Après Le Peace Corps , Chapter 4

My best chapter

I got to the train station in Mbeya early the next morning. No sign of Mike. I went to the ticket window and bought my passage to Dar Es Salaam, and wandered around, and found a map of the train route across Tanzania. As I was looking at it, Mike came over. He said, “You know Maseko, we should stop somewhere along the way. The Maasai people live here. We should meet some and experience their culture.” There wasn’t a lot of detail to the map, in terms of discrimination of one place from another, but about half way to Dar, was a tiny town called Kisaki, which was surrounded by a national park, so we randomly decided to stop there for a couple days. Mike went and bought a ticket to Kisaki, and this caused us some serious problems later.

Train riding seems romantic and fun looking, but is mostly boring. Your eyes get tired of looking at things going past the window at the speed of the train. And Tanzania was just a series of passing clumps of forest, interspersed with patches of bushveldt. The other thing about riding a train, is the constant clack clack, clack clack, of the joints of the rails. After a while, you get into synch with the clack clack. You think in time with clack clack. You speak in time with clack clack. You move with the cadence of clack clack. You eat with the clack clack. It drove me nuts. We eventually came to  Kisaki, a tiny town that existed because of the railway. There were no roads to Kisaki. Only the train. You got there on the train, and you left on the train. Or walked, and there was nothing near to walk to.

We got off the train, and walked over to the rest house next to the station, and got rooms. There didn’t seem to be much to Kisaki, just the train station and the rest house. And the police station tacked on to the back of the station.The rest of the village was hidden in the surrounding forest. There was a large clearing, where people had set up little stands to sell food to train passengers. As soon as the train went on, the little stands and people disappeared into the forest. It reminded me of the movies where they say, “It’s quiet here. Too quiet.” The next train through was in 2 days. Usually, in a situation like that, you go to the police station and introduce yourself, and tell them why you stopped and how long you are staying. Mike and I forgot to do that, and that later caused a problem.

It was evening, and we took the food we had bought from the stands while the train was there, and retired to the rest house and ate,  and went to bed. We were up at dawn, and since the village was surrounded by forest, we took our binoculars and cameras, and walked down the train tracks looking for birds or whatever. A couple times I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, a man seemed to be skulking around after us, but staying hidden in the surrounding trees. It was a nice walk, and we got back to the rest house after a couple hours, having not seen much in the way of birds or wildlife. On our return, a Maasai woman came by the rest house with a jug of milk for sale. I had not drank milk in a month or so, and so I bought some. It seemed kind of brownish, but the woman assured us that she had milked the cow only an hour before. Mike and I looked at it, and decided that we should boil it, to be sure there was no untoward bacteria in it, and I set up my little one-burner stove, and put the milk on to boil. After 10 minutes, there seemed to be clumping going on in the milk. I took it off the stove, and it looked awful, and smelled worse. I remembered reading that the Maasai lived off their cows. They drank the milk, and also bled the cattle, and drank that. Evidently, the woman had mixed blood and milk, and boiling it was not the way to consume it. I tasted a little sip, and made a face. It tasted not at all like milk, and I spit it out, and pitched the rest.

There were some people gathered under a big tree nearby, and we walked over to chat them up. An old grandfather came over to us, and spoke to us in English. It turned out that somewhere in his past, he had been an English teacher, and we spent an hour talking with him. He was interesting to talk with. At one point, he was trying to sell us his 10 year old granddaughter, to travel with us to Dar, and beyond, I guess, since we would own her, to cook for us and wash our clothes. We politely turned him down. As we talked, a man popped out from behind some bushes, and came storming over to us. It was the local cop, and was the man I had seen skulking after us that morning. He seemed mad. He was wearing a khaki uniform, with tall boots, and had a riding crop in his hand, with which he was slapping his boots as he yelled at us. He had a rusty pistol in a holster on his belt. He ordered us, in no uncertain terms, to return to our rooms at the rest house immediately. He seemed to mean business, so we turned and walked back to the rest house. I looked over my shoulder as we went, and saw him jerk the grandfather by the arm, and throw him down, and start kicking him with his boots. I knew we were in deep shit.

