Last week I boarded a brand-new RwandAir aircraft from Kigali to Kilimanjaro International Airport. The one hour-five minutes flight was indeed too short to enjoy, although it was clear that services of the airline were superb. I was going to attend the East African Community (EAC) Regional Business Journalists Networking Workshop on economic aspects of the regional integration process and implementation of the Customs Union and Common Market Protocols in Arusha. While on the plane, my Rwandan colleague with whom I was travelling made a joke when he was served the popular Rwandan beer, Mutzig: “It’s so interesting to drink Rwandan beer while travelling on Rwandan planes...it makes me forget the past history of suffering I endured as a refugee in the wildernesses.” We made a big joke out of it until we were reminded to tighten our seat belts, we were about to land at Kilimanjaro International Airport. The airport was not busy and actually looked like that of Bujumbura – the one I saw several years ago. We were immediately cleared by migration officials before we met taxi drivers holding placards that read: $50 to Arusha. A few minutes later, we were on our way to Arusha, passing thousands of cattle grazing on totally flat Masai land. The journey from Kilimanjaro to Arusha took us about the same time it had taken us to travel from Kigali to Kilimanjaro. Serenity Arusha, a city located in northern Tanzania and surrounded by some of Africas most famous landscapes and national parks, offers a rare lifestyle to its residents. This is mainly evidenced by a stranger visiting the town for the first time, with a background of madness and recklessness of other East African towns and cities. Situated below Mount Meru on the eastern branch of the Great Rift Valley, Arusha has a temperate climate. At this time of the year the weather is cold throughout the day with scanty rains. The cool climate notwithstanding, the town remains tranquil during the day and night. The population, which is predominantly Masai, is mixed with many foreigners, who are either permanent residents or on international missions, or tourists. Although Kiswahili remains the main language, Arusha is the only city in Tanzania, where foreigners who can’t speak Kiswahili will use English to communicate to local population. The presence of the newly built East African Community headquarters gave the town a facelift. The magnificent building that came at a hefty cost of 14.8 million Euros (about Rwf12.4 billion) will no doubt add economic value to the town. Arusha thus remains a major international diplomatic hub – a de facto capital of the East African Community. Since 1994, the city was privileged to host the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which is just adjacent to the EAC headquarters. The Masai-park animals co-existence The town is also economically advantaged to be close to a number of the country’s national parks, including Serengeti and Ngorongoro. However, the most exiting of all is the peaceful Masai-park animals co-existence along Ngorongoro Park. The Masai move freely near the big seven animals present in the park; including the deadly lions, leopards and buffaloes. According to managers of the park, the Maasai have special herbal medicines that keep off animals’ potential attacks. “It is astonishingly true that the Masai can never be attacked by park animals. They have medicine that checks animal attacks...and besides, the animals are very friendly to the Masai because they don’t kill them either,” says the park warden. The town that was named after the local tribe Wa-Arusha, currently known as Larusa by the Masai, has clean roads run by highly responsible drivers. The madness and impatience of drivers in the region can never be found in any of the streets in Arusha. Drivers will stop even at the most congested point to allow pedestrians cross from one point of the road to another. The drivers will also allow others to get into another road at a junction without hooting or complaining as evidenced in other cities. This explains why you will rarely witness any accidents along Arusha roads, contrary to daily carnages we see along our roads. It is a reality to mark that even though there are roadside food sellers, locally known as ‘Mama nitiriye’, they operate in a very clean environment. We managed to talk to one of the ‘Mama nitirye’ who wanted to remain anonymous, and she had this say about her business: “I make ends meet with this business... I have known clients and I retire home after serving them all. The cleanliness I have here is just similar to what I observe in my house,” a middle aged woman said in Kiswahili. The things you will hate, however, are the unnecessary expensive commodities including food sold in Arusha. Everything costs thousands of shillings, including a plate of food. You will not be served a meal without parting with more than 15,000 Tanzania shillings, which approximately Rwf7,000. This makes life for a visitor difficult, owing to the fact that food of the same quantity and quality would be served in Kigali at half the price. Clients in hotels find themselves victims of a wrong perception by the businesspersons that the town is for tourists (Bazungu wana pesa). Arusha neighbours Olduvai Gorge where some of the key findings in the history of human evolution were made.
