When Keith inquired about hot water for the shower the next morning, it was not really much of a surprise to learn that the all the items that indicated hot water, such as taps, were not in use, since the pipe didn’t reach as far as our room. A bucket of hot water was brought down and did very nicely instead.
I worked on my letter to Joy and the scholarship sponsors, and Keith read it and asked questions that made me explain things more clearly. Eventually he was happy with it all, and we went off to breakfast.We were able to leave our packs at reception while we went for a walk into town. Cyclists with ladies sitting side saddle on the back were operating the cheapest form of taxi service, but we declined the offer of a lift, preferring to walk and explore. We were only about one and a half kilometres out of town, but we had not reckoned with the high humidity here. It wasn’t long before we were dripping. We walked up one side street, lured by beautiful singing. Keith stayed under a tree outside a church listening while I walked off to explore the deserted school building opposite and eventually to find the new one. When I came back, Keith had been disappointed, with the singing having soon stopped and lots of speakers in Swahili and ‘Hallelujas’ taking its place. A large building called Katani House announced that ‘Sisal is Tanga and Tanga is sisal.’ There were so many signs about training schools for education and every other career and others for medical research. The old hospital was being gradually demolished while a new one stood proudly further along in the grounds.
The main roundabout was surrounded by enormous pots, presumably for sale but no-one was stealing them. It felt like a good sign. Down at the bank we joined a queue for the automatic teller and then found that it didn’t accept Visa cards. Cyclists in the know lurked there to cart ladies off to the other bank, but we walked there and joined a very long queue. Something was amiss, but no-one went away, even when one couple was in the little automatic teller room for twenty minutes. Eventually a man, presumably from the bank, came along and went in with them and got the queue rolling again.
The town was very quiet since this was Sunday morning, with only a few people sitting out in the gardens overlooking the sea. A forlorn monument in scruffy surrounds marked the deaths of German soldiers in January, March and May in 1889. We wandered what had happened then.
The gardens were mostly trees and untended grass and weeds, with a cliff drop, which was used as a tip, down to the port road. A humpy made of rubbish had been built on a little terrace. At the far end we reached the library, a grand building which surely had a colonial past. It had a car park that was for ‘Members Only’. 
We strolled around the town, feeling listless and hot, through the Council park in the centre of town with its enormous trees and the opportunity for civic sculpture missed. The disused railway station and tracks were in very good condition and looked as if a train could start up again tomorrow. A Hindu Temple was well cared for and colourful. Our search for a lunch venue was not going well – one only had milk and boiled eggs and others were closed. We were directed to a café with the whole range of Tanzanian food, where we had the chip omelette, ‘chipsy mayai’ and a dixie icecream. Others who had been on our bus yesterday arrived and a lady who had been sitting near me, said “Jambo,” (hello). It was our first friendly contact with anyone in this quiet town. Shortly afterwards a bus parked outside. People raced in for meals, and a very fat man who had been sitting outside all along, did the rounds offering to change money. He carried enormous wads of notes in different currencies, and just shoved them carelessly into his pants pockets when he left. Other vendors had arrived to try the bus crowd, offering peanuts and newspapers.Keith said that he thought that the majority of Tanzanians were overweight, but I did not have that impression at all. Certainly some are, but what was interesting was how our perceptions differed. In any case, we hadn’t seen all that many Tanzanians, but even of the ones we had seen, we still didn’t agree. I must ask Rosie what she and Ticha think on this one.
The buildings near the café looked very much like colonial guest houses, where plantation owners and administrators would stay when they came in to town, and where they would sip gin and tonics before going out to dinner. They were all dilapidated and had plenty of scope for renovation. Not so some other buildings that we passed, where a glance in the door showed the crumbling state of decay and gave us an interesting insight into the building methods. Wood had been used to reinforce mud wall construction.
A moving clothing stall floated past on the road, with only the very bottoms of the bicycle tyres showing that someone must be within, riding it along.We were hot and tired, and there was no action in the town. We didn’t want to go to the airport too early because a possible tin shed would not improve how we were feeling. It was a bit of luck that we came to an internet café. Each computer was in its own little palm frond room, so that Keith and I couldn’t see each other but could chat about our emails through the wall. We were shocked to see how far the Australian dollar had dropped when we checked our bank statement, with a loss of about 25% against the Tanzanian shilling in two or three weeks. We didn’t achieve much due the slow connection, but at least we were cool.
