A Walk to the Port
April 15, 2001
Around midnight I had heard singing, and around dawn a sort of parade with music, drums and singing that must have moved along Jamhuri Street, the main street in town two blocks away. I stayed in bed until almost 8. I wondered what to do on Easter Sunday. Out of curiosity of the spectacle, I considered going to mass at the Catholic cathedral just a block from my house, but it looks to be under construction, its tall concrete spire buttressed by four concrete arms and surrounded by thousands of beams of thin wooden scaffolding. So I figured mass would be held elsewhere and I didn't know where or when. Instead, I decided to take a walk to the lake and port. It was a mostly cloudy morning, but I put on a hat and sunscreen to protect against indirect sunlight and in case the sun came out. I brought my wallets in case there was any fresh fish for sale, but I left my camera behind, not knowing if it would be safe or appropriate to take photos.
Having previously gone up the road to the Lake Hotel and Bukoba Club only in the dark, I had a quite different experience in the daytime. I passed a large group of people singing to the left that might have been a church service or related Easter celebration. Several people were well dressed for the occasion. Others passed on foot, bicycle, and land rover, but traffic was considerably lighter than in the town. I passed the Coffee Tree Hotel on the left with its western fa?ade and conical traditional thatched roof in the interior. Also on the left was the CCM party building, with its giant billboard picture of President Mkapa. A V-shaped stream or canal came to the edge of the road. By the side of the road I saw a few of the black birds with long legs, long beaks and green wings that I see in my back yard and hear squawking around my house. Small clouds of grey lake flies blew in the wind, but my hat kept them out of my hair and they didn't bother me much. On the right was a sign to the Upendo Lodge. Also on the right was a five-story concrete apartment building that looked even more ugly in the day than at night. The unpainted outer wall was covered with green lichens or mould, and some of the windowless openings showed dark black patches from wood fires the habitants clearly use for cooking. Many people were in their apartments, cooking or hanging laundry or talking to people within or below.
The paved road becomes a dirt road at the four-way intersection by the Duka Kubwa (big shop), an unexciting building that was one of the first buildings in Bukoba a century ago. Just after it on the left is the Lake Hotel, a small hotel with a veranda overlooking the lake in the distance, though the lake is not very visible due to grass, trees and other vegetation. Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn supposedly stayed at the Lake Hotel during the filming of The African Queen. Next on the left is the Bukoba Club, a bar with a television and pool table.
The dirt road continues on to the lake, and the wind increased as I approached, helping to disperse the lake flies. Just before the lake is a bridge, slightly elevated, with big wood beams that are not all firmly secured and do not seem sturdy enough for a car. From the bridge I could see the lake very well. Fairly large waves were crashing against the sand, and small white gull-like birds with long legs were picking for food in the puddles and grass. A few kilometres from shore is an island (named something like Misila or Msira) that juts abruptly from the flat surface of the lake like an eroding green birthday cake. To the left are low hills in the distance. To the right are lines of higher hills with clusters of protruding vertical rocks like teeth in a lower jaw, and buildings scattered amongst the vegetation.
The road curves to the right and follows the shore. In the lagoon grow some fuzzy plants with a circle at the end. Piles of orange dirt and large potholes full of orange water increasingly blocked the road. In some places it was difficult to pass even on foot; clearly it was no longer a passable road for cars, at least not until the end of the rainy season. A few decaying colonial or square tin-roofed houses lined the road, and a few people were working in their yards or passed by. A number of goats were tethered to posts or trees, nibbling the grass and ignoring me even when I passed very close by. Some of the tree trunks were ornately covered with vines. A tin fence was battered by the wind, and many of the panes were missing. The Spice Hotel appears in good shape and is located right on the beach; it is supposedly a good place for (wealthy) ferry passengers to wait.
The road continues to the right back to town, but I took the footpath that follows the lakeshore. In places I had to leap over small streams, and I was glad I had worn my boots. Some wooden boats of various sizes floated in the bay. In a small clearing, along a dirt road, were a few shack shops and some tables with sellers of piles of dried sardines called dagaa and other small items. The port itself was walled off and inaccessible except through a metal gate, so I didn't go closer. I didn't see any boats large enough to be a ferry, but usually the ferry leaves after dark and arrive in Mwanza in the morning, so I wasn't surprised.
To the right the road became smoothly paved and led back to the town. Houses were nestled among thick vegetation and large boulders. Among the most common plants are banana trees, with thick green stalks, large green leaves, and bunches of inverted small green bananas hanging above a stem ending in a pointed purple bulb. Billboards can be seen at a few places, including a Karibu (Welcome to) Bukoba sign. The road here was more heavily trafficked with motorcycles and land rovers as well as bicyclists and pedestrians. A few people greeted me in various ways: good afternoon, hello, mzungu, shikamoo, or just "sh". The lake breeze was no longer strong enough to cool me off, and I regretted having worn my heavy black jeans. At one point the vegetation opened up and I could see the spire of the Catholic cathedral in the distance, as well as the lake, the island, a lagoon and the port. I passed a telecomm building, a few guest houses, a warehouse that advertised that it sold pasteurised milk and a number of different cheeses and other dairy products, and a small shack where colourful dresses and other clothing items were hanging for sale. A pickup truck carrying massive speakers slowly passed, blaring an advertisement of something in Swahili.
At last I came to the dirt road that leads to my house. In those final few blocks I passed a small fashion shop with a picture of a woman with a stylish hairdo wearing a black bra, the Sikh Temple with its overhanging gate and ornate towers, the post office, the small Bukoba Library with its small collection of decaying books, the two-story Bukoba Secondary School, the petrol station, NBC bank, NBC club, and the cathedral. My walk had taken over an hour and was probably about five kilometres. I would definitely like to repeat it another Sunday morning and take a camera with me to take at least a hundred pictures.