Lost in a big city, in a strange country, with a poor command of the language. What could be better? Hopping on a third-class bus, going to a place I've never been, where I know nobody. Mmm, what a delectable treat, though I have no idea what taste will be left on my lips--in Africa one can't choose the flavor of the dust one is going to eat.

It's a hot, tired, sticky, stinky day. I don't like it one bit! I'm desperate to get out of Dar es Salaam but the damn bus is broken down. We were supposed to leave at 10am, but the bus didn't arrive until 10:30. Then it took three hours to load (it looks like a daliesque double-decker). Then they decided to change the front axle. Right now it's 2pm and the bus is in pieces. There's a crowd of passengers huddled around the driver and his mechanics as they pound and grease-gun the front-end back into shape. Their major tool is a sledge hammer. They seem blessed with an unlimited amount of patience. I, for one, have none. The bus stand is steaming and reeks of piss. The sun bakes relentlessly on the oil-covered tarmac. There's nowhere to sit, no shade. I've got a trashy, ugly feeling in my guts, a knawwing sensation that this journey is doomed for disaster.

…I dozed off, head on knees, butt on the filthy curb, only to be awakened by a blasting, "HONK-HONK!" Time to play last one on the bus is a rotten egg. Everyone charges into the coach like a herd of buffalo stampeding through a chute too narrow to squeeze a slim turd through. We all jam on though: feet, knees, elbows, baggage, babies, bread, bananas, who knows what else? We take off at 3:35 pm, over five and a half hours late.

Well, it's 4:45 pm now and we've broken down in the tiny town of Mlandizi. At least we had the good fortune to break down near a bar. I pound back a couple of warm Safari beers to cut the thirst and dust. (I've got the distinct impression there will be ample opportunities to piss on this fitful journey.) It's just a flat tire, thank God. We'll be back on the road in an African jiffy, whatever that means.

How's that old folk song go? "Could be tomorrow but it might be today." We're all off the bus watching the mechanic's progress as if it were some sort of sporting match. Barefoot little boys run around hawking hard-boiled eggs, greasy samosas and roasted cashews. All in all, we're a pretty stoic crowd. A rich kid to my right, with purple and pink "redboks" on his feet, has a yellow "sportz" transistor radio, and we're all jamming to some sort of Zairian juju blasting distortedly from its fancy, disco-lit body.

The tire-changer man has his shirt off. He's pure muscle and sweat as he tugs on the bolts with a spanner the size of a cricket bat. The sweat flings in arcs off his forehead with every exaggerated jerk of his rippling black flesh.

I have no idea how long the journey is supposed to take. I don't know where we are other than some side of the highway town called Mlandizi. I don't have a guidebook. I don't have a map. I don't know shit, but I do know we have a long ride ahead of us and at this rate it will take us days to reach Songea. No one seems particularly concerned though, so why should I be? In a country where nothing ever happens in a hurry (other than loading onto buses) what the hell difference does it make? We'll be on the road before dark-I think.

Glancing at the flat tire, I notice it's balder than Yul Brenner's head after an especially close shave. The driver had no intention of changing it until it popped. And he had no spare!

We do get going eventually only to break down three times in the night. The good news is we've made it into the province of Iringa. The bad news is it's over 22 hours into our journey and we've covered about four hours of distance on the road.

We've ended up stranded in a tiny village called Mbylini, just a small conglomeration of mud shacks that act as hotel, bar, restaurant and brothel. At the moment, the bus is back in pieces. Our over-worked mechanic is busy doing to the back-end what he did to the front end in Dar es Salaam, which is to raise the suspension up so it doesn't rub against the tires. Good luck! The simple solution would be to throw off half the passengers and half the cargo, but I guess the driver prefers to sit on the side of the road and listen to us grumble.

The inside of the bus looks like a war zone. Bags are laying everywhere, many of them trampled by passengers getting on and off the bus. The floor is littered with banana peels, mango seeds, chewed sugarcane, bottle caps, bread crumbs, egg shells, even a few chicken bones. It's a crowded, messy situation.

The bus is five seats across, about 25 rows long. My knees are bruised from banging against the seat in front of me. But I shouldn't complain-at least I have a seat. We've been squished together for so long (there must be close to 200 passengers on the bus) that I'm beginning to feel like pulp. It's still hot and sweaty as hell. We're all filthy from sleeping on the bus floor and outside on the dusty ground. We're a grimy, weary bunch with a long, long way to go.

