The Agrinautica

Wednesday, October 21st, Day 17 - Moshi is a very peaceful town on the slopes of Mount Kiliminjaro. It is one of the most "suburban" places I've seen in Africa, with broad tree-lined streets under arches of overhanging jacaranda trees, whose purple-blue flowers float down to the ground.

   Moshi feels very safe. Usually. Finding myself in a pitch black street, the overhanging jacaranda blotting out the moon and stars, with three large dogs growling at me, it didn't feel so safe. I tried to continue on my way but every time I turned from them they'd start lunging at me. I considered walking back to the hotel, only half a block away now, but that would lead me back towards the epicenter of the area the dogs seemed to be guarding. I could barely make out their shape in the dark, but I'd seen them earlier in the day watching passersby warily from a neighboring yard that wasn't fenced -- I wouldn't say positively they were german shepherds but they were that shape and size, and now they were growling at me in a way that clearly meant business, in a dark deserted street.

   I tried to continue on my way and the pack leader made a snarling lunge for my back foot. I turned around and looked at it sternly, raising my arms a little to look bigger, and it crouched back growling angrily. Is this how I'm going to die? Mauled by domestic dogs in the peaceful town of Moshi?? I asked myself.



   The previous day I had left Dar Es Salaam by bus. It took approximately ten hours to get from there to Moshi. The bus ride was mostly uneventful, passed two crashed trucks, saw baboons two or three times. I noted that sometimes we would pick up someone selling nuts or drinks, typically somewhere we had to stop like a weigh station (they seem to be on the borders of every Tanzanian region), who would go up and down the aisles trying to make sales and then get off at the next weigh station, presumably catching a bus bound the other direction. The bus crew seemed to know these people very well. A related observation is that the busses always have a "crew" of two or three persons in addition to the driver, and even trucks in Africa seem to always have several people in the cab. When the cost of labor is insignificant compared to the value of the vehicle, might as well.

   Arriving in Moshi I went through the familiar routine of catching a taxi, who said he knew the hotel I wanted to be taken to but then did not, and tried to charge me three times what I knew it should have cost. The hotel I stayed in was the gaily coloured little place called Blue Acacia, with a lovely seating area out in front and a pretty garden. I have no pictures from this time because my DSLR battery was dead, power was very inconsistent, and all pictures on my phone were lost with the phone (yes I'll probably gripe about that in every single entry about this trip).
   Being the top reviewed location in town on tripadvisor and other sites, the hotel attracted all the travelers who were "in the know." And Moshi itself primarily attracts people who want to climb Kiliminjaro so there was a steady stream of fit young people coming in, meeting with their guides in the evening, and heading out early the next morning.
   That evening before it was dark I trotted down the street to the nearby Thai restaurant I'd been looking forward to getting back to for the entire last year. It was still there, with its tall thatched roof and spacious open patio (see interesting roof under-structure on right), but it was under new ownership and no longer a thai restaurant. It was good though and I ended up eating there twice more during my brief stay in Moshi, and every time the owner came by and chatted with me.


   It was this restaurant I was trying to reach for a late dinner the next night when I found myself beset by aggressive guard dogs on the street. I found that if I faced the dogs they would stay back but as soon as I turned they'd start lunging for me. I ended up mostly backing down the street until I reached the corner, which they seemed to regard as the extent of their territory. There I crossed one of the major streets by a round about and proceeded down a long dark block towards my favorite restaurant.
   It was around 10pm and no one was about. This block seemed to have construction sites on both side, which were darker than the night. As I walked down the street I was acutely aware in fact that no one was about, and the construction yards were full of places one could hide. Moshi is a very safe peaceful town, it really is, but it also strongly occurred to me that it would just take one unscrupulous thug who might be hanging around the construction yard at night to see a muzungu alone in a deserted area on a dark night and think it might be very profitable for them. I looked at my feet, instead of my sturdy black combat boots I was only wearing flip-flops for this little jaunt, which would severely hinder both running and kicking. I walked carefully, spinning around at any sound in the night.


