55. Tanzania: Mwanza Tabora Dar es Salaam

Most of what we had heard about Tanzania was the failed collective farm experiment, the overall low income per capita and the crackdown on black-marketeers.  Almost as an afterthought people would add that Julius Nyerere was considered to be honest, and that the government was not corrupt by comparison with other African countries.  In this blog this became evident with the comparatively smooth-functioning railways.  They left on time, and even 3^rd class was supposed to have guaranteed seating.  This was in huge contrast to Zaire, where even in Deluxe class you could get kicked out, down and around if a military officer wanted your seats. There were even relatively new railroad cars, where by comparison, resource-rich Zaire´s entire transportation system seemed to date from 1926.

In our previous blog we had made a 36 hour hitch hike ride from near the Rwandan border so we were recovering from this.

We have very clear memories of the unique scenery in Mwanza, but somehow we came away without very satisfactory photographs. 30 years later Dan was in Kisumu on the Kenyan side of Lake Victoria.  It is definietly a unique part of the world, and it would have interesting to be involved in the building of the railways and lake steamer services.

 

Our route through Tanzania.  The rail travel is shown with red dots, road travel in yellow

Mwanza, Tanzania, Wednesday, 1 June, 1983

(HELENA) It goes without saying that we both slept very, very well. Last night we asked what time breakfast would be served, and we thought we understood the young woman to say 7:00. I was up in plenty of time, but finally we decided I had better see if they would bring it to the room. (The only other place we have had breakfast included in the price was in Banjul, also a former British Colony and there they brought it to the door.[1]) They were serving it down­stairs, so we went down and enjoyed a full breakfast of omelet, bread, banana, and a little pot apiece of sweet chai.

When Bashir dropped us off last night, he said he would come by to see us at 11:00. We washed some clothes in order to take advantage of the nice drying roof and Dan went out in search of cheaper lodgings. Bashir never came, and since the hotel management really wanted us out by 10:00, we packed up (wet clothes and all) and moved to the Afrika guest house. We could not even understand the registry book, and the people in charge do not speak English, but they are very friendly, and the place is very clean.

We re-hung our wet clothes on a line we strung in the room and went out in search of nourishment. There are a lot of restaurants in the market district, and they seem to have standardized prices. The prices are rather high since we are dealing on the official ex­change rate. After all of the rumors we had heard about Tanzania, the market was a pleasant surprise. True, there are not many imported items (Dan did see a lot of canned mango juice from India) but there is a lot of variety in fruits, lots of peanuts, and plenty of dried corn and split peas. We shall probably perish without our daily fix of bread, but that’s life. We have seen none for sale on the street, and Bashir said wheat flour is very scarce.

Dan went looking for Bashir in the late afternoon, but as he was working on a truck with a group of friends, he told Dan he would come by to see us tonight. He never did show up.

Something that has amazed us about Mwanza is the high Indian population. I am looking forward to getting to a place where I can read up on exactly how all of them got here[2]. It seems as though there is at least one Indian sitting in the door of virtually all of the shops.

Our supper was original: cooked corn on the cob (bought on the street) raw peanuts, and oranges. Not at all bad (Dan).

Mwanza, Tanzania, Thursday 2 June, 1983

(DAN) We stirred early, had our café con leche, washed our clothes, and hit the street. We were very relaxed yesterday and had gotten no information about further travel. Our first stop was the post office situated near the shorefront area. Even at the official rate letters here are reasonable again after Rwanda. In Rwanda it cost $1.50 to send an install­ment of the diary; here it costs $ .60. The service was polite and efficient. Post offices and immigration offices have become our “dip sticks” for bureaucratic health.

Next stop was the train station. A train leaves every night for Dar es Salaam for a trip of 36 hours. First we were told that we should come EARLY the next morning to buy tickets; however we decided to brave a short line to see if I could at least reserve our seats ahead of time. Not only was that possible, but if I had the money I could actually buy the tickets 36 hours ahead of time and no hours of growing agony --impressive! Second class is actually affordable, and we figure that the difference between it and third class may be two nights of semi-sleep against no rest at all. Third class had a most un-inviting line of people snaking through the dust for tonight’s train, and we just are not up to the hassle. We are fast becoming snobs.

