Development!!

I’m sitting here on my computer and the power has gone out four times in the past ten minutes. Power cuts this year seem limited to our little part of Arusha as there is some development going on in the form of a tar sealed road. For those of you yet to see where I live, it’s about 12km (or a 45min dalla dalla ride) out of the main town and the last 4km of road is dirt and has always been quite an adventure for me on the piki piki (motorbike) and perhaps not such an adventure for people who drive cars as they’re always paying for new suspension. You need to keep your wits about you as goats and cattle are herded along the road and long-suffering donkeys haul their loads of charcoal for sale.

Now, finally, we had some sightings of Chinese surveyors taking a look at our little road (when you see an Mchina as they’re called you know it’s business) and very shortly we had the community in a frenzy cutting down every tree that might impede the new road that was rumored to take only a month! It’s been two now but work seems to be cracking along and I never know what I’ll encounter when I venture out. It seems the favourite thing for the Chinese to do at the moment is to pile up large dirt mounds taking up most of the road and watch as cars (who never normally stick to the correct side of the road) take on this obstacle course with gusto. Fine for me, the motorbike can squeeze through some tight places but the thing that gets me is when they spread it all out and you have to ride through half a metre deep gravel. 

To top it all off though is the traffic controllers who perform a type of dance with their small red and green rags tied to sticks, you never know whether to stop, go or to just ditch the whole cherade and take a back path or the footpath swerving for the cattle and stray goats. Today I spotted a traffic controller who’d just given up and was sleeping under a tree.

I think I’m a little nostalgic that this village which sometimes seemed like the absolute end of the line is now going to be more accessible and more houses will start popping up, giving the feeling we are becoming just another extension of town. Although, as I ride or walk along the road and large dust clouds envelop me I get the feeling that perhaps a little development won’t be such a bad thing after all.