   That morning I had lazily awoken enjoying a rare opportunity to sleep in a bit after 6am bus trips the past few days (two and a half weeks in and jet lag was still causing me to be pretty wakeful in the morning though). Enjoyed the complimentary breakfast of pancakes and fresh fruit. Despite being a coffee producing area they don't know how to brew coffee around there though. I was excited to actually see a coffee percolator but the coffee was insanely weak -- another guest later told me she saw the staff reusing the used coffee grinds.
   I was torn for awhile in the morning because there were still things to see in the Moshi area (despite my having spent a week there last year), notably a hot springs, and I felt like I should make the most of it, but I also really felt like spending a day relaxing in this beautiful place. Finally the latter idea won out and as other guests went off to climb the mountain or see the hotsprings I took my jolly sweet time eating breakfast and generally "chilling."
   That afternoon I walked downtown to look for somewhere that might sell a new lensecap for my camera. Since they get a fair number of tourists doing the mountain there's the accompanying annoying gnat-like hangers-on downtown, trying to hook tourists for their travel agency. As I walked along several tried to engage me in conversation but I kept going. One followed me for a fair ways trying to start a conversation with me in a friendly manner despite my ignoring him and walking along at a brisk pace. In Egypt I learned you can't say one word to these guys or they'll never leave you alone, but nowhere else I've been have they been as bad and I deigned to answer a few basic questions from this guy so as not to seem like a complete asshole ("where are you from?" "California" ... "here on safari?" "nope" ... "let me take you to my safari agency" "nope" ...) eventually he gave up but another one picked up his place in less than a block. The town's not big and by this point I'd gotten to one end of town and was headed back the other. Went through the same basic questions with this guy, he really wanted me to stop by his travel agency or let him book me to go to the hot springs. When he asked me what I was doing and I said I was looking for a lense cap he said he knew someone that sold them (of course) and since he claimed it was the direction I was going I let him guide me to it. Of course the guy didn't have them, tehre didn't seem to be a camera shop in town which I was rather disappointed about since it seemed likely enough in this kiliminjaro hub.
   I then let the guy guide me to a bus company office since I did need to get a ticket for a bus the next morning. It was kind of interesting because the posted rate was about twice the price I ended up paying but after talking to my "guide" the ticket agent said that the guide had arranged the lower price. (I think it was like $15-$20? I dunno all my notes were on my phone) After that I was headed back to the hotel, even though he seemed to have gotten me a good deal I was still anxious to shake the guy. About a block or two from the bus station the man said goodbye and with a handshake he was off .... and I was shocked! I was thoroughly entirely expecting him to put it hard to me for payment for his assistance -- and I wasn't opposed to it since he had gotten me a good deal on a ticket but I had still been not lookign forward to the issue coming up. And then he was gone and I was left wishing I _had_ had a chance to give him something. Now, he _probably_ got a cut from the ticket sale, even with the reduced rate -- especially since he could honestly say I was planning on going with a different bus company, because I had been, and he'd brought me there instead.

   Had lunch at the former thai place on the way back to the hotel, chatted briefly with the owner and continued down past the construction yards, across the big road, into the leafy green suburban neighborhood where some neighbors dogs lazily watched me go by, and back to the hotel.

   This is a bad idea, this is a bad idea, this is a bad idea, I had started repeating myself earlier when I met the dogs and it was still going through my head as I cautiously made my way down the dark street. Many times I thought about just going back but the dogs made that prospect unappealing.
   Fortunately I made it to the golden glow of the restaurant without incident. Unfortunately, they had just shut down their kitchen.
   "Ummmm, could you call me a cab?" I asked the owner, "it's a bit sketchy out there," he was shocked I'd even attempted to walk around out there. Moments later he came back with a taxi driver who I believe was just finishing eating there anyway. The driver drove me back to the hotel, which took merely a minute or two, and declined to even charge me for so short a trip. He seemed nice, I took his name and number down for next time -- now lost with my phone.


View looking up from the main road at Kiliminjaro (picture from last year)

Thursday, October 22nd, Day 18 - Early the next morning I took a taxi down to the bus station, got on a small shuttle-bus (as opposed to the greyhound style coach buses I'd taken to and from Dar Es Salaam), the Moshi-Arusha-Nairobi route seems to be entirely done by these smaller busses for some reason. It took us two hours or so to get to Arusha, where we had to board a different bus, and who should be on that bus, and not only that but with an open seat right next to her, but the girl I sat next to on the Nairobi to Arusha leg two weeks earlier! This was a bizarre coincidence especially since we hadn't discussed what days we were returning, and I'd been playing my return entirely by ear, and I would have taken a different bus line anyway if that guy hadn't intervened! She got a mention in the earlier entry just because she was the source of the hot tip that Uber works for getting rides in Nairobi (you get much better rates that way I really recommend it!). She had also stayed at the Blue Acacia when she was in Moshi in fact! But she was on an opposite circle from me, starting in Moshi and ending in Arusha before returning to Nairobi.
   And then we arrived in Nairobi, or as many call it, "Nai-robbery," as I would soon find out...

