The Smoke

Moshi means smoke in Kiswahili language. How the town got it's name I didn't really manage to find out.

Our action research kept us busy, we worked really long hours and had more than one backlash to fight. But we learnt a lot about this method and about Tanzanian people and their interests and abilities, so we have adapted our plan and I expect more success next week in Morogoro.

I took one extra day to go and hike around the hills on the bottom of Kilimanjaro a bit... I thought, with a scenery like this I cannot just work and leave - who knows if I will ever be back to Moshi again?

The mountain lets itself be seen only very early in the morning or very late in the  evening. The rest of the time it is  hidden by the clouds. Could that be the smoke the name Moshi refers to?

The Christmas feeling in Moshi is violet, dominated by many trees with violet blossoms in the big, bright alleys...

Moshi is known to be one of the few, if not the only, clean cities in Tanzania. Everyone who drops  garbage on the floor, gets fined with TSh 50,000. This law is, unlike many other laws, implemented, because the District Executive Director of Moshi really is committed to her town. Everyone who reports a person throwing things out on the street, gets a reward of TSh 15,000. So the Moshi people say: If you throw, have money ready!

In my opinion the Moshi people are young and productive. Why do I say it? Because I have seen 8 weddings on the Saturday I arrived, just in those 2 hours between arrival and darkness! This waterfall, fed directly from Kilimanjaro, is called the Bridal Veil.

Every tour on the slopes below Kilimanjaro, which are a mixture of tropical forest and cultivated banana and coffee plantations, has to include a visit to a coffee farm. There the tourist must grind his own coffee beans...

...then roast them over open fire, and then cook delicious coffee for him/herself.