It's 8:30am and most of us are off the bus, sitting in the shade of the mud-brick bars. Three radios are blaring competitively. In the distance I hear what sounds like a pig being slaughtered with a dull kitchen-knife. A bold chicken and her chicks ramble around my feet pecking through the rubbish. I feel like a dirtball. I've got to find a place to wash my hands and face.

I head into a restaurant. There are a few bare wooden tables. A mangy dog skulks in and out of the back door searching for crumbs. In a corner, a young man sits studiously slurping a cup of tea. Signs above the sink indicate one tap for drinking and one for washing. Both are attached to the same rusted, tin water tank. I open both taps. The water trickles out in muddy drops and then stops. Empty! An advertisement on the wall above reads. "Top Club, the cigarette for a man whose decision is final."

I try and wipe the damp, streaked grime off my hands and head back outside. Truck drivers walk around scratching their crotches and picking their teeth. Women sit in groups, separately from their men, much more self-possessed, just like everywhere, under-valued and under-classed.

Groups of Masai tribesmen go strolling through town, dressed in their long, flowing, ragged blankets, carrying their walking sticks and long, unsheathed knives. They're so lucky. They don't have to go riding across the country in an over-crowded metal death trap on wonky wheels. All they have to do is look cool and wander around the countryside tending their animals. Do they think we're as insane as I think we are? They look at us like they do.

Uh-oh! Now they're back working on the front-end, repeating what they did in Dar es Salaam yesterday. My fellow passengers are finally becoming perturbed. Old men curse under their breath, children whine. There's talk of making us wait a few more hours for today's bus so we can lighten our load (as if that bus would be any emptier). Some folks want their money back. Most of us just want to get where we're going. Is this some sort of test? How tolerant can a tolerant people be?

A herd of goats saunter through the village with bells around their necks, baaing, jingling, raising up a giant cloud of dust. Flies buzz around my head. I swat at them complacently. They seem to buzz even more furiously. I don't think I'm going anywhere very soon.

A snazzily dressed Tanzanian, a fellow teacher it turns out, tells me in a combination of broken English and Kiswahili, that the "pot smoking communist," Lee Harvey Oswald, was responsible for the downfall of Tanzania. It's 10:00am. The dusty road shimmers in the sun. It's funny, we all appreciate the hopelessness of our situation, and yet, we still seem to have hope. Logic seems to have nothing to do with anything anymore.

It's 10:20am. We were scheduled to leave Dar over 24 hours ago. There are a group of "experts" squatting around the front end of the bus offering useless advice. We all need sleep. A nap would be just the thing.

…Finally! The driver's honking the horn. All the pieces of the bus are back together-I hope. We all rush to the bus as if we plan to actually get somewhere. And we do-for a while. We climb up to Iringa town, zip through Mafinga, and take the turn at Makambako, south toward Njombe.

I sit on the aisle seat with bibi and babu (Grandma and grandpa) to my right. Babu has his leathery old feet, that look and smell like dried fish, spread across our laps. Every few minutes he rustles through a soiled paper bag and pulls out little greasy home-made donuts, stuffs them into his toothless mouth and chews, his face twisting into spastic contractions. Sitting on a bale of straw in the aisle to my left is a young man with an Arkansas Razorbacks t-shirt, who lays his nappy head on my thigh as he sleeps, while his two sisters lean on him. Whenever the bus hits a bump in the road, his head slips and collides into one of babu's withered, rotten toes. Bibi, hidden in layers of a black and red kanga, spreads her ample backside halfway into my seat, lays her head on my shoulder, and goes to sleep. I am a living, breathing pillow-a soar one, with cramps in both legs and a crick in my neck. I must be the only one on the whole bus with my eyes open. I almost relish the thought of another breakdown, simply to straighten out my cramped, twisted body.

The countryside gets more and more beautiful as we approach Njombe.
The farmland becomes richer and the highlands have turned into a bright, green undulating plateau. The hills and valleys are spotted by traditional red brick houses with pitched grass roofs. We pass a huge Brooke-Bond tea plantation with long, straight, orderly rows that look markedly out of place amidst the helter-skelter Tanzanian landscape. A rushing cascade with an enormous waterfall runs along the road as we pull into the highland town of Njombe. It's 5:30pm and only 120km to Madaba-Songea. Too good to believe.

