Darkness, Then Light, On a Road in Tanzania

Travel Blog  •  Jim Benning  •  07.01.06 | 11:29 AM ET

How often do the best travel stories in newspapers appear outside the travel section? At least half the time, I’d say, and today’s New York Times has a good example. In an eloquent opinion piece, Verlyn Klinkenborg writes about arriving in Tanzania after sundown and the ride from the airport into Arusha on a darkened highway. “Again and again, the lights caught people walking along the side of the road — past the edges of the fields and in the dusty track beside the asphalt,” Klinkenborg writes. “They were not hastening. Some wheeled heavily loaded bicycles. Many carried five-gallon plastic buckets, in every way those buckets could be carried. Some were dressed up, with surprising formality, for the evening ahead, although why the formality surprised me is a good question. They came into view for a second or two and then vanished. As for the country beyond them, it might have looked like anything — like savannah, like forest, like the canals of Mars.” Over the next week, the road and Arusha are illuminated for Klinkenborg, literally and metaphorically.

Tags: Africa, Tanzania


1 Comment for Darkness, Then Light, On a Road in Tanzania

rabilu abbas ibrahim 07.06.06 | 10:22 AM ET

good day i want you send me more information

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