getting around Arusha.. daladalas!

This is a borrowed pic of a daladala (a very clean nice looking one compared to the ones here).. the local transport here in Arusha. There’s no public transport system, so the roads in town are full of old Toyota Hiaces loaded with more people you could imagine would fit in them. They are cheap, only costs 300 shillings (about 35 cents) to go the 7km to town, but there’s a reason. You usually have to share your 2 seat space with three or four others, maybe even have someone sitting on your lap or balancing above you, and expect to share the van with at least fifteen other people, but usually more than twenty, and their produce (fruit, veg, chickens etc). And you have to be careful, the doors don’t seem to slide shut properly, and can open at the most unexpected moment, usually when speeding around corners. Oh, and they all have large words painted on the outside, like P-Square, or God Lives across their cracked windscreen.. some very cool ones have Led Zeppelin in huge letters. There’s one dala on our route which needs to be pushed down a hill to get started, and a friend was on one the other day whose driver got into an argument with another driver who, after a yelling match, proceeded to put rocks under the wheels of the dala she was on, so she had to swap and get on another one.

Getting around in Arusha may not be safe, but you can’t say its boring.