At about 7:00pm, as the sun sets gracefully behind the mountains, we hear a honking behind us. It's the bus that left Dar this morning passing us. As they whiz by I see them signaling the driver, pointing at the rear of the bus. We have another flat-the rear, left inside tire again. We pile resignedly out of the bus. I see a big thunderstorm approaching from the Southeast. Shit!

Of course, there's no spare. The mechanic takes off the tires, pounds off the rim, and tosses the ripped, useless tire in a ditch. Then he puts the remaining tire back on. We load up again and start limping toward Songea. The storm hits us with a fury. An hour later, we reach the turn-off toward Madaba. It's dark, cold and nasty out, and about a 6km trek into the village. The driver and the passengers up front hold a lively discussion about what to do with me. Against my better judgment, it's decided I should continue into Songea and catch the minibus out the next morning. We drive along, slower and slower it seems.

About midnight, as we finally approach the outskirts of Songea, a huge ruckus ensues. The driver says he can't drive into town so late. We'd be stopped by the police. He pulls into a large abandoned construction site and parks the coach. The argument goes on for at least an hour. Eventually I realize it's going to be another long night spent in the over-crowded bus, either that, or outside on the ground in the dirt. I choose the dirt. I get drizzled on and swarmed over by malaria carrying mosquitoes, but it beats the smell, the squalor, the snoring, and the claustrophobic conditions of the bus. I spend most of the night walking around in circles, trying to stay warm. My mouth feels like a dried-out sewer, my body like pure grunge. As I pace, I ponder my situation. If life is hell then these last 40 hours haven't been all that bad, but if it's not, and life is good, then this really sucks. Finally, I plump into a damp sand pile and doze off. Then it starts raining harder. I head into the bus and crash on the filthy floor.

Morning finally comes. We all shout at the driver, "twende, twende," (let's go). He just rolls over and snores louder. We finally crawl into town about 7:30am. I walk around the bus-stop in a sleepless, foodless haze. I feel mentally lost, used up. Somehow I end up getting sucked up onto a bus headed back toward Madaba. Standing room only. I feel like an albino sardine vacuum-packed on its end amidst an endless tin of black sardines. We start off down the road, my crotch beating repetitively into a little boy's face. Behind me an old lady holds a chicken to her breast while it pecks at my back. Our driver is a maniac. He shouts to himself as he swerves wildly down the road. I think he's drunk. We're rounding sharp bends at 100km/hour. I swear the bus is going to flip over. We would all topple like dominoes only we have no room to fall, so we just sway back and forth against each other like blades of grass in a windstorm. I belt a woman in the nose with my pack, an umbrella falls from the overhead rack coming close to putting me out of my misery. The ride that took over four hours last night takes less than an hour today.

The bus stops, the door opens and I practically explode out of the bus. Suddenly, I find myself on the side of the road, at the turn-off to Madaba, with not a soul in sight. The quiet is deafening: birds, frogs, lizards, locusts, all buzzing, humming, chirping up a storm. I drag my pack over to a lean-to bamboo shelter and wait. I flag down the first car that goes by. It's driven by a gray-haired, Irish Catholic priest named Moses from Njombe. In the back of the Landrover he has a generator, a VCR, and a large television set. He's going to a village two hours down the road to show the locals a video on the life of Christ. "If I can't convert them with religion, I wow them with technology," Moses confides with a conspiratorial wink.

Stuffed between the equipment sits a middle-aged Tanzanian man holding his hands to his jaw, groaning like a woman in labor.
"What's wrong with him," I ask.
"He says he's suffering from Malaria of the teeth. I'm giving him a lift to the mission hospital down the road."
"Malaria of the teeth," I ask incredulously?
Moses smiles with a patronizing twinkle in his eyes. "Oh yes, it's quite common-along with malaria of the ear, the knee, and especially the private parts."

Moses turns up the volume on the car stereo. The Gregorian chants blast out the open windows. We have to shout to be heard. I tell him I'm headed to Wilima Secondary School to teach agriculture. He roars with laughter, which then tapers to a constant chuckling, a private joke no doubt. Then he starts patting me on the shoulder reassuringly.
"Karibu, karibu sana," (you're very welcome) he bellows over and over again as we drive down the bumpy road into the village.