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Published: February 8th 2009
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On the road again
I’m back on the road again, this time to the African continent! After I came back from my South America Travel in July 2008, I started a course in “International Development Studies” on Oslo University College. The first year contains a field study in a country abroad and my choice was Tanzania.
We are going to spend 7 weeks down here in total. About 4 and a half of them studying, and then I’m heading off to Kenya to do some climbing with Lars Magnus, a friend of mine who is coming down to meet me in Nairobi.
From the class we are 15 students in this country and the rest of the group are in India, Mexico, Namibia and Zambia.
Dar Es Salaam
We left Oslo Friday morning (about a week ago) in -7 degrees and proper winter conditions. After a long day in the air we arrived Dar Es Salaam in the night and got shocked by the heat that met us : )
Around 27 degrees plus I think it said on the airport.
Dar Es Salaam is not the capital of Tanzania, but still the city were everything is
going on. Dodoma is the parliamentary capital, but Dar is the main centre and has East Africa’s second largest port.
Saturday was mainly spent getting to know Dar a little. It’s a quit small centre and not much to do actually. I think most of the travellers use it as a connection point between Safari, mountains and beaches. But it’s worth a few days, especially when it’s my first time in Africa. The people’s clothes, women with trays of fruit on their head, the Swahili language and the interesting mixture of Arabic, Indian and African influences it’s all worth a small study.
On Sunday we went just outside Dar on a beach resort, to enjoy the sun for a day. Stupid white men, and women as we are, we all got sunburned. Actually all of us managed to get burned in totally different places!
Anyway, we had some good days here visiting the Norwegian Embassy, Norwegian Church Aid, SNV (A Dutch Aid Organisation) and other organisations and officials.
During a couple of walks around town at night time, we could also see the other side of the life. It’s a good portion of homeless people here.
Moshi
After 4 days in Dar we left the city on Wednesday and headed for Moshi. This is in the Kilimanjaro region where we are going to do our study.
It’s actually based on the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro (5896 metres, and the highest mountain in Africa) 580 metres above sea level. Apart from being a tourist centre with Kilimanjaro as the main object, it’s also one of Tanzania’s major coffee-growing regions and a major educational centre with highest per-capita concentration of secondary schools in the country.
We have used a couple of days here now, and we have got some new contacts experiences and a couple of new friends. We also went to Marangu yesterday for a little sight-seeing to prepare for the stay up there. Marangu is the main entrance gate to Kilimanjaro National Park.
The gate is at 1980 metres and it was pretty nice to feel the chilly temperature up there!
I think I mentioned “South-American time” when I was travelling there last year…. Here they are doing everything in the same pace as in South America, so I think it’s a good idea to operate with “African time”. Yesterday for example, it
took us almost two hours to get the lunch we ordered! Be relaxed and don’t stress with anything is the two best slogans to get around without being frustrated and angry ; )
That was a short resume of the first week. I’ll give you some more history and updates later!
(And sorry for not taking any great pictures yet....)
See you!
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