the writing nib

Tag: places

  • “You’re not the river, you’re the city” – John Green

    “You’re not the river, you’re the city” – John Green

    So it was a Friday morning. The weather was good and I left on time for work with my bicycle that I had bought just two days before. I cycled in heels, a mini skirt and my bag that says ‘boy bye’ was hanging from the left handle. To quote Thanos, ‘Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.‘

    I ended up cycling thrice around a park.

    For the first few days in Bonn, I had to live at a hostel because finding a place to I can sleep and eat comfortably at for a few months needed to be the most difficult thing. I stayed at a place called Max Hostel and the receptionists there are the nicest I’ve ever met. I was welcomed with a smile each morning. That was one of the two things that made the painful first week in Bonn bearable, the other being that I’m at the UN!!!

    The people in Bonn are very nice, foreigners and locals alike. The streets are beautiful, the trains and buses are packed in the mornings and evenings and I like it because it gives me that big city feeling. And maybe it’s just because it’s summer, but I love how a lot of people here choose to cycle instead of using cars and contributing to the horrific tale of global warming. (Me here wishing Dar es Salaam found a way to deal with the overflow of cars in the city). I still haven’t seen Bonn properly, but I have 6 months to do that and more and I’m really looking forward to all it.

    66456847_2363636970585418_975214410941333504_nHere’s the view from my room, you know, what I stare at when listening to the Jonas Brothers’ album Happiness Begins and thinking of ways to make friends in the city and not embarrass myself by getting lost every morning.

    Oh and the river in the featured photo is the Rhine 😉

  • Hi again.

    Hi again.

    It’s been a while! All those memes about university life destroying your mental and physical well-being are true!

    I’ve been writing all kinds of things in the last two months: academic papers, social media posts and angry texts trying to educate people on why the n-word still has power today because of the continued oppression of black people (big sigh).

    Still, I have a couple (thousands, if not millions) of sentences that my keyboard is begging me to type (was this even funny? Haha). Recently, I’ve come across all kinds of journalism on the internet and on paper. I’ve been doing some research on magazines and article writing because I had to write and edit a couple in the last two months. A group of other Tanzanian youth and I having been working on a digital magazine that’s scheduled to come out this June! Head over to our website, Instagram , Facebook and Twitter pages for updates and whatnot. I’m really excited about this because it has been my long-time dream to see authentic written journalism from Tanzania (apart from traditional news journalism on newspapers); something educational and inspiring, yet entertaining. Although I am on the writing end in this case, I have had the most amazing experience and I hope whoever reads it enjoys every word and image.

    What I’ve learnt is that there are so many stories to tell and many different ways to tell them: writing, videography, photography and illustration, to name a few. I’ve been inspired by different photographers and travel bloggers, the likes of Natalie Basha (@thetravelmuse) who does journalism “with a beat in travel and human interest”. Head over to her YouTube channel to see her amazing work. Whenever I think of my dream of becoming a journalist, I think of it in the same way; traveling in order to learn and share what I come across with in other cultures. The world is full of very many untold stories. Platforms like WordPress and YouTube allow us to experience these stories either visually or using our imagination. I hope my words spark your imagination from time to time.

    It has been eye-opening to see how people from all around the world tell stories through photography, videography, writing 😉 and what kinds of stories they choose to tell. It feels great to be a part of the amazing fabric of journalism. The future is exciting (and uncertain, but I kinda like it that way haha). It’s like opening the big pink furry box from RuPaul’s Drag Race =D.

  • A Very Short Time in Kampala

    A Very Short Time in Kampala

    TheWritingNib (1)

    It must be amazing to go to bed after seeing a view like this (sorry it’s a bit blurry, I’m not a professional photographer). From the fourth floor of a building in Bukoto area in Kampala, I almost dropped my jaw. I had never seen anything like it, honestly. The part of Dar es Salaam where I’m from is just next to the ocean so it’s pretty plain. So when this photo was taken I realized how “plain” my life had been (I’m so sorry for the pun).

    The city looked back at me on my first night in Kampala, Uganda. I’d spent the day walking around Bukoto area with my friend, who’s also Tanzanian, looking for places to eat. We came across a certain restaurant called ‘Cheese Shop…’ on the way to Acacia Mall for pizza (I’m not a super fan of pizza by the way. Fight me in the comments, or not. Please don’t). Anyway, it was at that restaurant where I had Chips and Chap for the very first time. Chap is Ugandan; very tasty! Unfortunately, I never asked what exactly was in it (I can still google) or took a picture, but egg is the one thing that was noticeable at first sight.

    Aside from a nice experience at the restaurant, having a nice man who help me get my sandal fixed after it broke in the middle of the road and the sight of very many Bodabodas in the streets of Kampala, I enjoyed feeling very welcomed. I believe it is common in East Africa to welcome people from other countries in a friendly manner. People are always curious to know why you’re there. The guy who took us to Bukoto from the airport and back was very happy to help with little things, like directions to places to eat, when he found out that my friend and I are from Tanzania.

