MOUNTAIN HIGHS, TOURIST LOWS

IN JULIA'S WORDS

19 July

THE SACREDSTITIONS OF KAOLE

Bagamoyo was a most unexpected little and old town with a Stone Town flavour to it. The Germans had – or had meant to – make it their capital when Tanganyika had been theirs.

But even more interesting than this little town was that just next to it – or rather, the ruins that had used to be a major town. Its name is Kaole, which comes from local languages meaning, “Come and see”. And what all the locals wanted to come and see were the famed buildings, so unlike their own, of the newcomers to the place, perhaps 500 years or more ago – oh yes, the Sharazi!

For my newly-tutored eyes, the dots that I’m able to join by visiting the ruins along the Swahili coast are quite thrilling. Mikindani, Kilwa Kisiwani, Mafia Island, Chole Island, Zanzibar, and now Kaole: these are the places on the Tanzanian coast that have ruins which echo each other. 
Now I recognise the building materials – baked coral joined with lime – and architecture – stone wells, thick walls, old collapsed mosque domes and the huge graves of each community’s most powerful near them – of the Shirazi and other Arabs who built and lived in the towns.

Kaole, five hundred years after it was established

Our guide Bartolemeu (a student in Antiquities and Preservation at the University of Dar es Salaam) highlighted a few of Kaole’s unique charms. Firstly, in the graveyard. Arabic inscriptions are still visible (unusually so) on the biggest of the graves. The man is identified as Mohammed (probably), he who had led the settler Shirazi in their flight from their homeland, Far, to this place that became known as Kaole.
Like all such Muslim male tombs we’ve seen along the coast, this one had its chest-high baked-coral walls enclosing a large rectangular space of earth where the body’s bones must still lie. There is also the standard phallus built of coral on the wall which faces east to Mecca.
But instead of the usual giant phallus of the other males’ graves, Mohammed’s had a very very mega-giant phallus on his. Clearly the message, as good as an engraving on a gravestone, is “The Incomparably Unbelievably Venerated Powerful Man Lies Here”.

Guess who?

Another unusual grave in Kole’s graveyard is “the lovers’ grave”, and is believed by locals today as the place to come to say your prayers to heal romantic relationships. This is because it contains the once-watery remains of a wife and husband who drowned on their way over from Zanzibar. They were discovered locked in each other’s embrace, and so (also unusually) buried as man next to wife, the tragic but inspiring symbol of how love can save you from dying alone.

The child’s tomb for Sharifa is also treated as a place with sacred powers. Sharifa was only 13 years old when she died all those hundreds of years ago. But already by then she had become revered and renowned for her power to see future events. Sharifa’s tomb is the place to pray if you wish to solve practically any kind of problem.

Not too far from the graveyard and the mosque’s ruins is the Magic Baobab, deemed to be able to influence the number of years a person will live because it has itself been witness to at least half a century. To increase the number of years you will live, walk clockwise around its massive ancient girth; to decrease, do the opposite.

Clockwise adds years, anticlockwise isn't recommended

So once you’ve secured the blessings from the lovers’ grave, placed your order with Sharifa for her divine intervention and put in your request with the baobab for some or less life, you would do well to finish off at the Holy Well.
This is the same circular well we’ve discovered at all these places along the Swahili coast, but with two magical differences: despite being over 500 years old, it has never ever dried up, and to this day its water is fresh and altogether healing. Take at least a sip but no more than a gulp of the Holy Water from the half-broken plastic bucket to seal your prayers.

That’s what I did, anyway, when I’d finished buzzing out my most fervent wishes through the cosmos to these local deities. Really, really hoping that each has caught my wishes and will proceed as humbly beseeched.

The old broken structures at what was a harbour are not nearly so fascinating as the thick mangrove forest that fills the salty swamp. What? Boats got through THAT? Yes, apparently even ol’ Thingymajig Stanley: it was here he set out from to find Dr Whatsit Livingstone.

500-year-old Chinese pottery found in the ruins at Bagamoyo

IN REHANA'S WORDS

Sunday, 21 July

I woke up in Marangu this morning to the sound of church bells, a not-too-unpleasant tolling that rose above the light rain hitting our canvas tent roof. The first hymn lulled me back to sleep. But then the priest’s voice came droning over the very public address system and killed all hopes of a snooze. What is it with Tanzanians and their very loud displays of piety?