( Pictures from in and around Moshi last year )

( Relive last year's adventures! All entries tagged Moshi )

   On the morning of Thursday, November 20th, our fourth day in Moshi, a funny thing happened while Doug and I were walking through town. A tout tried speaking to talk to me about buying some beaded bracelets he had allegedly made. He was a rastifarian looking fellow, and his red-green-and-yellow beaded bracelets looking extremely unexceptional. I wasn't interested, and as a rule I've found it's better to avoid entirely engaging in conversation with the touts because if you talk to them at all they'll never leave you alone. Doug was talking to someone else nearby though so I was stuck in his vicinity for a few minutes. It feels less rude to feign not to speak English than to ignore them completely, so I said
   "No espeakay englitz!"
   "What language then?" he asked, "espagnole? francaise? italiano?"
   "Svenska" I said, "jag prata ingenting men Svenska" -- I speak nothing but Swedish.
   "Hey. Yag heter John." he said putting out his hand. A passable pronunciation of "Hi, my name is John" in Swedish.
   "Du kan prater Svenska??" I asked in shock -- "you can speak Swedish?"
   He explained, in clumsy Swedish, that he'd had a Swedish friend who taught him some Swedish. His pronunciation was just good enough to be understandable, but I was really impressed. So I deigned to converse with him -- but only in Swedish.
   What's funny is that since everybody who can speak Swedish can also speak English the only use he could really get from it would be from other Swedish speaking people feigning not to speak English!

   In the later morning Simon came by to pick us up in his olive green land-rover. We filled the back with about a hundred saplings and headed up the mountain. Soon we were at the edge of the forest where the road ended in the decrepit remains of a bridge. Waiting for us were about a dozen of Simon's staff. Holes had already been dug all around the hillside. The plan was to plant the trees all over, but in particular along the embankment of the stream to prevent erosion.

   We busied ourselves hurrying up and down the trail like ants carrying the trees to their holes and burying them, carefully crossing the the flimsy bridge with our precious cargo. Presently everything all the trees were planted, our bare hands were covered in dirt, and everyone felt very accomplished. Our departure was delayed, however, by the discovery that our vehicle had a flat tire. While this was changed out Doug exchanged shirts with one of Simon's hard-working employees whose own shirt was very torn and dirty.

   Then we had to hurry down the mountain because Shimon and the French intern both had to get to Kiliminjaro International Airport (about 30 miles out of town) that day to depart.



   That evening Simon invited us to a speaking event at the international school on the history of the Indian population of Moshi. It was very interesting. One tends to think of all non-ethnically-native-people's as recent immigrants into the area but as the presenter pointed out (a local Indian of course), Indians traders had been visiting the area of Tanzania for hundreds of years, with some Indian families becoming established in town before the turn of the 20th century, typically running retail shops but also engaging in a wide variety of other trades. During the colonial era more Indians immigrated in and were brought in to work on the railroads. By the independence of Tanzania in 1957 there were about 5000 Indians living in Moshi. However the government subsequently went through a communist period during which many businesses and even houses were nationalized. Many of the Indians had invested in property and found themselves now forced to pay rent for what they'd built themselves. Many left and now only about 500 remain in the city, a 90% reduction in fifty years.



