James5

The first few times you walk down any main street in Arusha your bound to be greeted by many ‘Mambo!’s, ‘Hello!’s and handshakes from all the hawkers and street vendors on the lookout for tourists. It seems that quite a few people here are “painters” or own a store that they’d love you to come visit and get a “big discount” at.

photo source: loukreu
On a few occasions, I have struck up a conversation with someone on the street, only to then have them try to sell me something for the next fifteen minutes, during which time the price drops from $25 to $5 as long as you keep saying you don’t want it. At the end of that sort of hard sell it can be hard to say no (we have one dodgy painting in our apartment from this tactic so far).

While it’s easy enough to just walk fast and ignore them and the paintings, newspaper, maps and jewellery that they are selling, it’s hard not to feel rude doing this sometimes.

After three months here, my wife and I are well known enough so that most hawkers don’t bother trying to sell stuff to us on the streets, and the people we see at the market are now comfortable striking up a conversation with us (and giving us non-exploitative prices). In fact, Clare has even managed on a few occasions to sit and chat with some locals after doing some shopping at the markets. Her knowledge of Kiswahilii probably helps in that regard too.

I’ve been told off twice now for being “too busy” and for not replying to a Mambo. So maybe I need to start practising my Kiswahillii – Poa (cool) and hapana sante (no thank-you). Hopefully I won’t be coming home with a too many more dodgy paintings bought at crazy prices.

Popularity: 4% [?]

From Chapter 6 of Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher:

Lord Snow tells us that when educated people deplore the ‘illiteracy of scientists’ he sometimes ask, ‘How many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics?’ The response, he reports, is usually cold and negative. ‘Yet,’ he says, ‘I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?’ Such a statement challenges the entire basis of our civilisation. What matters is the tool-box of ideas with which, by which, through which, we experience and interpret the world. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is nothing more than a working hypothesis suitable for various types of scientific research. On the other hand – a work by Shakespeare: teeming with the most vital ideas about the inner development of man, showing the whole grandeur and misery of a human existence. How could these two things be equivalent? What do I miss, as a human being, if I have never heard of the Second Law of Thermodynamics? The answer is: nothing. And what do I miss by not knowing Shakespeare? Unless I get my understanding from another source, I simply miss my life. Shall we tell our children that one thing is as good as another – here a bit of knowledge of physics, and there a bit of knowledge of literature?

Makes me think I need to start reading more fiction…

Popularity: 6% [?]

My wife recently wrote a post on how much things costs here in Arusha. This was something I was always searching for when planning for the internship, so I’ve reproduced some of it below.

photo credit: will pate
On Saturday I went to the Sokoine Market where fresh fruit and vegetables are sold and spent about $13AUS on the items below:

1 cucumber (200 shilingi)

1 avocado (500 shilingi)

bunch of basil (100 shilingi)

cup of green peas (500 shilingi)

5 tomatoes (500 shilingi)

400g green beans (300 shilingi0

2 medium sized zucchini’s (300 shilingi)

bunch of watercress (100 shilingi)

medium bunch of spinach (purchased as someone picked it on my way to market) (200 shilingi)

7 apples (3500 shilingi)

2 oranges (200 shilingi)

6 potatoes (500 shilingi)

spring onion (100 shilingi)

6 small onions and a piece of ginger (500 shilingi)

1 coconut (300 shilingi)

a medium sized bunch of bananas (800 shilingi)

3 green capsicums (300 shilingi)

3 eggplants (900 shilingi)

8 carrots (300 shilingi)

Popularity: 11% [?]

If you watch MTV for any reasonable amount of time here in Tanzania you are bound to see the SCRUTINIZE ad for HIV awareness. While HIV public health education in Australia is subtle to say the least, these campaign is in your face and loud.

It is almost incomprehensible to outsiders like myself, but the gist of the series of short advertisements seems to be to get viewers know and protect their HIV status and practice safe sex. The advertisements are animations of ‘township’ African characters who screetch their message across the television. “If a player is too drunk to put it [a condom] on, don’t put him in the game”, we are told, and the catch phrase is “Flip HIV to HI Victory!”. They are set in a variety of places, from bars to game shows, and are always eye-catching, amusing and not at all the typical dour pronouncement that public health announcements too easily turn in to.

What interests me in these ads is how culturally tuned they are. You could not play them in Australia and have any sort of impact – I doubt many Australian teens would even understand them. A lot of thought has obviously gone in to what would work here in Southern and East Africa, and it appears to be working.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Apologies for the bad pun in the title. One of the more noticeable differences between Arusha and life back home is the amount of noise people put up with here, especially at random times of the night and morning.

We live on a street about a 20 minute walk from the city centre, so that probably explains part of the problem, but it also seems that either the locals don’t mind the constant noisy interruptions to their lives, or there is nothing they can do about it.

First, There’s the prayer call, which begins at 5am. It’s pretty loud but often melodic, so usually easy to sleep through. Worse is the habit of local street vendors to use megaphones attached to some sort of tape deck to spruik their products. They set the volume at somewhere past 11, resulting in a garbled, distorted mess of noise broadcast up and down the street. Worst of all is when one of the local radio stations is broadcast over loudspeakers. It always sounds like a combination of crazed speeches and a government propaganda machine – and it feels like the speaker is directly facing at our window. Though it’s all in kiswahili so who knows what they’re saying.

Beyond the abuse from loudspeakers, there is also a range of automotive sounds to put up with too. None of the cars and motor cycles here appear to have mufflers, and drivers also seem to enjoy revving their cars, trucks and transports up and down our road as they try to get up the hill with an overloaded car or truck. The extra weight results in the engine working overtime, producing a massive haze of smoke and noise. The cars also insist on using their horn as their main form of communication. There is one notorious dalla dalla that insists on hooting their horn for about 20 minutes outside our apartment at 7am for no apparent reason.

Finally, the dogs, which sleep throughout the day, roam the streets at night time, creating their own cacophony of barking, growling and fighting. While during the day you wouldn’t think the street was overrun by dogs, judging by the night time sounds there must be a serious over-population of fighting animals here (another reason not to walk the streets at night).

Even with all of the above, though, it’s been a while since I’ve been woken up by noise during the night. A combination of late nights, early mornings and long walks to work appears to have made me slightly more impervious to sleep disturbances – plus consumption of the bastardised ‘gin’ known as Konyagi has been known to help in this regard too.

Popularity: 12% [?]