We stopped by a travel agency to get some information. There is no tourist office here, and we were curious about a “Sukuma Museum” marked well out of town on our Michelin map. We found that we could get there by taking a bus from the market to a town called Kisesa, and then walking out of the town. We walked through the market and picked up some glorious tangerines on our way to the bus.

The bus situation was very confusing. There is a large open area where people are queuing for buses in about 20 places, none of them marked. We finally found somebody who could speak a little English, and he pointed out where we should wait for the bus to Kisesa, but he had never heard of the museum. After 20 minutes we had about given up and were going to see if we could hitch out. Just then a large bus appeared with someone yelling “Kisesa, Kisesa,” and we joined the rush. Miraculously the line formed against the side of the bus where I happened to be, and we actually got seats. We did not know how much it cost or if it was really taking us to the right town. As we pulled out, Helena remarked, “I believe this is the most ‘hang loose’ thing we have done.”

About 30 minutes later we pulled into Kisesa and found the fare to be 5 sh. Not bad. But we still had not found anybody who registered when we said “Sukuma Museum”.  We went into the only restaurant to get something to eat, as it was noon by now. We asked for Wali ya Maharagwe (rice and beans) but they had none. Yes, they had rice and meat, so we sat down. After 10 minutes of non-communication, they finally made us understand that they only had tea and a slezi of bread, so we had THAT.

We are having the hardest time communicating here in Tanzania since our first days in Morocco. We experienced something of the same sensation when entering Nigeria. In both places there are strong local trade languages (Swahili and Hausa) but in general it appears that the British were less concerned with “Europeanizing” than were the French. However Nigeria, West Cameroon, and now Tanzania are the only places we have seen “common people” reading newspapers. I would like to see what is written on this subject.

Well, we did find a sign indicating the Sukuma Museum, and after a 30 minute walk up a hill, we arrived. Both of us were expecting some kind of a museum with a lot of explanation and colonial artifacts as Mwanza is the area where Speke first came upon Lake Victoria and “the source of the Nile”. The museum is actually a collection of a few huts and six or seven newish concrete struc­tures of different designs with Navajo-like designs painted on the exterior. We had difficulty raising anybody, but finally found a Danish man who took us to the apropriate man.

The entire place is a Catholic mission and is a combination museum, handicraft school and workshop. They have a most interesting collection of 12 huge drums (“200 years old”) that are used when coronations take place. “Sukuma” turned out to be the federation of many smaller tribes in the Mwanza area into a great chieftainship. The drums were made of hollowed-out logs in longish funnel shape with cow skins drawn over both ends. The largest was about 1.2 meters in diameter and about 1.5 meters high. They had a really good tone.

A drum at the Sukuma museum and Helena´s smile when she is around a musical instrument.

Another notable display was a room showing various dancing and witchcraft accoutre­ments of the two main factions in the federation. He also took us on a tour of a “real live” local hut, including two grumbling “natives”. The hut was large and circular with another circular hut inside. As we understood it, the inner hut is for the parents and calves while the outside area was for children and also held the kitchen. The walls are similar to the style eastern Bolivia with a framework of poles filled in with mud (mud and wattle); however these had many more upright rather than cross poles.

Next was a visit to the different workshops --woodcarving, sewing, weaving (with western looms), pottery and brick kiln. The Danish woman here teaches pottery.  There is obviously a system of making indigenous pottery, but it was apparent that they were using western style wheels and turning out mugs and other western “artsy” items.

Finally, with a great flourish our guide unlocked the door to the little store, and a group of people crowded in to watch the two tourists buy all those mugs and little deco­rations. We left a contribution with the guide even though he was looking very pointedly at the $20 - 30 wood-carvings. Helena and I agree that this place coincided with our theory that handcrafts produced for the tourists look more like their counterparts over the world than objects in the local homes.

Back in Mwanza we spent the evening walking along one of the two bays. Mwanza is another unique city. It is composed almost entirely of two to four story once-white build­ings. There are hills on all sides except the two bays, and these hills are covered with rounded granite boulders, many of them delicately balanced. The bay we walked along appears to be the shallower one and is used mainly by sail boats of various sizes bringing in loads of bananas, charcoal, fish, and fruit. Just as almost all of the store keepers are Indian, the boat and shore people are black (as are the hotel keepers).

