Kibaya Repeater
Paare Mountains in the background, Pangani bridge in the foreground
Which way to go in the Ruvu Rimit?
Lunch on the way
After not seeing any cars a bus came..
...who had destroyed the road completely!
Finally reaching the "Post Mountain" in Kibaya
Our tent at the next morning
Clearing the bushes around the transmitter
Lunch
Lore taking Solar panels off
Re-filling destilled water of the batteries
Placing new fence poles
And fixing the fence again
A wonderful fiew of our camping place
Our cutter broke when taking the nails out with it
Nailing the iron sheets onto the roof
Ready !
Storing all the solar panels in the car
Shortly before Kondoa
On Tuesday afternoon
I went to town to purchase the material as fence poles, nails corrugated iron sheets etc.
On Wednesday
March 23rd 2011 we took of to drive to Kibaya after passing a steel pipe needed to
prepare the pipes for Oldeani Transmitter at the studio. We also had to get more money at
the ATM, fill diesel and buy enough drinking water bottles.
We choose the route
through Handeni, because it proved to be the less strain one for the car the last time.
Unfortunately no one could tell us whether the road is still passing. We just tried it to
cross the Ruvu at Handeni, cross the Ruvu Rimit until we continued the journey to
Engathmet. At the low points of Ruvu Rimit the soil was quite muddy because the heavy
rains have already started the day before. We were sure we could not return there after
another day of rains and more cars digging on the road.
Even between
Engathmet and Kibaya a bus got stuck and made the road impossible to be passed again.
Fortunately we found a way around through the bush.
We reached the
"Post mountain" close to Kibaya just a few minutes before night. The way up
nearly brought the Landrover Defender 130 to its upper limits, because it was so bad
detoriated by the rains of the last years. We had to pitch our tent there in the dark.
The next morning I
started to drill the rivits holding the solar panels while Lore refilled the water in the
solar batteries. Unfortunately the over/ undervoltage protector was destroyed by a
thunderstorm I have to take it o Moshi and repaire it. I connected all the 8 battery
chargers and made shure they are working. In the afternoon we could start taking the first
solar panels off after disconnecting every each one. We employed two watchmen to cut the
bushes within the ground.
The next morning
Lore helped me to take further nails off the rich cover and take down the second half of
the solar panels on the other side. In the afternoon unto night I nailed the iron sheets
on the place of the solar panels to cover the roof again. During night we packed the solar
panels into the car and tied them up for the bad road.
After giving the
transmitter the final test on Tanesco operation, we took down our tent and went down the
mountain. Again it was close the car would fail due to the extreme steep, washed out way
up. At the bottom we had to rearrange all the solar panels again in the back. Luckily no
one was broken.
Because we were sure
the road we came would be no longer passable because of the rains we got, we had to take
another road home. One solution would have been the one through Korogwe. But it would have
been another 70 km further on bad, stony roads than the one passing through Kondoa. So we
took this one. Unfortunately it was as stony as the one to Korogwe up to Babatiu were we
were very lucky to hit the new tomarked road to Arusha via Makuyuni.
It was dark shortly
after Babati, and there was one detour left of about 10 km through a stony, muddy way.
Between Makuyuni and Arusha we passed by many cars coming from Lolyondo, many of them in a
poor condition. We felt pity about all the people freezing on the back of pickups.
We arrived safely at
home in Moshi around 23 hours at night.
Martin Ahnert
March 28st 2011
Feiew down from the "Post mountain"
Sunset