A quick stay in Mwanza on Lake Victoria

Mwanza is a BUSTLING city. Pedestrians, motorbikes, bajajis, cars, busses, all moving around the city in a chaotically choreographed dance. Just getting to our hotel, Hotel Kingdom was a challenge because Alfred had to make a u-turn in the middle of all of it. So here we had to bid farewell to our amazing driver and guide and meet up with Richard, my rafiki who I have known since 2005. It was just so good to see him and introduce him to Liz. He is ageless and looks exactly the same. The reason we are in Mwanza is because Richard suggested it as a place where a lot of Tanzania vacationers go on holiday.

Don’t be fooled by no one on the road - this place was chaotic!

Fish centerpiece at a traffic circle in town

Richard met us in our “posh” hotel and we headed to this awesome nightclub right on the beach. He wanted to take us to Lake Victoria which is a huge lake that is surrounded by Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. We were right there on the shore - it was just beautiful! We took a Bolt there (the equivalent of uber) and sat on the patio and ordered food, of course fish. Tilapia is the primary fish here, and Liz and I shared a tilapia with coconut and vegetable sauce and ugali. This was Liz’s first real helping of ugali - mixed reviews. She said that it wasn’t like I described it (air in solid form); she didn’t like it because it didn’t taste like anything but she also didn’t hate it for the same reason. It definitely doesn’t taste like corn though it is made rom cornmeal. The waiter delivered the fish and left and Richard was like “are you gonna start?” Welp we were just waiting for silverware but that wasn’t coming. There is a handwashing station literally on the patio so you can wash your hands because you eat with them. We asked for a fork because how do you eat a whole fish without a fork, but that might have been the most mzungu thing we did all day. Speaking on mzungu- this place is so different from everywhere we have been- literally no white tourists here- we saw one white person from afar. But it is so cosmopolitan that people weren’t yelling “mzungu” at us either.

The club we were at had live music set up with a woman who had an amazing voice and a guy who had a less than amazing voice performing. There were dancers and a dj also but there was a football game on a huge screen right behind the performers which was interesting and definitely would have bothered me if I was performing. It was super loud everywhere we looked at sitting but maybe that’s just us being old. We ended up leaving for Richard to show us a cool hotel but it was closed for a private event- a university homecoming king and queen type contest which was Tsh 10,000 to get in (this is about $4) so we went back to Kwatunza Beach for a few beers (it’s Kili time!). Kwatunza Beach was so different than Dar in 2005. From the fancy metal patio chairs to the fact that there were some groups of women going out together without men, it seemed like it could have been anywhere on the coast in the US. Back at the hotel, very interesting design. It almost seems like the exterior was designed before the interior, there are a lot of odd nooks and crannies here.

They take Valentine’s Day seriously here

We got back to our hotel at about 1am and were very happy to go to bed. Some of the windows in our room don’t have glass, only screens, which was interesting because we felt like we were actually IN the nightclub next door that went until 6am. I woke up at 5:30 to hear the nightclub music, the Muslim call to prayer, AND roosters crowing all at once. Thank god for earplugs!

The next morning we met Richard at our hotel for breakfast. More andazi (donuts) that are so delicious with jam - Liz’s idea. We ate on this lovely patio and chatted about life and work. I love talking to people from other cultures and seeing where the similarities and perceptions overlap. Architectural education was a topic, and how AI is going to impact the profession of architecture. Richard is a professor at Ardhi University and has private sector work so he is in tune with the responsibility of educators to prepare young architects for a transitioning profession. He actually asked me to speak to his class on Monday, as they had a pinup last Thursday and he did not feel that the designs students came up with reflected a lot of thought and creativity. Of course I said yes, that will be fun!