Mwanza neighborhood amonst the boulder strewn hills.  Lake Victoria in the background.

Some of the buildings along the shoreline date from the 1940’s. One was the regional Red Cross Center: “Dedicated by Lady Twinning, wife of the Governor of Tanganyika Colony”, etc.

Up on a hill, one of two that rise in the town itself, there is some kind of stone fort with ramparts and turrets at at least two of the corners. The other hill has some extra buildings on it.

We had corn and peanuts again for supper and spent the evening getting ready for our departure the next day.

Mwanza, Tanzania,  Friday, 3 June, 1983

(HELENA) Checkout time in Tanzania is 1000, so we got started early in order to wash our pack covers and big plastic bags that we used to protect our packs from dust and charcoal. As usual, I washed a couple of my things, and since they did not have time to dry, I had to pack them while damp. Somehow we managed to communicate with the two men in charge (they may understand some English, but they do not have the nerve to speak it) that we would like to leave our luggage there all day and return to pick it up closer to train time. Once again they proved to be helpful and let us leave the things in our room.

We had almost 12 hours to kill, so we had a most leisurely day of walking around town. First stop was the bank. We tried a couple before we found the one that would change money. The woman took care of Dan immediately, and the process only took 30 minutes this time. They had stickers there advertising several kinds of travelers’ cheques --including Tanzanian shilling travelers’ cheques. Hard to imagine who would use those.

We then climbed the smaller of the two hills that sprout in the middle of the town. We had understood that the neat old house that shared the top of the hill with several huge, balanced boulders was part of an Indian hospital, but it was a house. We asked a young man what the house was; “My house”; and when was it built: “1960”. I suppose we replied politely, but within us it was “1960, my foot!” It was one of these old houses of which I am so fond, complete with circular tower and staircases. We decided he might have said “1916”, although it may have been earlier than that.

We are seeing a different type of dress on the women in Mwanza. Of course, there are several different Indian styles that are new, but the “African” women dress differently as well. Now it is fairly common for them to have a cloth over their heads “á la Mary” rather than in a head wrap. There seems to be a great predominance of yellow cloth with green prints. Maybe it is just what the national cloth company has in stock.

A vivid memory I carry of Mwanza is of a street that winds around the base of the smaller, rocky hill. It is narrow with a large Hindu hospital on one side and a Sikh temple against the mountain. People had stalls set up among boulders and in the shade of a huge tree that grows from between the rocks. I hit this street soon after I first started looking for hotels and was struck by the variety and change of race, dress, and even wares.

We were feeling a bit weak with hunger so we decided to return to our rest­aurant and each get a plate of rice and beans. We topped it off with chai. Dan is the one who realized what makes this place’s chai special; it is well laced with ginger. We made a stop at the market for another kilo of raw peanuts, oranges and lemons, and we were set for the big train ride. The only trouble was that we still had 8 hours before departure time.

We dropped our supplies off at the guest house and climbed the other, bigger hill to see the fort. Since we could not find anyone to tell us, we decided that it must date back to the days when Tanganyika was a German colony. It is built of the stone that dominates the Mwanza region (but it is the only building we have seen out of stone) and is the only thing on the whole hill. We sat outside it for a good while, just gazing at the lake and the different parts of Mwanza.

Sailboat on Lake Victoria, Mwanza.

Down the hill and over toward the big docks we had seen from on top. We ended up looking across at the docks from right beside the “Mwanza Yacht Club” (discretely small). We were also right beside an old wazungu graveyard. The oldest graves were from between 1896 and 1906 and belonged to different soldiers of the Kaiserlichen Schutztruppe (about six of them).  There were two each of British born in South Africa and Boers, one from Transvaal and one from Friestaat. The rest were fairly evenly divided between British and Portuguese names. Fascinating! A lot of the graves had lost their identification, but still it showed what sorts of foreigners have been through.

