The long journey home last week

Well, I had a nice Sunday to just relax and get set for everything the next week (and to recover from some sunburn during those demos). I had planned to wake up early and get organized a bit, but I decided that the sleep was more important.

On Monday, we were supposed to go for some more village demos, but those kinda fell through so we decided to re-evaluate strategy a bit. We also decided to go to the National Microfinance Bank. The Mbeya branch is the zonal office for the bulk of Tanzania's bread-basket (maize-basket?) so we were excited to meet with the director. It turns out that she's a farmer and when she saw a video of the sheller in action, she was definitely impressed. She wants to help us get our machines out to farmers and is a big believer in supporting entrepreneurs (which is a good trait in her position). She gave us lots of advice and information and she said that she will be talking to farmers about our machine. We went to talk to one more agro-dealer, but it was more of a dead end.

On Tuesday, I went to Mbozi, which is a medium sized town an hour and a half outside of Mbeya. The scenery on the bus ride was absolutely gorgeous. My contact there wasn't nearly as enthusiastic as I had hoped, but I was still happy to touch base there. When I made it back to Mbeya, I tried to do another quick trip to a town in the other direction, but the bus wasn't leaving, so I just headed back to the hotel to pack things up.

Reuben and I decided to go to the restaurant across the street. It was a tad more exotic, but not much pricier than most of the other places in Mbeya. On Sunday, we went and I had a cheeseburger, which wasn't great, but Monday and Tuesday, Reuben and I did pizza. By splitting it, it was actually a pretty good deal. Monday's pizza was supposed to have bananas, but they forgot them. Tuesday also had Brazilian soap operas on the TV behind us. It was really bad, but Reuben and I couldn't stop watching it. We had to go back to our hotel since the restaurant was closing, so we turned on the TV in our room (the first time we'd used it; the room only had one outlet and we were mostly spending our time charging our laptops and my phone). So, we watched the end and were very sad for Mariacruz. I'm sure she'll come out on top. And then The Princess Bride came on. Reuben hadn't seen it, so we put away our computers (we both needed to charge) and watched the movie. Good times.

On Wednesday, we just needed to drop the bike off in town before we could leave Mbeya. Our ride was supposed to come at 9 A.M. After several phone calls ("oh, we'll be there soon...no more than half an hour...just a little longer"), we found out at 1:30 that we wouldn't be able to get a ride. I was not so happy about that. In any case, I hauled the bike to town and ran to the bus stand. The bus was wayyyyy too crowded (I spent the first stretch getting my knee crushed before deciding to stand and jostle back and forth since it was at the back where there's no suspension) and we had to wait a while at the halfway point. A ride that should be well under 2 hours wound up taking just under 4 hours. At least we were able to grab some roasted bananas (really good) which was the only food we had during all of our waiting.

Then, we arrived in Kyela and met up with our contact there. He had been particularly vehement about us visiting the town. My first trip there, I remembered thinking it was a nothing town and I was super-skeptical. Pretty sure I was just incredibly tired that time. As Iddy (our contact) explained to us, the area is incredibly flat and there are no cars or public transport serving the surrounding villages, so everyone rides bikes. It was a really great sight to see the road filled with bikes going in all directions. Reuben and I did a quick village visit and looked at all the farms in the area (lots of rice fields and fruit trees, but no maize since it's the hot, humid lakeside climate), but then we decided that it was kinda late and we needed a meal before crashing.

On Thursday (also marked 18 months that I've been over here, congrats to the remainder of the training group who's also celebrating this milestone), I took the early morning bus to Iringa (the latest bus leaves at 5:30 AM). I was a bit exhausted on arrival, so I ran and found a salad, which boosted my spirits. I met with a dealer in Iringa (who was really excited and we really enjoyed talking) before hopping on another bus to visit a town an hour and a half down the road. As I waited for the bus to depart, I bought some tangerines at the bus stop, (like the limes, lemons, oranges and grapefruits, these tangerines were green) and ate all 8 tangerines on the ride. I arrived at 4:50 PM and the dealer didn't seem like he gets many visitors from afar. Anyway, I made the pitch and he really enjoyed it. After every point, he looked with disbelief and said "Sure?!?" It was a really nice meeting. Then, I ran back to the bus and made it back for a quick bite.

That evening, I had a 1:30 AM meeting. Sadly, I was kinda out of it the whole time. One of my friends told me that she worried the meetings might be unhealthy for me. Well, it's not the meetings, it's just my reluctance to stop when I reach my limits. In this case, I was up to meet at 1:30 on Monday night. On Tuesday I was checking the email constantly because I was supposed to have a meeting during the night (which didn't end up happening). Wednesday there were no meetings, but since I had the early morning morning bus, I wound up not sleeping until I got on the bus (apparently it's not at all a challenge to stay up until 5:30). So it's not the meetings that are unhealthy. It's more of a problem with my circadian rhythm. I should work on that. Eventually...

Anyway, Friday I couldn't get out of bed in time for the buses back to Arusha, so I decided to see if I could get a lift part way. Unfortunately, there were no lifts to be had. I headed back to the bus station and got a stack of pears and found a bus to take me 5 hours up the road to Morogoro. I had a somewhat unpleasant bus ride since I was also fighting a headache, and I was thrilled to get in to Morogoro. I met with a store owner, but he was more interested in figuring out how to put credit on his phone than in talking about products. It was my own fault for breaking my rule of not making cold calls on Friday afternoons (but I didn't have a whole lot of options with my schedule on this trip). Fortunately, I went and talked to the salespeople and they were a lot more interested, so that was positive.

After that, I walked around town a bit, and took in the sights which was nice. I'd love to go back there again and spend more time. I found some baby mangoes (not a very good snack) and I went to a bar with really stale fries and flavorless meat. I found a hotel for 6000 shillings (less than $5), which was pretty nice, and not much less comfortable than the places I stayed for 10,000, 15,000 or 20,000 shillings. I actually had a good night's sleep, which was very much needed.

Then, yesterday morning I had a 9 AM bus. That was a big relief over recent travel days. Unfortunately, I had some emails to send that morning which took much longer than I wanted. I wound up sprinting for a daladala to get to the bus and I got there with 10 minutes to spare. I asked the driver to put my bag under the bus, but he refused and told me to store it overhead (there was no good reason for this except for him to refuse except for laziness). Unfortunately, the bag was too big to fit in the space, so I tried to wedge it as best as I could. It stayed in place for 5 hours, then all of a sudden, the bag fell onto the woman sitting next to me. The heavy metal part of the bag (I'm carrying the cast-iron machine in there) fell about one inch from her baby's head. The woman was very understanding, but my heart was racing and I was furious with that bus driver who had refused to listen to me.

Anyway, the bus ride was otherwise uneventful. I didn't have the chance to grab breakfast, and so I had to find food at a rest stop at 1:30 PM. I grabbed a little of the greasy food so I would have some substance and then I bought a huge stack of passion fruits. That definitely brightened the rest of the ride.

When I got home it was really nice to be greeted by my puppy. I hadn't seen Juju (short for Ijumaa) in over two weeks. He gave me a really warm greeting and it made me feel better about the whole long journey home.