We had a very lazy morning chatting before we got into a bolt and started our day. Our first stop was the atm, because here you can just ask your driver to wait for you as you get out to do whatever. Then we went to the shore of Lake Victoria - a place called Bismark rock. We got out of the bolt and Richard asked him to wait for us while we checked it out. There was a cover charge to visit this public park (seemed odd but fitting with everywhere else here that has a cover charge). We were considering taking a boat to an island off the shore and to the fish market but this guy wanted over $100 for it, we bargained him down to $50 but then decided to go get lunch first. While we were at Bismark Rock there was a journalist and a camera guy setting up. Liz asked - um are we the news here? And it turns out we were. The woman who approached us was named Shalom and she was making a tourism video celebrating the lake zone of Tanzania and asked us to be in the video to speak from the heart about how we enjoyed Mwanza and the Lake Zone. Of course we said yes again. I wish I could remember the name of the program, because we may never see our big international debut!

From there we got back into our bolt and headed to Capri Point - which is a hilltop area that has a lot of big homes, the Beverly Hills of Mwanza. At the top of one of the hills was a water treatment plant. It was relevant because we were at Kwatunza Beach and got drinks with ice in them and were nervous about having the ice. I asked Richard to confirm if the ice was made with filtered water and the waiter said that their water was trucked in and boiled before they made the ice. So this water treatment plant that was built in the early 2000s with support from the EU was also speaking to efforts to have clean drinking water here in Mwanza. I have no idea how but we very easily drove in our bolt into the water treatment facility and our driver gave us a tour. He said that he worked on construction of the plant, very random connection. So after our impromptu tour we drove around a little bit more to see los of big gated properties and a few apartment towers. There were several also under construction that we drove by as we drove through the city.

Buildings here seem to have very skinny concrete columns. The scaffolding looks quite precarious and is made from wood, but seems to do the trick. We talked to Richard about a catastrophe in Dar where a high rise building actually collapsed. He said that there is a scary trend where buildings will be designed to be 5 stories for example and then the owner will build extra stories on the building without redesigning the structure. Or sometimes if it is a commercial building a business owner will use a building as storage and put mechanical equipment in the building though it was not designed for that. The construction industry is dominated by the Chinese here. The Chinese invest a lot in infrastructure projects here but then are able to import Chinese steel, equipment, and other materials. When we got back to Hotel Kingdom on our second night there was a crazy hours long thunderstorm. The whole building was shaking and I was definitely thinking about those skinny columns.

Our driver finally dropped us off at Hotel Malaika where we had a very long lunch. This place was very similar to Kwatunza Beach but had a bougie hotel connected to it. We again had to pay a cover charge (Tsh 4000!) to go eat lunch. Again, a lovely patio right next to the water. Liz and Richard both got the tilapia and ate it with their hands this time. After a long saga that involved the manager I was able to order a non-vegetarian mixed skewer platter with naan. It definitely had an Indian spin to it and was spicy, but it was really good and flavorful. We completed lunch with a mojito and a pina colada. Eating at a restaurant here is an hours long process, so it was 4pm by the time we were finished and waited another 4 minutes for the bill - no hurry in Africa! There was a nightclub right next to the restaurant and Richard wanted to watch the Yanga (Young Africans) Team play soccer so we got a few more drinks there and watched the sun set over the lake. I had a Kilimanjaro and Liz and Richard split a bottle of very sweet rose wine from Dodoma. It was interesting to talk about things like chivalry and gender roles in different cultures. Things like female circumcision that were a thing in many of the tribes are now outlawed. The country really has evolved a lot since I was here in 2005. I don’t see men holding hands anymore, there is a lot more image awareness and social media, and of course the venues in Mwanza were very international feeling.I was walking back from the bathroom and there were 4 teenagers, one of which just said - “Mzungu… foto.” I mean how could I say no, but I definitely wonder what that photo is doing in his phone now and what he thinks about it.

We probably spent about 6 hours at this place so no time for the boat tour, we just went back to the hotel and then watched the Manchester City and Liverpool game before bed.

This morning we woke up early to catch our flight to Dar. The airport is about the size of a CVS, but with two security checkpoints! The first checkpoint where I got flagged for my cross-stitch scissors. So now writing this from the flight with a view of Kili and Mt Meru!