The centre of the village is where the taxis and the buses gather. And motorcycles, called budabuda. That's the noise they make, and they are taxis for short distances.We took a taxi to Dodoma, Tz4000 each way, each passenger. The taxis are small Toyotas with eight seats. Coming back we had eleven people on board.
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| This is very similar in construction to the prep school I went to - a boarding school, of course, with metal roofs that rattled in the rain. |
We stopped over at CAMS,an international school, and had food at the New Dodoma Hotel, which is very pleasant, and built in German style. The German nation used to control this part of Africa until they were removed by the League of Nations or some such, and Tanganyika was given over to Britain instead of the Norwegians as a protectorate.
We had a Chinese meal, and I consumed two bottles of beer. Alison had just one. Between us we have had five bottles of beer in two and a half months.
Dodoma is a thriving place: the centre streets are like a giant shopping mall, with hundreds of shops competing with the same kinds of goods. A lot is made in China.Now: on to the exciting prospect of meeting snakes.
Maggie encountered a snake yesterday. It was slim and green with a white belly. This was most likely a green mamba. One of the fastest snakes around, and poisonous enough to disable you permanently.
In the days of Eden, the snakes and the mosquitoes and the hyenas shared the landscape.
Now that we have discovered that the old and gracious European buildings of the last millenium aren’t the oldest things in the world, and that the pyramids are predated by it, Africa is the great adventure of the developed world.
We come to view the giraffes and the everlasting symbols of Eden that we have rediscovered here in the skulls and cave paintings and great burial chambers where we have lain buried for millions of year. In our countries, Great Eden has been trimmed and clipped by us into the suburbs of tumble driers and tennis courts in the old smoke of the empires and the fuss of Airmiles.
But this really is the great museum of Eden. Even stripped of its great forests there is enough left for us to sense our primitive selves living among the lions and hippos and leopards and waterbuck and wildebeest.The conflict of existence may be the tribes and thinned forests, our lawnmowers, their zebras and mambas, the shopping mall and the crocodiles, malaria, heat and their unlikely solace in our charity.
I'm sure there's more to say.
The picture is borrowed from the Wikipedia entry on green mambas. At the time of Maggie's encounter, she had turned and fled, but a tall young student had taken a large stone and thrown it at the snake, hitting it on the head. "Masai boy," was the comment.
Green mambas may be beautiful, but the venom will kill a human in half a day.
