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I have learnt that it is better to cross the border in the evening there is less people it takes you less time and the day after you are ready to start again directly towards your new destination. Through Namanga I passed in the far 1998 when I climbed Kilimanjaro, which today I hoped to see in the distance but could not: the sky was covered, but I am not sure you can see it from where I passed.
Last night I fell asleep like a baby, I do not know when it had happen last, so I had to write the post in the morning, then breakfast and go looking for a cyclist!
The hotel helper takes me to one but the boss is not there and the assistant does not know where to start. We go to another a bit further on, it is a shop managed by an old Tanzanian Indian, many Indians came here with the English during colonial time, outside there is a team leader and a group made of some kind of Customer Care Officer, a group of Fly Catchers, that is a group of boys who have nothing to do and backing up the choices of the leader they say sentences like ‘now we do a fantastic job!’, ‘the bike will be as new’, ‘this spare is perfect’ … finally there is the fundi, the mechanic who is the only one working. This is the set formation to do business with the musungu.
The beginning is promising a gear similar is found on a secondhand bicycle just arrived from Europe, the fundi, the mechanic, seems able even though a bit rough, he changes the gear of Malawi with the secondhand one, everything seems to be working … I ask if he can clean the crowns behind … he removes the wheel, cleans it, puts it back and … shit it is not working! After some hasty proposals … among which ‘making the chain shorter’ … suggestions like ‘it is enough using just these three rapports in the middle and nothing will happen’ we decide to put my gear back on after hammering it straight …
In the meanwhile a batik seller wants to sell me one of a square meter even though he has understood I am travelling on a bicycle!
At this point a second fundi comes into the scene, he speaks little and does not listen to the gang of the Fly Catchers, and in half an hour fixes the gear in a acceptable way, a strong vibration remains which is felt under the saddle since the end of the stage to Dodoma, I make him notice that and, like one of those a bit shy students who when questioned in Math they answer by writing on the blackboard without speaking, he starts dismantling the wheel behind he removes the hub from the ‘hub cover’ … and surprise it is broken in two … a part from the terrain in the last stages it seemed to me like I could not push like usual … side effect of the hub change is that now if I get a puncture I have to dismantle the wheel with a spanner … but I am happy that the problem has been solved!
We come to the bill of 150,000 Tanzanian shillings, 100 dollars! … I offer 30,000 … they 120,000 I 35,000 … they 115,000 I 40,000 … then 45,000 and they 110,000 … then 50,000 and they a hundred … they say they cannot go any lower because the cost of the spares is very high … I want to start off … I explain that it is not fair to shoot prices like that because I am white … I make quite a scene … then I get sick of it and I enter to the Indian and ask him the price of the spares … 30,000 … I pay him … then I leave 15,000 to the team leader who acts offended, but the workers on the roads of the Chinese get less than that for a whole day work … to summarize from 150,000 to 45,000 … in Malawi where all the shops were managed by locals I did not have such problems … moreover the vicinity to the tourists does not help … and some are an invitation to be crooked … for the way they were decked out I point two of them … the first one seen at the market around 40 year old dressed as a grown up scout with a hat for the ‘Marathon des Sables’, trekking boots, and camel bag, a bag for water carried on the back with a straw which comes out from the chest to suck the water, when in Arusha you can buy a perfect sealed water every 10 meters … the second seen tonight with a hat similar to the one worn by Livingstone, or of a traffic officer in Milan … covered by a mosquito net which reached his shoulders …
At the market we finished towards 12,30, I took advantage of the occasion to eat lunch at the hotel, I had not had a normal lunch since the half stage arriving in Lundazi! I start off towards 13,30 from Arusha with the only option to reach the border, for the first twenty kilometers the road goes up to the 1800 m of Soit Sambu, the landscape is moonlike, then the road starts going down and the wind today is my friend, the average is faster than all the other stages and I arrive in Namanga just after sunset. On the road I met a lot of Masai with a lot of cows, on a downhill I lost, without realizing it, the jacket I used to wear in the evenings and in the mornings when it is cold, when Andrè gave it to me it did not seem very appropriate to cross Africa … instead I was using it almost every day …
Tomorrow Nairobi, I could stay shortly in Kenya because I do not know if I will be allowed to cycle the stretch between Isiolo and Moyale … too many bandits they say …
Arusha S 3° 36.578’ E 36° 67.445’ – Namanga S 2° 55.209’ E 36° 78.389’
115 km