Mar 4 - Cosmopolitan Tanzania?

March 4

If you had have told me nine months ago that we would visit a country such as Tanzania after living in Malawi and consider it nothing short of cosmopolitan, I would have laughed in your face. Yet such is the stark poverty and lack of western resources or communication means, that this is exactly the feeling one gets coming from Malawi. Nice roads, food cooked with spices, a choice of semi-decent restaurants, locals with enough money to actually eat at a sit down affair for lunch, the majority of village houses with tin roofs, a cinema, taxis, buildings more than a couple of stories high, people out after dark, an airport that actually looks (and works) like an airport, a choice of palatable beers, road signs, drivers with a vague idea (and only vague) of how to drive. The list is unending. Tanzania is in so many indescribable ways an absolute quantum leap ahead of Malawi – yet Tanzania still sits down at 159 0f 177 countries on the WHO Human Development Index, only 5 positions above Malawi.



Since living in a country with the overwhelming poverty of Malawi, we have somewhat changed our views of the throngs of beggars who constantly harangue you as an mzungu, and it is not until you visit a country that would normally look so poor to unaccustomed Western eyes that you quite realise where you live.

And just in case we were a little homesick when in Tanzania, missing the disheveled, chaotic life of good old Malawi, the national airline kept up some gentle reminders for us. Air Malawi, or Air Where-Are-We as it has become colloquially known as after its string of countless monumental stuff ups, certainly kept us guessing. We did manage to get to Dar es Salaam on our original direct flight, but not before four different time delays (and subsequently a rather worrying number of Greens at the airport lounge dampening our increasing incredulousness) totaling almost nine hours.


The journey home wasn’t quite so smooth. Two days before departing we were called with the news that our wonderful national carrier had cancelled almost all flights, with ours being included in the axings (apparently if you refuse to pay your landing fees and route charges after the seventieth warning they ground your planes and call you bankrupt… go figure?). After many phone calls, a few travel agent visits, a couple of ticket re-issuings and innumerable options explored, we finally found our way home. Dar-Jo’burg, Jo’burg-Lilongwe, Lilongwe-Blantyre. Sixteen hours late in the middle of the night.

The ability to laugh is a valuable asset around here.