A Mystery Solved

In Tanzania, as in the United Kingdom, cars travel on the left side of the road and on-coming traffic travels on the right. At least, that is the case on paved roads. That is not the case for Abdul Wakill Road.

The road outside the orphanage is an unpaved stretch of dirt that is dusty when it is dry and slick with greasy clay when it is raining. Even at the best of times, drivers seldom follow the official rules of the road. Instead, they drive on the left, on the right, or in the middle -- whichever side is least like to snap the vehicle's suspension by hitting potholes that resemble ravines.

When I first got here I asked someone knowledgeable why the roads were so bumpy. He looked at me as if I were an idiot and replied, "Because the rains wash the dirt away." It was a good lesson in framing questions effectively. What I should have asked, "Why does nobody repair the roads so that they are not so bumpy?"

Today, I discovered the answer. It is not, as I suspected, because Tanzania is a poor country with little money to spend on repairing country roads. Nor, as I discovered, was it that the orphanage is too far out in the sticks to make it worth the politicians' while to repair the road. The truth is that they do make at least a token attempt to repair the road.

I discovered this as I headed down Abdul Wakill to a duka to buy some Coca Cola for Mama Christina and me. As I walked down the road, I noticed it was far dustier than it should have been, even considering that it has not rained in over a week. The more dust I kicked up, the stranger it seemed, until it suddenly dawned on me that the dirt I was kicking up had a different consistency than the hard, packed earth that formed the rest of the road. The soft, sifted soil was only found in the mini-arroyos, which meant that someone had attempted to fix the road.