Gory New Year

At 5am, when it was still pitch black, I was down at the Al Saedy bus company office, boarding for the long ride back to Dar es Salaam. As the light appeared over the Southern Highlands the landscape was stunning, even with the bus’s green strip lighting permeating the ambience.

One of the half dozen TV screens on the bus was eight inches from my face, and the entertainment options were…gorily eclectic. It began with some raucous boxing matches including one featuring a Tanzanian versus someone from Birmingham. I will never understand the strength of boxing as a source of ‘entertainment’. Surely it brings out the most base instincts of humans. Anyway, the Tanzanian pummelled the Brummie and the Brummie went away bloodied and dazed.

Then we had Britain’s Got Talent ‘Most Dangerous Acts’ compilation on mute during which I watched an escapologist almost drown in chains in a water-filled box and a knife-thrower almost impale Declan Donnelly.

Then we had a pirate copy of Beast, a recent film starring Idris Elba fighting off a marauding lion in South Africa. I had to be careful being in close confines and watching the gory injury shots, remembering the time I vomited on a plane from Chengdu to Amsterdam watching Naomi Watts and her tsunami debris injuries in The Impossible. I checked and I didn’t blip about this at the time as apparently I was more coy in 2012/13. Anyway the upshot was that on this journey I couldn’t pause watching because who wants to voluntarily switch off from Idris Elba. Which is something else I wouldn’t have written ten years ago. Hallelujah for living one’s truth with gay abandon.

Mercifully we then had some classic music videos including Sacrifice by Elton John. Lionel Richie was next, crooning ‘is it me you’re looking for?’ whilst hovering around a blind woman. You’d like to think things would be done more subtly now.

The highway passes through Mikumi National Park with plenty of impala, giraffe, zebra and warthogs seen from the road. Mikumi is one of the more accessible wildlife parks from Dar es Salaam and I made a mental note to return.

Overall the journey took about 10 hours, which could have been a lot worse. The entertainment could have been less gruesome. Swings and roundabouts.

I went to the supermarket for some groceries on my return. I used the very handy Bolt app to order a tuk-tuk for the return journey, which usually involves a brief phone call from the driver to check the requester isn’t a bot, scammer or someone with rogue GPS settings.

As I clambered in the driver said, ‘I think it is a black man and it is a white man’, referring to my accent on the phone. Maybe the recent traipsing about the country has had a positive impact on my Swahili skills. Hurrah for gradual assimilation.

Happy New Year.