My Triple Near-Death Experience...in 5 hours

I don’t think I’ve ever feared for my life as much as I did last night when I was coming back to Morogoro from Dar-es-Salaam! I’d gone to Dar on Friday to spend the weekend with friends and experience a change of scenery from Morogoro. I wanted to milk my weekend in Dar for all it was worth, so I decided not to leave Dar to go back to Morgoro until late Sunday night. After all, all that was waiting for me in Morogoro to rush home to last night was just a good night’s sleep. Usually when I head back to Morogoro I don’t arrive at the Ubungo bus station in Dar any later than 5:30pm, especially since Sunday nights in particular are really hectic at the station with everyone trying to head back to Morogoro at the end of the weekend. Last night, however, I wasn’t able to make it to the bus station until almost 6:30pm. By the time I arrived there with my friend Nora (also from Morogoro), we were disappointed to find that the most reliable bus services that I’ve always used to go back and forth to Dar were completely filled. Since Nora is fairly new to Tanzania and it was her first time at the bus station in Dar, I decided to take charge.

A man approached us and suggested that we take an Islam Express bus back to Morogoro. Although we were pretty desperate for a ride back, I couldn’t help but scoff in the guy’s face…the last and only time I took an Islam bus it sat idly in Morogoro for three hours (during which time all the other bus companies’ buses were zooming towards Dar one after the other) and then it took four an a half hours to travel to Dar. The bus was so worn down that it could barely make it up the hills. We even had giant lorries weighing a couple of tons passing us even on the smallest inclines. Hence, I declined the man’s sales pitch to take the Isalm Express bus last night. Hence, we were left with one option.

To the right of the lines of parked buses that had just arrived from Morogoro sat a small minibus whose khonda was yelling for passengers wishing to go to Morogoro. It looked fairly empty, but the khonda insisted that the bus was leaving “sasa hivi” (soon). If there’s anything I’ve learned since being in Tanzania for nine months now, it’s to not take someone’s promise of “soon” too seriously. Soon could usually mean even 8 hours from now! Although Nora and I felt pretty skeptical about the reliability of the transport, we hopped on the bus anyway and hoped for the best. That was at 6:30. An hour later we still found ourselves sitting on the bus waiting in the parking lot. By that point a few other people had joined us on the bus. By the time it hit 7:30 I joked with Nora that we’d be lucky to even leave by 8:00. Sure enough, somehow we managed to start moving at 7:57. That felt like a real confidence boost…until we got rammed in the rear end literally two minutes later by a bus behind us just as we were pulling out of the parking lot! Luckily no one was hurt, but our nerves went through the roof. The driver and khonda freaked out and stopped the bus mid-intersection in front of a long queue of angry drivers going in the opposite direction who were impatient to make it out of the congested traffic. I don’t think I’ve ever heard so many horns hopelessly beeping at once before! It was almost deafening. By the time the men got out of the vehicle the bus that had hit us had already taken off at warp speed, trying to avoid accountability for the accident.

Nora and I couldn’t help but laugh anxiously as we wondered what would happen next. It was already 8:30 and it would still be a lengthy three-hour’s drive back to Morogoro once we officially got on the road. We were contemplating the wisdom of our decision to take this bus after all and were seriously considering hopping off in the next 15 minutes and finding a place to stay for the night in Dar if we didn’t go anywhere anytime soon. Just as we were talking about that option, the driver and khonda climbed onto the bus again and started up the engine. Just as our nerves were beginning to settle down, we randomly stopped on the side of the road to pick up more passengers apparently hoping to make it to Morogoro that night as well. Our bus acted more like a local daladala for quick transport than a bus going three hours away. As the people came onto the bus they really caused a racket, unapologetically pushing and shoving each other to win a spot to stand in the bus aisle. Fortunately Nora and I were towards the back of the bus so we didn’t feel the immediate effect of the jostling. As soon as we took off again Nora and I let out another sigh of relief, but our attempts to stay calm were interrupted by all of the passengers who starting yelling at this one lady who’d just gotten on. As the argument escalated, Nora and I sat back googley-eyed trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Before we could register the turn of events, the driver stopped and the khonda opened the door and shoved the woman out of the bus and onto the street. Yelps and whoops of satisfaction echoed from end to end of the bus as we drove onward.

