Sunday morning we had tickets for the 10 a.m. bus back to Arusha (for me; Sarah stopped off in Magugu to observe one of our student teachers there for a day or two). We had breakfast at our guesthouse....
Oh, just have to add a paragraph about meals this week! We ate lunches at school, and pretty much bananas and a Fiber 1 bar (for me) for breakfasts, all but the Immigration Morning. Dinners we ate at our guest house because we didn't want to be walking around Kondoa after dark by ourselves. Albert cooked and served our meals, so we got to know him very well! Sarah had sat beside his mother on the bus to Kondoa, so she knew who he was. He just finished high school (Form 4, the first 4 years of HS; if you do well on that exam, you can on for 2 more years and qualify for university. If not, you can still go to college, just not university. I know - what?) and was waiting for results of his exams, so they had him working in the restaurant. Pretty much every meal was chicken and ... chips (French fries) or rice. Or we could have chips mayai, which is French fries and eggs, sort of like an omelette and one of my favorites. That got old pretty quickly, so sometimes we just had rice with veggies! Any way, we prayed before every meal, even though this is a 98+% Muslim village, and after the first time, Albert said, "I notice you pray. Can I listen?" We had also prayed that we would be a blessing to him since we would be spending so much time with him, and I told him that we prayed for him, too. From then on, he stayed to listen to us pray at every meal, including him and our prayers for God to bless him and use him. When we were telling him good-bye, he said, "I will miss you." Very sweet.
So, our 10:00 bus finally left at 10:30, and shortly after leaving, a ticket-taker gave me a new ticket on a different bus lne for the second half of the trip. Going to Kondoa, it had been one bus the whole way, so this was different. After about 3 and 1/2 hours we got to Babati, the half-way point. Sarah was only a few km from Magugu, and they told her to stay and wait for the same bus I was going to get on, then she could just get off in Magugu. However, after an hour, my bus had not come, yet, so she took a smaller local bus (dala-dala, like a mini-van or old VW bus that holds 12-20 people, depending on how many you can pack in!), and I stayed on. There were several others waiting with me, only 1 of whom spoke English, but everyone sort of bonded through the exasperation of waiting together.
After the next hour, people started getting restless! Finally, after about 2 and 1/2 hours, people, including me, went to see the policeman, whose job is, apparently, maintaining order at the bus depot. A heated discussion followed, and he finally put us on a dfferent bus line altogether, where we waited another 30 minutes! Just as we were finally pulling out, our "real" bus arrived, so we all had to get off and back on again. One mama had taken me under her wing, so she made sure I was following the plan! We were finally off and doing well, and about 20 minutes later, had a flat tire! That was a good time for a toilet break, so everyone who needed to (me included) found bushes or clumps of grass and took care of that business. Back on the bus and off we went. At some point a man a few rows up bought some peanuts from a vendor on the side of a road, shared some with the girl next to me, who shared some with me. We had become a family, I think.
As we approached Arusha I called a taxi driver we use and asked him to pick me up at the bus stand because it would be dark and not safe for me to take a dala-dala, then walk, to En Gedi. The mama who had been taking care of me got off the bus, and we held hands, and I said, "Mungu akubariki," which is God bless you! She just grinned and said something similar back to me, then she got off the bus. A few stops later and we were at the main bus stand in Arusha, which is a busy place. I sent Dickson a message, and soon he was walking over to greet me and whisk me away home. So 10 hours from when we left Kondoa, I was finally home!
A very full week!
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