On how everything always (?) works out for the better

Big disappointment. There are no tickets for the Tazara train that leaves Dar es Salaam on Tuesday, direction Zambia, and next train isn’t until Friday. What to do with all that time, we wanna get going, our trip has hardly even started and we’ve got so much more mileage to clock up?

Here we are, at the YWCA (yes, they do accept men and no, it’s not nearly as fun as I imagined), it is soon Friday and we thank our lucky star that we didn’t get tickets for that Tuesday train. Not that anything bad happened to that train, in these times of plane crashes that wouldn’t seem such a farfetched story, it’s just that we would have missed a great time…

Tuesday was field day. Swedish Sekab has been busy trying to start African ethanol production in Bagamoyo, 60 kms north of Dar es Salaam; they are now busy trying to find a buyer because their owners have told them they should stick to Swedish core business – the main reason for this change of heart being the biofuel-bashing by some of our friends in the Swedish media… Anyway, we went out to see what they had accomplished and what was there for potential buyers to scoop up.

I (Mattias) will be back with more writing about this, but it clearly seems a big shame if all this work will just go to waste… And for us, it was a great way of seeing, learning and touching more of Tanzanian farming and setting-up-business, with a whole day spent in the field – we would have missed a lot if we had had to go back for that train!

In the end, we spent two nights in lovely little Bagamoyo, that was the center for the slave trade on the east coast, the port of entry for the European explorers and the capital of then German East Africa, all meaning lots of crumbling ruins that are only now starting to be renovated with the eyes set on achieving Unesco World Heritage Status. And the seafood – after having been sick for two days I (Mattias again) had a lot to regain and refill, but I never managed to finish all the crabs, shrimp, octopus and fish set down before me!

Dar es Salaam, which only became the capital after Bagamoyo’s harbor was finally declared inapt for all up-coming business, is not much to write home about. We struggled to even find a café to spend some time after we finally gave up on finding anything else to do (most people rightfully set off for Zanzibar immediately, but that is a different trip for us). We did the museum (there is only one), we walked along the waterfront (dreadful, just stinking containerships all the way up to the shore) and we managed to spend almost ten minutes in the Botanical Garden (already very much)… So now it is about time to get going, and if everything works out well, the Zambia-headed train is a-waiting for us! Another 25 h onboard – next stop Mbeya...