Getting lost, a thief in the night, scratching and typfus

A couple of monkeys look at us questioningly. A family of warthogs runs into the bushes, tails upright. A flock of guinea-fowl is startled by the noise of a stone under a tyre and flies away. Hornbills watch from a safe distance how we push our way through the dead-quiet park. Waterbuck run along with us for hundreds of metres, until the leader halts and the whole troop pauses. The most beautiful are the majestic giraffe that look down upon us. Peter can't constrain himself and calls: "Cold up there?" They don't bother to answer.

Cycling in the game-reserve is hard but enjoyable. We face some difficulties when we stumble upon a T-section, of course without any signs: to the left a sandy path, to the right a sandy path. Hoping for the best we turn to the right. At the next junction we choose to go to the left, to have some variation. After twenty kilometres we come across the first fellow human being.
One hour later when we are absolutely sure that we're lost, we arrive in Wami-village. Just like many other villages Wami doesn't exist on our map. The road also stops in this village; two boys on a bicycle show us the road to a railway line. At fifty centimetres from the actual rail we see a faint track, caused by the many cyclists and pedestrians, that functions as the main road between Wami and the road to Bagamoyo. For 24 kilometre we bump, walk and swish of the narrow track. Except for some cyclists and a number of baboons looking for water, we only see a service train on this important north-south connection.

The train blocks our way; in front of us we see an African man take his bicycle on his neck, climb down the steep dike, push his bicycle through the thick bushes and carry the bicycle back on the dike again. The men on the train are servicing the dike the railway is fixed upon. The supervisor spots us and asks us to wait a moment: when his men are ready he will move the train for us, because: "You white people can't do any hard work like the black man before you did!" An eery feeling comes over us: of course we can do what our predecessor did, but do we want to do it? The supervisor would have never offered this to us if we would have been black, is this a reason to refuse? We decide to wait and affirm his prejudices. After all, there's nothing wrong with a bit of comfort once in a while.

In Bagamoyo we settle in the simple Alpha-guesthouse, after having visited the expensive Bagamoyo Beach Resort by mistake. According to our travel-guide this resort is an affordable beach-lodge. The posh resort is run by a seedy-looking French gigolo and his rich prey. Both of them are blind drunk at three o'clock in the afternoon. Their amicable lust for touching their (potential) guests and the jokes they repeat five times in three minutes chase us away very fast.

At night at two-thirty I suddenly wake up because I hear strange metallic noises. When I see nothing I fall asleep again. Moments later I sit upright when something falls on the floor. I climb out of bed and turn on the light. Peter keeps on sleeping, despite the noises and the light. I discover the cause of the racket: our calendula-jar lies on the floor and there is a square hole in the wire-netting of the window. Our toilet bag, that has been cut to fit, is stuck in the hole. Some of our things are missing, so I get dressed, look for a way out of the heavily locked building, and go out in the dark. Besides the guesthouse I climb over some barbed wire and find all of our belongings lying on the ground. I pick them up and go back to sleep. The next morning I tell Peter the whole story, and he doesn't believe me until I show him the window and the toilet-bag. Now we find out that the thieves have cut a hole in the wire and used a long stick with a hook to angle the toilet bag outside. They must have been so disappointed at their catch! The same morning the owner of the guesthouse wants us to move to a safer room, one that doesn't border at the dangerous outside world.

In Bagamoyo we visit the remains of the German colonial period and see how the most beautiful buildings (in our eyes) are badly deteriorated because of lack of maintenance. The local museum is strikingly well-organised and gives a good idea of the period of slavery, colonial rule and the national hero Julius Nyerere, who united the country in his time as first president of the nation. At the exit we see the museum is set up by a Dutchman. Near to the museum we visit the chapel where Livingstone's body was showed after his death, before it was shipped to England. A bit further away there is the church where Livingstone once attended mass. A sign above the door reminds the visitors of the fact.

It's sweltering hot, in the afternoon we decide to go to the beach. Here blows a delicious breeze, in the shade of a palm tree we watch the little wooden boats and the fishermen that repair their nets. The local children find those white people very interesting and very soon we have made three friends: two boys of about six years old and a girl of eight. Bare feet, skinny bodies and torn clothes are proof of the poverty they live in. We play with them in the sand and sea and play tricks. We share our pineapple and apple-mango's, they really enjoy themselves. Then they suddenly run off to the fishing boats, to return minutes later with proud expressions on their faces and four big stolen crabs in their hands. They bob the undersides open and ladle the yellow-green intestines out of the animals. Wood is being collected, the girl steals some matches form a fisherman's hiding place and one of the boys bring a plastic bottle filled with sea-water. They are going to prepare us a meal!

The wind blows so hard that it's hard to light a fire, but they have no problems with it. With a stick they make a deep cross in the sand, in which they put the wood. The contraption works perfectly as a windbreaker, the small campfire burns well. The plastic bottle with crabs and water is put in the middle, but melts immediately. A coconut serves as pan number two, which isn't a success as well: the water doesn't boil and the pan turns into firewood. Their inventiveness knows no limits: we watch how an empty Fanta-can is decapitated wit a small knife. The aluminium pan works perfectly and after fifteen minutes of blowing and collecting wood our meal is served. Carefully we taste the boiled crabmeat and, to be perfectly honest, it is delicious. Even though it doesn't look very tasty, and there are a lot of pieces of bones and shell in the meat, and the sand grinds our back-teeth, the crabmeat tastes great. The three little ones beam.

Two hours later we're taking a bucket-shower at our guesthouse and discover our newest abnormality: under our swimsuits both our skins crawl with red pimples. In the following days these start itching and move to breast, back and shoulders. What is it we have now? Acne, consumption, skin-fungi, prickly heat or simply typhus?