Travel to Pangani

Saying Goodbye to Jane and Whitney
The week of March 19th we said goodbye to Jane and Whitney. They both returned to their homes after finishing their volunteer terms at Orkeeswa. We went out for drinks on a Tuesday night with several of the volunteer and Tanzanian staff. Jane had been teaching English to many of the Tanzanian staff. One of her students jumped up in the middle of the evening and said “Hey you guys, it’s not Friday yet. I’m going home.” It was great!

Vacation in Lushoto
This past Saturday Lisa and I headed East for a vacation. We began in Lushoto, a town in the Usambara Mountains. We stayed at a place called the Irente Farm and Biodiversity Area. It was great because they make cheese and fruit preserves there! The showers were icy cold, but the view was great.

We did two day hikes from the farm. The first day hike was through the forest. We saw many areas of reforestation projects. There were also many chameleons! The second day we hiked through many villages to a waterfall. The waterfall wasn’t anything special but the hike was good. We were also greeted at the falls by a group of teenage boys doing their laundry in their underwear!

Travel to Pangani (A.K.A. This is the song that never ends...)
On Tuesday, after a tour of the Irente Farm cheese making facility, we took a bus to Panagani. Our destination was the Tinga Tinga lodge since apparently everything else was booked for the Easter weekend (who knew right?). The bus from Lushoto to Tanga took nearly 5 hours and we arrived sweaty and tired.

From there we found a taxi to drive us the rest of the way. Our taxi driver had a bandage on his left hand and was a big guy. We negotiated the price for him to drive us to Tinga Tinga.

We depart on a rough gravel road. We get a flat tire. We fixed the flat tire with the donut tire and were off. We rode along forever! We passed the signs to the places we wanted to stay which had such nice looking signs and driveways. We finally arrive at the sign for Tinga Tinga – faded, slanted…frightening. We drove in to discover what can only be described as bunkers dotting the landscape with cows grazing between. Needless to say, we didn’t stay there!

Back in the cab. Bandage fisted driver is getting angry. We try calling another place. It seems they have vacancies. We try to drive there and get lost. Part of the difficulty with that one was the name was Beach Crab. Our driver, you know the big one with the bandaged fist, kept pronouncing it as Beach Club. So, people kept directing us to all of the clubs in Pangani! Fun, but not helpful.

Finally, we get good directions and start driving toward the Beach Crab (now with every sign the driver would phonetically say Beach Crrrrab and roll his ‘r’s a bit. Spooky…). We cross a ferry. We drive. We follow the signs. We continue to follow the signs. The signs seem to be leading us into the middle of nowhere! We arrive (finally) at Beach Crrrrab (roll the r’s). Lisa grabs the bags and goes in. Even if this place is awful, we’re staying here! I renegotiate the price with the cab driver. I get it wrong. I’m very afraid now. I re-renegotiate the price. It’s done like this. Seth – How about this much. Driver – Add a little. Seth – OK – How about this much. Driver – Add a little. Seth – How about you just tell me what you want. Driver – This much. Seth – (coughs) – OK.

And, in the process of all that we forgot our trail mix and salted almonds in the back seat!

Beach Crab Resort
It’s hot at the Beach Crab. I’m a gushing river, so to speak. We throw our bags in the room, head to the restaurant and eat. We discover fellow teachers Allison and Juliet are there! They tell us the nights are HOT at this place! Hmm…
We finish eating and go back to our room. Thankfully, Lisa goes to the bathroom and I’m getting things unpacked. I move one of our pillows and what should fall out but two baby mice. Yep, two fairly hairless and still living baby mice. I calmly walk out, find Lisa, find the manager, and explain the situation. They look at us like, baby huh. Then we showed them and sure enough, it was what it was. So, we moved to a new room.

Finally, after a thorough inspection, we were able to settle into our sweat box of a room, some 12 hours after we began the journey!

We woke up hating Pangani, the whole idea of being there, and convinced we were going to leave that same day. We walked along the beach complaining about the heat, the trashy beach, the baby mice in my pillow… Then, for some reason that day things changed. I really don’t know what it was, but we started enjoying the place. Maybe the temperature dropped a bit. Maybe we ate a bit of food and relaxed. Maybe it was simple resignation. I don’t know! But, about mid-afternoon, both of us said, this place is OK. And it was. We enjoyed ourselves until we left yesterday.