The changing face of Dar es Salaam

[MkenyaMzalendo]

Population: Over 4 million
Nickname: ‘Bongo’, meaning ‘brain’ or ‘wit’ – what you need to survive in the city
Origins: Founded in 1862, when Sultan Seyyid Majid of Zanzibar chose it as a site for his summer palace
Revived in 1887, when the Germans established it as one of their main commercial stations on the coast – later becoming the capital of German East Africa
Retained as the capital by the British when they took over Tanganyika after the Second World War
Lost the title of capital when Nyerere moved it to Dodoma in 1973 – though Dar is still regarded by many as the ‘real’ capital of Tanzania.
Accommodation

The full range: from expensive five star hotels to cheap guest houses; in the city, at Oyster Bay and along the Indian Ocean beaches, especially to the north.
Getting there: By air: KQ daily at $455; 540 Aviation daily at $270
By bus: shuttle from Nairobi to Arusha at $60 return (6 hours) – and then by public transport to Dar es Salaam (4 hours)
In the mid-1980s, I had a research job that meant travelling out twice a year from my university in the UK to spend a couple of weeks each in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi.

I always made sure that I did the Dar leg first – on the principle of saving the best till last.

In those days, the fag-end of Ujamaa, the Tanzanian economy, was in dire straits. I made sure to fly with even light bulbs as well as toothpaste and soaps for Tanzanian university colleagues, because you couldn’t buy such basic things in the shops.

So the common wisecrack of Kenyans in those days was almost true: “Tanzanians say that Kenya is a man-eat-man society – well, theirs is a man-eat-nothing society”.

Once-affluent suburb
Occasionally, I would stay at the Oyster Bay Hotel, supposedly the most comfortable hotel in that seaside and once-affluent suburb of the city. But the amenities were quite rudimentary and the food was, to say the least, plain.

There was a young Turkish diplomat staying there. He always carried to breakfast his own jar of honey – because there was nothing else provided to eat with the toast but margarine.

One evening, I was chatting with him over a drink on the terrace. (Beer was always available. Wasn’t it Nyerere himself who said that everywhere in Africa it is easier to get a bottle of beer than a glass of clean water?)

That evening as we were talking a plane flew overhead. The young man stopped talking and tilted his head and watched the plane till it was out of sight.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I’m very sorry but, you see, I have this fantasy that all the pilots in the world will one day forget how to fly – so how then will I be able to get away from this bloody awful country?”

But anyone of you who has been in Dar es Salaam in recent years will know how dramatically things have changed.

I was there for a few days just two weeks ago. The middle-range hotel we were staying in – the Peacock in Bibi Titi Mohamed Road – is typical of the new Dar. It is clad in the kind of blue glass that you now see on so many high-rise buildings all across the city.

It depends not on foreign tourists but on local as well as foreign businessmen and professionals. It offers comfortable and well-equipped rooms, good communication facilities and efficient service. It offers excellent entertainment, too, we discovered.

On what we thought was going to be a quiet evening and early night at the hotel, we found the Kalunde Band and dancers on stage in the dining room.

Superb
They were superb – and they took me back to those times, 20 or more years ago, when Congolese bands were regularly playing in the nightclubs of Nairobi and Dar.

“Are you from the Congo?” I asked Deborah, the lead singer and, as I was soon to discover, the band manager.
“No, no!” she protested. “We are from here – from here in Dar.”

Another evening, we went for a drink and then dinner at the Kilimanjaro Kempinski on the Kivukoni Front.

The Kilimanjaro started life back in the 1960s as a state-run hotel. It was then a square, sombre and soon shoddy place. It is now so very smart and sophisticated. From the top-floor bar, the view over the harbour is very special.

We also went in search of the Oyster Bay Hotel. The young taxi driver had never heard of it.

We didn’t find it. Maybe it has long gone. But we found plenty of other resorts, restaurants and bars along Coco Beach, Toure Drive and round into Msasani Bay.

Yes, things in Dar es Salaam are still dramatically changing. I think that, these days, the young Turkish diplomat would not be so keen to get away.

Daily Nation:*- Lifestyle*|The changing face of Dar es Salaam

 

[bona]

so havent you imagine why peoplein this country would rather prefer to get back to those yrs than we are now, do you think if we had turned to capitalism those days would there still be opportunities left that even our jirani are desperate to get into federation kukimbia capitalist system walioiona bora miaka hiyo, mbona kenya iliyouanza huo ubepari since then sasa ivi wako desperate hata grain za kulisha nchi wanakuja kuiba tanzania na bunduki za kivita? large farming zote za kenya kwa nini zimeshindwa kuwalisha chakula wakenya hadi mpewe cha msaada? ushaona mtanzania hana chakula hadi tunaenda kuiba kenya? wakenya wanachekesha kweli, at least hata kama hatukua na beer, we had free education up to university, jobs were plenty, no kuibiwa resources na foreigners, see at least we have the benefit of still having our minerals in the ground now the current generation is using, because in kenya u gave everything to wazungu sasa hamna cha kufanya mnauana wenyewe tu!

 

[MkenyaMzalendo]

Eeeh, bwana, hii article inaongea kuhusu Dar, kama unataka ku-bash Kenya na waKenya tafadhari ingekuwa jambo la busara kuanzisha thread ingine.

 

[Smatta]

Eeeh, bwana, hii article inaongea kuhusu Dar, kama unataka ku-bash Kenya na waKenya tafadhari ingekuwa jambo la busara kuanzisha thread ingine.

Nadhani anashida na kudecipher kilichoandikwa kwenye nyuzi hio. Hapo juu nimeona mwenzangu yuasema Tanzania ilikuwa inasomesha watoto wake bure hadi chuo kikuu kwa sababu ya ujamaa, nataka nimkosoe kwa sababu hata Kenya ilisomesha wanafunzi hadi chuo kikuu na middle level colleges bure.. cha kushangaza ni jinsi alivyo vamia Kenya nikama sisi ndio tumeandika hio article, Kenya ina matatizo hatukatai, lakini kama nyie ndie mtakao ikomboa Tanzania naionea Tanzania huruma, kwa sababu kama ume misinterpret hii article ukadhani waKenya wanajaribu kuwabash wabongo, then hio free university ilikuwa ya bure kama hizi (akina Wacha1, Eliakeem, Kanyabwoya) ndizo products.

 

[eliakeem]

Nadhani anashida na kudecipher kilichoandikwa kwenye nyuzi hio. Hapo juu nimeona mwenzangu yuasema Tanzania ilikuwa inasomesha watoto wake bure hadi chuo kikuu kwa sababu ya ujamaa, nataka nimkosoe kwa sababu hata Kenya ilisomesha wanafunzi hadi chuo kikuu na middle level colleges bure.. cha kushangaza ni jinsi alivyo vamia Kenya nikama sisi ndio tumeandika hio article, Kenya ina matatizo hatukatai, lakini kama nyie ndie mtakao ikomboa Tanzania naionea Tanzania huruma, kwa sababu kama ume misinterpret hii article ukadhani waKenya wanajaribu kuwabash wabongo, then hio free university ilikuwa ya bure kama hizi (akina Wacha1, Eliakeem, Kanyabwoya) ndizo products.

:blah:

Yaelea usipotuona jf unatumisi sana. smatta kwa sasa tuna mambo ya msingi sana, huwezi kutuona tukibishania mada zisizo na msingi kama hizi.

 

[DICTATOR]

Wekeni hii maada pembeni, niko busy na uchaguzi jamani mtanichanganya au mumetumwa na ccm mturubuni tuibiwe kura!!! Tafadhali jamani.