Before having a tea-time “Double Cola” (the only kind of soda we have seen in Tan­zania although there are a lot of old fashioned Coke and Fanta signs) we stopped by the station to check on the departure time of our train. Unchanged, AND we had the unheard of luxury of going through the gates and climbing on the cars to see where we would be. Before doing that we checked the “berthing lists” and discovered that MRS. ROBINSON was down for cabin B while MR. ROBBINSON had been assigned to cabin F. Yep, folks, they are so or­ganized here that they have segregated cabins. I do not know if Dan and I can manage to travel 36 hours without each other.

We decided to return to the station right after our drink, even though we would be more than 3 hours early and our seats were reserved. Dan had another opportunity to chat with the station master. That has been unheard of for the other trains we have taken; things have always so hectic and disorganized that no one has time for the poor passenger. When we complimented him on the Tanzanian Railways, he said that even for the third class, everyone is assured of a seat.

They let us through the gates promptly at 18:00, the coaches were cleaned out and waiting for us, and there was no rush. Dan and I put our packs under the seats in our respective cabins and got down to wait our 3 hours. Dan wrote some on the journal, and we speculated on the different passengers. My trip promised to be most interesting because eventually I learned that my cabin mates would be a Tanzanian nun, a woman with two children, two young single women (I later talked to one of them, a chemistry teacher) and at a later station another woman joined us with her baby. Our train left promptly at 21:00, but it took a while for the smoke to clear in Cabin B. Aside from the extra

children, there were two husbands who spent time there and a couple of boyfriends. There was plenty of luggage to accompany all of the activity. (As Dan said, though, it is a good thing not everyone carries as much as we do. Ed: I’ll bet they are glad they decided to leave the guitar at home.)  Dan settled down on a top bunk and I chose a middle one. There are three tiers of bunks on each of two sides, or six in all.

Tabora - Dodoma, Tanzania, Saturday, June 4, 1983

(DAN) I had a good night in compartment F. Even though my bunk was above window level, the window was left open and the exhaust fan worked to where my sleeping bag felt mighty nice. We all agreed to have the lights off as well. Helena, in the nurs­ery, had a different story. Yet another woman and baby materialized during the night. Their window was shut tight and the light, though faint, was left on --but the fan did work.

The coaches are the nicest we have traveled in yet. Second class here is in many ways more comfortable than our deluxe in Zaire. They are cleaner, the lights and win­dows work, and we even have running water in each compartment. The coaches are from about 1978-1980, so the railways here are intent on a little upkeep. We have seen a good number of well-painted old box cars which would support the idea.  The coaches were made in England, but evidently with Tanzania or the Third World in mind. Our coach had three W.C.’s, two “low types” and one “high type”.  I, personally, have changed my allegiance on this trip, to the low or French type, with two slippery footprints.

We went north-south all night and moved from late rainy season well into the dry season. Then as we went from Tabora east through Dodoma, it got constantly drier until it took on a Sahelian appearance. To our amazement, just as in Upper Volta and Niger, the drier it got, the denser the population and the heavier the cultivation.  By mid-afternoon it was solid millet fields. Where it was not cultivated, it was heavily over-grazed. It is amazing after the green expanses of the Kagera region. I wonder how much of it has to do with the tse-tse fly.

We did not see many women, but the dress of the men in the country has changed radically. Many of them wear a kind of toga and all appeared to carry staffs.

Helena came to our compartment to eat breakfast since the men got down during the two hours we were in Tabora. Thereafter there were seldom more than two other men in the compartment, so after asking permission, Helena remained with us the rest of the day. I am sure she preferred the quiet, masculine pensiveness and so­briety over the feminine chaos of the nursery. The long delay in Tabora and one in Dodoma were the only times we stopped for very long. We must have taken on cars at both places because we ended up with 15 passenger coaches on our train. This trip of approximately 1100 kms. is the longest continuous run we have made.

It was interesting to watch the vendors in Dodoma. Many of them had cheap bows and arrows, wooden cars, etc. for sale. These were not for wazungus but for the Tanzan­ians. Some of the “best-clothes-presents-for-everybody” phenomenon we have seen across Africa. One of my compartment mates did not appear to have any baggage, and I think he barely ate all the trip, but he bought a bow and arrow set.

For supper we actually braved the embarrassment, got out our burner and had something hot to drink. Then after packing Helena back to the nursery, we had another pleasant, gently rocking night. The window was shut forcibly, so with just the fan it was a pajamas and sheet night. I wonder how many bacpackers  in Africa sleep in their pajamas on trains.

