Basi

Bus.

I set off on a journey westwards towards central Tanzania, with some ideas but very little planned. The first challenge was navigating the vast Magufuli Bus Station in Dar es Salaam, one of the late President’s mega infrastructure projects that were kickstarted during his term.

My destination was Morogoro, around 4 hours from Dar. I asked for the name of one of the reputable bus companies and approached someone sporting a shirt with the name. He handed me a ticket for Morogoro which stated 10.30am. It was around 1pm so this made no sense as even in the Swahili clock 10.30am would be 4.30am standard time. I then established it was going to leave at 4.30pm so perched on a kerb with a fellow passenger as we fended off snack vendors and on one occasion an unhinged man who ranted ‘white skin, f*ck off.’

Eventually the bus left at 3.20pm, defying both the bus ticket and typical understanding of time.

In Morogoro I’d eyed up the Queen Hotel, with the slogan ‘the best place to be’. Couldn’t be bad. Fortunately they had rooms. I liked the receptionist who commented on my forenames Robert James: ‘your name is like Tanzanian’. She was charming and wanted to become pals: ‘when you have new you can share with me and when I have new I can share with you.’ I didn’t have any news to share at that time as I mainly wanted to rest my weary head.