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Hi again! Judging from the number of responses I got to my last post, it seems that you, my readers, are not avid frequenters of spas. Thank you, Atiya Sumar (of Groovy Cup, a cozy cafe in Masaki, Dar es Salaam), for sharing you favorite spa–Coconut Spa in Zanzibar–which sounds truly heavenly! Now, let’s move on to the next question… Continue reading
The event that I have most enjoyed attending in the two years I have lived in Dar es Salaam is, without a doubt, the Visa 2 Dance Contemporary Dance Festival. If you live in Dar es Salaam and have never heard of Visa 2 Dance (like a friend recently told me despite his having lived in Dar es Salaam for the past eight years), then you are who I write this post for. I won’t be roundabout; I’ll get right to it.
What is the Visa 2 Dance Contemporary Dance Festival? Visa 2 Dance is an annual, international contemporary dance festival that takes place every October in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (though the 2010 edition did also include activities in Zanzibar). In the words of its organizers (taken from the Visa 2 Dance website): Continue reading
For as long as I can remember, I have always been a great lover of kanga, the East African cotton fabric with bold designs, bright colors, and a Swahili saying, aphorism, or slogan printed along its bottom border. If you’ve ever seen children wearing kanga wrapped around their bodies and tied behind their necks, then you have a perfect picture of me as a child. If you were to drop by my house unannounced today and I didn’t have a chance to run and change into something “decent”, then chances are that you would find me in a kanga, though this time worn in the kifua style (wrapped around my body, passing under my arms), rather than tied behind my neck. Why? Continue reading
Hi…so did you miss me these past three weeks? Please excuse the silence – it’s just that I got caught up in a flurry of activity related to a cousin’s wedding. You know how weddings can be. But how so exciting! This wedding was particularly exciting for me because it was the first truly Tanzanian wedding I was attending in 18 years. On top of being a great opportunity to catch up with the Tanzanian side of my family, I was looking forward to this wedding because I knew it would offer me a chance to attend some typically Tanzanian wedding functions for the first time. Of particular interest to me was attending a kitchen party.
If you’ve not heard of Tanzanian kitchen parties before, basically, these events are a sort of bridal shower where the bride-to-be’s close female friends and relatives get together to “provide her with all the necessary qualities and material things she needs to be a proper wife to the man she is marrying”. On top of the gifts she receives, mostly household items (and of course kangas), the women present offer the bride advice on how to have a happy marriage based on their own marital experiences. Sounds harmless enough, no? Yes, except that I’d heard that kitchen parties, despite being an all-female affair, could turn extremely wild and racy. This, I wanted to see for myself! Continue reading
