Day 260 / 25

Date: 28 December 2022
Sleeping location: Kahwibili village school, Tanzania 
Distance (km today/total/total Part 2): 55 / 16029 / 1192
Estimated climb (m today/total/total Part 2): 800 / 138000 / 20000
Sportball winner: Nobody wins at Sportball
Day in three words: Bring the mzungu!

In the night it started to rain so I had to dash out to put my tent outer on, then there were some weird animal noises nearby, so my sleep wasn’t great but the strong coffee in the morning was. We said goodbye to the date palm crew and set off into blazing sunshine, despite the forecast predicting intense rain from 10am. The weather here can't be predicted other than what you can see with your eyes.  

We stopped for chai and supplies in a small village and loads of youths surrounded us asking for selfies with us. Anne-Claire had heard people repeatedly singing “lete Mzungu” at her in Tanzania and here some kids in a shop with a soundsystem put the actual song on for us. Apparently it means “bring the mzungu” and is something to do with Simba FC football team. More research is required here.

After this village the road turned away from the lake into inland hills and became very quiet and forested. A few times we scared monkeys who seemed to be stealing crops away into trees. The surface was ok but progress was slow with lots of hills and heat, and into the afternoon the surface got less good, the hills got steeper (the two are probably related) and the heat got hotter. Thankfully there were streams tumbling down from the hills above for dips. 

A couple of hours before sunset we stopped in first village in ages for drinks and A&AC suggested that we ask the village chief if we could camp there. Two young guys with decent English (sadlyI forgot their names) adopted us and waited with us until the chief finishes a meeting, which ended up being two hours. We were also joined by two approximately five year-old children, one a quiet kid with intelligent eyes in way-too-big orange Zanzibar vest, and the other a kid, who had a sort of chaos energy about him, and was wearing a tattered red football shirt that just said "sport" on and shorts with a hole in the seat so his little bum poked out every time he bent over. “Sport” kid had a squishy yellow ball with him and Anne-Claire, the two kids and I started throwing the ball between us to pass the time. Unfortunately “sport” kid wasn’t a team player and he mainly rushed around stealing the ball off the other kid then throwing the ball at Anne-Claire as hard as possible. 

Eventually the administrative council of the village, which appeared to be about 20% of the population of the village, appeared and one of them randomly spoke good French again. He was friendly and welcoming and said we could sleep in the school so that we had a flat surface and some extra shelter. It had this but nothing more - there is no electricity or running water in the whole village. The young men we spoke to can't find a job and think they will have to go to Kigoma to get one. This is a hard place to live. We made some spaghetti but by this point were struggling for additional ingredients due to the remoteness so it was just combined with tomatoes and salt. I am completely drained and my stomach is quite unhappy, so I crash out early. There is also the potentially problematic equation of distance remaining to Mpanda. C&AC are planning to take a boat south along the lake and I am planning to cycle to Mpanda in time for New Year’s Eve, which gives me three days, and there is about 230km left along a road which ioverlander claims is challenging…for 4x4s. 

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