Blogs from East, Tanzania, Africa - page 4

Distance Travelled Today: 393 km (ferry and truck) Elapsed Travel Time: 11 hours 11 min (ferry and truck) Lodging for the Night: Tan-Swiss Campground Today we had another early start. We left the hotel for breakfast at 5:30 so we could catch the 7:00 am ferry from Zanzibar back to Dar on the mainland. The ferry was about 2 hours on a high speed catamaran that traveled at 28 knots. We were late getting to the ferry, so we had to queue with the general public, and we were only able to get seats on the top deck. It was a nice morning, so that was not a problem at all. There wasn't enough space for us all to sit in the chairs on the deck, so Elysia sat on the ground in the front with ... read more

Episode 1: Hello Tanzania – Dar es Salaam. 23 June, 2014 Hello to all. Our trip up to Tanzania started off well when we learned that we had been up-graded to business class on the three hour South African Airways flight from Johannesburg to Dar es Salaam. Excellent food and service. Anyway, Dar es Salaam (Dar) is the capital of Tanzania in everything but name, a large, bustling and rather chaotic city of some 3 million souls (local Swahili folks, Muslims and descendents from the German and British colonial days). The airport in Tanzania was organized chaos, with officials simply mingling with the arriving passengers in one big mess and snapping up the $50 required for on-the-spot visas. While waiting in the crowded mess, we encountered a group of teenagers from – of all places – ... read more

African trips probably get more authentic the further you venture from the northern African nations, where vestiges of European influences have seeped in somehow or other, so this being the first sub-equatorial African trip, expectations of the truer spirit of Africa were riding pretty high. Dar Es Salaam is not, let it be known, Tanzania's capital city, that accolade belonging to Dodoma, but it is the country's largest urban area, so scope for urban exploration was about to unfold fine style. Staying at a well-fitted hotel in a central and accessible area is recommended, and the tour of the city proper pretty much revolved around the cluster of centrally-located sights which run parallel to the waterfront. Although Dar is not huge on individual sights as such, there is enough substance to qualify the city for the ... read more

My week in Tanzania flew by so quickly I barely had time to breathe. I was there to do a sort of reconnaissance trip for a new study we are developing on health communication impact. We are looking at people who receive no messages, interpersonal communication through healthcare providers and health workers, and those who hear mass media messages or those delivered through SMS. We are looking at such communication related to family planning and voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) to see which channel (or combination of channels) has the greatest impact on getting men to VMMC services and women to use family planning. My week was spent meeting with USAID and organizations that implement related programs. I also interviewed 5 different candidates for a local researcher position—someone who will help me on the ground for ... read more

Good day in Dar es Salaam. Breakfast at the Slipway with tuna, tomato, sweetbreads and beans. Coffee was fabulous as it is all over Tanzania. Everyone slept reasonably well. We discussed ideas about our meeting with the Deputy Minister. Daniel shared that our main purpose is to show that KARUCO is connected to well respected institutions in the U.S. and abroad. The connections to EARTH University and the University of Minnesota show that Karagwe University College has support with relevant resources and circles outside of Tanzania. We discussed the meeting and then shared some work and family stories and thought we were pretty funny. We took a short walk on the slipway. Congested. Dar is a city of 4.5 million, most of whom seem to be on the same road we're on. But our trusty driver ... read more