Mbeya - Tanzania

Even though we had only had fours hours sleep we were up again at 9am, as much as we wanted to stay in bed we needed to check out Rupert and get plans in place to sort him out ASAP.

Our cottage, in extensive gardens away from the main hotel, was one of eight which had originally been used by the staff who ran the nearby coffee plantation. That had been years ago, now, apart from one which Francis and his wife Fionuela were using, they sat empty, however Francis had grand designs to rejuvenate them and use them again.

Our cottage was in our opinion the nicest, set high on the hill it had a lovely big veranda with sweeping views to the plains and distant mountains to the West, the Sunsets were spectacular.

It was a lovely sunny morning so we had breakfast on the veranda, afterwards Sue began to unpack Rupert while I checked out the damage. It was much worse than I thought, the turret had smashed through the wing protector and torn away the coolant reservoir from its mountings. Amazingly the reservoir itself was intact, if it had burst while we were on the road then we would have been buggered.  The reservoir in turn had been bashing against the bonnet and had made quite a dent

On top of this one end of the support bracket for the 40 litre water tank had snapped so the tank was hanging on by just one end plus the rear shock had all but lost its mountings again, it was incredible we had made it back at all.

I removed the useless turret and supported the water tank as best I could but Rupert was in urgent need of a serious makeover. Francis called by to see how we were and to let us know he had spoken to Ari one of the Swiss guys who ran the best garage in town to warn him we would need his help.

We called Ari and arranged to take Rupert in first thing the next day but first we had to remove virtually everything from inside as he would be left at the garage for at least two days. This was no mean task which took up most of the afternoon so in the evening we treated ourselves to dinner at the hotel restaurant then collapsed into bed again.

Early next morning we followed Francis to the garage, the garage and Utengule are situated out of town in a township  called Mblazi so we needed Francis to drive us into Mbeya proper after we left Rupert with Ari. The garage 'Mfundi Mblazi' is run by Swiss Methodists who also built and run the local hospital and training college where they train young Tanzanians in a number of trades from Computing to Carpentry.

The garage services all makes of vehicle including large trucks but it's speciality is 4WD's especially Landrovers. It is very well equipped even by European standards and apart from Ari who is very experienced with Landrovers it has a number of local foremen (fundi's) who supervise a small army of young and very keen local apprentices.  Because of this they are able to keep their labour costs to a minimum which was just as well in our case!

Now we had Rup on a ramp we were able to check him out more thoroughly. Apart from the broken turret to the front shock and broken water tank strap, the coolant reservoir would need replacing and one of the rear shocks and its mounting was also buggered. However, this was not all, the road to Katavi had been so bad that we had cracked the chassis so this would also need welding. 

When we were building Rupert we had a long debate with Foleys about fitting Old Man Emu gas shocks and suspension  but they had argued us out of it saying the Landrover shocks and heavy duty suspension bushes would be ok, at least for year one.

Now we felt that as the roads out here were so hard on Rup's  suspension we should change two of the four oil shocks on the rear for new Gas shocks and fit poly bushes. We would also carry out a normal service, all necessary before we were able to continue Northwards. 

Francis kindly waited to take us on into Mbeya, we needed to check email, get money but more importantly prior to going to Katavi we had arranged for the RAC to DHL our new Carnet to Mbeya and we hoped that it would be waiting for us at their office in town.

Our existing Carnet would expire on the 18th November and if we didn't get a replacement we would be trapped in Tanzania. The DHL office was on the corner of a small back street in the town centre, the place looked pretty ramshackle and as we went in the young man manning the place barely looked up from his newspaper, good start!

We asked him if a package had arrived for us, having not yet caught up with email we didn't have a waybill number but we figured that not too many Egan's lived in Mbeya so it shouldn't be too hard to locate. Clearly unhappy about being disturbed he didn't even give a cursory check but just said no, was he sure we asked? yes he said he would know if it was here.

As we left we noticed for the first time the huge mound of parcels and letters just tossed in the corner, shit if this was their filing system and the Carnet was here then we were in trouble, we would have to come back with the waybill number and just hoped that Paul at the RAC had emailed it by now.

We walked round to the Post Office which also serves as an Internet Cafe and thankfully amongst all our mail was one from Paul confirming the DHL details. However, by now we were supposed to meet Francis for lunch so it would have to wait.

Francis was waiting when we got to the restaurant, a place  called 'Sombrero', a strange name for an African restaurant  specialising in serving curry dishes! Francis recommended we try the veggie curry so we ordered beers while we waited for the food and wait we did. Ages went by so two beers later with still no sign of the food I decided to rush round to the DHL office to try for the Carnet again.