Our last two nights in Dar es Salaam were awful. The competing cacaphony of three mosques ruled out any hopes of a good night’s sleep. The voices that blared out – throughout the night – were far to dismal to drown out, no matter how desperately hard I tried not to listen. 
One man with acess to a mosque’s powerful sound system had bad nasal congestion. He raced through the prayers without any rhythm or rhyme, gasping for breath occassionally. Another sounded like an auctioneer on amphetimines and the third wailed piteously to Allah till the sun rose.

We packed up in darkness and left Dar at dawn, to avoid the congestion on the ferry into the city and peak hour traffic. The ferry crossing was easy and the congestion, horrible as it was, only trapped us at one intersection. By 9am we were at Bagamoyo, where the sea was a flat and shiny mirror.

Bagamoyo had been the capital of Tanzania until the Germans moved their administration to Dar. But centuries before the Germans, the Omanis had established a port and a town there, and their ruins remained. 
Jules is so taken with the ancient history of trade on the east coast of Africa that she’s considering a trip from Oman to Mozambique in a dhow, stopping at every clump of ruins along the African coast. Good idea Jules!

Pretty as Bagamoyo was, there wasn’t much more to see than the ruins and the old town. The place is going to change enormously: the Chinese are building what is billed to be the biggest port in Africa. I hope someone stops them from razing the old buildings when they start construction.

The Germans left forts everywhere, also at Bagamoyo

There's an arts college in Bagamoyo. Is this a student's work?

Stopped at a market in Bagamoyo. We buy most of our provisions in markets

We headed for Lushoto, halfway between Dar and Kilimanjaro. The last part of the drive was spectacular, with gushing waterfalls around many a corner on the narrow, winding road that quickly took us from sea level to 1 400m. Lushoto turned out to be much busier than we expected. Mielie fields and banana plantations were planted on the highest slopes and mzungu tourists were everywhere.

Our campsite at the Irente Biodiversity Centre was fine by Tanzanian standards – there was some grass, a tap nearby that gave us drinkable water (a first in Tanzania!) on the first day and muddy dregs the next. 
The water in the shower, lugged in buckets and poured into a drum by a staffer, was almost too hot to bear. The centre had a shop that sold cheese, milk, yoghurt, cream and brilliant bread at not too extortionate prices. 

Out came the thermal underwear, jeans, jumpers and thick socks.  I wrapped myself in my sleeping bag while I read after supper (thanks so much, Katy!) and sweated through the night when I draped it over our duvet. There was only one mosque within earshot of our camp, and the tarawee prayers were muted and lyrical enough for us to enjoy them.

From a hot beach to this!

Jules and I rejected the notion of shelling out yet more thousands of shillings for the entry fee into the forest and a guide to take us on a walk. After breakfast a gentle rain shower sent us scurrying into our tent and I finally managed – for the first time on this trip – to take a nap.

We walked on our own, to the viewpoint where we pretended that we didn’t understand the surly guard demanding a receipt for our payment (to sit on a rock and look at the view below) – are these people insane! 
We had planned to walk to Lushoto to shop at the market but went so far past the town that we had to negotiate a payment for a ride back with two motorcyclists.

We had to pay to sit here

Had it been a clear day, I would have seen all the way to forever

Next destination, Marangu: gateway to the Kilimanjaro National Park. I had high hopes that we would see Africa’s highest peak from a distance as we drove towards it.  All we saw was grey cloud.

It’s cold, not unbearable but similar to Joburg’s winter. The Cofee Tree Campsite has a rondavel campers can use, which makes the evenings a little more bearable.

It is now day two at the foothills of Kilimanjaro and all we can see is grey cloud. Our host Thomas says that the mountain can remain shrouded for up to a week.

We plan to walk up the route to the summit tommorrow to the first camp at Mandara – 2 700m above sea level. We will have to pay a guide and shell out $70 each for the pleasure of one day in the park. Thomas says the fees are not too bad because the Rwandan Parks Board charges $90 for 30 minutes with gorillas and the money is urgently needed to conserve the mountain. 
I had to bite my tongue because I wanted to ask why mazungu have to pay a premium to conserve a Tanzanian mountain. If they love it as much as he claims they do, why don’t they bloody well pay a premium to get in?

Oh yes, Jules and I have finally decided we’re not going to the Serengeti. We’re not rich enough and most of our fellow tourists we’ve met in Tanzania say its not worth the entry fee. They can take their world renowned park and shove it where the lions don’t roar.

