The differences between Tanzania and Malawi were striking, within kilometres of the border bone-dry hills covered with skeletal scrub gave way to lush forest and blooming gardens. The first town we reached, Mbeya, was full of snappily dressed men and women in beautifully tailored dresses of kitenge print. Interestingly it was the first country that accurately priced camping as an expensive hobby reserved for white people. Mzungu, the Swahili word for a foreigner, can be translated as someone who makes herself dizzy but my favourite definition came from a Rwandan who told me it means ‘aimless wanderer’. Since the only people who camp are Wazungu it makes sense that the rates charged for it are aimless.
The fantastic flipside of this was a large range of budget and mid-range accommodation options aimed at Tanzanian travellers, a sure sign of the country’s wealth in relation to its southern neighbours. For the first time since leaving South Africa we found ourselves surrounded by domestic travellers. Businessmen and women, truck drivers, people who worked for international organisations like the UNHCR. They weren’t camping.
With cheap and cheerful accommodation and food on offer we found ourselves staying much closer to towns and were able to observe life partially camouflaged. During our stay in Sitalike, a village on the edge of the Katavi National Park, we dined at Anne’s café which served up tasty $2 meals and occasionally broadcast football matches on what looked like the only television in the village. During our second meal there the tele came on to show the last 10 minutes of a melodramatic soap opera and people started arriving by the dozen. We wondered what drama was on next that could draw this many men and women. It was the national news. On the upcoming election. There was much clucking and tsking, followed by softly spoken jokes and not so soft laughter. The stay in Sitalike was as enjoyable as our bush camping experience in Katavi where there are no fences and no armed rangers between your tent and the lions, leopard, hyena, elephant and buffalo of the park. At one point of cooking dinner we looked up to see five hyena curiously looking at us. I may have squeaked.
The chimpanzee tracking at Gombe National Park was also a highlight in the trip but unexpectedly one of the highlights was the boat trip at 6am. It's a spectacular journey. Past Kigoma there are flotillas of fishing boats nearing the end of their workday, tiny isolated fishing villages full of stout looking houses, and as the traces of human occupation disappear you see monkeys, and more monkeys until you get off the boat and start walking in search of chimps. It only took us 30 minutes to cross paths with the alpha-male and we literally had to jump back to get out of his way.
All that said, my favourite stop was in the tiny town of Biharamulo which is near the Rwandan border. We found ourselves here with days to kill, waiting for the day we arbitrarily selected to enter Rwanda when we applied for our visas online. Biharamulo is described by the Lonely Planet as ‘a nowhere town that travellers find inexplicably appealing.’
What was interesting about Biharamulo was that despite its diminutive size it seemed comfortably wealthy. There were whole suburbs of large houses in leafy streets; in one of them we could find a bakery, cafes and a DVD shop which had a cosmopolitan mix of Chinese, Korean, Bollywood and Hollywood films. In that order.
Another day we visited a boisterous high school football game. We started chatting to the students and one of the teachers, who was actually younger than many of his students. He was 27. It was heart-warming to see that there were so many men in their late twenties and early thirties in school with plans to go to college.
But my favourite part of hanging out in Biharamulo was the people watching: the women were just fabulously dressed. And women were seen to be publically socialising. I had seen this phenomenon in the cities we’d visited but it was only in Tanzania it hit me that it had been absent in the towns. All the women had been too busy getting water or making a living.
I have this theory that ladies’ fashion is an indicator of a locality’s prosperity. It comes from the clothes dumping in many African countries which means used Western clothing is often a fraction of the price of a locally made garment. By all observations rural Tanzania is relatively well off, a welcome contrast to the rural areas of Malawi and Mozambique.
