Puncture-avalanche
at
Lake Balangida Lelu
In Singida we take a two-day break, after all it's weekend,
to rest our tormented kidneys and bodies. The second day our urine regains
its normal yellow colour. Singida is the capital of one of Tanzania's
19 regions and we even discover a few fragments of old tarmac in the
roads. For the fun of it we cycle around a little bit and enjoy the
singing tires. This way we visit the granite football-shaped rocks and
two small salt lakes.
From our window in the guesthouse we look out upon the back of the adjacent
'cafeteria'. Eight o'clock in the morning the chef starts his preparations
for the new day. Cow-legs, cow-tails, goat-heads, living chicken and
eggs are delivered by boys on bicycles, as well as a huge sack of potatoes
and charcoal. The legs are stripped of the meat, the tails stripped
of the hair. The remaining bones are cooked in a huge soup-kettle. The
wind blows the sickly smell of the boiling bones into our room. We close
the window. The goat-heads are trimmed of all eatable parts and the
potatoes peeled. A radio with a lot of static takes care of the necessary
zest for work. The chicken are killed, picked and emptied the moment
an order is placed, fresher isn't possible. The cafeteria consists of
four walls of pieces of corrugated iron and cardboard, the roof of corrugated
iron and plastic. Inside they have put small benches and tables on which
we eat 'kuku mayay': fried chicken with an chips-omelette, delicious.
Saturday afternoon we're sitting in an half-open bar watching English football, when it starts raining. The new roof of shining corrugated iron rests on wooden scaffold poles. It replaces the old roof of which the large pieces of canvas with the blue UNHCR-logo are still visible. There are no gutters and the rain clatters via the roof into the bar. Ten minutes later the whole group of about twenty visitors and staff are sitting on a heap on the only dry spot in the place.
We've repaired the seven punctured tubes of the previous days, checked the tires again and are on our way to Arusha: two hundred kilometres of unpaved road, one hundred of tar-road. With a steady headwind we slowly climb out of Singida-valley. Looking back, the town with the grey and smooth rocks nonchalantly thrown everywhere lies on our feet. Tanzania is ever so beautiful. Fifteen kilometres later we have our first puncture of the day, half an hour later the second, ten minutes later again the third. Every time the puncture looks like a long wear-mark with a little hole in the middle, on the rim-side of the tube. We check rim-ribbon and tyre, discover nothing but stick sportstape on the rim-ribbon to be on the safe side. Fifteen minutes later puncture number four. We are getting insane and very tired by now. With the largest stickers we have we seal the umpteenth wear-mark and still are unable to find the cause.
Half-way through the afternoon, we left Singida six hours ago, we've
only managed to cycle 35 kilometres, because of the headwind and the
enormous amount of punctures. The fifth puncture isn't far away and
we are at our wit's end. We take the entire tyre off, check it very
thorough again and finally find the almost invisible cause: a millimetre
of the steel heel-thread has come through the rubber and is in direct
contact with the tube. The bumping on stones and potholes did the rest.
With our spare-tyre we reach Sagara, a small village where we are allowed
to sleep in the primary school.
The next morning at 6.30 a.m. we are ready to go, watched by dozens of curious children in their green school uniforms. Schools start early here: between 6.30 and 8.00 a.m. the children clean classrooms and the school yard. Bent down and in cordon the children sweep the grounds around the buildings with tiny reed brooms, while the hard wind blows everything in all directions again. It looks quite useless, but the children don't seem to care. At eight o'clock the lessons start and we say goodbye to the hospitable teachers and their family that offered us tea and rice with beans this morning.
With Mount Hanang right in front of us and a formidable view of the
eastern Mangati Plains, we pass Lake Balangida Lelu. The wind has increased
to storm and forces us to bump even slower than we did yesterday. It
gets harder all the time to enjoy the landscape and mongooses that dash
off in these circumstances. It takes us almost five hours to cycle forty
kilometres and ours kidneys are irritated again when we arrive in Katesh,
at the foot of the old volcano. A hairdresser in the village brings
a smile to our faces again when we see after which beautiful town he
has named his business. In large letters he painted "ROTTERDAM"
on his facade.
The next days, cycling along and through traditional Masai-villages, we manage to register a total of twenty-two punctures in twelve days. A new record and low. Winner of this contest was a four centimetre acacia-thorn, hard as a nail and sharp like a needle. Our tubes start to look very colourful by now, because of all the stickers, including the two spare tubes.
The last stretch over the tarmac road to Arusha is as heavy as lead:
again we ride in the teeth of the wind that tries to blow us back forcibly,
over one upland plain to the other. There are almost no descents. The
most beautiful and exotic birds such as brightly coloured parrots and
a perky walking secretary-bird and the views of Mount Meru give us the
power to squeeze another eighty kilometres out of our legs. Exhausted
and numb we arrive in Arusha for a week of rest, eating, drinking, sleeping,
eating, drinking, sleeping, eating, drinking…