Mandazi

This lady, who is called Tatu (meaning ‘Three’ in Swahili), is making mandazi, a fried bread / doughnut creation that comes from the Swahili coast. Breakfast was mandazi with some ginger spiced tea.

After this we had a whole day in the car, travelling from Nyerere National Park to Masasi in southern Tanzania, where our landscape office is located. On the journey we could see the vast caravans of lorries hauling materials to the site of Stiegler’s Gorge Dam, the highly controversial hydropower project on the Rufiji River. UNESCO have threatened to withdraw the World Heritage status of Selous because of this development, however have ultimately issued some watered down decisions that won’t cause any Tanzanian politician to lose a wink of sleep.

The dam is rightly being highly contested for its ecosystem impacts, including downstream where the Rufiji drains into East Africa’s largest mangrove forest. In villages such as Kisaki, where Tatu is making mandazi, the economic benefits are very real in places where there hasn’t previously been any wealth. Tatu ran a small catering stall to feed the vast number of construction workers at the dam site and has been able to return to Kisaki to build her own café, keeping the village supplied with fried tastiness.

The obscurity of Masasi is highlighted by its Lonely Planet entry being on page 341 of 342. There was an electricity blackout as we arrived in town, which was not the most auspicious start to somewhere I’ll be spending chunks of time. It did have a beautiful red sunset though. The simple guesthouse run by someone called Daffy (not a duck) surprisingly provided the best shower I’ve had for many a long week, and a fan for which there was no off switch.

Time will tell with Masasi.