Getting Home

It was one of our more adventurous, or laborious trips home we’ve had since we started traveling to and from Tanzania. We really thought the travel to Minneapolis from Dar es Salaam back at the end of April was the best trip we’ve had yet with two kids. On May 29th at 12:30pm CST we arrived at the MSP airport 2 and a half hours before our flight was to take off. Check-in was a breeze, and we went straight to the gate. Once there an announcement came on the PA stating that the plane we were to board had been “downgraded,” and they needed close to 40 volunteers to board a different later flight in order to get the proper number of passengers. Any volunteer would get a pretty sizeable travel voucher to be used on any future travel. After some deliberation- the next flight was set for 6 hours later at 9pm, and we thought about the prospect of adding more time to the task of traveling with two toddlers, but thought the voucher money would come in handy the next time we wanted to travel, and might enable us to afford to come home for Christmas- we decided to volunteer. So, to their credit, the airline was very nice and grateful that we volunteered, and gave us more meal and beverage vouchers than we could spend; and having that travel voucher (x4) made us feel pretty good about the decision. The changes to our itinerary were that instead of two planes- Minnesota→ Amsterdam and Ams→Dar es Salaam, we had three with an extra stop in Nairobi, the lay over in Ams was now 8 hours instead 3, and we were arriving in Dar es Salaam at 9am on May 31st, instead of the originally planned 9pm on May 30th. But still: who could refuse so many meal vouchers right!? The kids did great with the extra wait, and we had dinner in the airport, played in the playground, and rode the tram back and forth until it was time to go. That flight (8 hours from Minnesota to Amsterdam) didn’t entail much sleep for the parents as the kids sort of alternated when they felt like sleeping themselves. The lay-over in Amsterdam featured several attempts to get the kids to nap, and a small success when Mommy and the three year old took a crammed nap in the Kids’ lounge crib. Next came the flight on Kenya Airways to Nairobi. It seemed like a decent enough airline, and it was novel and nice to hear and read Kiswahili on an airplane and while still in Europe. The kids didn’t sleep at all on this flight, however, and they had several meltdowns during the Nairobi airport layover (2hours) even though it was a nice airport that even had a playground as well! The flight from Nairobi to Dar (one hour) went really well on the other hand, and just as we landed in Dar (9am on the 31st local time, 1am on the 31st Minnesota time- 37.5hours after we arrived at the first airport) the three year old decided to finally collapse into sleep. Little did we know it would take us more than twice as long to cross Dar es Salaam to get to our friends’ house than it did to get from Nairobi to Dar! We went to go get our good friend and Nanny, Eliza, who was staying about an hour away from the airport, before heading to our friends’ house where we’d be staying. Just as we began to wonder why the driver had decided to get us first and not Eliza before collecting us at the airport, the driver threw us for another loop turning down a back road to meet a relative of his who was said to have the credentials to help our sewing class as a potential teacher In case we wanted another. Sort of, “Welcome back to Tanzania, mind doing a quick job interview?” After the meet and greet was done, and we met up with Eliza, we arrived at our friends’ fairly close to noon, dropped off the kids, and went straight to work meeting with friends from Mufindi who had come to Dar to attend the Dar Goat Races Charity Event (goatraces.com). We spent the rest of the day preparing for the following day’s event, then fell asleep about 7:30pm and woke up almost 13 hours later. The goat races (June 1st) was a great success, and we also managed to get our recently purchased furniture on a truck headed to Iringa. We also put almost all of our luggage (8 checked bags, 50lbs each) on the same truck. Our plan was to finish up at the goat races event, which ended at 6pm, then head down the road to Mufindi to get part of the way home to a town called Morogoro which was 200km (~125miles) from Dar, which would leave us with about 425km(~265miles) left to drive the next day to get home. That was the plan anyway. We had called ahead to our Tanzania family in Morogoro who booked us in a hotel there for the night telling them we’d arrive fairly late depending on traffic, maybe 11pm. This is something we had done at least dozen times before. 40km east of Morogoro, there was a massive accident that blocked both lanes of highway with big 18-wheeler trucks lined up in a backlog clogging the road. We were stuck. Because traffic was so bad in Dar es Salaam, it was around midnight when we had reached this point. We followed a clever, seasoned, Tanzanian who communicated with these trucks one by one to move this way or that to let us with smaller cars weave in and out of the middle of the trucks, or either shoulder to eventually get past the accident a few kilometers down the road. We eventually turned up in Morogoro at 1:30am. Once at the hotel, we said hello to the nice-seeming man who let us in, and we started to get all of our remaining luggage out of the car, wake up the kids, and enter the hotel, when he started shaking his head. We asked him which room we were staying in, and he said, “Oh… hee… (shaking his head) the rooms are all full.” We then asked, “You’re joking right?” Because that would have been a pretty fun joke to make at that time: to watch us come in very late, road weary, watch us unload the car, watch us wake up our kids, and then tell us there were no rooms (meaning he had sold the rooms to someone else even though a booking was made). That would have been funny had it been a joke, but of course he wasn’t kidding. So we packed the car back up, and the kids started crying saying, “We want to stay right here,” we told them we couldn’t stay there because there was a bad man at that hotel, which they seemed to surprisingly understand quite well. We went to another hotel that probably has 200 rooms, and it was completely full as well with two weddings happening that night. The man there called other places and said they were full too, offering that likely, it being Saturday, it might be hard to find a place. So we decided to just keep driving down the road to Mikumi town- another 100km closer to home. Once there the three places we checked were full, and we became befuddled as to why it seemed like everyone in Tanzania had decided to stay in a hotel that night! So we drove all the way to Iringa, and arrived at 7am in Iringa twon, still another 3 and half hours of driving away from home. We had sent a message to some friends of ours in Iringa at around 6:30am to ask if we could pass out at their house upon arrival, and were relieved that they obliged. We woke up in the afternoon, did some shopping, and then headed home. At home in Mufindi we were given a heroes’ welcome as the older kids and a handful of guardians from the Children’s Village all met us at our house with songs, joyful cheering, and lots of hugs. It was great to be home, and everybody greeting us like that has really started our return on the right foot. Despite the difficult travel, everyone feels refreshed, recharged, and ready to do good. The kids are speaking Swahili fluently with their friends, and English with Mom and Dad, and they’re happy to be home as well. It takes a lot to get back to our home sometimes, but once there, it’s more than worth the hassle.