk when we took a ferry across a river. A shy girl of fifteen told us that there were crocodiles in that river. The ferry didn't come all the way to shore, and I didn't want to get eaten by a crocodile (that, and I didn't want to get my tennis shoes wet), so Sean gave me a piggy-back ride onto the ferry.
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| dry shoes ftw. |
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| on the ferry. me, sam, and the girl who told us about crocodiles. |
We had no idea what we would do once we got to Kasama. It was already dark, and none of us had a cell phone. We figured that we would cross that bridge once we got there, but by some miracle, Tobias (a worker for Zambia's Scholarship Fund), knew a bus driver who told him that he had seen a small van with some white people in it. Tobias told him to catch up to that van. We were those white people.
While we were on the ferry, a man we had never seen before tapped Sean on the shoulder, gave him his cell phone, and said, "It's for you."
It was Tobias on the phone. When Sean told us about it on the other side of the river, we couldn't believe it. What were the chances?
Previously on the van, Sean had the window seat, I sat in the middle, and Sam sat on the other side of me. Sam and I switched places after the river.
She told me it was bad, but I didn't realize that it was actually quite bad until after I had been sitting for nearly an hour with some strange African dude's crotch in my face. Plus, another African had his arm around the headrest, so the only thing you could do was lean forward. Sam said not to lean back or he would slap the back of your head. I didn't lean back.
We finally got to Kasama a couple hours after the ferry. Tobias picked us up from the bus stop. He told us that he hadn't told Jeff and Nick that he had come to pick us up. We would surprise them.
We got to the lodge where we would be staying. We walked up to Jeff and Nick's room, and Tobias yelled out that they had to leave to pick us up from the station. They walked out, and saw us, and surprise, and all that jazz.
We got some food (fried chicken, how did you know?), and it was great.
But more importantly,
we got to shower.
And we went to sleep in an honest to goodness non-moving bed. Glory be.
Hahaha I love it! My transportation experiences were 'african' but not THAT crazy! Good for you! That's so funny about the random man hanging Sean his phone!
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