We got back to my room, and were sitting there trying to figure out what to do. An hour later, the cop showed up with another cop. They came in the room, and made us sit in the two chairs, and started interrogating us. “Who are you?” “Why are you here?” “Why are you taking pictures?” he barked at us.  Just like most people on our journey had done, but in a very aggressive manner. We answered his questions. He told us to call him Mr. David. He seemed to think that we were spies, for some reason, though he never  said for whom he thought we were spying. The interrogation went on for an hour. He took our cameras, and passports. We told him we were just passing through, and he demanded to see our train tickets. It seemed to be a big issue that mine was to Dar Es Salaam, but Mikes was only to Kisaki. We tried to explain that, but he wasn’t having any of it. Finally the cops went away, but Mr David cautioned us to stay in the rest house and not wander around. The second cop was stationed outside the rest house to keep us from escaping, though there was no place to escape to.

The train was due the next morning, and I was happy that I was going to be able to get on it, and get out of Mr David’s town. Mike went to the station, and bought his onward passage to Dar. We had several discussions with Mr David. They went nowhere. At one point he brought back the film from our cameras, pulled completely out of the cassette, exposed to the light. He smirked as he gave it to us. Mike was trying to talk with him using positive statements like, “When the train gets here. and you give us back our passports and cameras, we will get on the train, and continue to Dar Es Salaam.” He ignored the efforts, and smirked at us all the time. What an a-hole.

The next morning, we took our packs to the platform, and sat on them waiting for the train. Mike gave it one more try, and went around back to the police station, to talk with Mr David, and came back with our empty cameras, but no passports. Mike is such a diplomat, much more patient than I.  Just as I heard the train in the distance, Mr David came on to the platform, holding our passports. He seemed positively jovial. I was suspicious, and with good reason. As the train pulled into the station, we got up, and he barked at us, “Sit down!” So we did. The other people waiting started getting on the train, and from the back of the train, 4 cops with rifles came running up, and took us into custody. Mr David gave the head cop our passports, and was all smiles as they led us back the train. The cops put us on the floor in the space between the 3rd class car, and the last car, which was evidently, the car for the cops. We sat on the floor, and watched Kisaki fade into the distance. The people on the third class wooden benches were turned around looking at us. One of the cops, with a name plate on his uniform reading Sergeant Baker, stood next to us. He had his rifle in his hands. Once we got underway, he started interrogating us, asking the same questions as the idiot Mr David. I was getting pretty pissed off. He kept asking questions, and when he was not getting the answers he wanted, he started poking me in the forehead with his rifle barrel as he asked.

“Why are you here!?” poke poke

“We are teachers traveling to Dar Es Salaam.”

“No! Why are you here?” poke

It went on endlessly. It was hot, and my forehead was sore from the poking, and I got madder and madder. Finally, I snapped, and reached up and grabbed his rifle barrel, and pulled it to my forehead, and held it there, and shouted at him, “I am telling you the truth. If you don’t believe me, just f—ing shoot me!” I held the barrel with a grip of death against my forehead. I had had enough. At least if he shot me, I would not have to flinch from his rifle any more, or listen to his stupid questions.

Mikes eyes got huge, and he looked like he was pooping in his pants. “Sam, Sam!  What are you doing?”

I said, “Sorry Mike, but if this guy keeps poking me with his rifle, I am going to take it away from him, and shove it up his ass!” I was really pissed.

Sergeant Baker looked like he was pooping in his pants too, and was trying valiantly to pull his rifle out of my hand. I kept yanking it back to my forehead. I was shouting at the top of my lungs, “Shoot me! Just f—ing shoot me! I am sick of you poking me.” I don’t know why, it was just a spontaneous reaction, but he had pushed me beyond my limits of patience. Mike was freaking out, and pulling on my gun holding arm, saying, “Sam, Sam, let go of the rifle!” The third class passengers were standing up and staring at us. Sergeant Baker was trying to jerk his rifle back, and finally jerked it out of my hand, and moved back a little way into the cops train car behind us. It was almost comical. You could see on his face that he knew he had a crazy man here. Mike said, “What are you doing? Are you nuts?”

“I’m sorry Mike, but I just want him to stop poking me.” (I swear this is true.) It was so out of character for me to be like that, but I had had enough. Mike kept talking to me, trying to calm me down. Sergeant Baker left us alone for the next 6 hours into Dar.