That's all folks - all we saw of Kilimanjaro from a distance

IN JULIA'S WORDS

24 July

Thomas is a shortshit like me, all granddaddy behind his bifocals; he waddle-walks paunch-first. We pandered to his Big Man posturing simply because the place is his, and because it is a given in this sweltering patriarchy that the patriarch always receives special respect. Very Extra Special.

“Weeelcome, weeelcome,” smiled Thomas, his hands grasping up and down my arm so enthusiastically I feel groped. “Weeelcome to Coffee Tree Plant camp.” His eyes are all crinkled in the manner of a friendly smile; the look in his eye is a few shades cooler.

“Asante sana,” Rehana and I say in our best brown-nosing manner. “We’ve been camping for months and this is one of the best campsites we’ve stayed in so far,” adds Rehana. 
And it is lovely: being at the foot of Kilimanjaro in the little town of Marangu, it’s lush with emerald grass and manicured lemon-yellow hedges that line mossy paths. It has HOT water in a clean tiled shower room, and best of all, a room made from ndizi (banana) leaves where us campers can take refuge from the damp cold.

“Yes, asante, asante sana,” says Thomas. “It’s all my wife, Lucy, and her big imagination. It’s such an imagination… she’s been to Italy, to the United States, visited many, ooh, many different campsites, and this is why this one is such a comfortable one.”

We all enthuse our enthuses, and Thomas turns to the heart of the matter: when are we to climb Kili, and how high?

“We only want to get as high as the first basecamp, a day’s hike,” says Rehana, adding, “It’s just too expensive for us at $70 a day, and that’s just to get in through the gates, and then those added costs of a guide and accommodation … it’s all we can afford.” [Actually it’s also because none of us feel fit enough or up to what we’re sure will be a gruelling climb to anywhere higher]

“Aah, yes,” Thomas sighs. “But we’re saving the mountain from being destroyed, climate change being such a real and true thing. If we don’t make it very expensive and so control the numbers of visitors climbing up, the ice cap will be melting even more.”

I nod along as if understanding, and try to keep my quizzical eyebrow respectfully in check. If I understand his point properly, he’s saying that many people walking up the mountain = raised temperatures. My grasp of scientific principles like cause-and-effect may be shaky, but this really does seem a bit of a stretch. Like perhaps it’s not the primary reason for milking the mzungus.

But Thomas is helpful enough, hooking up with Alfred, a skinny, lithe older man (where are the women guides? I’ve seen only one our entire trip so far) who joins us in the Ndizi room with its chairs you can actually sit on to discuss times and costs. We think we agree on YouEss30 each for his services, although whether it is to be paid to him or to Thomas BossMan remained tediously unclear.

So in the cold and the mist of the early morning we set off – and my oh my is it exquisite really making all this whining about the cost seem silly. It was worth every square penny, stepping along the manicured paths through the rain forest adrip with moss and shaggy old man’s beard, all the way up to where the forest gives way to slopes infused with the sharp smells of fynbos. 
We made it with minimum wheeze and maximum delight up to Mandara, the first basecamp, and my only fright was when I lost all feeling in an index finger, which hung like a frozen yellow-dead foreign object from my left hand for about an hour.

Hot to trot up Kili. The jacket was bought in Joburg

But how much Tanzania has soured us with the government’s vulgar policy to squeeze every possible extortionate dollar from its tourists became clear when we discovered we need also pay for one Emil, a man who mysteriously joined our party in the morning and climbed the mountain with us. Never were we told he was a guide; and his sole contribution to our experience was talking loudly and continually up and down the mountain to Alfred.

So when Thomas came the next morning to complain that we’d not paid additional money for this second guide, it struck a certain discordant chord in Rehana.

“But Thomas, we didn’t need a second guide! Even the parks board officials said we only needed one. We didn’t even know he was supposed to be our guide. The way he was chatting non-stop with Alfred, I thought he must be a friend of his that he was catching up with after not seeing each other for 15 years. I really don’t think we should have to pay him.”

“Yes yes,” sighed Thomas, “but really it’s park regulations. I don’t know why they’re not following them. You should really pay Emil, and please be sure to tip Joseph the driver for all he's done for you and the gardener too, and perhaps a little extra for Alfred here as well,” indicating with his arm to where Alfred is grinning his mostly toothless grin at us from near the Coffee Tree Plant. "After all, it’s your Christian duty.”

“Goodbye, thanks, asante sana Thomas,” I yelled in reply as I swung myself up behind the wheel.

