Today is Karume Day and a day off from school since it’s a
public holiday. Abeid Amani Karume was
the first president of Zanzibar after a revolution (in 1964) which deposed the
last Sultan of Zanzibar. Later that year
Zanzibar and Tanganyika united as Tanzania and Karume became the first Vice
President of the United Republic of Tanzania with Julius Nyerere as
president. Karume was assassinated on
April 7th 1972, and I remember that quite clearly. History seems to have happened very recently
in a relatively young country like Tanzania.
The two past weeks have been rainy, with lovely rains
falling almost every day except for the last few. The air has a feel that seems the rain might
be about over, but certainly the blessing that fell during these weeks have
saved a lot of crops. Some of the maize
was really too far gone, but other fields were young enough to benefit from
this rain. I’ve heard that many parts of
the country predict a good harvest; here it’s dicey, but some will reap and
others not so. That’s the life of a
farmer.
We are getting ready to close school for mid-term break next
week and so have been administering the exams that precede every break like
this. I still have a few of the 87
English papers to mark but the pile is getting smaller every hour. Good results from good students.
And our city, Dodoma, the capital city of Tanzania, has its
first traffic lights installed! I don’t
know if there are more than two intersections, but those two are the only ones
that I’ve seen so far. It’s all very
orderly with drivers being patient as they wait out a red light. Now if only there was a light at the end of
our road that leads to the main Dodoma-Dar es Salaam highway. One has to look right and left several times,
trying to see past staff buses which have parked obstructing a line of vision
to the right, small commuter buses dashing both right and left, bicycles,
pedestrians trying to cross the road, and motorcycles by the hundreds. Last week when I came home from town I
decided to count the number of motorcycles on the road. From downtown Dodoma where I started counting
to home (distance of about six kms.) I
counted 69 motorcycles on the road. They
are menaces, and we are told that many
young men have been killed or incapacitated because of motorcycle
accidents. They take too many risks, for
sure.
Good morning, how are you?
ReplyDeleteMy name is Emilio, I am a Spanish boy and I live in a town near to Madrid. I am a very interested person in knowing things so different as the culture, the way of life of the inhabitants of our planet, the fauna, the flora, and the landscapes of all the countries of the world etc. in summary, I am a person that enjoys traveling, learning and respecting people's diversity from all over the world.
I would love to travel and meet in person all the aspects above mentioned, but unfortunately as this is very expensive and my purchasing power is quite small, so I devised a way to travel with the imagination in every corner of our planet. A few years ago I started a collection of used stamps because trough them, you can see pictures about fauna, flora, monuments, landscapes etc. from all the countries. As every day is more and more difficult to get stamps, some years ago I started a new collection in order to get traditional letters addressed to me in which my goal was to get at least 1 letter from each country in the world. This modest goal is feasible to reach in the most part of countries, but unfortunately, it is impossible to achieve in other various territories for several reasons, either because they are very small countries with very few population, either because they are countries at war, either because they are countries with extreme poverty or because for whatever reason the postal system is not functioning properly.
For all this, I would ask you one small favor:
Would you be so kind as to send me a letter by traditional mail from Tanzania? I understand perfectly that you think that your blog is not the appropriate place to ask this, and even, is very probably that you ignore my letter, but I would call your attention to the difficulty involved in getting a letter from that country, and also I don’t know anyone neither where to write in Tanzania in order to increase my collection. a letter for me is like a little souvenir, like if I have had visited that territory with my imagination and at same time, the arrival of the letters from a country is a sign of peace and normality and an original way to promote a country in the world. My postal address is the following one:
Emilio Fernandez Esteban
Avenida Juan de la Cierva, 44
28902 Getafe (Madrid)
Spain
If you wish, you can visit my blog www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com where you can see the pictures of all the letters that I have received from whole World.
Finally, I would like to thank the attention given to this letter, and whether you can help me or not, I send my best wishes for peace, health and happiness for you, your family and all your dear beings.
Yours Sincerely
Emilio Fernandez
I have just seen your request and will attend to it soon. God bless.
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