TAN: Mikumi Park by way of Scandinavia

Up at 6 a.m. to get the laundry started in the dryer. Alex Fox emerges from his room as I am transferring the clothes. He tells me that they had worked on the train until 2 a.m. But were unable to complete the preparations on time because the crew at the train yard had neglected the wheels. Their restoration, in spite of the crew having the wheels for three months, would take another three days. In addition, the windows had not been delivered.
I continue with my preparations and getting my gear rearranged and consolidated for the next leg of the trip. We are shooting for a 10 a.m. departure. I wake Gabe up at 7:30 a.m. He gets volunteered to go with Alex over to the train yard and get some shots of the train. Chantal, Julie and I gather all of our stuff up and head over to the DTP office to get some telecommunication taken care of.
It takes up a few minutes to get a cab. For all intents and purposes they are unmarked private cars. The only way I have been able to figure they are something else is that they will honk as they approach. We negotiate the price and get all our gear loaded. Not five minutes into our journey, we get a flat. I have little confidence that the spare is going to get us much further down the road, so we flag down the next available taxis and are under way again.

Our broken-down chariot with everyone looking concerned and the dubious looking spare.

We get to the DTP office after a slight detour. Apparently the map I showed to the driver didn’t make a strong impression. We are happy to find Maina in the office. He unfortunately is under the impression that we are back in town for a while. We manage to get hooked up to the Internet and start downloading emails and uploading my blog entries. The 128kbs top speed is really not helping us to get done in the 10 minutes we had told the cab driver we would be. Once Chantal receives a new email from Bruce Fox, we disconnect and head out. The DVD replication will take a good deal longer than anticipated. We will end up making another demo of the project and refining it at a later date. I am not entirely thrilled with the idea of this project dragging on further, but I think we will be able to deliver a product that is more to Bruce’s liking with him being able to make revisions before the replication takes place. Even though he is disappointed now, in the end, he will have a better product.
Next stop is the Tazara Workshop. I am glad we had been here previously, as the driver really doesn’t know where we need to go. We don’t see Alex’s truck anywhere and are nervous that we have missed them. We stop at where their trains are to find Gabe and Vlad. Neither of them seems all that happy. There is no way the train would have been ready for a departure today or any day for a month or so from now.

This baby has a long, long way to go before it is track ready.

Another couple that has just arrived is brought over to admire the train they will not be leaving on. We come to learn that the other large group of folks due at the destination have already left via plane and minibus and that if we were psychic enough to know that we needed to be at the airport an hour previously, we could have been on the plane as well. We cool our heels while a “plan C” is formulated. We are stuck by the antiquity of the equipment in the office we occupy and ham it up for a bit.

We finally get word that we will all be on a Scandinavian bus (similar to a Greyhound). Jeannie rushes us over to get tickets and deposits us back at the DTP office. We hope to get some more email correspondence taken care of, but we were there in the morning, a problem has developed with the electrical circuit that all the network equipment is on. The time is used to get some lunch around the corner at “The Royal Chef,” our usual hangout.
We are back at the Scandinavia office at 1 p.m. in anticipation of our 2 p.m. departure. Lots of eyes are directed our way as we reshuffle our belongings to check some of the bags into the storage underneath. Having purchased our tickets rather late, our assigned seats are spread out over the bus. After we board, the bus sits for quite a while as the rest of the passengers saunter on. The air is dead calm and we are all dripping with sweat in the intense tropical heat. We are thrilled when we finally get underway.
As we head out of Dar es Salaam, Gabe, Chantal and Julie move to more desirable seats. I have a very good hunch their efforts will soon be for naught. As will pull into another depot, they all have to move back to make way for more passengers. The bus fills up completely.
Our route is the same as the other trips out to Mikumi and beyond. It is a little strange to be inside on of the buses that I had previously cursed at for driving so recklessly. We pass through Chalinze and make a quick stop at Morogoro. We get to Mikumi just before sunset. I am very happy to see a truck from Vuma Hills flag down the bus by the camp entrance. I was not really looking forward to going all the way into Mikumi Town and all the way back to the park. We get all of our gear unloaded to the sound of the other passengers making what I imagined were comments about us being able to get off here at a normally unscheduled stop.
Vuma Hills is completely filled so we end up at the camp host, Netta’s house. We are thrilled to have a place to stay. Dinner is served a bit after we get settled and make arrangements for the following couple of days. The meal is excellent and we finally tuck in, exhausted, at 11 p.m.