Dar es Salaam in English

Today we woke up in the middle of the night at 3:30. Because we went on a tour to Luis, Francisco and Jocelyn home town : Dar es Salaam which is located in the coast of Tanzania , furthermore it has a huge port as a result a lot of ships are seen on the shore of Dar es Salaam . This harbour city is something you could find  in every country in the world not at all like Dodoma. Everyone slept the whole way there because we were all tired.

At  8:50, we arrived and went to breakfast. The restaurant was located in the middle of a casino and everyone had a omelette with toast for breakfast. We were impressed about how modern the city is compared to Dodoma. We noticed the buildings were higher, it was hotter here and more humid. It was very hard walking down the streets because of the warm weather. There was a lot of traffic and it seemed like everyone just drove how they wanted. The reason why we went to Dar es Salaam was to visit the National Village Museum.

We saw all the houses of  35 different tribes that are here in Tanzania but not all of them because there are more than 120 tribes in the whole country. We learned that till this day tribes still live like this and men have more than one wife, they often share a house with their animals and put on a fire in their house to keep mosquitoes away. At the end of our tour, we got to see some traditional dances of different tribes combined with some athletic stunts.

The music was played by a group of drummers and and the dancers had long skirts on with a somewhat crown and a white painted face. The dances talk about different events and tell different stories and they depend on what tribe they are from. For example , the “Nyamwezi“ tribe showed a dance that talked about cultivating and harvest season. At the end of the performance they all dress us up in traditional clothes and got us up on the stage to dance with them.

We learned a few dance moves and a few call and response and phrases. These dances gave all of us mixed feelings, we felt a little bit uncomfortable because we were dancing dances which all had a story and a different culture behind them.

We were all very sweaty, tired and hot and very happy once we got to the restaurant and they had AC.  Because Dar es Salaam is a busy city, we left early to head towards the train station. The train stations here reminded us all of an airport because we had to go through a security check and a passport control and even the trains are similar to an airplane. On the train ride home, we wrote the blog with our exchange students, which is why this blog is in English.

Dar es Salaam reminded us of a European city since it’s so advance than other cities we’ve seen. At the end of the day we all wished we could’ve jumped into the ocean to cool off.