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Shifty types

Wednesday, September 1st, 2004

Tanzania, June 1984
I had been trying to get a ship to Zanzibar for three days and still not managed to secure a ticket. For the third time in as many days I walked to the Zanzibar Shipping Company, a green building near the Kariakoo market. It was not yet eight in the morning so I found somewhere to have a coffee and a pipe; on my two previous visits the ticket counters had been closed for at least an hour after my arrival. However when I walked across just before nine they were not only open but under siege and the queue that had formed was at least 100m long.
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Running into my teacher

Wednesday, September 1st, 2004

Tanzania, June 1984
Dar es Salaam sprawled endlessly, dirty and flat. I walked the streets until dawn without finding a place to stay. Eventually, I reached the city centre and walked around a corner where I collided with a young man.
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Third class travel to Dar

Tuesday, August 31st, 2004

Tanzania, June 1984
Dodoma is Tanzania’s wine country. Here the sickly red wine which is served in every bar in Tanzania is produced. That morning on the market I tried the tiny blue grapes and found to my surprise that they are mouth-puckeringly sour.
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Elephant encounter

Sunday, August 29th, 2004

Tanzania, June 1984
In the area around the Ngorongoro Crater we once again encountered Massai herding their cattle. Suddenly the cars left the road and Knut, the Danish driver, told me that the geologists wanted to take a look at Olduvai Gorge nearby. It was here that Richard Leaky had made his famous discoveries. Not long ago his wive had found the oldest known human footprints. I had never dreamt that I would visit this legendary place one day.
Just before we reached the gorge we stopped for a little break. The landscape was covered with short grass and strange whitish-grey stones.
“It is the bottom of a lake,” one of the geologists said. “Many millions of years ago there was a valley with a natron lake where we are now standing.”

We drove into the gorge which looked like a giant river bed but which had been shaped by erosion. At the very bottom was black lava, followed by red and white clay. The individual layers could clearly be seen in the steep walls.
There were excavations where anthropologists revealed bone fragments and stone tools with painstaking patience; forming an image of the early humans who once lived here.

(Visiting the famous Cradle of Mankind with a couple of geologists was a great opportunity. We spent several hours there, talking to the anthropologists and I took meticulous notes. They have been lost.)
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The “get-away”

Saturday, August 28th, 2004

Tanzania, June 1984
The landrover destined for Arusha had not arrived but a white VW van was parked at the entrance so I asked the driver where he was going.
“Ngorongoro Crater,” he said: “but the landrover to Arusha is on the way!”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes” he said.
Still — I hesitated. After the fraccas in the tourism office I could not possibly spend another night in the hostel. If that landrover did not arrive, I might have to sneak into the bush and throw myself at the mercy of the lions. I was really worried.
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Under arrest (again)

Thursday, August 26th, 2004

Tanzania, June 1984
I went back to the Tourism Office to pay my outstanding park fees and hostel bill, cursing that the money would have been more use for a trip to Kigoma. I returned to the hostel for a final night before an early start hitchhiking the next day, but the people who had the key were away. I climbed over the gate and slept in my tent in the courtyard.
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Buffalo encounter

Monday, August 23rd, 2004

Tanzania, June 1984
I was smoking a pipe at the bar in the lodge, concentrating on my Swahili phrase book and occassionally looking out over the plain beneath where a group of baboons and a few warthogs had gathered by a water hole when a buzzing noise made me look up. A plane was flying overhead, presumably the Swiss zoologist back from his wildlife census.
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Night-drive through the Serengeti

Sunday, August 22nd, 2004

Tanzania 1984
We had undertaken the long drive to Mwanza to collect spare parts for the park’s fleet of jeeps and landrovers. The transaction had been supervised by a Swiss woman who was living on an island in Lake Victoria. We spent the night in a swish hotel where A paid for a room for me after his jokey suggestion to share a bed earnt him a withering look, and early the next morning departed for the shores of the great lake. The short boatride to the island felt like being at sea. A fresh wind rippled the surface of the water.
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The big migration

Saturday, August 21st, 2004

Tanzania 1984
Two days later I had an excuse to re-visit A to return a pair of sandals he had lent me to allow my feet to heal. I waited for three quarters of an hour before he finally rose at eight, grumbling that he had overslept. He had planned to go to Mwanza that day and would have to delay until tomorrow.
“Do you want to come?”
I had found a way to see the big migration!
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Into the Serengeti

Friday, August 20th, 2004

Tanzania 1984
It seemed to grow even colder. I began to wish that I had packed a whoolen sweater or a thick coat. The hills were shrouded in a thick mist and the long grass was clammy and wet.

I went to the lodge for breakfast to find that my host from last night was serving. Very embarrassing. More importantly, staff were strictly forbidden from befriending guests, so I had to act nonchalantly. He winked and I smiled.
I felt somewhat cheap when I left my tip, though it was a good one by my tight-fisted standards.
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