By now a lady had arrived to join the guy at DHL so figuring she couldn't be any worse I gave her the waybill number. She leafed through an old exercise book but could not find it, Pauls email  said the Carnet had been sent by courier over a week ago, so it should have arrived by now.

I asked her to check again but she was adamant it wasn't there, she asked who the sender was and I said the RAC, suddenly this triggered a response in the guy.  He recognised the word RAC and in a sudden frenzy of activity he dived into the pile in the corner and after rooting about triumphantly came up with a package in his hand - on it it was a label with our name in big letters and the waybill number!

I was too relieved it was here to worry about giving them a hard time about their record keeping, on their part they acted like 'how good are we locating your document so quickly'!

Rushing back to the restaurant I found Sue and Francis had finished their curry, mine was waiting for me, it was luke warm but quite good, even though it had taken nearly an hour to arrive! By now the weather was turning cloudy and the air very heavy and humid so as we were absolutely knackered Francis gave us a lift back to Utengule, Katavi had taken its toll on us also. 

Next morning we got a lift into town stopping at the garage to see how Rup was doing. Quite a few of the jobs had been completed and to our delight Ari reckoned everything would be ready by the end of the day. The total cost would be 1,080,000 TSHS about £500 which considering what was done was excellent, in the UK it would have been at least twice that.

The next problem was rustling up the cash, virtually nowhere in Tanzania takes credit cards, only cash, so getting together over a million shillings in one day would take some doing. We had hoped that Francis could help by paying Ari from Utengule cash and we pay him back via credit card but that would give him too much trouble balancing the books.

The other way would be to make a bank transfer from our UK bank account to the garages bank account in Tanzania. Ari gave us their account details and we tried calling our bank on the International number they had given us but the number just kept ringing out, no answer. We had till 11am GMT to make the transfer after that we would have to wait till the following week in which case of course we could not get Rupert back and could not carry on Northwards.

By now it was 12.30pm, 10.30am in the UK, we kept trying the number and sent the bank an urgent email saying we couldn't get through but it was all to no avail, the bank didn't answer and we missed the deadline.  The only thing we could now try was to get the cash from the local ATMs but could we get enough, the most the ATM's would issue in one transaction was just 200,000 TSHS so would we be allowed to make multiple withdrawals in one day?

It was a rush but in the end by going from bank to bank we managed to pull together TSHS 800,000 which was good and we could make up the balance from what we had in US$ & GBP. However, all this had taken time so now we had a last minute dash to get back to the garage before they closed for the weekend.

Since 1pm a heavy storm had been raging over Mbeya, November marks the beginning of the short rains in East Africa and this year it was starting early which didn't bode well for our travels on into Kenya.

At the garage Rupert was all finished, ready for the next stage of our travels, it was good to get him back, we had heard that the roads in Kenya where very bad so the new gas shocks and re-enforced suspension would be needed. We also needed to re-stock with food and drink before leaving Mbeya but that would have to wait till tomorrow.  

Next morning we had to clean Rupert before we could re-pack everything. The problem we face whenever Rupert goes in for  work is he is so full of irreplaceable stuff is we either have to stay with him for the whole day or if in overnight or longer empty the cab, sometimes the roof and even the back box - so each time its feels like your moving house !

The rest of the day was spent rushing about getting as much as we could for the next stage of our journey through Tanzania. Our next stop would be Iringa, 200 miles away, but this would just be an overnight stop,  after that we would be back in the bush in Ruaha NP, one of the largest wilderness areas in Africa.

Supermarkets do not exist in Mbeya, shopping in the town markets mainly consists of small Dukkas or roadside stalls. The only places which remotely resemble shops are the Ndiyo mini market, owned by a Russian woman and her Tanzanian husband, where you stand behind the counter and the assistants fetch what you need or the Oil Com petrol station which has a tiny mini mart attached.

Your choice is very limited but they really are the only show in town, so much that as we left Oil Com a wedding car pulled up decorated with balloons and ribbons and out stepped the bride and groom who rushed into the mart, re-appearing soon after with carrier bags full of stuff!

Mbeya would also be our last access to the internet for at least a week so we spent what time we had left doing email, bank and website. Last job was to fill up with fuel, 92 litres in fact, which cost TSHS 124,000 about £50, it had been a frenetic week but finally we were ready for the off to Iringa in the morning!