Most people are extremely poor here except for the few that are rich, there is no middle class. Everybody talks about money all the time because they need it to survive. Even 50 TSH which is equivalent in canadian money to less than a penny, is a lot for some people in the small villages. In the village Ioli part of their culture is to drink coffee and sit around and talk. The coffee cups are the size of baby tea cups and the problem is that the coffees too expensive for many so they have to share. When me and my mom went to visit Ioli we bought everyone 5- 10 cups of coffee each, which made them all very very happy.

Because so many are very poor a lot of things here are not too expensive. fruit and vegetables are 1,000-3,000 TSH ($0.75-$2.00 CAD) and Renting a room in house is 50,000 to 100,000 TSH a month, which is 30-60$ CAD. It may not seem like a lot to us but in Tanzania it is. In the villages the prices are even lower. Things are not exactly sold in stores here. Pretty much everything is sold outside as street venders. Sometimes the people just walk around carrying the items they’re selling and yelling to get your attention. There are no fixed prices on anything. How things are sold is by the seller telling you a price and you have to barter your way down to the price you want. Personally me and mommy hate doing this because communication is hard as well as the people try and push for things. It can get annoying at times because they really like to force you to buy your stuff, i think especially because we are tourists.

The divide between the rich and the poor is drastic. There are the people in the villages living in mud huts and fighting for water while the rich are driving around in the land cruisers. One of the days me, mommy and Moshi were buying a bee box (for one of the villages) when a Land Cruiser drove by. Inside was one of the government officials. Moshi instantly knew who because he recognized the expensive car. the majority of people don’t even own cars so when they see very expensive ones it’s easy to figure who the person driving them is. I think that it is not right that the richer people of Tanzania don’t give back to their country, it would solve a lot of their problems in my opinion.