Becoming Jane Goodall

Getting to Gombe Stream is not for the faint of heart. To get here, you must do the following:

First, pretend that it is 1960 and your name is Jane Goodall and you are completely obsessed with chimpanzees. After all, they do share 98% of the genetic make up of humans.

You are so obsessed with these primates that you are willing to risk your own well being for the study of their living habits.

You set out in Dar e Salaam where your plane has landed and you embark on the first adventure: to procure public transit to Kigoma. You ask which dala dala to take but are repeatedly discouraged. You try to tell them you have been in these types of shared van situations before, but as the locals insist it will be extremely dangerous, you agree to go with Mr. Bakarti, the taxi driver who loiters near the entrance to your hotel, the Safari Inn, an out of the way establishment down a short alley behind a gate with a perpetually sleeping guard. His presence makes you feel extremely safe whenever you enter the building, his deep sleep undisturbed.
Mr. Bakarti escorts you to first a booking that attempts to convince you that in fact you want to leave Monday rather than Sunday. You insist that you do indeed want to leave Sunday and after a fruitless argument in broken Swahili and English, Mr. Bakarti, says, “Twende,” and you follow him to a second booking agent that agrees to sell you bus tickets for the following day.

Back at the hotel, you set an alarm for 4:45 am and the following morning, Mr. Bakarti is back to take you and your companion to the bus depot about 10 miles from the city center. You know you are close when traffic comes to a complete halt. You sit for 10 minutes in stopped traffic until Mr. Bakarti makes a joke about how one can often miss a bus waiting to make the right turn into the depot’s parking lot. You take the hint, pay too much for the taxicab ride and try not to get mad, knowing that taxis are notorious for overcharging tourists for their fares.

Finding the bus is an out of body experience with rows of busses ten deep and fifty across and sea of people traffic milling aimlessly around. Men at the front of each bus scream out names into the darkness of the early morning, none seem to be familiar. Now you understand why they tell you to arrive an hour before departure. You may miss this bus if you can’t find it in the chaos.

Every person you ask for help repeats the same set of questions, “Where are you going? Do you have a ticket? Let me see. Over there.” They invariably point you in the direction from which you have just come.

Finally with just minutes remaining until the 6 am departure time, night still heavy in the air, you locate your company, Adventure Connection. You sigh thinking now you can relax. But you are wrong. This is not Connecticut and you are not boarding a Greyhound bus bound for Westminster. This is Tanzania, Africa sweetheart and the adventure has barely begun. You wonder if you should have considered the name of the company, Adventure Connection as a sign of what to expect on the bus, but before you can spend much time thinking about it, someone shoves you up the stairs from behind.

To get to your seat, you must battle no fewer than three very well endowed women with babies strapped to their backs and large baskets on their heads, one man with a suitcase that definitely will not fit into the overhead and at least three toddlers standing smack dab in the middle of the aisle with absolutely no where to go. The man will succeed in shoving the oversized piece of luggage into the slot beneath the roof and as you duck underneath to find your seat, an elderly toothless man carrying 6-foot sugar cane sticks on his head narrowly misses smacking you in the face.

Then you must prepare yourself for the next thirty-six hours. You will stop no fewer than twenty times. There will be the expected stops at bus stations along the way to pick up passengers, ones to give the passengers a lunch or dinner break for no more than 15 minutes at a time and of course the ones where the whole bus empties to use the bathroom. Of course you might expect to find a bathroom or a set of portapotties at this juncture, but you would be mistaken. I remind you, you are not in Kansas anymore and there is nothing more rewarding than an African Bush toilet in the middle of nowhere on the side of the road along side of 50 of your newest best friends. It’s community building really.

You might not have expected, but probably should have anticipated the flat tire that needed to be jacked up and repaired mid trip, the money collector that fell from the moving bus (this one still escapes me) and the 6 hour stop at 8 pm since night time driving is illegal in Tanzania. Initially this is frustrating for you, but later you realize the law enforcement probably have good reason behind this law.

You resign yourself to trying to locate some edible food from the all night chicken and potato rotisserie outside the bus and watch in amusement as passengers begin to attempt to find a modicum of comfort on school bus type seat for the evening. Feet are pressed up against the windowpanes, necks crooked at dangerous angles.