At this point Nora and I were seriously considering getting off the next time the bus stopped, if and when that was. But by about 10 minutes later we’d conceded to just stay on the bus, as we were heading out of town at a hefty speed and away from any place to stay in the city center for the night. Yet, it was literally impossible to settle into our seats and get comfortable for the hours ahead. For one, the driver had deliriously decided to play traditional Tanzanian bongo flava music at an incredible volume…it was so high that the bus was literally vibrating to the base beat of the tracks. Everyone around us began to get restless and tried to yell at the driver to turn the music down. Nora and I couldn’t even hear what each other was saying and we were sitting right next to each other! (Rather) fortunately, because Tanzanian roads aren’t the best and the tracks were being played off of a CD, the music would skip every time we went over the bumps. Aware of this, the whole bus teamed up against the driver to play a verbal version of whack-a-mole. Every time the CD would skip everyone would yell out at once, “Punguza sauti!” (Reduce the volume!). Eventually everyone’s complaining took its toll on the driver and he agreed to turn the music down. So things started to look like they were getting better, again…until the man next to me perked up and started trying to talk to me.

Although I never caught his name, he tried to make sure that I would pay attention to him for the whole night. He looked fairly young, like he was just out of college like me. Although he appeared rather normal, clad in jeans and a button up shirt, he was holding a plastic packet filled with two shots of Konyagi – the local spirit (or gin) available in Tanzania. That’s right…you can get shots of alcohol in little tiny plastic packets here when you’re on the go! The guy had an opened one in his hand that he was sipping from and another unopened one on deck resting in his lap for when he ran out of the first (or that might’ve even been his third by the rate way he was talking). Although it’s common to see men drinking at bars and pubs with their buddies here in Tanzania, I’ve never seen a man so openly drinking alcohol during something as anticlimactic as a bus ride back to Morogoro. Haha. I guess everyone has his or her coping mechanisms for long bus rides. They are rather boring, so I can’t really blame the guy. I wouldn’t have minded him drinking so much if his behavior hadn’t been so disruptive. When it reached past 9:00pm, most of the bus was visibly and audibly exhausted. There were barely any people talking and mostly everyone had his or her eyes shut trying to sleep…except for the guy next to me. He had the urge to call literally everyone he knew on his contact list and talk at an obscene volume. I’m sure he didn’t realize how loud he was talking because he was drunk, but there’s no reason why he needed to be yelling when the whole bus was quiet.

That’s a funny trend here…I’ve observed that there’s very little phone etiquette in Tanzania, at least compared to the American standards I’m used to. In America people make sure to silent their phones during important meetings and they’re usually fairly quiet and considerate of others when they need to talk on the phone when other people are trying to sleep on a bus. But in Tanzania most people never silence their phones during meetings or at other times (like at night on a bus) when it should be quiet. Even some of my colleagues pick up their phones mid-teaching instead of silencing their phones or waiting to call back later. What’s more is that people insist on yelling into their phones here, no matter what, as if the people on the other end of the line can’t hear them hardly at all. In America if someone screamed into his or her phone everyone would look at him/her like she was crazy!

Anyway, back to this guy. Not only did he call his entire phone book and scream into his phone, he also insisted on chatting me up for about an hour into the bus ride. His balance was off so I got a horrible whiff of his konyagi-breath too many times to feel comfortable about. Haha. It really was bad though. And at the speed at which he was talking, it took forever for him to get out what he was trying to say. On a positive note, he did speak very good English so at least he was slurring words in my native language so I had a 50% higher chance of trying to translate them than if he’d been slurring words in Swahili. Haha. But if I were to add up the entirety of the words he spoke to me in that hour, another – sober – person speaking at a normal rate could’ve managed to say all of them in less than ten minutes. As annoying as it was, it was also incredibly, fantastically, absurdly and wildly hilarious. Nora and I could barely hold ourselves together from laughing at this guy. At one point I tried to go to sleep, or at least pretend to, by resting my head on the back of the seat in front of me. Really I was just trying to avoid having to talk to the guy next to me. While I was “resting” the guy tried to talk to me, so Nora, awake and semi-alert, insisted to the guy that he needed to be quiet and not disturb me because I was sleeping. I couldn’t help but start laughing. I tried my best to do it as unnoticeably as possible, but Nora could see that I was laughing and started laughing too…which only triggered the guy to ask her why she was laughing at him...and as he proceeded to get angry I only started laughing more. It was a great cycle…and probably the best increment of the trip. Eventually the guy drank himself into a stooper and ended up falling asleep on the other lady next to him who was in a deep slumber herself.

