Ein paar Eindrücke vom Wegrand
Fabrik
Kategorie-Archiv: Fotografie
Images: Dresden 1-5
Images: The last day in Dar and the long journey
Images: Two weeks – Boat exercise and Uganda
Boat exercise at Nyerere Bridge
As a new fire station close to Nyerere Bridge has been opened it still lacks a car but is being used as a training facility. Two rescue boats are stored there for a weekly training conducted by the diving team and the boat team. The teams consist of firefighters from all government fire stations in Dar es Salaam, comprising approx. 15 men and one woman. The diving team is taking new lessons every week, improving their skills in search and rescue. The boat team is working on steering the rescue boats safely. Chillout by the beach is a positive side effect of the exercise, making it quite popular among its participants.
Trip to 7even Hills Classic Frisbee Tournament in Kampala
Every year the Ugandan Frisbee Federation holds an Ultimate Frisbee tournament played on grass. It is the biggest regular tournament in East Africa. I took the chance to see friends again that I had met during other tournaments. Staying with a player from the Kampala Team, I enjoyed a wonderful time in the Ugandan capital, being showed around and taking a week off my daily concerns. Kampala is much quieter, greener and cleaner than Dar es Salaam. People speak English and I was close to never called Mzungu or asked to buy something. On the way back I took a bus, stopping over in Mwanza at Lake Victoria to see another friend, finally taking to Dar, enjoying the first night in my bed again. On the next day I went to the beach to play frisbee, quite a familiar thing after three intensive competition days.
Images: Fiery Thursday
Grau
Images: The journey and the temple of Pepsi
As my brother came to see Tanzania and fortunately also me we went for a round trip through the countryside and the smaller towns of the country. We took a train from Dar es Salaam to Makambako, boarding a bus to Iringa, taking from Iringa to Morogoro and coming back to Dar es Salaam with a colleague of mine from the Headquarters who happened to be travelling with his car on the same day.
GSC: The fourth campaign day
Good evening, dear GSC people and friends,
on the end of the fourth campaign day, my flatmate Lutz and I agreed that it was not so easy to run a fair competition with people who are really underprivileged when we are benefiting hugely from our own social background and our privileged environment. Yesterday’s dinner was an invitation from our guests who would probably not have stayed with us if we had been living in a mouldy shack next to an illegal waste dump. For lunch I was invited today by one of my coworkers who bought me extremely tasty fish skewers and fried banana. She was not aware of my participating in a poverty challenge and I would not have wanted to reject her invitation since hospitality and solidarity are core values in the Tanzanian society. Counting in a favorable way, today’s food cost me 2,900 Shilling, including water (1.32 Dollar) which wouldn’t be a bad result. Counting the things I really consumed, the bill would rather have looked like 6900 Shilling (3.14 Dollar). To a western observer this might seem ridiculous, in Tanzania it marks the difference between the poor and the middle class.
Finally Lutz and I found three cynical pieces of advice that we would like to give to those who are not spending more than 1.25 Dollar per day to survive:
- Especially when you spend less, you should see that you eat enough. It is not the lack of money that is harmful to you but the lack of food.
- You should have more people inviting you, then you are going to save on food and can invite them in return.
- Finally food is an important part of any culture. Why save on it so eagerly? Deprive yourself of going shopping sometimes or other money-wasting stuff and enjoy your favourite dish together with friends instead.
The waste challenge went quite well. Today I guess that I produced not more than one litre of waste although it was hard to say since I disposed of it in different places. So I do not know whether to see it as a success or more as a hidden defeat.
If nothing else since my fundraising is not working as well as I could wish the Global Solidarity Challenge at least makes things more visible for me that I had only theoretically thought about before. We throw away our stuff in so many different places that we cannot remember at the end of the day what impact we left. Later we ask ourselves why the cities are so dirty, especially in developing countries. Every piece of scrap once started as something shiny and useful.
The success in getting closer to the 1.25 Dollar mark is so far mainly bought from my social status. Squatters do not take part in regattas, they have no visitors from Malawi and they have no nice colleagues from the Legal Department of the fire service who invite them for lunch.
To support the Global Solidarity Challenge (GSC) 2016, follow this link to my campaign page at VIDEA: http://solidarity.videa.ca/participantpage.asp?fundid=1846&uid=3419&role=1
The world keeps going, on whatever budget you live. These are the images of the day:
Images: Night Shift
Fire at a plastic and chemicals store in an industrial area near Julius Nyerere Road.
Port Fire Service, Airport Fire Service and Fire and Rescue Force joining forces in their efforts to control the blaze.
Images: The long journey
After a longer work period at the fire station it was time for some change. On Tuesday, 14th June, we boarded Tazara train from Dar es Salaam, taking to Mbeya in the west of Tanzania. From Mbeya we took a bus first to Sumbawanga, then to Kasanga where we arrived in the afternoon. After enjoying two stunning sunsets over Lake Tanganyika we climbed the gangway to MV Liemba, spending the next two days on the upper deck, watching boats pass by, visiting a church ruin left behind by British settlers during one of the numerous stops along the route. Finally we arrived in Kigoma where we were most friendly welcomed by a frisbee teammate who hosted us in his Norwegian-style bungalow. After four days of hiking, swimming and relaxing we started out on our way back. Arriving in Dodoma by train we stayed in a deserted upper class hotel before leaving for the village of Katesh to climb Mt. Hanang, Tanzania’s fourth-highest mountain. A guided is said to be compulsory to be admitted to the Forest Reserve the climb featured beautiful views across saltlakes and the plains, yet it was not incredibly challenging to reach the top. Ambitioned mountaineers might rather want to spend their money in the Alps rather than going for a 3D safari in the middle of Tanzania. Arriving in Dodoma again I turned twenty-one standing on the empty platform of the railway station, my co-traveller Marianne singing a birthday song for me. Later we had cake at the station master’s office. Taking the express train we arrived in Dar es Salaam in the evening of 29th June, just in time to make pizza for a small birthday gathering which marked the happy ending of our long journey.
