East vs. West

After spending five days only in the biggest city of Tanzania I can't really make any justifiable comparisons between East and West Africa after two days. But there are things that I have just noticed by watching. I am actually quite surprised how much many things do remind me of West Africa. Of course the histories, cultures and languages are totally different, but still there are some things which can be categorized as so very essentially African. Let's start with similarities, then:

God. He/She/Them is the most important thing for most people in Africa, it seems. Dar es Salaam is a nice mixture of religions, actually: mosques, churches and Hindu temples all over. But Jesus rules in visibility, at least: at one gas station all the workers had red shirts with a text: Jesus (heart / loves) me! I didn't know that Jesus sponsors oil business, too...and I'm sure car accidents can be prevented with the best bumper sticker I've seen so far: "This vehicle is protected by the blood of our Jesus". Wow.

Ugali / pate / dough - lumpy, thick, porridgy dish that you just can't avoid if you want to eat outside tourist restaurants. It's either made of maize, cassava (or manioc as it is also called) or something that sort. Often it tastes like nothing, sometimes a bit sour, sometimes in Benin it had onions and tomatoes in it (that was my favourite!).

To continue with food: Parle-G (understandable, those being Indian cookies and most shopkeepers here being of Indian origin) - the most best-selling cookie brand in the world! So simple, so good...Turkish cookies are quite good too, but I've forgotten their name already.

And one more thing about food: the chilliness varies, but one thing never changes: food is always very, very fat. I can just feel the fat particles circulating in my veins after a normal 'chicken and rice' meal...or even better, chicken and chips :). Or chipsi mayai here, meaning an omelette with chips and a lot of oil. To some extent adding oil does make food taste better, but I start to miss salads and vegetables here...

People's attitudes. Greeting, chatting to each other, joking, taking it easy, they're all part of day-to-day life. Also loud, big and friendly (if there is no reason to be so) African mamas are probably the same everywhere - I adore them.

But there are some differences, too:

There are almost no motorcycles or bikes, but instead I can see endlessly Land Rovers and Land Cruisers. Is everyone heading for a safari or what? I mean, I know the roads are pretty bad even in Dar es Salaam, but normal cars can survive them, too. Which reminds me of another thing: the cars (excluding dala-dalas, the minibuses used for public transport) look so brand new here, compared to the ones in West Africa! Where do people get money to buy these cars?

Where are the HIV/AIDS campaign posters? So far I have seen only one or two, whereas in Togo, for example they were everywhere. Has the message already been spread out enough, or what? Instead of AIDS campaigns I have seen quite a lot of phone company advertisements and tobacco advertisements, the latter ones with images of well-to-do people having fun in a jazz club etc. with a text: "Hiyo ndiyo ni maisha", "This is really life". I don't think that would pass in Finland...

Language: it is very different when you understand even a bit of what people are saying on the street. I mean, I didn't have a clue what people were saying when they were speaking Mossi, Bambara, Wolof or even Mina (well, with Mina I could sometimes guess if I understood a word here, word there). But Swahili I've been learning for two years, and although it has been quite a while, revising in the plane brought a lot if it back to me, too. The strong status of Swahili as the main national language in Tanzania is both visible and audible: most newspapers, for example, are in Swahili,and so are the advertisements, radio programmes etc.


Oh, and most likely I won't blog (nor can be contacted in any way) for the next 2-4 weeks, at least. The workcamp where I'm goin will be in the middle of nowhere in Pemba, it seems...and even after the camp I am not sure about the internet connections. So, again in October or so!