Hakuna Matata

While Cristiano went road tripping to Dodoma this weekend, I went to Bagomoyo. OK, Cristiano wasn’t really on a road trip. The Tanganyika Law Society had its semi-annual meeting in Dodoma this weekend and Cristiano was unexpectedly put onto the speaker’s list. In fact, he gets kudos for turning around a speech on effective legal writing skills, with power point no less, in a day and a half. Like I said, it was rather an unexpected honour for Cristiano to be speaking at the meeting. As part of the TLS’ meeting, Cristiano had the opportunity to watch TZ’s parliament, which is located in Dodoma. Dodoma is officially the capital of TZ and is said to be smack dab in the centre of TZ.

Bagomoyo on the other hand is a small seaside town an hour or two outside of Dar (take a dalladalla from Mwenge to Bagomoyo for Tsh 1800). Bogomoyo used to be one of the most important dhow posts along the East African coast and it was the terminus of the trade caravan route (and the slave trade). It has passed through the hands of the Arabs, Germans and British. Today, the town is quiet and somewhat run down. The buildings erected by the Germans at the turn of the last century are still standing, but most are in bad repair. The picture above is a castle located in Bagomoyo that was built by the Germans and later used as a administrative HQ of the British. I learnt all of this today from my Rastafarian tour guide, who greeted me with a “good vibrations” and a handshake. It was a little surreal, but in the interest of learning a little history I followed along. I later learnt that in addition to being an informal tourist guide, he is also the local drug dealer ….ignorance is bliss. I think our brief conversation on my views on smoking pot took me out of his clientele.