We took a taxi back to the hotel to collect our luggage, and then continued on to the airport. In the daytime, there was an organised taxi rank, with the first car taking the first people. On this day, it was probably the first car taking the only people, so quiet were the streets.
The airport was the real thing, and very pleasant to spend a very long time waiting for our late plane in. There was time to get to know our fellow passengers; three young Norwegians and a German lady. The German lady had been visiting the orphanage in Tanga that she and a group she belongs to, raise money for. Her friend runs it. She also helps raise money for operations and equipment performed by a German doctor at the hospital. She had tears in her eyes as she described meeting a man who had had his leg amputated. The details for the prosthesis were sent by SMS to her in Germany, and then the leg was flown over and fitted. He was overjoyed with his new lease of life, and had said that if he had had a goat, he would have killed it for her.
A drone announced the arrival of our plane, more than an hour late, with its slightly dishevelled pilot urging us to hurry, and telling our German friend that another plane would come to take her straight to Dar es Salaam, because it was too late now to go via Pemba. The reason for the hurry was that being so late, there was a risk that we would not arrive in daylight, and the runway on Pemba had no lights. We all piled in, with bags on top of us and Keith in the front. Not being very experienced in light planes, it seemed a miracle to me that we took off, and then, since we did not seem to be going very fast, I couldn’t understand why we didn’t just fall into the sea. Down below us we could see the buildings of Tanga; a much bigger place than we had realised from our little tour. As we approached Pemba Island, the coral reefs were visible, and we noticed long peninsulas and areas of forest. We only just made it in time to land as dusk fell.
At the airport we were met by Ali, the driver we had arranged through the hotel. He spoke English and was a kind and friendly man who took us to the hotel to book in, and then around to the cheaper annexe that we were staying in, where there was no power or water. The annexe was in a very grand old building, which was locked, with Ali’s call being answered by the receptionist, who seemed to be there at all times of the day and night. We walked up past the ground floor shops by the light of a candle, up the stairs until we reached the roof, where our room was. At first it seemed strange to have passed so many rooms off so many landings to finally find ourselves virtually outside, but Ali assured us that the evening breeze would help to keep our room cool. It was delightful up on the roof after the sun had set, and the roof top clothesline was all ours to use. As the water supply was not working, bucket of water would be delivered to our room each morning.We returned with Ali to the main part of the hotel and had a delicious vegetable stew with rice. Naturally we chatted with the only other person there, a friendly lady from England who was working for the British VSO organisation (Volunteer Service Overseas). Her job was to train trainers to pass on best practice in English language teaching. She was so enthusiastic, and after nearly a year, was applying for an extension. She was also excellent company. Our Norwegian travelling companions came in so we had an enjoyable evening getting to know each other. They have three weeks in Tanzania and then will return home.
We had been hoping to catch up with Mzee, the man from Pemba who we had met in Barnsley in England, but we did not have his new number. We contacted our mutual friend, Michael, by SMS, and asked if he could help. We were hoping to have a cup of coffee or a meal with Mzee sometime during our stay. Ali asked if he had our permission to call into the hotel at breakfast time to see if we need any transport, and told us where the tour offices were.
We walked home past all the candle lit stalls, past a street of parked dalla dallas (local very small buses). It turns out that our annexe will have power sometimes, when it is the turn of our section of town to have it turned on. The receptionist gave us a signed card with our names on it so that we could claim the included breakfast at the other part of the hotel in the morning. I wonder if a lot of travellers have gate crashed the breakfasts in the past, necessitating this very official move. We hung our washing up in the moonlight and gazed out on the shadowy town around us before we went to bed.
This entrance to a secondary school has a motto that may be considered unusual in Australia, but which is a reasonably accurate reflection of student and staff attitudes that we found in Farkwa and which possibly prevail in other parts of Tanzania.
Tatyana's was rather quiet the day we were in Tanga, but no doubt that's because it was a Sunday.
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