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Nobody wants to read about a 26-hour trip, but just one brief note - can I just say how tall the Dutch are? I’d forgotten. The average KLM female flight attendant must be 6’2. The locals in the Amsterdam Airport make it look like the departure lounge at Pandora International. This prompts in me an academic question: Why are the Dutch not better at basketball, in the mold of small countries that have outsize success in one sport - like Dominicans in baseball or Swedes in hockey? Has anyone researched this?
But seriously….
The first impression of Africa is of the darkness - flying in even over the city of Arusha the lights merely flicker, and there is darkness until the runway appears just below at Kilimanjaro Airport. Maria has arrived two weeks before, and meets me at the airport with a taxi driver. The road to Moshi is strikingly dark as well. It is nearly 11 o’clock when we pull into the driveway of the new home Maria has found for us, the guest cottage of a local doctor she has just moved into that afternoon.
I’d be preparing for this trip for over a year, but when I finally arrive I admit there is a rush of anxiety. A combination of factors, no doubt — the newness of the place, the exhaustion of the journey, the strange sights and smells, the reassuring but also alarming fact of the guard at the gate. The first night is filled with strange noises and fitfull sleep. Planning the trip I’d told myself 6 months wasn’t so long; suddenly it seems super long indeed. I wonder if this is really me. Will I find find some meaningful and useful way to spend my time here? I may not have a stretch of time like this again for decades - will I waste it somehow?
I even start to regret my plan to blog about the experience. I’m such a perfectionist in my writing I’m not sure I can even blog properly - will I waste endless hours editing myself? More importantly, do I really want to share the experience widely? What if I decide to head home early? Certainly not the end of the world, and perhaps the right thing to do, but will I be embarrassed because I’m on display?
But in the morning, my outlook is brighter. A few hours of sleep and daylight help. The guest cottage, in a suburb just outside Moshi, is small but clean and feels fairly safe. Maria concluded it was a better option, at least for now, than the nearby compound where most of the Duke people she works with live. Dr. Oneko comes to our door to introduce himself and walks us around his beautiful yard, showing off his fruit trees. He invites us in for breakfast and tells us about his work — trained in Germany, he has stayed to work in Tanzania even though virtually all of his colleagues have left for other countries. Typically, he’s at the hospital from 7-to-7 at least six days a week so I doubt we will see much of him. He points out a comfy chair in the shade on his tile veranda, where I am now writing this. A home, of sorts.
We take a brief walk down the street, and turning a corner, I get my first, truly breathtaking view of Mt. Kilimanjaro. If it were up to me, I would probably take several days to recover and try to get the bearings of my new surroundings. We’ll be here for half a year, after all. But in typical fashion Maria has decided to throw me straight-off-the-bat into a full African experience. We are joining a group of ex-pats on a “hash” (a kind of strenuous trail hike) and overnight camp at Lake Chala on the Kenyan border. I’m surprisingly I eager - I want to meet people, and figure if ever there will be a time I’m tired enough to sleep well in a tent, this it. We pile into a friend’s jeep and head out of the city. The highway is teeming with people walking alongside it, even between towns. Between the mountain ranges, stunning, open countryside begins to open up around us, and I start to see why so many people are transfixed by the place.