When we arrived in Dar Es Salaam in the evening, the cops had everybody leave the train while we sat there on the floor. I was calm by then, and wondering why I was still alive. Once the train was empty, Sergeant Baker motioned with his rifle for us to get up, and he walked us up the long platform toward the office in the station. As we walked, every 30 feet, there was a cop standing by the side. I guess, to prevent us from jumping down on to the tracks, and escaping. As we passed them, each one was snapping a salute, so sharply as to cause whiplash, to Sergeant Baker. I guess he was an important cop. He led us to the office, and turned us, and our passports over to the big cheese in the office. The fat man started calmly interrogating us, as he sat there while holding our passports, and tapping them on his teeth, and on the desk. We answered his questions. After a while, he said, “Ok, well, tomorrow I will need to take you to the Tanzania Police Headquarters, and work this out.”

“Wait,’ I said, “You aren’t the police?”

“No, we are the railway security, not the Police of the country,” he replied, “So I will need you to come back in the morning, and we can go see Mr Maji, the commander of the Tanzania police.”

I was pissed off again, and said, “You bet your ass we will go to the country police tomorrow, and I will register a complaint about you and your train cops.” And I reached across his desk, and snatched our passports out of his hand, surprising him, and said, “Come on, Mike, let’s get the hell out of here.” And I grabbed my pack, and left the office, Mike scrambling after me. All the way to the YMCA where we stayed that night, Mike was asking me if I had a death wish or something, and telling me that I needed to get control of my temper. He had never seen this side of me. I have little patience for injustice or bullying.

The next morning, early, we walked across Dar Es Salaam to the American Embassy, and when they opened for bidness, we were waiting outside. We asked to see somebody to tell our story to. A man eventually came out, and took us back to his office. We told him the story of Mr David, and Sergeant Baker, and what had happened. We showed him our passports, and told him we were Peace Corps volunteers, traveling through. They have a Peace Corps program in Tanzania. He looked stunned. “What were you guys doing?” he asked.

“Bird watching.” I replied. “That is not illegal here, is it?”

“No,” he said, “but the embassy is not here to bail out tourists when they get in trouble. We do not replace stolen passports, or loan money, or resolve problems with the law. We are here for diplomacy with the government of Tanzania. Wait here a minute.” And he went off somewhere. He came back in a while, with two pieces of paper. They turned out to be form letters on embassy stationary that basically said, To Whom It May Concern, William R Birchall, passport number such and such, is a US citizen of good standing, and a member of the United States Peace Corps, and any help that you can render him will be greatly appreciated by us. Love, The U. S. Embassy. We thanked him, and took the letters, and departed. We looked on our map, and found where the Police Headquarters was, and as we walked, Mike said, “Sam, I think it would be smart if you went to the Police Headquarters alone, to explain things, and I will go back to the YMCA, and get our packs, and meet you at the docks where the ferry to Zanzibar comes. That way, if you get arrested, I will be out here to try and get you out of jail.”

Ok. Sounded good to me. I was calm this morning. So I headed off to the Police Headquarters. Upon arriving there, I asked to see Mr. Maji, commander of the Tanzania police. After a while, I was shown to his office. He was a nice and calm man, and as I told him my story, he started chuckling. “You grabbed his rifle?” he said in amazement. “Yes,” I replied, “It was not my proudest moment.” He thought my story was hilarious. He assured me that Mr David was just a zealot railway cop, left over from when the revolution for independence in Zimbabwe had had spies for the revolutionaries who met on the trains in Tanzania, and as such, I should just forget about it, and continue to travel in his country freely, without breaking the laws, of course. I told him that I had had my fill of Tanzania, and as soon as I left his office, I would be getting on the first ferry to Zanzibar. He gave me his business card, and said to call him if we had any further problems, and shook my hand. He said that he knew the country’s Peace Corps directors, and was very happy  that Peace Corps was sending people to help out in the rural areas. A very nice man.

I left, and made my way to the docks, and found Mike. The ferry came in, and we boarded it. Zanzibar is 70 miles off the coast. The ferry was an old Russian made hydrofoil and soon we were up on the skis, and flying across the water of the Indian Ocean. We arrived at the docks of Zanzibar, and walked into Old Town Zanzibar looking for a rest house. What an exotic looking and smelling place, with the towers of the many mosques sticking up everywhere. But that is the next chapter.

Try not to be nuts.  ❤️

People in charge Matter.   ❤️