Jolting until you pee blood...

Sometimes it seems like the frontiers of countries and climatic zones coincide. Where Uganda almost entirely was humid, tropical, green and wet, our first impressions are completely the opposite: dry, barren and hot. The last lap out of Uganda we conclude after 116 kilometres in Kyaka, about thirty kilometres over the Tanzanian border. In this small village at the turn-off to the town of Bukoba, once again white people turn out to be an unknown phenomena. Most people turn around twice and stare at us, everywhere we're sitting, standing or passing. For one euro sixty we rent a room for the night and for one euro we eat a delicious meal.

The next day it's just a short distance to Bukoba, only fifty kilometres. We don't mind, because the wind is blowing from the wrong direction again and the new tar-road presents a number of bumpy interruptions. Under Chinese management the muddy and steep road over the hills is being widened and tarred. Unfortunately the project isn't finished yet and we are forced to walk quite some distances, dragging the bicycles through deep drains. At a group of road-workers Peter points at the sandy hills, mud and drains and asks them why it isn't ready yet. They shrug their shoulders and laugh at his teasing.
Having arrived in Bukoba Peter exchanges a number of travellers-cheques at a bank, while I interrogate the guards outside. Geoff van de Merwe, the South African motor-cyclist we met in Ethiopia, warned us in a recent e-mail about cycling from Bukoba to Mwanza. He was attacked there by men with large cutting-knives and could barely escape. The guards confirm the threat and advice us to take the ferry across the lake. This ferry departs the same evening between nine and ten o'clock. The choice between ferry and possible death isn't a difficult one. We prefer cycling, but still love to live very much.
Through the Indian atmosphere of Bukoba we ride to the harbour, where's a lot of stir, bustle and movement. We hope to sleep on the deck tonight, so we buy two third-class tickets for the 375 kilometre boat-ride over Lake Victoria. Behind the dilapidated office-building there is a toilet- and shower-building which we are eager to use after this sweaty morning. This country is no different from the previous African countries in at least one aspect: everything is broken, lights, shower-taps, washing-stands, doors, tiles, hooks. The shower gives cold water though, which is real nice and refreshing.

We are the first allowed to embark, with our bicycles, and the steersman appoints us to a nice place in a dead-end hall-way, next to the railing and with a beautiful view on the hardworking men that load the ship by hand. When you have a few hours to kill, nothing in the world beats watching how an African ship is being loaded. Everything is done by hand and everything has to come along. On this ship the main cargo is bananas and frozen fish, in enormous quantities. Because of the low tide, the gang-planks are standing in a 45-degree angle at the quay. This is the only way the men with their heavy loads can get on and off the boat, for hours on end. It's very hot, the sun stands high in the sky and the sweat-drops fly all around. The men work very hard. The enormous bunches of banana are marked with paint or engravings, so they reach the rightful owner after unloading the boat in Mwanza. The surroundings of the boat crawl with hunting birds: ibis, egrets, darters and hundreds of kingfishers dive into the water, not always with success.
At eight p.m. the other passengers are allowed to embark. On the ship there are three classes, each with their own entrance. Unfortunately there are no signs that point out which gang-plank gives entrance to which class. The tide is still low, so the angles of the gang-planks are still dangerously high. Adults, children and older people, loaded with bags, boxes and sacks, clamber on and off the ship, searching for the right class. It would have been nice to look at, if it wouldn't have been so dangerous: one wrong step and people end up between boat and quay.
At half past nine the ship's horn sounds for the second time and we're off. Peter bought a small bottle of Konyagi (the Tanzanian gin distilled from sugarcane) to ease his worsening throat-ache. It really works well: within the hour we're asleep on one of our mattresses, jammed between the bicycles and the ship's plating. At sunrise we wake up and witness how a pink sun lights Mwanza's round hills.

