Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

It is not every day that a rural Tanzanian government official goes around the village with a loudspeaker to make announcements. And it is even rarer when the announcement called for all eateries in the area to shut down until further notice. But the government officials went around this time to sound the alarm for a massive cholera outbreak, people obliged quickly. When they heard that 80-some victims of the outbreak are already lying in the hospital, having a proper sit-down lunch, no matter how simple , becomes much less important.

It is a bit unfortunate, but it suffices to say that the average African's hair is not particularly suitable for styling.  Genetically created to be hard and not so malleable, attempts at being creative with what is on top of one's head often involves donning a stylized wig.  Of course, for most local males, who neither see the need nor have the financial resources to keep up with such superficial pursuits , the average hair cut becomes not much beyond shaving off extra hair with a simple electric shaver.  With foreign clientele so few and far in between, foreign males pretty much get the same treatment.

The expatriate community in rural Tanzania is quite separate from the local one. Expats come to have their own restaurants, shops, and hobbies that are often not only financially unreachable but also culturally unpalatable for Tanzanians. The sad reality is that the phenomenon is not limited to foreigners. A holdover from the continent's colonial era, still active populations of white and Indian Tanzanians dot even the remote landscapes of rural townships, sometimes making their presence felt in ethnically familiar expatriate communities or creating their own separate ones.

In the past couple of years, there is a growing focus in the tech world on the topic of mobile payment platforms.  The idea is to use smartphone apps loaded with money as replacement of cash in everyday business transactions.  Paying for groceries, restaurant bills, and transport will no longer involve searching for petty cash, not only reducing time and hassle for digging through small change, but also dramatically decreasing possibilities of errors, frauds, and thefts while making it all the easier for tracking spending, checking available balances, and splitting bills across multiple people.

In rural Tanzania, I ate the same lunch every workday when I went to the villages. It was a combination of rice, boiled beans, boil vegetables, and beef chunks stewed in tomato sauce. In this little local street-side eatery in the rural village where I went to work, this combo plate is the only thing on the menu. The young owner of the shop makes the exact same thing for lunch and dinner every day, day in and day out. Interestingly enough, her eatery is sustained by the same customers who work in the area, who come to eat the exact same thing, day in and day out.  I was one of them.