MOSHI,OUR MOSHI!

This is Moshi.Every urban settlement has its unique characteristics telling it apart from any other,and no matter how talented one might be in describing human settlements,their histories,geographies,cultures,traditions,peoples,oddities etc. nothing,but nothing compares to being there in person.So no matter how many pages of lonely Planet you read describing Melbourne,you will never have the same experience or in depth knowledge of that Australian city as well as someone who has actually been there.

This being moshi,expect to have a glimpse of the two peaks of the giant Kilimanjaro at unexpected times and places,as long as the sky happens to be clear.And if it happens that you have been informed on how to identify minibuses plying the Mbuyuni/Kiborloni route,passing by the main bus stand along the dual carriageway(double road),do not assume that you can just board one simply by seeing it headed to KB,there are rules here,rules that you may never see anywhere else,the same buses that you see commuting along the said route alternate as school buses too.So you may find yourself trying to board one at the unfortunate turn during which it is a school bus.It does not matter how many potential commuters are at the bus terminal waiting for service,or how late they might be,they have to wait.

Another interesting aspect of this town is the mutual understanding between customers and sellers(of practically anything)that every commodity has a genuine and a counterfeit version,and a price to match! Sometimes there is a genuine-genuine,especially in imported manufactured goods.Consider copper wire,there is a copper wire version(genuine-genuine) that when you peel off its plastic insulation,you find it is copper coloured and there is a second version that when you peel off its insulation it is also copper coloured but if you scratch the copper colour with a pocket knife you find out it is a mere coating,and the real wire is of the colour of zinc or lead.The third version is the truly fake that no one even bothered to coat with copper.But life goes on,thanks to the existence of fake electricians in our folds.

Moshi has acquired an interesting 'taste ' nowadays,that of tidiness or cleanlinesse or broadly speaking ,environmental consciousness or more broadly speaking yet,livability,but with a twist! You can see at street corners,metal thrash bins attached to lamp posts,yellow with a “crystal zoo” advertisement stenciled on them.“Keep your town clean” is also a common slogan around town.The municipal council is apparently quite commited in its efforts to maintain cleanliness,it even has special askaris for the task.And spies too!!If you want to feel the pinch for littering in Moshi,try it at the Police Officers Mess Complex entry gate,you will find yourself being accompanied by two to three gentlemen greeting you politely and asking you(as if for a favour)whether you recall having spat or threwn away a tooth pick just a few seconds earlier,it does not matter how you answer,or indeed if you did not even commit the said act,there are usually other criteria under consideration.If your shirt pocket bulges with a cellphone then you surely did spit!!And again if you have the looks of a rural peasant with money,then you must have thrown away thrash just a moment ago,if you do not think so,it does not matter because they know so!.It is interesting to note,even annoying,that right at the feet of the said askaris there is a lot of thrash,cigarette butts,matchsticks,maize cobs,ice cream wrappings etc.Once you are taken to their office,which is less than fifty meters from their waiting post,you either pay an official littering fine of fify thousand shillings or a lesser non official sum or are given a written piece of paper in return for a cellphone,watch or any small valuable item you happen to be carrying then so that you can come and retrieve it later by cash.

You are warmly welcome to Moshi,it is generally quite an entertaining town,especially if you are not allergic to noise.The type of noise that typifies any town that is,except at a more pronounced volume and randomness.Here a police van siren may be sounded by a speeding daladala and a fire tender piercing alarm by a tiny volkswagon beetle asking for passage in a trafick jam.A 350cc Honda motorbike may speed by without sound mufflers just to stretch further your perception of 'loud'.There are also vans equipped with public address systems announcing various upcoming events such as a music performance not to be missed or an announcement by Tannesco reminding its customers to settle their bills quickly lest….!or maybe a healing and miracles crusade by a visiting group of priests from far away.We are never short of noise here.I have not talked about mobile phone companies blaring away about a new rolled out product or tariff.

Again if you are a pedestrian you have to share roads with motor traffick because pavements are packed,not just by peddlers but by licenced businesses,proof is at Barclays Bank.All this manages to happen because municipal askaris are busy fleecing farmers of their hard earned cash at Police Mess entry.The other forms of pollution or acts that inconvenience others are not as attractive money making ventures as just sitting around at PM grounds and pouncing on passersby in order to help them discover that they just spat!!

We have nothing new to tell residents of other towns concerning motoring,except that motor bike riders here are invisible to automobile drivers or at best they are considered pedestrians.You see,our drivers need not see bike riders at all because for all I know they might as well be 80% blind.You want to know how come?Simple,the procedure of acquiring a driving licence here is completed,I mean completed at a driving school.The face of the candidate need not appear at any TRA office,or the eye department of any hospital or indeed at any police station.Papers are enough,a variety of them,especially currency.So you see,you get on the road with your Tonda knowing pretty well it is not big enough to be spotted at a distance of 20 meters and you are done,run over by a blind driver.That is how come it is common here for a vehicle to overtake another while there is a bike coming from the opposite direction.

And then there is booze,too much of it for the good of this society.There are much much too many pombe outlets and varieties going around that it may be statistically correct to say that on average every resident of this town is,at least for a few hours of any day,under the influence of alcohol.It is available in so many forms of packaging(even zero packaging),and flavours and prices that everybody can in one way or another afford to get drunk.And if you think of “illicit” think again,this is moshi my dear.Your illicit distill is sold legally over the counter,nicely packaged and labeled just to your satisfaction plus the nice golden tinge of brandy or the aroma of konyagi,without having to travel all the way from Dar es salaam,actually hardly ten kilometers from town centre!!Just let TDL compare the consumption of its products in Moshi to that of any other town of its size,or as a ratio of its population and wake up.You see,we give the country its policemen,so we have our ways with them.