I am not sure but what I caught some gentle smiles among the Aussies in Burundi and Rwanda when I appeared thus clothed. It surely makes all the difference when you wake up and CHANGE to get dressed[3].

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Sunday, 5 June, 1983

(HELENA) We awakened to find ourselves in humid, green countryside. During the night the nun had left Compartment B, but we had added two young women in her place. I slept on the top bunk this time, so I felt fairly removed from the activity. It was raining as we pulled into the Dar es Salaam station (at 8:00 sharp, right on time) so Dan and I decided to play it really cool. After everyone else was long gone, there we sat preparing and sipping our cafe con leche. We could not possibly forego that little luxury. I will admit that I was a little nervous about the possibility that the train might decide to go park while we were still there, so I gulped rather than sipped and managed to burn my tongue. (Almost every time we have bought Tanzanian chai, it has been so hot that we have burned our tongues.)

Finding lodgings in “Dar” (the way “with-it” people say it) is not simple even though you see guest house and hotel signs all over certain parts of town. For one thing they tend to be full and they are  rather pricey for us. After asking at two places (one full and the other $ l8 for bed and breakfast), with both of us trooping in and out complete with boots and packs, we parked me on the street while Dan made the rounds. Finally, our best bet was to take a room right around the corner from where I was sitting. Although the building that houses the “Royal Guest House” does not specify its age, we guess it to be from the 1930’s. The rooms are large and high-ceilinged, and the outside of the building looks a lot like all of the other buildings we have seen around here with such markings as “AMUBHAI MANSION, 1936.” There must be hundreds of different 3-storied “mansions” built in the 30’s and 50’s. The Royal is owned by Indians or maybe a mixture; in fact this whole area is almost all Indian with blacks looking out of place and at a disadvantage.

View of Dar es Sallam from the roof of our hotel. 

So far I would not call Dar es Salaam a “pretty” city because the buildings are mostly blackened with damp and age and the streets are a bit dirty. It is, however, a place for watching people. How I wish we could sit for a while with someone who lives here in order to get an explanation as to who wears the long dresses with hooded capes, who wears the elegant tapered pants with the long slit smock (I now know these to be salwar camise); who wears the saris, and who wears the long black dresses with black hoods. And these are only SOME of the women. Most of the men wear Western style clothing, but some wear turbans (the Sikhs wear their beards tucked up into their neat pastel-colored turbans), a good many black men wear the neat, white crocheted caps that are molded to the head; some men wear lengths of cloth wrapped around them, etc. There are also a lot of plump Indian men.

We took showers and rested before going to eat rice and meat (wali ya nyama) at the cheapest of many restaurants. Mind you, it is “cheapest”, not “cheap”. We then walked out to the fancy, two-storied enclosed market. It was sort of empty, perhaps because it was Sunday afternoon. We asked at several more hotels, but found nothing better than we had. It was with a feeling of achievement that we found a small bakery that would sell us some sour-dough buns, the first bread we have seen for sale outside of restaurants!

Upon returning to the Royal we observed a slim young man installing himself in the hall. He was wearing a length of plaid cloth wrapped around himself as a skirt, he sat on an oval mat woven out of straw, and he had placed before him a bottle of Pepsi (it was opened by puncturing the top; we never saw him drinking, but it was half full), a copy of Roots (we never saw it opened) and a pile of pliable straw. During the evening, Dan and I both made several trips to the bathroom. Each time we would pass, he would smile at us rather vaguely and chew on his straws. He sat out there from noon till 21:00 hours! He is staying in a room next to ours. We cannot imagine what he was up to.

It felt good to lie back and rest. We even pampered ourselves by having a third cup of hot liquid at the end of the day instead of our usual two.

Big headlines in today’s paper: “TANZANIA SHILLING DEVALUED.” It helps us a bit ($l = l2 shillings instead of 9 sh.) but it is still far from the real value.

