Hamadi
“Wait”, he said, “I come with you, till you have tickets”.
And so Hamadi walked with us into the ferry terminal, acted as interpreter as we bought return tickets to Zanzibar, and only bid farewell when he’d seen us safely through the ticket barrier. Such actions were completely in character. Over our eight days together, Hamadi had become so much more than our driver and guide, and by now we felt a real warmth and friendship as we said our last goodbyes. He was also probably one of the most handsome men either of us had ever seen! Hamadi scribbled his phone number on a scrap of paper.
“Call me when you get back to Dar-es-Salaam, maybe we have another beer”.
“We will, we will, thank you so much Hamadi”
And he was gone. Hamadi was descended from the Masai tribe – his ever present red shuka (shawl) displays this – and was the archetypal softly spoken gentle giant. A large man, his manner was peaceful and kind, helpful and caring, and absolutely nothing was a problem. Occasionally Hamadi would join us for a post-safari evening beer and teach us Swahili, even teaching the words to his favourite lullaby which he sang regularly.
“It’s my song to my guardian angel”, he explained.
So it had been a shock to see the rage which engulfed Hamadi when armed police pulled us over at a roadblock somewhere on the remote and potholed dusty road south of Mikumi. Suddenly this peaceful gentle giant seemed to double in size as he faced the raised guns with anger, shouts, and bulging eyes. This epitome of calm had become a personification of rage. We sat tight inside the minibus.
Frighteningly, guns were still pointed at our bus as Hamadi sat heavily in the driver’s seat, hit the gas pedal and bolted away, leaving plumes of dust behind. It was a while before anyone spoke.
“I am solly”, he said, “those are bad people”.
“The police?”
His face relaxed a little.
“They are not police. They are robbers. Bandits pretending to be police”.
We fell silent as we processed this and assessed just how much danger we may have been in just now.
“Hamadi, I think I should buy your beer tonight”.
He just smiled and fixed his eyes back on the potholes.
Just a few days later, returning from a dug-out canoe adventure on the Colombero River, our hearts missed a beat as we came upon another road block, more “police”, more guns at the ready. Except this time, there was no character change from Hamadi, instead he retained his usual peaceful air and talked respectfully and calmly.
“It’s OK”, he said to us through the open window, “this time it is the real police”.
We breathed a sigh of relief as Hamadi reached for something under the dashboard.
“I have to pay fine for small problem”.
Back on the road, we were eager for explanations.
“Why were you fined Hamadi?”
“Small problem”, he explained calmly, “everything good apart from one small problem. They make me pay fine because of just one problem. Sometimes they take no money but today they make me pay”.
A few miles down the road, Hamadi showed me the “small problem”, which was the “small” issue of one of the minibus wheels missing half of its wheel nuts. For five or six days we had been travelling on dangerous potholed dirt roads, traversing off-road bush country, covering hundreds of miles, passing through lion country, with a half-fixed wheel which could have fallen off at any time.
“Hamadi”, I said, “maybe it’s your turn to buy the beer”.
The safari days were good too, by the way – see gallery below.
