Where exactly is that?

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Welcome to Dodoma, the capital of Tanzania since 1974. On Thursday morning, we left for the six hour bus drive to Dodoma to see the Budget reading session of Parliament (the Bunge). The scenery was pretty, with mountains and open plains and the occasional little village that happened to be in the same spot that they wanted to put the road. It was a long drive during which I managed to finish my book. Luckily, we arrived in Dodoma soon afterwards.

I didn't realize that we were in Dodoma until we actually passed the Bunge La Tanzania. The tallest building in the city is maybe 5 stories high, but that might actually be too high. It's ridiculous. We stopped by the hotel, got changed, and went straight to Parliament. We waited there awhile (playing Hangman kwa Kiswahili) and then the session started. It was all in Swahili but they gave us a copy of the speech in English. It was useful and really helped me to understand (although even in English some of it was difficult). After about 2 hours, the session ended and we met Mohammed, the Georgetown alumn and MP who personally invited us to the session. We went back to house to talk for a little bit and then returned to the hotel to get ready for dinner.

Dinner was pretty fancy (and it was even better that we didn't have to pay - Mohammed is one of the richest people in Tanzania and, besides being an MP, owns factories and businesses that amount to over 3% of Tanzania's GDP). Afterwards, Mohammed insisted that we go out to a club. Now, Dodoma may be a small city, but it can still have a club, right? Wrong...we were the only ones there. Us, and 3 of Mohammed's other MP friends. We stayed up pretty late in the club and finally returned to the hotel for sleep at around 2 in the morning (yes, it's a long day when you wake up at 6).

The next morning, we left Dodoma for Morogoro but first made a pitstop at the University of Dodoma. It lies a little outside the city, down a 7 kilometer dirt and winding road. It's another ridiculous place for the city. The building is massive (former headquarters of the ruling party of Tanzania, CCM). It opened for the first time last year with 1200 students. Next year there will be 6500. The goal is 60000. As a hint, they may want to pave the road going up to the campus. After a "quick" 1 hour tour, we finally left to go to Morogoro.

Morogoro is about halfway between Dar es Salaam and Dodoma. It contains one of Mohammed's factories, 21st Century Textiles Ltd. The factory is the largest textile factory in Africa. It was very nice and we got to do a private tour (which we hope few people actually get to do...it makes us special). For not knowing anything about textiles, I found it pretty amazing. At last, after that tour, we continued back to Dar.

I arrived home at 8 pm. I ate dinner and slept because I desperately needed sleep. It was a long trip do Dodoma, a very strange city. But it was nice to see life in Tanzania outside of the main city.

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