As most of you know I do not like staying in one place for long. Therefore transportation is an important part of life and it's one thing I tend to notice most about places I visit, especially now where I do not have my own ride to get anywhere that I need or want to go. Here I am relying on public transportation (or nice people with cars). When living in Kentucky I did not use public transportation, one because I had a car that I could drive and two, because it's not all that common for most people.
Here, I have to use public transport everyday and I'm actually pretty happy with it for the most part. I love daladalas, they are cheap are easily found and get you close to where you need to go. They remind me a lot of the mini-buses in South Africa especially with the amount of people packed into them and the rules of the road according to the drivers. While this is a method of public transportation, they are privately owned buses. I have seen them switch drivers and conductors on route which leads me to believe that a few people get together to buy one and then share in the profit of the day. There is always one driver (obviously) but also there is always a conductor which beckons people in and collects the fair. Once while riding a daladala a friend and I saw another one for sale in which we devised a plan that we should buy it and then I would become the driver and she the conductor and we would then have a nice little side business. Daladalas drive on a specific route which is clearly marked on the front and while there are certain stops along the way there isn't a set schedule. You cannot plan when one will come you just stand and wait but usually it does not take very long to find the next one.
Daladalas stop running after 9 and I've been advised by my family not to take one after dark anyways (about 6:30pm) so the other forms of transportation include bajijis and taxis. Bajijis are also another privately owned vehicle which looks like a motorized tricycle with a carriage to me. You can fit about three people inside and they will take you anyway for a negotiated price. The trick is to barter for a cheap price (especially being white they always try and charge more) but overall I'd rather take that than a taxi. Taxis are like taxis everywhere else, with the exception that I haven't seen a meter counter yet, so here you also negotiate prices with the drivers.
This weekend I traveled to Morogoro which is about 2-3 hours away from Dar es Salaam which gave an interesting insight into driving here and made me really think about the differences in ways people drive. One obvious difference is that they drive on the left side of the road and the steering wheel is on the right side of the car. This, I was already used to thanks to my stay in Cape Town but it would definitely be an adjustment to others coming here. Also I'd like to point out that while I am in Africa and it's a third world country a majority of the roads are paved. There are some that are not but even to other towns and cities there are paved roads. One big difference I've noticed is that there are a lot less stop lights and I haven't seen one stop sign but there are more speed bumps then I've even witnessed. Speed bumps are everywhere you can't get away from them! In general driving is the same except people have no problem going around you if you are in their way, too slow or for whatever reason and by whatever means.
Ok now back to the trip to Morogoro, we traveled there by tour bus which is supposed to take 2-3 hours depending on traffic so we decided to wake up and leave early Saturday morning. Everything was going very well at the station; we easily got our tickets, found the bus and were on our way until right as we were pulling out of the station. So as we were pulling out a motorcyclist stops to let us through but the truck behind him does not, he tried to go around and over the highway divide and ends up running over the motorcycle and hitting the tail end of our bus. Luckily the motorcyclist had jump off and was therefore unharmed also it did not cause a lot of damage to our bus, but none the less it caused us a great deal of time lost and we had to go back in the station to change buses. We eventually got to Morogoro in the second try without any problems. However, on the way back into Dar es Salaam we experience heavy traffic which took us about an hour just to get back into the station. Sure I've experience heavy traffic before but nothing really like this, especially with only one street light there was barely any movement for quite some time.
So sometimes I miss having a car of my own to drive and get me to where I need and want to go but public transportation has been doing just fine here and I've not run into any major problems.
Hakuna Matata,
Kimberly
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