NBO

nairobi has been rough... on my first trip alone to the city center the mob has kicked unconscious a man suspected to be a thief. i hate this city. still, it feels suprisingly comfortable not to be watched and pointed out all the time. during the whole day i heard 'mzungu' only once.

it's such an interesting country, especially now that i can compare it to tanzania. you can see an enormous difference, which i would put on the carb of socialism vs. capitalism. i've thought about it a lot. maybe when i'm home, i'll write some more about this and about all the other interesting things (lately the blog has been really shallow and boring, sorry. it'll get better.)

i've been staying at two glennies' place. they're cool (as their flatmates even more so - a merry UN company: a kenyan family with a hyperactive son, a german, a czech, an indian and a canadian... :)) they are working in the mathare slum with a project called shootback (in MYSA). have you seen 'born into brothels'? it was inspired and based on the same idea as shootback! kids with cameras documenting their lives and the situation.

and tonight i'm picking up my mum from the airport!!! it's sooo great!!

out of tanzania

dear all,
this is the end of my travel around tanzania. tomorrow i'm leaving arusha to go to nairobi. i'll hang out in kenya for about ten days and then... hush.. i'll tell you later :)

this is what i'll miss the most...
..all the wonderful people: Tanzanians and others that i keep meeting on my way
..the merry atmosphere of economy class in the train with people chatting all the time, sharing news, blankets and food, holding chickens and huge bags of everything
..stunningly beautiful views everywhere
..vast spaces with no people, no houses, just nature
..the time to think about everything
..muezzins waking me up with their priers at 5.30 in the morning
..people really being proud of their country
..the feeling of community everywhere
..people telling me not to trust anyone and then themselves being so generous and trustworthy
..breakfast consisting of two chapatis and a tiny cup of coffee on a bench in front of a mosque
..people playing bao and domino
.."karibu chakula"
..fruits tamu kichizi kama ndizi (crazy sweet like a banana :)))
..practicing my swahili
..saying "nzuri" 250 times per day
..mastering my skills of saying 'no' (esp. on the bus station)
..same handcraft everywhere, always very beautiful
..many many more...

dark?

on my screen they seem really dark. i hope they are not in reality...

train to mwanza and mzee timotheo who tested my swahili

lake victoria... soooooooo beautiful

the hill

it's been a while since the last post...

what should i write...? it's been good :)
tabora-mwanza-musoma-mwanza-moshi

mwanza, finally some rest. together with two german and two british girls and beautiful rocks and boulders on the shore of lake victoria

musoma, visiting with gerald. we stayed in exactly same room in philly (at chuck and pamela's), only in different time :) i had a good time hanging out with him and his family (nota bene, nyerere's family :))

mwanza, hanging out with the girls again.

moshi, after a murderous bus ride, along the new road via singida (next to the road and under new bridges, not over them most of the time...) with strikingly beautiful views i'm in this really cool little town at the feet of mt kilimanjaro. tomorrow i'm meeting local fair trade farmers :)

next time some more. i don't know why, but i don't feel like writing at all at the moment...

acknowledgements

a couple of appreciations:

Stefan, Morogoro - for showing me around the MEHAYO (glen project), for being so great with the children, for the invitation in the evening (even if i couldn't make it there)

Ed and Maganga - for a day and a half of fun, for the most exciting pool game (half of Ifakara was watching us), for telling me everything about mosquitos and malaria, for the bike trip to the river, for keeping me company and walking me home, for being really cool guys

Salvina, Ifakara - for being the most helpful person I've met in my life, for staying with me when I felt down, for all the advice and stories that I understood in half (swahili...), for her patience for my swahili efforts, for accompanying me to the train station in the middle of the night, for finding Muhenze

Muhenze, Ifakara - for getting a train ticket for me on the last moment, for guiding me through the pitch-black train station, finding me a seat in the overcrowded carriage, for sharing his blanket with me, for offering me bananas, for such an interesting conversation so early in the morning

a man on the train - for sharing boiled corn with me, for smiling so much and saying nothing

women on the slope of Loleza Peak, Mbeya - for my most wonderful conversation in swahili, for laughing so much, for the invitation to her house for food

Maloti, Mbeya - for being the sweetest guy on earth, for serving me the best wali mboga and the worst chai ever, for joining me at the table every time, for being so brilliant, for letting me develop a tiny crush on him:)

Samu, Mbeya - for helping me so much in Mwanjelwa, for not letting me to get lost, for being so interesting

Tiba, bus to Tabora - for being so kind and beautiful, for the chat, for all the kind words during the scary 27h-long journey on the bus

Suleiman, bus to Tabora - for being sooo kind, for offering me a good seat, for letting me sleap on driver's matress, for the candy, for offering me his food, for all the interesting explanations, for mocking me, when i was afraid of the way his drunken brother drove the bus, for showing me baboons and buchbabies, for driving me to the hostel in tabora

My Imaginary Boyfriend - for saving me lots of time and trouble... :) actually, he's becoming the more and more compleate and complex person. i'll soon start believing in his existence myself. he's a student, lives in poland, we're engaged and we're getting married next year. he still doesn't have a name (nobody's asked so far:))

finally

it's just to let you know that i'm safe in Mbeya (very close to zambian border), it's beautiful, i've experienced amazing things in ifakara and finally...

