Pangani

Riding on a bicycle to the nearby town of Pangani is always loads of fun. After the recent heavy rains of the last few days, a sunny afternoon is too good to ignore! The road from the farm to Pangani is a mud track, barely more than a glorified path at the best of times. As I ride along, small children run out of their huts and wave. "Mzungu! Muzungu!" Always nice to be noticed. Chickens squawk and leap out of the way; butterflies flit about, playing with death in the form of speeding bicycle tyres. The sun beats down, blasting everything with a cheerful glare and fierce, broiling heat. The omnipresent red dust has transformed after the rains, forming muddy pits you could lose a goat in. Cattle tracks in the mud complete the picture of remote, darkest Africa. As I pedal along, squeaking gently, Iggy Pop wails away on the MP3 player, "Sweet sixteen, in leather boots, body and soul, I go crazy.." Totally at odds with the surrounds. I wonder what the dreadlocked chap sitting by the side of the road pounding mielies, would think if he knew anything about Iggy Pop, and chuckle quietly to myself.

To get into town proper its necessary to cross the river on the ferry, from Bweni. Bweni isn't a village. It isn't anything. A few houses and some scraggly chickens scuttling about in the dirt, eating worms more unfortunate than themselves. It only exists because the ferry needs to stop somewhere over the river. The children here play a game that involves nailing a paint tin lid to a stick, and then running it along the ground. Poor bastards. Someone needs to send an aid shipment of proper toys to Tanzania, desperately. Ninja Turtles, Transformers, Africa needs you!

The river is straight out of Apocalypse Now; small wooden canoes paddle about in the green, slimy looking water. Tropical rainforest lines the sides of the river, coconut palms and their ilk. The ferry is always on the other side of the river. It comes across slowly, fighting the current and the tide, past plastic bottles and other detritus, groaning with the weight of trucks, motorcycles, cars, bicycles and what sometimes seems to be hundreds of people. Snot nosed babies, faces caked with dust, mothers wrapped in elegant kanga's, motorcyclists delivering six cases of beer on the back of their bikes, old men clutching hand woven baskets of live chickens, scuttling and scratching and clucking to themselves. The hoi-polloi that is Africa's public transport- the noise, the spitting of mango pips and nonchalant throwing overboard of litter, the shouting, the crying, the blank faces, the diesel fumes, the sweat.

Pangani is not a tourist town. A few mad mzungu's come here- some lost, some adventuring off the (very) well beaten track (ie: Zanzibar), some volunteers. But, after Zanzibar's heaving tides of pale-skinned vacationers, its a pleasure to be able to spot a whitey out in a crowd. It feels slightly more authentic, for one thing. No queues of safari-suited Americans snaking through the streets photographing everything that moves, no constant smell of sunblock and chatter about hair dryers and nail varnish. Luxury!