   The next morning, Friday, November 21st, fifth day in Moshi, Doug had made plans to play table tennis at some club in town that he'd found out has a table tennis table. He has an extreme love for table tennis and travels about with his paddle and a table tennis ball. I wasn't overwhelmingly interested in this, but a German couple who was staying in our guest house had invited me to visit a coffee plantation on the mountain with them so I did that instead. The youngish German couple consisted of a woman who was a doctor, had previously worked in Namibia if I recall correctly as some sort of foreign service requirement of her university and had that pixie haircut that for some reason seems to be extremely popular in Europe, Despite the haircut she was rather cute. Her husband was a photographer and runs an advertising agency in Germany. He has previously spent a large chunk of time in continuous travel around the world, which he documented on his website www.outtabavaria.com.
   Our first order of business / adventure was to find money since I was out and I think so was at least Katja. There were several banks in town, which is fortunate because I think we visited five of them that morning. First one the ATM was out of money, second one the ATM just didn't like my card, third one wouldn't accept my five digit ATM pin code. Finally found one that would work, as a parade marched by on the street behind me.
   "What's that all about?" I asked the driver.
   "Oh it's the police"
   "Why are they marching?" I asked, to which he just shrugged.
   Then we were once again up the mountain, this time to a different location high on the slopes than we'd been to before. In a quaint little open air meeting area with a thatched canopy over it, like a large hut without walls, we met with Jehosephat, who would be our guide for the day. He explained how the coffee cooperative worked, and how the tours were also run by the cooperative. The small family run plantations rotated through being visited on the tours so that the money could be shared out evenly. Coffee was grown on small family plots, collected by the cooperative who gave them a set price, and then sold at auction in town by the cooperative. I think if the coffee was sold for more than expected the excess profits were rolled back into the cooperative. One thing that I found interesting was the fair trade coffee. Being a highly cynical person I've always been suspicious that "fair trade" coffee was some kind of feel good scam used by starbucks to sell coffee at a higher price and that it wasn't all it's cracked up to be, and have long wished to visit the actual fair trade growers on the ground. Well, as it turns out, here they were! Basically, some of their coffee was sold as fair trade and some of it wasn't. In this case there was no difference between the coffee sold as fair trade and the coffee not sold as fair trade, though they get a better price for the fair trade coffee ... which is rolled back in to the cooperative. In order to sell coffee as fair trade they have to meet certain conditions, which they do, but presumably there's other coffee growers which don't meet them and can't get in on this. So despite finally meeting the fair trade growers on the ground I still can't make real determination as to relevant the distinction really is. After visiting the cooperative building where bags of coffee beans were being weighed, we walked down the road a short distance, through a local market (pictured above) where women in beautiful local patterns were conducting their daily business down to the coffee farm that we'd be visiting that day.
   Being eternally cynical, I was also prepared to be bored, after all, "I've been to Ethoipia!," what can any other place possibly show me about coffee that will impress me? Well. Those gosh darn Ethiopians, you know, they had hornswaggled me by serving me such delicious delicious coffee that I overlooked the fact that they never actually showed me how they harvested the beans. So on this occasion I had a walk through of the entire process, from plucking ripe berries from the tree, running it through a shiny brass rind remover, pretending to let the beans soak overnight (we put the berries we had just rinded into a bucket of water and continued following along with some beans that had just done that), putting the beans out on a drying rack, grinding them (just enough to remove the outer layer of chaff at this point) and tossing them to remove the chaff, roasting them, grinding them (this time into a powder), and finally, brewed into fresh fresh coffee:



   After this we were served a delicious lunch of local foods back by the cooperative building (some kind of stew, some sort of mashed potatoes, and of course the ever present spinach), and then we headed back down the mountain.


   In our little guest house at this point we had Doug and I, the elderly French couple, the German couple, and a Brazilian fellow. And of course in a little house in the back Neema the housekeeper, diminuitive, cute, shy but sassy when pressed, engaged to a policeman in far away Dar Es Salaam, where she's from. And the guard lad who curled up in his maasai robe on the porch every night and I don't think had any other on site accomodations.
   The Brazilian lad had become bored with life in Brazil and determined he wanted to volunteer in Africa. It turns out, according to him, a lot of volunteer organizations want you to actually pay to join them (?!?). Now I think he volunteers with a school, and lives in the guest-house. I think living in the guest-house must be nice on account of meeting all the people who come through it ... though presumably there's cheaper housing options in town (if I recall it was $30 / room / night. For awhile Doug, Shimon and I were sharing a room because we're cheap like that). The Brazilian fella, whose name I don't recall but he's in all my notes as "the Brazilian fella" had a eukelele that he could sometimes be prevailed upon to play for us. Also, he was covered with an interesting variety of tattoos. Toby the German guy, being as I mentioned, a photographer, had him do a sort of formal photo shoot for him that afternoon. This resulted in this photo from Toby's main site.