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Monday, June 6^th, 1983

(DAN) First order of the day was to go to the bank to get some of the new, improved Tanzanian shillings (20% more for your money). First we had to wait for the completely decadent hour of 0830 before the doors opened. Then for a while the employees ignored our presence. When we did get attention, it was to find that the new rate did not apply to cash, just to travelers’ checks, but he would be glad to change my cash at $l = 9 shillings. I was burning; they make us change at the bank (when we could get $1 = 60-70 shillings on the street) and when they have a nation-wide devaluation, it only applies to travelers’ checks. The National Bank of Commerce is the only one that can change money, but there are two or so branches within a couple of blocks. The same story.

We decided to check in at the Zambian embassy while the bank decided to devalue cash. What we found here dragged our spirits even lower. “A tourist visa takes 3 to 4 weeks to issue because we have to check with Lusaka.” You can get a transit visa in a week, but it is good for two days. “3 to 4 weeks is of course longer than we have permission to stay in Tanzania, and we HAVE to go through Zambia. We went to the tourist information place while we got accustomed to THIS news. Got a schedule for the Tanzanian train and inquired about the national parks.

We returned to the bank to find that they had finally devalued cash, so I was able to exchange it at $1 = 11.9987 sh. Meantime we decided to apply for a transit visa to Zambia and try to have it prolonged once we get there. So back to the Zambia place. At first he said he would not need our passports; then he decided he would have to keep them until 1500 tomorrow, then maybe 0900 hrs tomorrow. Finally he said we could pick them up THIS afternoon at 1500. I wonder what the real policy is. As with Nigeria, it appears to be a small attempt to get back at the U.S. for its stringent requirements and delays over visas to the U.S.

Next we walked out to the U.S. Embassy, about 45 minutes, and got our first view of the Indian Ocean proper. The two employees who dealt with us there were both of In­dian stock and most friendly. We registered, and then she had us check the visitors’ mail file. We did have a letter! “Bab’s Blabs”, May 18. Mommy, you have never failed us at even an insignificant mail stop. We found that it is not prohibited for U.S. citizens to go to Mozambique, as our guidebook suggested, so that may be an alternative for us. Surely would hate, however, to be caught in Mozambique with a special passport for South Africa[4].

We met there a traveler from Cincinnati who is working his way south to north through Sudan and Egypt. He is the first traveler from the U.S. we have met since Niger (8 countries ago), and they were Peace Corps volunteers on vacation. John is a friendly sort, and we spent the walk back into town trading information about ground we are to cover. An ex­ample of prices here: the best he could find for accommodation was a “Christian Hostel” that costs $10 per night. He is heading to Moshi and Arusha after a few days, so we may yet see him again.

We returned to the “Royal” for a short siesta under our (yes) ceiling fan. This afternoon it took a while to get our passports back, and then we walked around looking for paper to feed the ravenous journal.

The socialist government here has quite a bit of work to do in regard to beggars. Aside from the usual men with elephantiasis[5], there are a LOT of women with one or two children out. Yesterday we went past a small triangular park, and there were perhaps 30 destitute Masai (?) people settling down for the night. One group had a fire going, but most of them just had a length of cloth against rainy, cool weather.

Tomorrow we will head up toward Moshi to see about visiting Kilimanjaro and Ngoron­goro Crater while our Zambian visa is processed.

We are seeing a type of tourist here not seen since Morocco and Spain --older, al­ways couples, and actually appearing to stay in those incredibly expensive hotels.

---

[1] That wonderful custom of “bed tea” in some former British Colonies.

[2] It is hard to believe in the age of google, where you can answer almost any question instantly anywhere there is internet, that our only source for history and culture was our 1st edition Lonely Planet book. I just googled “Indian population in Tanzania and got over 10 million “hits”.  There is, for example a wikipedia article on the Indian diaspora in South East Africa.  In a nutshell most originally came as indentured workers to work on the railways.

[3] We encountered an Australian gent later in South Africa, who had been traveling for 2 years.  He had a long sleeved shirt, a pair of trousers, a short-sleeved shirt and a pair of shorts.  That was it, no underwear or any other article.

[4] Pre-Apartheid South Africa was fighting proxy wars in Mozambique and Angola at that time.

[5] Dan was diagnosed with elephantiasis, more accurately filariasis, when we returned to the US.  We figured that he got it in Gabon, which is where we saw the most cases, but we had forgotten that we saw beggars with it in other parts of  the continent.