Just as I actually started to doze off, I was jolted awake suddenly to the sounds of horns and the swerving movement of our minibus as we avoided a near-crash with an oncoming car. Throughout the whole trip our driver had actually chosen to drive at an incredible dangerous high speed. We could have easily been going up to 90 mph at some points and I’m definitely not exaggerating. The driver wanted to get us to Morogoro fast, albeit the total trip took us a whopping 5 hours by the time we arrived…2 hours more than it usually takes! Surely he had no worries about putting everyone in the car in severe danger while he was driving. At the moment of the near crash everyone bolted into alertness and cursed out the driver for nearly killing us all. For as far as he was driving, we would’ve all surely have died in an instant. Nora and I could only exhale out of panic and thank God that we’d chosen to move seats before the trip started. When we’d initially gotten seats on the bus we were seated right behind the driver. I can’t even imagine having more fear than I had when we were sitting right in front of the last row of seats where we ended up sitting for the journey, but I bet it was 10X scarier for everyone up front.

After that near-death experience, the driver ignored everyone’s requests to slow down and still insisted on driving like a mad man. He drove at menacing speeds all the way to Morogoro. By the time we reached the bus station in town I swear I almost collapsed from happiness…and exhaustion from being so tense the whole trip…but we still had a ways to go before we got home. A few other women, Nora, and I decided to stay on the bus a little bit longer because it was heading into town. We figured we could save a few bucks on a taxi back to the house by getting a ride out of town rather than all the way from the bus station. Clearly we weren’t thinking properly, because after getting rammed in the back by another bus, then barely missing hitting an oncoming car, we had another near-death experience shortly after we took off from the bus station. As we rode through town and the familiar images of town started to make me feel all warm and gooey inside about being home again, we ended up approaching a train that was just crossing at the intersection we were heading toward. Since the driver had seen the train from at least a half a kilometer away I figured we wouldn’t have to worry. Well, that’s not true. The driver kept pumping his brakes (just for fun or out of boredom?) until we were literally centimeters away from the speeding train passing in front of us. Nora and I actually leapt out of our seats slightly from fear. The front of out bus seriously seemed like it was about to get creamed by the train! Fortunately that didn’t happen, but just because it didn’t materialize doesn’t mean it made us any more satisfied.

As soon as we made it off the bus with all of our limbs attached a few minutes later, be both looked at each other with unexplainable degrees of relief plastering our faces. Even though we didn’t say anything, we knew just what each other was thinking – thank God we’re alive!! Fortunately we didn’t even have to walk four feet to get a taxi back to our house. As we rode up the hill to our house we were both spooked into silence from the crazy ride we’d just had. When we got into the house we couldn’t help but shake our heads in misbelief about how many times we’d barely escaped the clutches of death. I may sound overly dramatic, but we really were in danger. Too many people die in Tanzania every year because of poor driving…and all of those people’s deaths could be avoided if only people were a little more careful on the roads.

Perhaps the funniest kick to my story is that when I went to school today and told my colleagues that I got home from Dar-es-Salaam at 12:00 last night they all asked me how I got home at that time. After I told them I took a taxi they shook their heads and scolded me about how dangerous it is to take a taxi at that time of night. It took all of my energy to keep from laughing, since the moments during the taxi ride back to my house were perhaps the most calming, satisfying, and peaceful moments of my entire trip back to Morogoro! On the safer side I just nodded my head and said that it was a foolish idea and decided to keep the more dangerous aspects of my trip back from Dar to myself!

All in all, I’m happy to be alive and breathing – normally – today!