On the loose in Arusha, Tanzania

So, you have arrived at Kilimanjaro International Airport before embarking on a climb of Kilimanjaro or a safari to one of the game parks. You are tired, jet-lagged, and grubby. Other than a sleep, what should you do? Explore Arusha, what else?

Arusha is a bustling commercial city in north central Tanzania. It is not a tourist destination in itself, but is certainly worth a day or two of exploring. The central market in any city is worth a visit. This one was a bit smaller then I expected, and seemed quiet, but possibly my friends and I arrived too late in the day for the main action. The produce looks good!

Some big beefy ladies haunt the market district.

The market is next to the bus station, which is really active. There is no train service to Arusha now, but by bus you can go to Kenya or Uganda, and possibly further. That might be an interesting adventure.

Heading into town in the direction of the Clock Tower, the streets are commercial and lined with shops, small manufacturers, banks, mobile phone stores, and scooter/car repair shops. From what I can tell, everyone is busy, doing something, or plying some trade. Many of the stores run generators because while I was there, the mains electricity went off mid-morning and stayed off until early evening. Often the merchants sat on the sidewalk next to their generator. Yum, exhaust fumes.

A surprising number of merchants downtown were Indians (or Pakistanis?). We heard that many are descendants of Indian troops who were sent to Tanganyika in the early-20th century. When Britain gave up its colony, the former troopers stayed behind (or were left behind). Is this story true? In neighboring Uganda, the business class during the mid-20th century was dominated by Indians. Dictator Idi Amin (the "Butcher of Uganda") expelled the Indian traders, bankers, and merchants, and Uganda's economy virtually collapsed. (This sounds like the folly of Ferdinand and Isabella in expelling the Jews from Spain in the late-1400s - stupidity cloaked in religion.)

We came across a building with post office boxes, not a post office, just hundreds of boxes.

Near the bus station is a large and lonely cemetery. In the colonial era, it may have been the European cemetery. Sadly, it is neglected now.

On a clear day, Mount Meru looms over the city. Meru is a stratovolcano with peak elevation of 4,562.13 metres (14,968 ft). Our guide said there are climbing routes but it is not a common tourist destination.

We looked for English cultural remains, but I was surprised how few English buildings were left. This long colonnaded building was in the grounds of the Mount Meru Regional Hospital. Rangoon (see my Burma blog posts) has a much richer colonial architectural legacy.

This is the fourth of a series of Tanzania articles and has covered a short tour of Arusha. Should your travels take you there, do walk or take motorbikes round town.

Photographs taken with a Panasonic Lumix G3 digital camera with Panasonic 12-32mm lens. I  opened the raw files with Adobe Camera Raw 7.4 and processed most of the frames with DxO FilmPack 5 using the Kodachrome 25 emulation. I think it does not quite look like Kodachrome, but have no direct comparison available.

Arusha with Film Emulations

Long-time readers know I often convert my digital RAW files to black and white. Recently I tried the DxO FilmPack 5 film emulation software. I thought it would be interesting to see how some scenes in Arusha, Tanzania, would look if I had been using film (click any of the pictures to see them at 1,600 pixels wide).

This is the central bus station in Arusha. This is the RAW file from my Panasonic G3 camera opened with Adobe Camera Raw 7.4 with minimal manipulation other than  increasing exposure in the shadows. The colors are good and there is a long range of exposure from dark to white. Digital capture is amazing.

This is the simulation of Kodak Ektar 100 film. It was an excellent emulsion and looked a lot like the pure digital capture. Note that this was a negative film, meaning it was intended for printing on color print paper. Depending on the type of paper used and the filtration during printing, the final print might look quite different.

Here is my favorite slide film from the past, Kodachrome 25. Note the "clean" high contrast appearance.

Here is my favorite black and white film, Kodak Tri-X, with yellow filter added to enhance contrast a little. You can still buy Tri-X in various sizes.

Finally, here is the Kodak BW400CN black and white film with red filter. The BW400CN was discontinued in 2014 but can still be found in bulk on ePrey. This was a convenient  film because it was developed in C-41 chemicals at any color print lab (in other words, color print film but with monochrome dyes only). It scanned well - buy some while you can.

This is the abandoned railroad station. This is the standard digital output with good exposure range and reasonably realistic colors.

Here is the same scene but processed with DxO FilmPack 5 with the Kodak Tri-X film emulation. I added the yellow filter, which darkened the sky when using real Ti-X. Depending on filtration (green, yellow, orange, red, etc.) there are almost endless ways you can modify the tonality.

Her is another scene from the rail yard, the standard digital RAW file opened in Adobe camera Raw 7.4.

Here is a film that DxO labeled as Generic Kodachrome. Note the bright blue of the warehouse in the distance. The Kodachrome of the 1950s and 1960s was highly saturated, resulting in the "Kodachrome look." Kodachrome is gone forever, but many other films are still available. Borrow a film camera and try some traditional (real) photography as an aesthetic challenge.

Last train to Arusha

Dear Readers, sorry, the title is a bit deceptive. There are no trains to Arusha, and I think the last one left the station at least a decade ago. Arusha is a bustling commercial city in north central Tanzania. Most western visitors know it as a gateway to safaris in the Tanzanian game parks or as a gathering point before a climb of Kilimanjaro. Arusha itself does not offer much for the tourist, but it is busy, noisy, grubby, and colorful.

The railroad was built in the early 20th century, during the great era of railroad-building around the world. The official Tanzanian railroad web page states, 

"Construction of the 86.08 km Moshi-Arusha railway extension of the Tanga Line starting at Moshi in 1911 and reaching Arusha in 1929. The railway distance from Arusha to Tanga and Dar es Salaam is 437km and 644km respectively." 

My guide, Morris, said the railroad was built by the Germans. He was partly correct because while the Germans were forced out of their African colonies in World War I, they certainly began the construction project when Tanzania was part of German East Africa. According to Wikipedia, Germany controlled this part of east Africa from the 1880s to 1919, when, under the League of Nations, it became a British mandate.

On my first day in Arusha, I asked Morris to take me to the train depot. He was surprised, and said he had never had a tourist ask him to go there. We took rides with rent-a-motorbike transport guys. Mine had a spare helmet and was very careful, avoiding the rain gutters that line most of the roads. Some of these are serious troughs, about a meter deep and lined with organic debris of unknown aromatic origin. The depot buildings are in a warehouse part of town. Lorries were parked in the dust.

The buildings were intact and secure, so someone still takes responsibility.

The tracks were meter gauge, another remnant of the German origins for this project.

The electric supply from the mains is a bit erratic in Arusha, meaning often there is no electricity.

Were there once 1st and 2nd class outhouse stalls? Odd.

Some gents were sitting at once of the platforms. Morris asked them if I could take their portrait. They said they did not see many white people (Westerners?) around there.

It was pretty sleepy on the track side of the depot. The bugs were buzzing, the sun blazing - time for a nap.

There was not much happening inside, either. The buildings are locked, so someone has possession. I hope they can one day restore train service.

I took these photographs with a Panasonic G3 digital camera with the Panasonic Lumix 12-32mm lens, and added a polarizing filter for scenes with sky. To convert to black and white, I opened the RAW files in Adobe Photoshop Elements (using ACR 7.3), then opened DxO FilmPack 5 to use one of the black and white emulations. Most of the time, the Kodak Tri-X was best, but on some very contrasty scenes, Kodak BW400CN retained detail in the shadows. I usually added the yellow filter to darken the sky a bit.