A view of Dodoma

One Sunday, just before my friends Claire and Erin leave Tanzania, they invite me to climb Simba Rock with them and a few others. Among them is a young French couple, Marion and Augustine, who married only seven months ago, straight after finishing university. They arrived in Dodoma at the same time as me and plan to volunteer as teachers in Dom Bosco for the next couple of years. In their early twenties, Marion a physicist and Augustine, I think, an engineer, they talk about their wish to help out those in need and their rejection of the superficial life they would probably be living back home. I’m amazed that they plan to stay out here for two years without going back home for a break. Augustine does most of the talking but I’m struck by how much Marion resembles my future sister-in-law Marie, petite, blonde and sweet. And also from Nantes! I invite them to the welcome tea party I am planning for Nick and Wendy’s arrival. I promise to bake quiche especially for them! We are led up the giant rock by Michele, a Congolese priest who is used to guiding groups of school children up this rough stack of rocks and knows the best way to climb to the top with minimum effort. The view of Dodoma gets better and better and the occasional white monkey and lizard crosses our way as we ascend. An arid, brick red, flat landscape with patches of green bush and small grey buildings surrounds us. From time to time, we stop to catch our breath and talk as we admire our surroundings.



A strange view. It could easily be passed off as a faintly populated spot on planet Mars. I wonder if this is anything like the Tanzania Che Guevara or Roald Dahl knew when they lived here. From the summit you cannot hear the crowds of politicians watching World Cup matches at the New Dodoma Hotel. You cannot see that parliament is now in session discussing the budget and thickening Dodoma’s car and sex traffic. You cannot hear the brain bleaching loudspeakers swarming the streets, campaigning for Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) amidst posters of only one face, Mr Kikwete’s face, plastered around town. You cannot see the parrot green shirts, caps and kangas, CCM’s party colours, shading in the pre-election atmosphere in one tint only.

You cannot see the dead dogs, squashed hedgehogs, fleeting digi digis, small umpalas, and sometimes standing snakes on the roads. You cannot see the bodies of the run-over cyclists on the Dar road who die every day in their otherworldly effort to wheel bagfuls of charcoal into the city. You cannot see the traffic police on the outer highways preoccupied with stopping cars for bribes or that this is the only African capital not to have traffic lights! You cannot see the STT vehicle working as a village ambulance, driving to hospital a mother with her nine year-old daughter dying in her arms, or a teacher with a teenage boy after breaking his leg and waiting for hours in excruciating pain for a lift into town. You cannot see the children and the elderly peacefully playing bao.

You cannot smell the incinerated plastic and gruesome piles of garbage dumped in the back roads. You cannot smell the stench of toilets and pit holes. You cannot smell the freshly woven straw from the baskets hanging in the market or the citrus fruit on cartwheels or the sweet whiff of coconut hair oil in crowded churches.