I saw Rehana, hunched not so much against the cool drizzle as from the onerous Christian duties being landed on her, as she walked to the gate to tip Joseph.

As I drove away, far more snarly than I’d like to be, I thought of how Thomas the Vicar of Dosh would be checking to see how generous we’d been – especially since we’d only tipped one of his staff. Doubtless he’d not be best pleased.

So this was the straw that caused Rehana to long for home at best, or to get the hell out of Tanzania at worst. Enough already of the terrible burden of being seen first and sometimes only as an open wallet. Too much!

I too am changing rapidly into Acerbia, that ancient spirit who watches over those with poking, angry thoughts and their cutting tongues. My mood about the country has not been made any better by Mike and Carol’s experience in Arusha: when declining to give a beggar 1000 shillings, he wrenched their rearview mirror off their car and rushed away. Ready I am too to hightail it out of Tanzania.

Our climbing party. Alfred, far left, and the mysterious Emile, far right

IN REHANA'S WORDS

Wednesday, 24 July

My calf muscles refuse to unclench, my heart is heavy and right now all I want to do is go home. Or, at least, go home for a visit and then fly to Nairobi to continue this journey. What will console me is our departure from Tanzania. We are at Arusha, less than 100km from the border with Kenya. We have one last, expensive stop – the Ngorogoro Crater.

My calf muscles are protesting because I only took them one-fifth of the way up Kilimanjaro. They’re ready to climb to the next hut. Unfortunately, the rest of me doesn’t have the strength, the cash or the heart to go further.

We saw part of the mountain briefly, the clouds cleared for about 10 minutes at sunset on Sunday evening.  The snow-capped Uhuru peak looked sufficiently distant to not put us off our plans to climb Kili. There was no way we’d be expected to reach that lofty height in a day’s walk.

The menu at the start of the hike. We chose the top item

It rained throughout Sunday night and we emerged from our snug tents on Monday morning to a thick grey mist and drizzle. Not at all daunted, we set off. Our guide Alfred, whom we had met on Sunday, brought a friend, Emile, along.

The walk to Mandara camp, which the summiters also use on their first day, was surprisingly easy. Not once did we have to grab onto anything or heave ourselves up. We seldom stepped on rocks. The paths were gravelled, signposted and well maintained and the gradient was moderate throughout. 
I coped, except for the last 10 minutes when I struggled to maintain my breathing, probably as a result of the altitude. This was the first time I had propelled myself up to 2 700m. We reached the huts five minutes later than the recommended time of three hours.

Until Mandara camp, our walk was lined by lush forest covered in green ferns. We walked a bit further, probably another 300m higher, to the rim of the Maundi crater – passing through moorland grass into the bitter buchu smell of erica fynbos, including flowering protea. 
On a clear day, you can see into Kenya from the crater rim. All we saw was mist and more mist.

Made it to Mandara

Alfred took us to the A-framed hut provided for climbers at Mandara where we shivered on the wooden benches and clenched our sandwiches and fruit in icy hands. None of us had any desire to linger.

Alfred had been irritating us all day. His phone’s ringtone will forever be my soundtrack to Kilimanjaro. It rang constantly and when he wasn’t talking on it at the top of his voice, he was nattering away to Emile like he hadn’t seen him in decades. They had the irritating habit of walking close on our heels. Personal space, I’ve learned, is a bourgeois luxury.

We asked them a few times to turn down the volume, asked them nicely to either walk ahead of us or behind and eventually poor Julia had the task of being the moody mzungu – she snapped that we wanted to enjoy the sound of the birds chirping in the forest and the stream bubbling to our left and instructed them to walk ahead of us if they couldn’t shut up. We had about a half an hour of peace at the end of the walk.

Sodden but smiling

I had been warned that I would be shocked by the porters who make it possible for the wealthy to summit Kilimanjaro, but still they got to me. The route was busy, with several parties coming down after summiting. But when we spotted what their porters had to endure to make their smug smiles possible, we quickly stopped congratulating them. 

A party from Michigan had their porters carrying guitars! They are lightweight, but very bulky when there’s a lot of other stuff to be taken up a mountain. I told Jules loudly that we should have brought our harp.

The porters’ eyes were fixed on the ground as they rapidly overtook us – most had burdens on their backs and their necks. One had a canvas tent on his head, a huge orange gas tank on his neck and a heavy backpack on his shoulders. 
Surely someone who’s paying $16 000 to climb Kili can afford lightweight tents and gas stoves? Why do they need fresh onions and potatoes, what’s wrong with freeze-dried food? And why do they need to sit on folding chairs when they reach their destination? What’s wrong with a rock?

