Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Departed the Hotel Coliseum in Dar es Salaam for five hour drive to Tanga. Our five vehicle convoy proceeded with four SUV’s and one van loaded with the drugs for the VETCAP missions in Tanga; two passengers per car with one contract driver. The vehicles and drivers are contracted for the mission. The trip is about 200+ miles on paved roads through countryside thick with people and the occasional town or village.

Since this is “winter” the land is green and animals that we see are in good flesh. Animals are not seen in great number although occasionally cattle and goats are being herded in a few numbers. Village chickens are common with a few ducks. Trees are flowering and palms have coconuts, with some trees bearing fruit such as papaya or so I think. Some road work and a few detours are encountered. The villages are sometimes busy with many people near the road and quite a few shops selling fruit and other goods. TIGO is the most common advertisement, which according to CPT Amanda Coenen, who rides with me, is a phone company that sells minutes on cell phones.

We stop for a rest a short while at a gasoline station and then again at another filling station which has a decent bathroom. One of the Tanzanian officers who accompanies us bought a package of roasted cashew nuts from a boy that are quite good. Such are being sold and vended as you near stopping places. As we neared Tanga, one of the vehicles to the front of the convoy has a flat on the left rear tire which is changed while by the drive while we wait. Not a great deal of traffic as we are stalled, but now and then a large bus passes full of people and very colorful; good sized also, not far off from a Greyhound.

As we near Tanga, we see to the right or east a large amount of cultivated land planted with what we first think are pineapples. However, as we proceed the ones that are more mature have fronds that are much larger than pineapple plants and grow out in a star burst from a circumferential trunk that looks like a palm tree. These are sisal plants, or “mkonge” as our driver Menonu tells me. SFC Berk of the 354th CA Brigade tells me that sisal was used for rope and as a source of fiber for other products. A large amount of land is dedicated to its production as we get closer to Tanga, and the area gets more prosperous and urban. We also begin to see more of the people who appear to be Muslim by their dress. Tanga is only 40 miles or so from the border with Kenya, and on the east coast of Tanzania.

We arrive at the Hotel Mkonge which once was a British building with commemorative plaques and doors from 1950 and 1952. It’s a fine looking building and the rooms are well appointed with TV, air conditioning and mine with a veranda and good view of the bay on the ocean. Tanga is a port curving around this bay with an island named “Totan” to our front. The hotel restaurant opens to the garden which fronts the bay and the island. All very colonial and nice. We have supper and beer and turn in after unloading the drugs into a storage room. The hotel is two stories; my room is at the end of one wing on the second floor next to a large swimming pool associated with the hotel. Not bad. The TV works and the room is comfortable.