Sunday, March 25, 2007
Driving in the dark
We left the airport doors in search of our driver that the hotel was to send for us. It was not a long search as there he was at the end of the line of sign holding drivers with an N GRIMM paper in his hands. He seemed happy to see us, as our flight had been a bit late. The six of us headed out, after rushed hellos, into the darkness to find our ride. I hoped it was large enough to hold us and our humongous suitcases.
We crossed a road with cars seemingly driving with no regard for the faded lines and our helpers pushed their carts across a fairly flat, well-worn pavement parking lot. I breathed an audible sigh of relief when I saw the Toyota van, a model I had not seen before but a van non the less. We rolled around to the rear of the vehicle and the three young men debated in Swahili for some time before beginning to load the bags. My only input - in English of course - was that the "hard shell" bag with the duct tape patch must go on top, because I don't have too much tape left. They finished loading and we were ready to embark into the night.
As Nik and Abby were tucked into the backseat with the carry-on bags, I was directed to the front seat. I began to make my way to, what I figured was the passenger seat on, the right side of the van. There was a great deal of laughter from the group, and when I realized that if I sat on the right side I would have to drive, I had to chuckle as well. Now normally, I would take the wheel in a flash, but as it was 1 AM and I was coming off 22 hours of plane rides I deferred to the "professional".
I was quite happy I had taken to the left side once we got out onto the road for our 30 minute ride through Dar es Salaam. I had a hard time keeping my eyes on the road when we passed stores that I found to be way out of place: Huge bright furniture stores, Flashy dealerships like New Holland, Karcker Tractors, BMW, Subaru and SAAB. These had never entered my mental picture of Tanzania and they made my brain hunt for balance between their polished sheen and the nearly dead corrugated metal roofed and crumbling brick homes on the other side of the road.
Part of my mental picture was made up of fears of the unknown. At one point in our drive, fear came home to me as we pulled off the road and came to an abrupt stop behind a clean and shining land cruiser parked with a few other trucks. A guy came from the driver side and approached our van with load and friendly, "HI! HI!" coming from his smiling mouth. I replied with a tentative, "hi" of my own, while thinking, 'what the hell is going on here? Are we about to be robbed, or what.' With my brain swimming for the answer as to why we stopped I saw our driver pull out a small wad of what appeared in the dark to be American money and hand it to our new friend. With a loud, "Thank you, brother!" he was off to his truck and we were once again on our way into the night. I will not soon forget the rear of that land cruiser with its faded maroon colour and its spare tire arm that was void of a tire.
As we drove on, my mind continued to focus on why we had stopped. I could not come to a conclusion that made much sense to me. An informal toll for safe passage? Some underhanded dealings that had nothing to do with us? I did not know. It wasn't until later that I thought about any "above board" explanation. To be honest it was Nik who pointed out that the man given the money may have actually been a friend of our driver who had simply run out of gas. Seems possible now, but at the time I was only seeing a dark possibility. The dark possibilities were also echoed in the dark traffic lights.
We were off again, as if fired from a slingshot, in our little Toyota van into the black streets. We were obviously on a main road, with two lanes in each direction separated by a crumbling concrete median. There was the odd tree with low branches and large leaves that blocked our high beams from the oncoming traffic. As we would approach intersections our driver may or may not slow is rapid speed. I am not sure what the determining factor was, as only one of the numerous intersections had functioning traffic lights. That is not to say that most had the red, green and yellow bulbs, they were simply not lit. If he did decelerate it was only down to about 50 Km/h, a glance each way and off again. The bright red light at one of the crossings did have us stop.
As we came to a stop I was not sure if the light had been yellow or red, but we did stop and I was relieved. I am sure we could have made it straight through, especially at our rate of speed, but I was glad we had stopped. The cars at our right waiting to get onto the main road were happy as well and made this known with a toot or three on their loud horns. The second car in the line may not have been honking his thanks, in hindsight I think he was honking to make the guy in front of him run the red light. Shortly after this I was excited to see a familiar road sign (from google maps) that signaled that we were nearing our destination.
A turn to the right took us onto a winding two lane affair, with an apparent speed limit of 50. I know this not because our driver slowed down but because I had studied the road signs in our international drivers permit, pamphlet. Our driver, continued along at 80-90 with little regard for the tight curves, driveways or oncoming traffic. With high beams on the entire way, we were constantly being flashed by the passing cars and with each passing car my heart would enter my stomach; I would see the lights in the distance and think, 'goodness man move over, if we stay on the left side we'll hit head on.' It wasn't until they were right on us that I realized we were on the correct side of the road.
On the left side of the road were some very impressively sized mansions
with Hatari painted on signs on their gates. These signs signified that there was some sort of danger that would befall those who tried to enter. The danger as it turns out would come from a probable loud sound that would summon the gaurds who were sleeping beside their Toyota trucks that were parked at the right side of the road overlooking the Indian Ocean. We passed a few of these trucks and at first I thought that they were the local police, but if that were the case our driver would have received numerous speeding tickets. But after the third truck - sitting there with its four doors opened wide and its two occupants lying prone on benches - I noticed that the insignia on the doors matched that of the gates to the mansions.
We slowed at one point as the road narrowed and another vehicle approached, undoubtably a Toyota. Then as we crested an enormous speed bump and the lights of the hotel lit the rest of our way. We slowly - at last - passed some people playing Soccer, or Football (at 1 AM) and drove under a security barrier and into the smooth interlocking brick driveway of the Sea Cliff Hotel. We emerged from the Toyota and almost kissed the ground, but resisted as it is, after all, a 5 star hotel.