I will never understand as long as I live why the Kilimanjaro National Park advises climbers to pay their guides $20 a day and the porters only $10.

Lay your burden down on a porter?

I woke up proud as punch yesterday, my body had no adverse effect from a six-hour, high altitude walk. Thomas, our host at the campsite, quickly spoiled my mood. Why he chose me for his hand-rubbing, lip-licking bullshit, I don’t know.

He came to tell me that two guides took us up the mountain, but we had only paid one. Emile was seeking his fee - $20 from each of us. 

Emile was our guide? Why didn’t he introduce himself to us? Thomas said he didn’t know. Why didn’t Alfred tell us he was bringing another guide? Thomas said it was because the parks board insisted that there was one guide for every two people on the mountain. Why didn’t the parks board ask us to register two guides, then, when we paid our entry fee? Why did we see parties of six and eight people with one guide? Thomas said he didn’t know why. 
What did Emile do for us, other than irritate with loud conversation all day? Thomas said he would have helped if we encountered any trouble. I said he wouldn’t have heard if one of us was screaming in agony. Thomas began backing away. It’s okay, he said.

He had the nerve to return as we left, to remind us that we had to tip his staff and to check on the size of our gift. We have tipped generously everywhere we’ve been – especially to people who did more than expected, or who earned peanuts (most of them). I’m afraid I used the f-word as we left, as loudly as Emile would have.

I am dog-tired of being a tourist in Tanzania. I feel worse than a kwerekwere in a South African township. I’m a walking ATM and almost everyone I encounter is a metro cop. I came here with an open heart and a fat wallet and most of the people I’ve met are holhangers, as the people on the Cape Flats so charmingly call human parasites. (Hol is arse, dear foreign readers)

It’s hardly been possible to walk down a street, along a beach, through a forest, up a mountain or down a hill without people attaching themselves to you.

This is how it works. You’re going somewhere, you know exactly where. Someone (always a man) catches up with you and greets. Swahili greetings are complicated so you stop. Next you’re exchanging names and you are asked where you’re from. Ah! Nelson Mandela! How’s he doing? 
You start walking again and the man accompanies you, talking non-stop. You reach your destination, turn to say goodbye to your new friend, who then demands a fee for taking you there.

Yesterday, I felt so shattered by Thomas’s avaricious tugging at my purse strings that I refused to meet the eyes of anyone on the streets of Arusha, let alone greet them. 
Kilimanjaro remained draped in mist as we drove away from Marangu but Mount Meru was sparkling in the sunshine above Arusha. I was too dejected to look up at it. I had a fat, snot-on-my-lip cry after we set up camp and another when I woke up this morning. Show me the way to go home! I’m really, really tired and I want to sleep in my bed.

I’m also feeling very sorry for myself because my Aunty Brenda died and I have to cope with this with only Julia’s comfort. My smses and emails to my cousins seem horribly inept and stilted. My family could fill a stadium, so there was always a chance one of them would die in the year that I was away. What I didn’t expect was how hard it would be to mourn without a crowd. I wanted to share more memories of Aunty Brenda, mine seem so inedequate for a personality as big as hers.

Jules and I popped into the tourist information office in Arusha yesterday. We wanted to visit a volcanic crater outside town, where you can peer down into a cauldron of orange lava. We’d have to pass through the land of three communities, the smiling woman at the office told us. All of them have set up checkpoints where they charge $15 dollars each for mzungus passing through. We’d have to pay another $20 dollars each for accommodation and $100 dollars for a guide. Total cost for two to peep at boiling lava: $230.

We’re going to the Ngorogoro Crater, which is cheaper and prettier than the Serengeti. I hope to be able to afford a hike in the Olduvai Gorge where the Leakeys found my ancestors.  Here’s their charges: entry to the park per person per day, $50; motor vehicle permit, $40; camping $30 per person per day and driving into the crater $200 per vehicle per day. The cost for both of us for ONE day: $400 (we’re not going to drive into the crater). I don’t know if the guide charge of $20 is per person or group. I don’t expect to be pleasantly surprised.

When the earth’s tectonic plates shifted and the Great Rift Valley was formed, the piece of land that became Tanzania was blessed by the beautiful natural formations left behind. What they did with their inheritance was establish the land of milk the tourists and squeeze out their last drop of honey. I’m a tourist – get me out of here!