photos uploaded

I have uploaded selected photos from my Tanzania trip on picasaweb. Now you can view them at http://picasaweb.google.co.in/sandeep.hell/DodomaTanzania#

Amitabh Bhachhaaan and Hindi Cinemas

Its been a month and I haven't seen a movie. So, I am looking around to see if I can find a movie theater, or a CD shop at least. My quest lead to this wonderful conversation with Chali.

Sandip: You said you like Hindi songs, have you seen any hindi movie ?
(He smiles, sparkle in eyes. I realized he's got something interesting to tell)
Chali: Yeah .. I watched few movies sometime ago ..
Sandip: Wow .. so you watch Hindi movies. Thats great. What do you know about Bollywood.
Chali: Yeah .. I know amitabh bhachhaan, Mithun Chakrawaati, Dharmendra. And Govinda is my favourite.
He gave me a Govinda Smile.
Sandip: Wow... Thats cool. What movies did you watch ?
Chali: Yeah .. I saw 'Mard', 'Disco Dancer', 'Hum'.
Uhh .. I am prepared to go back .. ages.
Sandip: Thats good. And what about Govinda.
Chali: Hatyaa ..
Sandip: Which one ?
I am trying hard to remember
Chali: Hatyaa ..
Sandip: Yeah .. Govinda movie. ;)
I cant remember
Chali: And I know Amrish Kapoor.
Sandip: Amrish .... was that Amrish Poori or Rishi Kapoor?
Chali: Yeah .. Amrish Amrish ... He is like 'Katili'.
Sandip: Katili, what is that supposed to be?
Chali: Katili is like .. ummm ..
Sandip: Hero .. Villain .. negative role, positive role ..
Chali: Yeah .. negative role. Bad guys who commit crime.
Sandip: Ohh ... Then it must be Amrish Poori . Who fight Hero .. Amitabh .. Govinda
Chali: Yeah .. right. I like Hindi movies. They are very good. I used to see them long ago.
Sandip: Do you know any latest .. young heroes .. like shahrukh .. hritik ?
Chali: I know shahrukh .. Sunny Deol, salman, shetty ..
Sandip: And what about actresses ?
Chali: What ..
Sandip: Heroin .. female actor .. aishwaryaa rai ??
Chali: Yeah .. I know Hemamalini.
Sandip: Good !!! So, what was the last movie you watched ?
Chali: I saw .. 'Tum Paas AAye .. Tum ne na jaane kya sapne dikhaye' ..
I am struggling now .. it just takes time .
Chali: Its 'Kuchh Kuchh Hota Hai'.
Sandip: Wow .. you beat me now. So, where do you see movies.
Chali: We go and get video cassettes. We have cinema theater in Dar ..
Sandip: I want to see one movie now.
Chali: Here in Dodoma, we do not have theater. We can buy CDs or Cassettes from One way street.
Sandip: Thats great news. I will go and check out.

I found my place. One Way Street.

A Walk Down the Road in Dodoma, Tanzania

A Walk down the road ..

I am late again. Thanks to Roku who called me and reminded me that the team was planning to go out for a walk and find some place for dinner. And that is adventure in itself. We hardly know the city and we decide to walk down the market place and find some place to eat.

So we walk. 10 aliens in a place like Dodoma. We are walking on road, some taking picture, and ocassionally saying .. Asanti , Asanti Sana. That means Thanks, Thank You very Much. We saw a group singing songs on backyards of a church. And we applauded when they finished.

So, Sean took us to some place that shows a closed sign. Sean and Dan run around the hotel every day, and come up with these ideas to take us around.

We decided to extend our search. We walked half a km more, saw a restaurant. That reminded me one of those 'local eating places' where you have a small plastic table with four chairs around. And there are like 4 such tables and an adjacent kitchen. Sean is our leader now. After all he is the one who got us here. The waitress hardly understood anything. Looked like for the first time she got the foreigners to her restaurant. And then we regroup again. A round of discussion. And group decides to go back to hotel. After all it was getting dark and we can’t experiment with food.

But some of us decide to check it out. Roku, Sean, Dan and Sandip decide to eat at the 'Local' eating place. The menu was unheard of. No prices mentioned. There were few items written on wall. And we try to decode, decipher. Roku identifies 20% , Sandip gets 10% of it and Dan and Sean are Ok to anything. Brave men.

We wanted to know what is Kuku. And the waitress waves her hands to show that its bird, and Dan makes this 'kuku kuku kuku' sound to confirm that its a bird and it chirps like Chicken. The waitress agreed. And here we go. We found out what you call chicken in Swahili.

So We order following items.
wadi kuku ..meaning chicken rice
wadi .. something ..
Pilao Special - fried Rice, chicken curry and some alien object - Sean said it might be tail of an animal .. elephant may be !!

We took coke, Roku wanted to try another local beer. Some kinda ginger beer. But let me say, food was tasty. It tested better than the one at University.
and we paid some 2500-3000 TSH each. Not cheap as we had expected. Probably we should have asked the prices before we order. Not sure if we paid the right money.

Then we are out for a walk .Lets explore the place. On one road we see some lights. Sean says that must be Bollywood music place . And I ask why ?? Sean says the you see so many lights, it looks colorful after all.
It was a casino called 'roses or something like that'. But we didnt dare to enter, atleast for now. And in the process we find one more casino . I never expected this in Tanzania. At least not in Dodoma.

We came across a place where we saw an advertise saying Liverpool vs arsenal match and 500 TSH for video show or something. We expect that to be a sports bar. Let us see if we can catch one of those matches.

Then we go to a place at the fountain square (there is a fountain at the square). We see a place that looked like a bar. We go and check out . its a coffee shop .. ppl sit on those round seats around the semi circular table .. and drink coffee .. Thats cool. You should name the place ‘Coffee Bar’.

So we take coffee. It was instant mix coffee. We were little disappointed as we were looking for a proper coffee .

Then we walk again. We see one restaurant . Nureen restaurant . The owners name was Mehboob. A nice and polite guy. And I was quick to find that he was from India. He said his dad came from India and wife is from Gujrat, India. They serve most of the Indian dishes . lets see what we get when we visit it again. At least I should find some good Indian vegetarian food. I am dying to eat Daal and Roti or simple chapati.

And finally we trek back to our New Dodoma Hotel, finding our way along the road, without streetlights. The sky looks great in nights. It could be because we were close to Equator. We could identify a spread of stars and Sean named it as Milky Way Galaxy.

So, we find our hotel, and rush back to rest of our team members who were still at the table enjoying their 'Indian Food' at the Dodoma Hotel Restaurant. And we get back to our regular session of 'I saw this, you saw that etc.’