   Though the Brazilian fellow had other plans that evening, he recommended a local bar/restaurant that would have local musicians that evening, and Doug and I walked down there in the evening with the German couple. Ironically before the band started the televisions inside were blaring a program about American country music, which at least Doug and I both found grated on our ears. Highlights of the evening involved the Germans teaching me you could mix ginger beer with beer to create a good drink, service being reeeeaally slow, and Doug meeting a prostitute outside. We'd found a ginger beer (non-alcoholic) called "stoney tangawizi to be readily available throughout Tanzania, which was a great joy to us both. I have a notable love for ginger and Doug seems to even exceed my love for it ... always ALWAYS having a piece of ginger in his fanny-pack which he'll take out and nibble upon on occasion. And while I for some reason find alcoholic ginger beer tends to be disappointing, mixing the stoney tangawizi with beer actually made for a good drink. Now as to the service, when the three of us, myself and the Germans, ordered our ginger beers, she brought two back, for them. When I tried to order one again she came back with something else, and I tried again also without success. Toby tried ordering one for me but she once again failed. Finally he convinced her HE wanted another one and when it showed up successfully he passed it to me. We had a similar problem with the food, it was really quite strange. It took at least an hour for our food to finally show up, we were just getting ready to get up and leave without it when it finally did show up.
   As for Doug, I've found when sitting with a group in a crowded restaurant in the evening he often gets restless and roves about. It was during one of these rovings that he apparently met the prostitute, who had been hanging out in front of the place. He returned promptly you'll be relieved to know, but reported that he asked her how business and she said it was slow. Now you know!
   The band was disappointingly non-traditional. It was some sort of jazz I suppose, and between you and I I'm not really into jazz. Jazz is like a story with no plot. I don't know where it's going, I can't get into it. After we finally ate our food we walked back up the street back to the guest-house. Exchanged jambos with the maasai guard-lad on the porch and went to bed under our veil-like mosquito nets.




( All Pictures From Nov 20th )
( All Pictures From Nov 21st )

Tuesday, November 18th - Woke up in our lovely guesthouse and had freshly made coffee and pancakes on the porch, all prepared by the dear diminuitive Neema. Enjoyed a nice leisurely morning in this idyllic little guesthouse, sipping coffee by the garden and talking with the older French couple who were also staying there. They were apparently visiting a grand-daughter who was working for an NGO in town. The woman a retired psychologist, now writing a book, and the man a retired engineer, they provided engaging intellectual discussion and Shimon in particular would prove prone to engage in long deep conversations with them.

   Simon came to pick us up late enough in the morning that we were to make our first stop lunch in town. He led us to a little place that was sort of hidden away down an alley, but once we ducked into the unassuming entrance we found ourselves in a very pleasant open air courtyard shaded by trees with comfortable seats and well attended with locals. The food, all local fare, typically cost around a dollar per main dish, and Simon ordered things for all of us. First there was a hearty sort of bean soup, and then a dish of beans and corn that was quite good. It was accompanied, like every meal we'd had in Tanzania, with a helping of spinach. Popeye would like this place.

   From there the five of us (Simon, Shimon, Doug and I, and a cyclist friend of Simon's from Hawaii who happened to be on the tail end of a several-weeks visit) drove about an hour along the base of the mountain until we got to a place where a guy was making concrete hives. Or cement? I'm told there's a difference but they're the same to me. Anyway we pulled into a tree lined drive with just a few buildings nearby, and I remarked that from the looks of things you could think you were in England or Germany or America or anywhere else in the world -- the buildings looked well-built and modern, the tree-lined drive was nice and well maintained. Under an awning around the corner we found a small gaggle of men gathered around, with several hand-made molds strewn about. Hubcaps formed the two ends of the cylinder, and chicken-wire and plastic formed the sides before the cement was slathered in. The man who had invented these and was supervising it was a retired German professor who was the very spitting image of the Doc from Back to the Future. Same wild white hair, same mannerisms and exciteable exuberance for his numerous innovative ideas.

