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Published: October 18th 2006
Police Report
The police report for the stolen camera What can we say about Tanzania.... every trip has its good and its bad times. Tanzania was for us, the bad time. From 29 countries visited, for sure, it's the one we would not recommend anyone to visit. Everything that exists in Tanzania to be visited can be found in the other neighbour countries (exception to the Kilimanjaro, but even that you can climb Mont Kenya). We have been only in Tanganyika (continental part of the country). Zanzibar still to be explored when we come back up.
Tanzania people are money oriented, not in the good way, like the workaholic cities of New York or Berlin, but in the way they want to make easy money. People ask for everything. We left a grocery store with some food and a taxi driver signal to us and from inside his car. He did a hand movement saying that he was hungry and wanted the food we'd just bought. A taxi driver begging? We gave a ride to some people on the road and instead of saying thank you, they asked for anything we had left in their sight of view (water, pen, book, anything).
Prices can be written in menus,
Land Rover
Once upon a time there was a dream about travel Africa by car... but for you (
myzungo, or white person) is more expensive. You can buy 9 times the same thing in the same store with the same seller, and in the 10th time they still try to rip you off. If you don't want to pay the extra price they sometimes don't even sell to you. Funny, this type of racism (oh yes, Tanzanians are extremely racist people) gives jail in our country, but here they find it normal.
You make deals with people and in the end they say they can't honor, and that is fine.
"People here in Africa don't have a word! You can never believe then!" - This is a comment of a Tanzanian lady after not fulfilling her promise. The only thing I would correct in this statement is the "Africa" for "Tanzania", we had great experiences with many other Africans, unfortunatly not in Tanzania. We set up meetings to finish a deal, they just don't show up. You call them and
"I'm sorry I was busy, can we do it tomorrow?". You go again in the next day and the same thing happens. They don't even bother calling to say they can't. Just let you wait for hours.
Wouldn't be fair if we said that all the people we met weren’t nice, but the good ones will pay for the bad ones.
Pictures? Well some unworthy Tanzanian has them all. As our memory card was full (Uganda, Rwanda, Congo and Tanzania) we would burn a CD as soon as we arrived in Dar es Salaam. But this scum Tanzanian did his work faster. As we left the bus from Mwanza (30 hours squeezed in this old colonization time bus) we took a van to the city center. And taking the opportunity that the van was crowded this ...(no definition for this being)... did his work and left before we realize the missing objects. The only pictures we have are the ones we send by e-mail before the robbery and the ones posted here for the previous countries. But anyway, the lack of pictures is a good representation of our Tanzanian experience.
In Tanzania we met lots of volunteers, but not many of them will come back there, after being robbed and cheated too. We meet a friendly group of Belgian Architecture students doing a project in Mwansa, also a group of Norwegian and Swedish students in Dar es Salaam. Thanks for all of them for making Tanzania experience better, hope to see then some day somewhere else.
The bad impression of Tanzania can be from a terribly bad luck we had, but sadly this will be the image that we will be carrying of Tanzania from now on.
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anis lorenzo
fabian sitte
Sorry Guys
Hey Fernando and Claudio! I am am honestly sorry and seriously shocked about what I was just reading about your Tanzanian experiences. You must really have had a bad time there. Off course, buying a car in a country like this you must be very lucky to get a real good deal. But all the other things that happend to you are really annoying. You seemed to be pissed and you are trying to keep people away from Tanzania now. But I believe, once you start making bad experiences in a particular country, your perception gets worse and things that happen get worse and so on. On all my African travels (should be 18 countries by now) Tanzania is definitely among the top five. And this is for exactly the opposite things that you wrote: nice, friendly and helpful people (except for very touristy areas), rough countrysides, few (harmless) begging, relatively safe in terms of minor crimes and most of all welcoming and affordable. I know that these arguments are my personal opinion (after all together 8 weeks of traviling Tanzania) and can not be taken as objective but the picture you are drawing sounds like a rough generalization written out of frustration (which I have totally empathy with). But this image you give to people who have never been to Tanzania or who are maybe planning to go there is a distorted one which is not fair towards all the tanzanians who try to make foreigners feel at home in their country even without making personal profit out of it (by the way Tanzania is among the six poorest countries in Africa). The only thing I do agree with you is the fact that by now they rip you of for going to the National Parks (which had been half price last year) and climbing Kilimandjaro. But the reason for these price explosions are once again we who have the desire and opportunity to visit these places. I hope you are fine by now and are still open hearted and looking positively forward to the other countries to come. Stay safe and have a good time with the people! Fabian (who is sometimes thinking of where the hell thiese guys might be right now!)