From Moshi

The streets of Dar are wet and muddy the day I arrive and my torn clothes are covered in dirt by the time I wheel my bike up to the gates of Bob and Judy’s house. The security guard looks curiously at me, and hesitates, before checking if I should be allowed in. There is a Canadian flag blowing reassuringly on a tall white pole at the end of the lawn and a few hundred yards behind, Tanzania’s eastern shores meet the Indian Ocean. The family, whom I had never met, invites me to stay for as long as I like. There is a golden retriever lying quietly in the hallway and Western newspapers are laid out neatly on a coffee table. I stay here for the weekend and sleep in a double bed and eat family meals with a napkin on my lap. On the Saturday I go with them to the yacht club and on Sunday to a charity sale where I say hello to the same smiling faces I saw at the club the day before.

Since the first day of the ride, almost three months ago, when I found a pack of sandwiches and a note from the guesthouse owner, resting on my saddlebag, I have been met with the kindness of strangers. In villages in Namibia, Botswana, and Zambia I have been given food and water and a place to sleep. Along the roads people have stopped to give me cold drinks. And here in Dar I am welcomed by strangers as if I am an old friend.

After a few days rest the road beckons and I head north along the coast to Bagamoyo. It is a short ride and I arrive in the little seafront town early in the day. The tide is out and beached dhows rest on the sand amongst torn nets and bright plastic bags that billow across the cluttered shore. Fires are smouldering beneath rickety corrugated shelters in the little market off the beach. Women stoop over pans of spitting oil and the smell of dried fish clings to the humid air. An ancient carpenter chips at a block of dark wood in a shaded corner. He is very thin and his brown skin clings tightly to the lean fibres of his tensed arm as he brings the axe down onto the wood. I buy a woolly hat from an old woman; it will be cold when I ride into the northern mountains around Kilimanjaro.

From Bagamoyo the tar stops and I ride a dirt track 70 km to Msata. The rains have washed much of the earth away and my bicycle clatters painfully over the exposed rocks that jut out of the dust. Where the road dips, deep pools of water have collected and I must get off and wade with my bike, muddy water swilling around my ankles. The sun is strong and the going slow. It takes six hours to reach Msata, where I get a big plate of goat and rice and a cold Coke. From Msata I ride north on the highway to Mbwewe. There is a guesthouse here and I spend a couple of hours fixing my bike beside the bed in the dark room.

Later I sit in the bar, where people stare at me sullenly over bottles of warm beer. The barman pulls a chair up next to me. He tells me his name is William and that he grew up in Tabora, in Western Tanzania. He has a cropped head of short wiry hair that recedes from his gaunt face and he smiles placidly as he talks. He tells me that he went to primary school till he was seven. That his parents were very poor and so died when he was young. That he came here to make a business. He used to sell charcoal here, for ten years: “Now I must work here, at the bar. Yes. It is because I am weak, you see. Too weak to work on my business. I am a victim, am victim of HIV, you see. Yes.” He nods meekly and I am silent. “Tanzania government, they have not enough money to help us, the victims. To bring us the foods and the drugs. But NGOs, you understand, NGOs from Europe, they want to help us. Yes.” He is speaking very softly and smiles when he looks up. “They want to bring us the monies so we can have the foods and the drugs. Yes. But they do not bring straight to us, the victims. They bring to the district leaders, you understand, to give to us. The NGOs they want the foods and the drugs to come to us. Yes. But the district leaders, they are a thief. They keep the monies and they are rich. We, the victims, do not get the foods and the drugs.” We are sitting side by side on plastic chairs as dusk falls on the little bar. I stare ahead and ask him when he found out he was sick. He says three months ago. We both go quiet and he jumps up to bring a drink to a guy shouting at him from the table opposite.

From Mbwewe I take three days to ride the 400 km to Moshi. I pull out of the guesthouse while the air is grey and I can see the shimmering glow of the first fires of the day being lit across the surrounding hills. For a couple of hours it is cool and a thin mist hangs over the road. In the east the dusky forms of the Usambara Mountains hide the rising sun; a pale yellow light filters through the cloud above them bathing the craggy hilltops in an angelic glow, as if plumes of stardust were drifting from the rocks towards the sky.

Between the road and the hills the land is lush and green and women are working in the fields. The road is full of potholes and coaches speed past forcing me onto the grassy verge. At Segera I am stopped at a roadblock and the policeman asks me how I find the condition of Tanzania. He beams when I tell him it is great. The roads good. The people friendly. National pride wells up in him and spreads across his plump face in a broad grin. I sleep at Korogwe and ride 160 km to Same the next day. The land dries up as I go further north; the fields of yellow-faced sunflowers and healthy maize give way to vast plains of dusty red earth. There are deep groves running through the dying soil, the scars of heavy rains that remain etched in the burning land. It is very flat and a battered sign warns of strong winds. I pass by row upon row of cotton plants and speed across the flats with a rushing wind behind me. I stay at Same and ride 100 km, past the Pare Mountains, to Moshi the next morning.