From Dar to Zanzibar

Hans B. Neumann is a history lecturer at Scarborough College, University
of Toronto.

For readers unfamiliar with African geography, the title of this
delightful little paperback refers to the country of Tanzania in East
Africa. Dar-es-Salaam is Tanzania’s capital, and the fabled Zanzibar
(now part of Tanzania) is an island half an hour by air from the
capital.

But this brief book is far more than a description of these two places.
The text relates Albertan Betty Kilgour’s second visit to Tanzania,
begun in January 1990. As readers of the book describing her first visit
will know, Kilgour is not your average tourist traveller. She avoids
luxury hotels and zoo-like tours through African game parks. Instead,
she is interested in meeting the African people, and not in artificial
tourist settings but in their daily lives in the more remote areas.

Fortunately for her and the reader, she makes her visit in the company
of a friend from Canada, Mumtaz Premji. Of East Indian descent, Premji
is fluent in Swahili, the language of choice in many parts of East
Africa. Through Premji, Kilgour is able to vivify the lifestyle and
problems of the extensive East Indian community, many of whose members
are of the Ismaili Muslim sect. In her travels around Tabora, as well as
north to Arusha National Park near Mount Kilimanjaro, Kilgour—with her
engaging personality—is able to meet and observe Tanzania’s native
population.

The text is written almost in diary style. It avoids long, thematic
discussions in favor of shorter, more fragmentary observations and
insights. Accompanying the text are intimate, unpretentious,
black-and-white photographs of people and places, which perfectly
complement the tone of the text.

For anyone wishing to get a rare glimpse of the real Africa, without
the glare and hype of glossy tourist brochures, this slim volume is a
must-read.