   In addition to the simple face of making cement beehives from molds, he had the additional innovation that the hives would be opened from the bottom rather than the more-normal top. He reasoned that bees prefer to climb upwards when smoked so if you open the bottom and smoke them, the bees will all climb out of your way and you can then inspect the comb from the bottom. He'd also taken to hanging shiney dangly things in front of the hives which would blow in the wind and get bees accustomed to movement and he claimed that hives he had put these near became so easy to work with he didn't even need smoke.
   All this seemed very innovative and he had such enthusiasm I'd be reluctant to rain on his parade, but we collectively had many concerns with his ideas and because promoting good beekeeping practices is what I do I feel I should share what we feel is wrong with these ideas. Firstly we were all concerned about the weight of cement hives and Simon's cyclist friend is a construction contractor and told us from his experience, cement that thin would very very easily break. As for the bottom-opening of the hive, that's great but in order to remove comb you need to cut it off from hte thing it's stuck to, which is always above it. Thus to harvest honey from a bottom-opening hive you need to somehow reach way into it to cut from the top, or "honey badger" it out piecemeal which would make a royal mess. And finally, that dangley thing -- bees see things blowing in the wind all the time. I really can't imagine hanging a glorified wind-chime in front of them would make a lick of difference. But like I said, I solidly admire his spirit.



   Next we traveled up the mountain to a house high up in the lush misty forest just below the national park line. Here a friend of Simon's (pictured above) had 450 stingless beehives. FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY, all lined up on his wall (also, pictured above). Being as stingless bees don't sting, this doesn't create the kind of insane menace having 450 normal beehives in very very close proximity to a house would. I'm not sure what the population of a stingless bee is (there's hundreds of different species, and I don't know which this was either, but I believe it was in the genus Melipona, for those following along at home), but they're much smaller than honeybees and the collective biomass of bees per hive is certainly less. They look like little flies zipping about, and even with 450 of them there it didn't LOOK like there was a lot of flight traffic. The other interesting thing is that stingless bees typically only forage over a 300 meter radius or so (as opposed to honeybees which have a 5,000 meter radius), so it was kind of amazing that the environment could support so many so close together.
   The stingless bees, in addition to not stinging, also never "abscond" or leave the hive (African sub-species of honeybee are notorious for saying "fuck it, we're out of here!" if you annoy them, which can be easy to do), and their honey is worth several times more (because it tastes unpleasantly tart and "medicinal," and is therefore commonly believed to BE medicinal). But they only make a few hundred grams each per year (as opposed to honeybees which, in a traditional hive make about 15-20 kilograms per year). To harvest, they crack it open, and pierce all the honeypots with a toothpick (did I mention, like with bumblebee nests, the honey is stored in honeypots?), and then tilt the hive to let all the honey run down and out a hole in one end. It is poured through a strainer and into a glass or bowl. The honey is much more liquid than honeybee honey, and can be drank from the cup like a liquid.

   Our purpose there, aside from seeing this fascinating operation, was that Simon had a deal with him wherein Simon would make hive boxes, and trade boxes for bees -- he'd give the guy a nice new empty box specially made for his stingless bees, and the guy would give Simon back a hive box full of stingless bees.

   From there we returned back down the mountain to Moshi. A few hours later Simon retrieved us from the guest-house again and we all went to dinner at this really nice Indian restaurant that had just opened in town. In addition to the five of us from earlier in the day we also had Doug's wife in attendance (originally from the United States, currently a professor at a nearby university), as well as the French intern (who was leaving the next day or so). The tables were once again out in the open air, lit by candles and dim lights that might as well have been candles, and with a reflecting pool behind us. Felt once more like far from suffering the hardships of Africa we were living it up better than comparable options in the States.

   Returned to our guesthouse for more intellectual conversations on the veranda. The night watchman, a young man of scarcely twenty, would sit on the edge of the porch wrapped in a his maasai robe. He didn't speak a word of English but he'd exhange enthusiastic "mambo"s with us ("jambo" is swahili for "hello," but after a few days in country someone let us in on the secret that "only tourists say jambo" and the locals usually say "mambo." The correct response to which is "poa," which is an equivalent transaction to saying "how's it going" "good!" apparently), and when the Germans showed up they'd share a companiable cigarette with this fellow we couldn't otherwise speak with. After the last of us went in to go to bed, he would cacoon himself up in his cloak on one of the lounge chairs on the porch.