The Arusha bus terminus is as busy as any, but over the past few months, things have become even more crowded.
A new bus route has opened up… to a destination that even Tanzanians themselves hadn’t heard of until a few days ago.
The Ngorongoro-Loliondo route, taking passengers north of Arusha, is by far the most popular here. Fourty-four-year-old Ibrahim Ahmed Kapiendo knows this very well.
He’s a ticket clerk here, but brisk business isn’t his only reason for his belief in this route and who it leads to. Behind his eyes lie a testimony that is being told and retold throughout Tanzania.
Until March 5 this year, Ibrahim was suffering from glaucoma — a degenerative eye disorder which eventually causes blindness — and high blood pressure. So he booked himself a ticket to Loliondo.
“After I got there, Babu gave me a concoction of herbs to drink. I have been cured since,” he says.
The man he’s referring to as Babu is 76-year-old Ambilikile Mwasapile, and, over the past few months, Tanzanians have been inundated with stories of the man and his miracle cure for all chronic diseases known to mankind.
The tale of this septuagenarian from Loliondo is quickly becoming legend. Thousands have trooped to his tiny hamlet, some dying along the way, in a pilgrimage that few here could have comprehended just a year ago.
And so we decided to go and see for ourselves. At Namanga, the border town straddling Kenya and Tanzania, we only needed to get out of our car for people to mob us, volunteering stories about Mwasapile and his lure.
We were advised not to go through Arusha and northward to Loliondo, but instead to go through Magadiinto, which, according to them, was the ‘better’ route.
Right from the outskirts of Magadi, nearly every car we met was headed to, or from, Loliondo — on this pilgrimage of faith.
The journey itself is a test of faith, taking you from the marshes of Shompole; across rivers in Pinyiny, the southernmost settlement right at the border between Kenya and northern Tanzania; and along the shores of Lake Natron. It’s a 300-kilometre ride that is not easy to get through, as we found out. And we weren’t carrying any sick people.
As we drew closer though, the carnage from a punishing road began to show itself; cars broken down in the most remote of places, hundreds of kilometres from help. After close to seven hours of travel, we were there — or at least we thought so.
So shocking was the abruptness of, from what I could judge, a seven-kilometre traffic jam snaking through the middle of nowhere.
All we could do was look as men and women and children, weary, but heartened by the fact that they had finally reached their promised land, trooped slowly towards the head of the end of this jam.
On one side of the compound stood an open-air waiting room full of patients suffering from all ailments, all waiting to see just one man. It seemed an impossible task for any man.
We had barely taken all this in when we heard a throbbing sound above, and peered into the sky to behold a helicopter rising from the pit of the Mwegaro Hills ahead of us.
We had heard tales of extremely rich invalids being flown here (for Sh40,000) to drink the concoction offered by Mwasapile. This was the evidence.
After convincing the patients that we were only here as reporters and not patients, we got to the front of the line.
And there we were confronted with an image that confirms both the faith that people here have in this drink, and the desperation that walks hand-in-hand with this belief.
The Arusha bus terminus is as busy as any, but over the past few months, things have become even more crowded.
A new bus route has opened up… to a destination that even Tanzanians themselves hadn’t heard of until a few days ago.
The Ngorongoro-Loliondo route, taking passengers north of Arusha, is by far the most popular here. Fourty-four-year-old Ibrahim Ahmed Kapiendo knows this very well.
He’s a ticket clerk here, but brisk business isn’t his only reason for his belief in this route and who it leads to. Behind his eyes lie a testimony that is being told and retold throughout Tanzania.
Until March 5 this year, Ibrahim was suffering from glaucoma — a degenerative eye disorder which eventually causes blindness — and high blood pressure. So he booked himself a ticket to Loliondo.
“After I got there, Babu gave me a concoction of herbs to drink. I have been cured since,” he says.
The man he’s referring to as Babu is 76-year-old Ambilikile Mwasapile, and, over the past few months, Tanzanians have been inundated with stories of the man and his miracle cure for all chronic diseases known to mankind.
The tale of this septuagenarian from Loliondo is quickly becoming legend. Thousands have trooped to his tiny hamlet, some dying along the way, in a pilgrimage that few here could have comprehended just a year ago.
And so we decided to go and see for ourselves. At Namanga, the border town straddling Kenya and Tanzania, we only needed to get out of our car for people to mob us, volunteering stories about Mwasapile and his lure.
We were advised not to go through Arusha and northward to Loliondo, but instead to go through Magadiinto, which, according to them, was the ‘better’ route.
Right from the outskirts of Magadi, nearly every car we met was headed to, or from, Loliondo — on this pilgrimage of faith.
The journey itself is a test of faith, taking you from the marshes of Shompole; across rivers in Pinyiny, the southernmost settlement right at the border between Kenya and northern Tanzania; and along the shores of Lake Natron. It’s a 300-kilometre ride that is not easy to get through, as we found out. And we weren’t carrying any sick people.
As we drew closer though, the carnage from a punishing road began to show itself; cars broken down in the most remote of places, hundreds of kilometres from help. After close to seven hours of travel, we were there — or at least we thought so.
So shocking was the abruptness of, from what I could judge, a seven-kilometre traffic jam snaking through the middle of nowhere.
All we could do was look as men and women and children, weary, but heartened by the fact that they had finally reached their promised land, trooped slowly towards the head of the end of this jam.
On one side of the compound stood an open-air waiting room full of patients suffering from all ailments, all waiting to see just one man. It seemed an impossible task for any man.
We had barely taken all this in when we heard a throbbing sound above, and peered into the sky to behold a helicopter rising from the pit of the Mwegaro Hills ahead of us.
We had heard tales of extremely rich invalids being flown here (for Sh40,000) to drink the concoction offered by Mwasapile. This was the evidence.
After convincing the patients that we were only here as reporters and not patients, we got to the front of the line.
And there we were confronted with an image that confirms both the faith that people here have in this drink, and the desperation that walks hand-in-hand with this belief.