After visiting the hole that serves as the public toilet for the bus toilet, you join your fellow passengers, consumer a warm beer in the warm night air and eat what an omelet made from unrefrigerated eggs, excessive salt and overcooked potatoes. Your companion attempts to eat something resembling friend chicken but gives up after five minutes of trying to rip the meat from the bone unsuccessfully. Your meal is clearly more edible.

The following day, you may not have anticipated the police interview with the man who had fallen from the vehicle or the quantity of trash, peanut shells and discarded wrappers that has ended up on the floor, but perhaps you need to recognize how very small your perspective really is on long distance travel.

By the time, you finally reach the town of Kigoma; your ankles with have swollen to the size of small tree trunks from 36 hours of bus travel. Your companion, who has twisted his own ankle on safari earlier that week, will suggest going to Kiribizi to catch the boat to Gombe stream via taxi.

Despite your aversion to taxis, you will reluctantly agree and take the ride down the bumpy dirt road the two km down to the shores of Kiribizi where you will be greeted with disappointing news. Kiribizi’s only hotel closes for the month of June and it’s back to Kigoma you will go. You will breathe deeply – inhaling and exhaling, glad that the 110 mph bus ride down unpaved, potholed road has not killed and realize that the 7000 shillings you will spend on the taxi in reality is a mere $5 and is nothing to fuss about.

You will settle in for the night after being told that the boat to Gombe Stream leaves either at 8 pm or 8 am or somewhere between 12 and 2 pm. Feeling confident that somehow the truth will surface, you set off into the night to procure a meal for the evening and possibly an adult beverage after such an harrowing bus journey. Surely the boat trip will be a piece of cake compared t what you have already endured. Of course you are dead wrong about this and later this will not surprise you in the least.

After realizing that you are the only English speaker in the entire town, you attempt to order a plate of vegetables and when served a plate of fish, you smile and nod and move the fish away from the cold, plain 5-day-old white rice that you will eat for dinner.

Later you find a place to have a warm beer. Your companion remarks, “I think I actually might like the warm beers now.” You nod and smile and know that he is also trying to convince himself of this fact. You hope that that chimps are worth the travel.

Out of nowhere appears a man who calls himself Peter. Peter speaks English and offers to cook you yet another potato omelet and you graciously accept full well knowing that this might be the only food you eat for your entire trip. It still trumps 5-day old cold, white rice and you are hungry.

Later, Peter will offer to make you all your meals for just 30,000 shillings for your trip to Gombe and this sounds easier than trying to navigate the grocery store system at night so you agree. He tells you the boat leaves from Kiribizi at 9 am. This is a new development but when he assures you that he can make you breakfast in the morning and accompany you to the port, you agree feeling somewhat more secure that you will actually arrive. In the back of your mind you feel this is probably too good to be true, but at this moment, you are too tired to argue. Later once in Gombe, you will realize he has given you six meals instead of the ten you have paid for, but as your companion likes to point out, it’s only a $10 loss and that is to be expected.

The next day, true to his word, Peter is there to make breakfast. He is running late making the meals but assures us not to worry that the boat actually leaves at 10 am not 9 am as originally planned.

Finally, you head out of the hostel, food in hand, accompanied by a well mannered, well dressed Peter who assures you that upon your return you will be welcome to stay a night in his house with his family.

You board the dala dala ride to Kiribizi and are surprised when nothing out of the ordinary happens. Your ride is more comfortable than most dala dala rides as only 14 passengers are aboard the van meant for 9. You know that easily there is “room” for at least 16 more and you hope that there won’t be a need for this.

Now a test of our patience begins. You first arrive at the beach to be told that actually the boat (originally 8 am, then 8 pm, then between 12 and 2, then at 9, no 10 am) is actually at 11 am. So you resign yourself to taking pictures with the local children and sitting on your backpack in the shade reading a book. At 11 am the departure port is empty and you walk around the beach looking for the man with the white paper that had taken your names.

