Arushatown

Arusha, or “Arushatown” as the locals here refer to it is where Dr. Marvin and I are spending the bulkload of our downtime here. According to all of the guidebooks, it is one of the most expensive and weathy cities in all of Tanzania. It is a tourist town, plain and simple. It serves as the gateway to both Kilimanjaro and the Northern Circuit national parks, where we spent our last 6 days watching baboons passionately embrace each other.

Arusha is reputedly one of the most pleasent cities in the world. Its climate is muy  perfecto –85 during the day, 60 at night. And, the people are extremely friendly. I just walked down the street outside of our hotel in search of an internet cafe and literally 30 people must have said hi–jambo in Swahili– to me. Little kids yell out their hellos in unison.  And, aside from the street touts in the downtown district, no one has asked me for a dime. Everyone smiles all of the time. Its refreshing.

The city buildings are a yellowish hue. It seems like every building is a different shade of yellow. If anyone wanted to make a bunch of money they should immediately show up here with a few truckloads of colored paints. Moreover, despite all the yellow, we have not encountered McDonalds of yet. Actually, we have not encountered a single fast food restaurant yet. Tons of Indian food though. You can get chicken masala out the ying yang.

Coca Cola has come with an interesting way of advertising to the people of Africa. They print the store signs for the individual shops. For example, a barbershop situated right next to a grocery store, across the street from a butcher all have their main store sign names produced by Coke. Who, in turn smacks a huge Coke logo on half of the sign. The cities clock tower in the downtown district, has a huge Coca-Cola logo on the actual clock. Now, I do not know what I expected when people kept talking about this clock tower, but I sure as hell did not expect Coke to be plastered on it. I think I pictured more of a tiny Big Ben. I was dead wrong.

By deductive reasoning I have decided that Coca Cola owns Africa.

When I walked down the bumpy, awful dirt road a half hour ago I saw smiling people digging trenches, selling vegetables, and sitting in front of their shops. The women effortlessly balance buckets, bananas, and whatever else they might need to carry on their heads. The children wear identical school uniforms and at a young age already understand the importance of speaking English.

Do not get me wrong, I am not under some grandiose illusion that all of Africa is like this. But, from my observation and through talking to people on the ground here, Tanzania as a whole seems devoid of racism, tribal conflicts, and religious tension–problems that plague much of the rest of Africa. All of this tranquility is in despite of the fact that the religious breakdown here is 40% muslim and 58% Christian. I realize that I might have stumbled upon some African utopian society.  Nonetheless, I am extremely pleased to have stumbled upon it to begin with. I am a big fan of Arusha, the country of Tanzania and its people.

My first impression of Africa has been all positive.

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