i am really in love in tanzania and tanzanians!!!

hmm.... i thought i would never come, but here it is. tanzanians are the most friendly people in the whole world and tanzania is the most beautiful and amazing country!!! :)

special issue for philly

ewo i michale kochani, to specjalnie dla was :)

i'm in the middle of nowhere, in Ifakara, actually. the only way to get out of here is going back, as i came. the road ends soon. there's also train (tazara - tanzania-zambia line) passing a couple of km from here. i'll try to get on the train tonight to go to Mbeya.

suprisingly enough, Ifakara turne out to be not-such-a-lost place. even though it's very small with no paved roads and dark at night and i haven't yet found any coffee here, it seems to be an important place. it's a valley, where there's the biggest malaria transmission in the world. that's why there's a research institute generously financed by the gates foundation. i was lucky enought to meet two interns catching and feeding mosquitos there... more details when i'm back. it's very interesting!!!

now about my travel in general: me and two other friends got some money from the Uni of Warsaw to research african and afro-shirazi art. we're here for 6 weeks with no particular plan. just going from one place to another, doing interviews and taking pictures of whatever falls into our hands. the guys have already gone noth, in the direction of Kenya, but i'm still heading south. i'm planning to make a loop around Tanzania (we've already been to the east coast). now i'm going south and west, then maybe to lake tanganyka, lake victoria, arusha (north) and close the loop in nairobi.

visiting fairtrade places here is just my hobby :) it's just so interesting to see in practice what i'm talking about so much;) i've got some addresses from the IFAT website (www.ifat.org) and so i'm trying to visit some of the producers. i've been so far to Bombolulu Workshops near Mombasa and to Kwanza (handcraft) in Dar es Salaam. i'm hoping to go and visit coffee producers of KNCU near Moshi, but they said it would cost 100$ to go there. i'll try to negociate the price and we'll see...

so much for now. the last couple of days, since i left the guys have been amazing... i'm meeting at least one super-interesting person a day :)

ha!

chlopaki niezle daja w noge w bagamoyo

now that the guys are gone, it's only the two of us...

the best dancers on the whole zanzibar

I take it back again... Monday in DSM is a really great thing :) lots of different people, lots of different lives, lots of different cultures. I love it. And it was a good day in general...

I've explored another IFAT company: Kwanza in DSM. I'm learning more and more about Fair Trade...

DSM

i'm in dar es salaam, the most boring city in the world probably... there's not much apart from the headquarters of some big banks and intl corporations and government buildings. it doesn't mean that the city is modern and hype though. it's covered with dust, slow, with hardly any street-stands and street markets. but i have to admit, that we've been here over the weekend. maybe tomorrow and outside the city center will be more interesting.

we got here by a so-called 'slowboat'. it definitely is slow, but it was a rather comfortable night on a bench in a large cabin, sleeping and watching a movie, stopped for the swahili news (each time there was a fight between those who wanted to watch the movie and those in favor of the news). the boat normally carries a huge pile of bags full of flour from dar to zanzibar (zanzi is too small to produce enough of it for the whole populatin). on the way back, the deck was empty.

yesterday we went to bagamoyo, a small town on the coast where the most interesting thing is the college of arts. it's very interesting... during the summer it offers courses of african dance and art for tourists, but during the academic year the student schedule is full. thanks to the college, bagamoyo has become the tanzanian center of art. there are artists' workshops everywhere. some are really good. painters and sculptors. there's also a wonderful fish market and a harbor (just wait to see the pictures of the boats... :)).

but one thing that made my time in bagamoyo the sweetest ever: the children. there are lots of them everywhere: at the local school and outside of it. they run around, play soccer, race. every time they see you with a camera, they demand a photo (there's no way to say no). then they jump, make funny faces, climb on one another and watch the photos on the camera (thanks god for the digital cameras...) forever laughing and joking. there's nothing better than that.

blazej and cyprian've just left. they're going straight to dodoma-mwanza-musoma-kenya. i want to make a bigger loop (going far south first), so we've split up. just keep your fingers crossed so that i don't get malaria while i travel alone. that's the only thing that would make it really nasty...

I take it back...

ok, i take it back... zanzibar IS beautiful, but the masses of tourists are hard to bear, as are people trying to sell you everything everywhere. it's time to get out of here. tonight we're taking the 'slowboat' to dar es salaam. finally.

meanwhile, i have a couple of minutes to tell you about a couple of really agreable things that I've experienced here:
...afternoon crowd of children and youth going back home from school
...men playing carrambol and children playing marbles on the street
...absolutely amazing 'swahili' coffee with cardamon and cinnamon
...SCUBA DIVING on a coral reef near stone town and near a 100year-old shipwreck with Yuriko and Ahmed. WONDERFUL!! i was quite a bit stressed out in the morning (i haven't dived for 7 years...), but everything went smoothly:) we've seen a stonefish and a crocodile fish and lots and lots of other beautiful fish (including my favourite ones: same as in 'Finding Nemo' :))
...so called 'spice tour'. a typical tourist attraction, but extremely interesting for me, beause it gives you an opportunity to learn about most of the alimentation plants grown here for spices and fruit. it was brilliant!!! the nature amazes me all the time.
...dhow port with a big fish market and a local cantine with lots of content people:)
...speaking swahili!!! i'm getting better and better... ;)