Raspberry clothes

Jackie and I were traveling again today. The trip was from Mbeya, which is in southern Tanzania near the Malawian border to Iringa, which is in southern Tanzania, but 329 km away (Tanzania is pretty big). We hopped on a bus (but it's actually only half the size of a standard bus, while still being much larger than a dala-dala) and set off. When I traveled down, Iringa to Mbeya took just over 4 hours. Our return trip was a whopping 7 hours. Shows what a difference stops to drop off, wait for and pick up passengers can make.

My duffle bag was at the back of the bus under my seat. At one point, the conductor asked me if I had any oil in my bag. I gave him a puzzled look and told him there was no oil. Jackie mentioned that she thought she saw something wet on my bag, but couldn't be sure. We both shrugged it off.

Ten minutes later, I had a flash of realization. Jackie had bought a glass bottle of raspberry balsamic vinagrette in Malawi that I was carrying for her. I had wrapped it in my towel and tried to insulate it from my other belongings (for fear of leaking and because I knew that the sheller could probably break it). I tried to keep my mind off of it for the rest of the trip, but my mind kept jumping to images of a shattered glass bottle and oil, balsamic vinegar and raspberry extract all over my clothes.

When we arrived in Iringa, Jackie smelled my bag and told me that it smelled more like gasoline than oil. I was optimistic. We carried our bags to a nearby guest house and as soon as I was in the room, I looked inside. Definitely raspberry clothes. I found the empty bottle, still fully intact with the stopper (not a screw-on cap) removed. At least I have some clean(ish) clothes for the next couple of days and I will do a full load of laundry when I get back to Arusha.

This duffle has seen 7 countries (maybe more) and faced other spills such as hand lotion and mango shampoo. I'm sure it'll bounce back from this little mishap as well.