Mwanza, Tanzania's second town, recalls strong memories of the Middle-East with her dusty streets and muezzins. We need some time to adjust to the rhythm of the town: in the mornings the shops open up late, in the afternoons they're closed for hours because of the siesta and at five p.m. the doors get locked again with about six or seven locks. We wonder how and when these people earn their money. Some shops never get unlocked. Fortunately 'Salma Cone' unlocks her doors every day and for long hours: for a small amount of money we buy fresh fruit juices, savoury and sweets bites or a complete meal.
We visit the Bismarck-rock: a small island of gigantic granite rocks in the harbour, where every kind of African water-bird seems to have assembled. Mwanza is built on and between hills, that thank their striking appearance to the enormous pebbles the giants threw around a long time ago. Everywhere you look there are thousands of mud or stone houses and shops criss-cross on and between the hills. Wherever we walk or cycle we smell the air of dried and fresh fish.

After two days and a last sleepless night in the hotel - on the ground level a disco drones until six a.m. - we leave Mwanza. Our possible route in Tanzania is strongly limited by the number of joint game-parks in the north-west of the country. Even if we wanted to, we couldn't cycle there because of the numbers of dangerous animals. We are on our way to Arusha, with a forced 800 kilometre detour via Shinyanga, Nzega and Singida. Our travel-guide tells us this area is barely visited by individual travellers. The first hundred kilometres we cycle over a new but bumpy tar-road. We never cycle alone: here again we effortlessly assemble our followers and keeps our 'friend' the headwind us company the whole day. The landscape is of an outstanding beauty: granite hills, vast dry fields, the promised African mud huts with reed roofs and everywhere the baobabs that seem to be thrown upside down from the sky. Most of the latter are bare, one or two blossom and some of them have leafs.

My cold is replaced by a dry cough because of all the dust, Peter's throat-ache has turned into major coughing-fits that result in white, yellow and green phlegm. He loves it when his lungs are free again. The sun is very hot, it's standing right above us and just like me Peter is forced to buy and wear a cap. Half of his face is covered with peels; mainly forehead, nose and lips have a hard time.

Having cycled for a hundred kilometres the tar-road stops and the road becomes something made out of pebbles, rocks, sand, dust and potholes. This is hard terrain. With headwinds and an excess supply of water our speed sinks beneath ten kilometres per hour. We bump from left to right over the road, searching for smooth stretches without washboard or rocks. That stretch always seems to be on the other side of the road, but having arrived there it usually turns out to be just as bad as the other side. When a rumbling truck or bus passes us we have to stop until all the dust is settled again. The African cyclists mainly use the narrow goat tracks that sometimes run parallel with the road, meekly we follow their example. The winding paths are smoother and a lot more comfortable than the road is, most of the time. Instead of cycling eight kilometres per hour, we manage fourteen kilometres on the paths, working half as hard. What remains are the stretches of sand, where we have to push the heavy bicycles while our sandals flood with sand.

On the fourth day of shaking and bumping Peter regularly has to pee, which every time is a painful experience. A few hours later I do have the same problem; it seems like the both of us have contracted an inflammation of the bladder at the same time. Six months ago in Ethiopia we had the same complaints, under the same circumstances. Then our complaints vanished by themselves after two days. At the end of the afternoon peeing is not only painful, the urine has become brown-red in colour. At night it gets even worse: we pee blood. According to our book for tropical diseases we could have bilharzia, we think it's too coincidental that the both of us would have exactly the same symptoms at the same time.

The next morning we do feel alright, but are worried because of the blood in our urine. It's the last day of the four hundred-kilometre road to Singida, that's situated in the centrally in the rough north of Tanzania. Today the road is as bad as the last days and both of us feel our kidneys, although we try to stand as much on our pedals as possible. By now we suspect that our urine-problems are caused by the daily five to six hours bumping-sessions on these bad roads. Our kidneys really have a hard time and feel irritated by that. It's about time we hit the tar-road … or a doctor?