    This is the kind of treatment everyone should be getting all around the world. It shouldn’t be that people look at you with scowls on their faces or call police on you when you’re busy doing normal human being things, or you know, hold parades aimed at promoting racist ideologies (“races” don’t exist by the way). If people in Kampala were like this then my friend and I would’ve gone hungry that day, because it was kind of obvious that we weren’t Ugandan, and neither would I have been able to walk back because no one would’ve wanted to fix my sandal.

    Overall, it was a nice experience and I wish everyone had nice experiences in the places they travel to. Also, I hope to go back again someday so I can eat chap and take a photo of it.

    Lake Victoria can be seen in the featured image. Taken on the way to Entebbe International Airport, along the Entebbe-Kampala Expressway.

     

  • The Ocean

    The Ocean

    To some people, the ocean seems like a scary place where you can die. First of all, you can die anywhere. But that’s not the point here.

    The ocean is like this magical if you think of it. I’ve dreamt of the ocean long before I first watched Sebastian sing that super catchy song ‘Under the Sea’ on The Little Mermaid. However, that particular film made me think more of it. Before I mostly thought of the beach part of it where I could play and catch some waves. But after it was about what it’s like to be part of the sea. Do the fish have some kind of kingdom that keeps them all at peace like how Disney tries to insist on all three of their Little Mermaid films? I’m curious.

    Sometimes people ask themselves whether there are different worlds out there. The way I see it, the ocean is another world that, as it happens, everyone except marine biologists and co. is not paying attention to. The sea level is an entry to another world – the same world where Nemo lives. That must mean something because some of us want to meet Nemo and not fry him (sorry?).

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    The Indian Ocean. Kigamboni, Dar es Salaam, TZ. By asuphotolog.

    The Indian Ocean, which happens to be 20 mins by foot from my home (lucky), is my favorite thing to look at. I remember the days when I had to ride the ferry boat every morning to work and the sun would rise high and its light would fall on the water. That one incident marked my mornings because I truly felt like I shared something with another world, a world I can’t live in because I don’t have gills… And this obsession with the ocean even made me visit the International Maritime Museum Hamburg the first time I went to the city. It’s basically a boat museum but the visit is truly worth it. Looking at all the boats gives you the feeling of wanting to be close with the sea world because everything in there tells you just how great the ocean is and not simply in terms of size but in history and whatever is in it and what it can do with its powerful waves etc.. I get a similar feeling when I look at these pictures by asuphotolog.

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    But, of course, as every story goes we, humans, have found lo many many ways to destroy a world that is not ours. I won’t get into that now. But save the oceans, please And take time to appreciate what is around you; the ocean, the lake, the river or even the sky because I’m certain some of us have dreamt of living in the clouds and being able to fly. I can assure you, that kind of thing doesn’t happen in this world of ours.

  • What’s On Your Mind?

    What’s On Your Mind?

    The first time I picked up a paint brush was on a Sunday afternoon about a month ago. I was in a room full of art such as paintings and potteryware and people who make these for fun and others who are professionals. It never occurred to me that I would come to love and appreciate painting as I do now. Painting was once one of those things which I didn’t understand why exactly people did them and especially how they made a living out it. At the time I was unsure what to do so I just decided to try and paint a picture of one of my favorite places in Dar es Salaam, Garden Avenue.

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    Garden Avenue, Dar es Salaam. By @son_dullah
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    A painting of Garden Avenue

    A few days later I decided to get some painting materials and try to paint myself. I got some brushes, mixing palettes, watercolor paper, a nice-looking glass jar and a set of 48 colors, which some people think is too much, but I prefer to escape the awful process of mixing hues to get the one I want.

    Now that I’ve made a couple of paintings I’ve decided this is something I’m going to be doing for a long time. Making any kind of art, I understand now, is very enjoyable since one has the power to imagine and reimagine things in their own way, like how I reimagined Garden Avenue in my first painting. One person even commented that the painting looked like a dark road in the middle of a forest which is completely different from what Garden Avenue truly is because the place is surrounded by buildings in the middle of a very busy city. But they’re probably not wrong because from the way I see it the place doesn’t scream “city” and whenever I walked there it was like I was far from all the commotion Dar es Salaam is always glad to offer. It’s not a perfect work of art but the joy in doing all of it comes from being able to free whatever is in my mind and not let it be buried with me when my time comes. It was like I tasted some addictive drug for the first time (don’t do drugs).

    So, the bottom line is that, since by now most of our new year resolutions have failed to materialize, it’s good to try something new that’s not part of a list made just after the date changed to December 1. It could be anything, even writing grammatically incorrect short stories based on whatever made up narratives you have in your mind. Let it all out of the cage!

    Here are two of the paintings I’ve done so far with the help of this amazing channel Paint Academy:

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    Autumn Scene
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    Night Scene