You find him and point at the boat and then your wrist as if to say to him, “What’s going on with the boat departure?” The man laughs and points at your wrist as well. You shake your head and try again, “What time is the boat leaving,” you ask stretching each word out and pointing again at your arm and the boat moored off shore. The man shakes his head, nods and then laughs, pointing once again to your wrist. You realize this conversation is going nowhere fast and begin to walk around asking others that also seem to be waiting for the boat. You ask three other people about the boat’s departure time and are told no fewer than three times and with this you resign yourself to returning to your seat on your backpack along the shore. You’ll leave when you leave, hopefully sometime that day.

Finally somewhere around 1:30, the boar begins its boarding process. The boat is a 20-foot long, dilapidated, wooden boar with a small motor at the back and long wooden slats running widthwise across the length of the boat. You board and choose a seat close to the front of the boat and watch in awe as the interior fills with mattresses, cases of cola, large oil cans, mothers with feeding children, men, grandmothers, small children and ever type of package imaginable. Vendors hop on board from the boat moored to our left and begin to yell out their wares: plastic bags of water, bread, a ball that appears to be doughnut like, yellow liquid packaged in reused water bottles and raw sugar cane. Everyone aboard buys in frenzy as if they had all not just come from sure just moments earlier.

The boat fills to what seems like capacity, but like the dala dalas, the filling process continues far beyond what one would expect until every available square inch of the front, side and back, including the slats and the interior of the boat for what appears to be storage is a sea of humanity and cargo.

Now the fun truly begins. Some men thin you are a good subject for their camera phones, thought to be honest, their wives don’t seem to agree. Your companion is decidedly tense and the boar moves through he water under a mid day African sun at a snail’s pace. All around you chaos ensues. There is a man that plays both an antique version of a PSP or DS and music from his mobile phone simultaneously. Another man, seated three people away from him, also plays his music. A third man argues with his wife who is seated half way across the boat as they pass a small child back and forth between them via the other passengers.

A heated debate breaks out between what seems to be the boat’s captain and some of the passengers near the bow of the boat. He has for some reason decided to move some large pieces of cargo while we travel and while what he is saying contains none of the Swahili phrases you have learned, you gather from the debate that it is important that he move the mattress, cases of sprite bottles and oil canes to the left of where you are seated. When he finally succeeds in making a hole in the cargo, you understand why as he begins to bale out the foot and a half of water that has accumulated over the duration of the last two hours of the journey.

The drama continues to unfold as children rip off sections of sugar cane with their teeth, suck out the sugar and then spit them into the water. Mothers continue to feed their crying babies and your butt begins to feel as though it has literally gone to sleep for good. A man finishes his coke and that too goes directly into the ocean, along with two plastic bags and three straws. A few men share a newspaper up front while others just cover their head to protect themselves from the noonday sun and attempt to sleep.

Some stare blatantly across the boat at you, while others steal furtive glances. You take deep breaths, inhaling and exhaling to ward off the low-grade nausea that has inevitably set in as it does on all open water journeys.

Finally almost four hours later, the captain signals that you are almost there. It is then that you realize the dreadful mistake you made when boarding. You are toward the front of the boat. Unfortunately for you, but again, not surprising, you will off load at the back of the boat and you will the only passengers disembarking. And so it begins, the traverse across the sea of humanity, bags and mattresses. You gather your bag, the plastic bag with the thermos from Peter containing a liquid you will never consume and your backpack and balance on a slat of wood and then lower yourself down onto a case of Fanta and steady yourself on the captain. All eyes are now glued to you as you duck beneath each bar crossing the boat, your backpacking catching on each one. No one moves nor offers assistance. You avoid stepping on a child and his vomit as you near the far side of the boat. You are almost ashore. A clean, well-dressed man awaits your arrival.

“Karibu, Welcome to Gombe Stream.” He says beaming as your backpack is tossed ashore and you shakily descend down a rickety ladder into Lake Tanganyika, the largest navigable lake in the world. You feel like Jane Goodall must have in 1960, a rush washes over you. You have arrived.

You bask in this success momentarily until the man behind the desk at the Gombe National Park headquarters quietly informs you that only dollars are accepted for the park entrance. Of course you have none. Somehow you know that despite that fact that you have arrived on shore, the adventure is only just beginning.