We crossed a road with cars seemingly driving with no regard for the faded lines and our helpers pushed their carts across a fairly flat, well-worn pavement parking lot. I breathed an audible sigh of relief when I saw the Toyota van, a model I had not seen before but a van non the less. We rolled around to the rear of the vehicle and the three young men debated in Swahili for some time before beginning to load the bags. My only input - in English of course - was that the "hard shell" bag with the duct tape patch must go on top, because I don't have too much tape left. They finished loading and we were ready to embark into the night.
As Nik and Abby were tucked into the backseat with the carry-on bags, I was directed to the front seat. I began to make my way to, what I figured was the passenger seat on, the right side of the van. There was a great deal of laughter from the group, and when I realized that if I sat on the right side I would have to drive, I had to chuckle as well. Now normally, I would take the wheel in a flash, but as it was 1 AM and I was coming off 22 hours of plane rides I deferred to the "professional".
I was quite happy I had taken to the left side once we got out onto the road for our 30 minute ride through Dar es Salaam. I had a hard time keeping my eyes on the road when we passed stores that I found to be way out of place: Huge bright furniture stores, Flashy dealerships like New Holland, Karcker Tractors, BMW, Subaru and SAAB. These had never entered my mental picture of Tanzania and they made my brain hunt for balance between their polished sheen and the nearly dead corrugated metal roofed and crumbling brick homes on the other side of the road.
Part of my mental picture was made up of fears of the unknown. At one point in our drive, fear came home to me as we pulled off the road and came to an abrupt stop behind a clean and shining land cruiser parked with a few other trucks. A guy came from the driver side and approached our van with load and friendly, "HI! HI!" coming from his smiling mouth. I replied with a tentative, "hi" of my own, while thinking, 'what the hell is going on here? Are we about to be robbed, or what.' With my brain swimming for the answer as to why we stopped I saw our driver pull out a small wad of what appeared in the dark to be American money and hand it to our new friend. With a loud, "Thank you, brother!" he was off to his truck and we were once again on our way into the night. I will not soon forget the rear of that land cruiser with its faded maroon colour and its spare tire arm that was void of a tire.
As we drove on, my mind continued to focus on why we had stopped. I could not come to a conclusion that made much sense to me. An informal toll for safe passage? Some underhanded dealings that had nothing to do with us? I did not know. It wasn't until later that I thought about any "above board" explanation. To be honest it was Nik who pointed out that the man given the money may have actually been a friend of our driver who had simply run out of gas. Seems possible now, but at the time I was only seeing a dark possibility. The dark possibilities were also echoed in the dark traffic lights.
We were off again, as if fired from a slingshot, in our little Toyota van into the black streets. We were obviously on a main road, with two lanes in each direction separated by a crumbling concrete median. There was the odd tree with low branches and large leaves that blocked our high beams from the oncoming traffic. As we would approach intersections our driver may or may not slow is rapid speed. I am not sure what the determining factor was, as only one of the numerous intersections had functioning traffic lights. That is not to say that most had the red, green and yellow bulbs, they were simply not lit. If he did decelerate it was only down to about 50 Km/h, a glance each way and off again. The bright red light at one of the crossings did have us stop.
As we came to a stop I was not sure if the light had been yellow or red, but we did stop and I was relieved. I am sure we could have made it straight through, especially at our rate of speed, but I was glad we had stopped. The cars at our right waiting to get onto the main road were happy as well and made this known with a toot or three on their loud horns. The second car in the line may not have been honking his thanks, in hindsight I think he was honking to make the guy in front of him run the red light. Shortly after this I was excited to see a familiar road sign (from google maps) that signaled that we were nearing our destination.
A turn to the right took us onto a winding two lane affair, with an apparent speed limit of 50. I know this not because our driver slowed down but because I had studied the road signs in our international drivers permit, pamphlet. Our driver, continued along at 80-90 with little regard for the tight curves, driveways or oncoming traffic. With high beams on the entire way, we were constantly being flashed by the passing cars and with each passing car my heart would enter my stomach; I would see the lights in the distance and think, 'goodness man move over, if we stay on the left side we'll hit head on.' It wasn't until they were right on us that I realized we were on the correct side of the road.
On the left side of the road were some very impressively sized mansions
with Hatari painted on signs on their gates. These signs signified that there was some sort of danger that would befall those who tried to enter. The danger as it turns out would come from a probable loud sound that would summon the gaurds who were sleeping beside their Toyota trucks that were parked at the right side of the road overlooking the Indian Ocean. We passed a few of these trucks and at first I thought that they were the local police, but if that were the case our driver would have received numerous speeding tickets. But after the third truck - sitting there with its four doors opened wide and its two occupants lying prone on benches - I noticed that the insignia on the doors matched that of the gates to the mansions.
We slowed at one point as the road narrowed and another vehicle approached, undoubtably a Toyota. Then as we crested an enormous speed bump and the lights of the hotel lit the rest of our way. We slowly - at last - passed some people playing Soccer, or Football (at 1 AM) and drove under a security barrier and into the smooth interlocking brick driveway of the Sea Cliff Hotel. We emerged from the Toyota and almost kissed the ground, but resisted as it is, after all, a 5 star hotel.
