Tanzania Culture (JOHNSON J LAZARO)

Tanzania lies on the east coast of Africa, just south of the equator. It shares borders with Kenya, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, and the Indian Ocean. Tanzania also shares three great lakes—Victoria, Tanganyika, and Malawi—with its neighbors. The country is comprised of a wide variety of agro-ecological zones: low-lying coastal plains, a dry highland plateau, northern savannas, and cool, well-watered regions in the northwest and south

Over 100 languages are spoken in Tanzania, most of them from the Bantu family. After independence, the government recognized that this represented a problem for nationalunity, and as a result introduced the Swahili language into all primary schools to spread its use. Swahili is the national and official language. English as a second official language is widely spoken especially in major cities, to a lesser extend in rural areas. Arabic is spoken in Zanzibar and Pemba, to a lesser extent though. Tribal languages are widely spoken as well.
Tanzania is among few countries where religious harmony is prevalent; people of different religions live in harmony and inter religious marriages are common. The main religions are Christianity and Islam, another religions are Hinduism and traditional religions.

Tanzania food has been developing gradually. Tanzania food items have lot of variety ranging from fruits to vegetables to meat and milk products. The early people who lived in Tanzania were mostly termed as hunter-gatherers. The most popular food in Tanzania consisted of sorghum, millets, fruits, fishes, vegetables pawpaw (papaya), ndizi (bananas), matunda (fruits), beans, spinach rice (wali) and maize. The Arabs entered Tanzania and established the trade routes in the country, during this time they introduced and popularized food items like cotton plants, citrus fruits, biriani and pilau. These food items became very popular among the people of the coastal areas. Groundnuts and cassava introduced by the Portuguese also became an important part of the diet of Tanzania. Meat items are not widely consumed in Tanzania. Sheep, goats and cattle are normally used for their milk. Only during festive occasions they are killed for their meats. The most commonly used meat items are ndafu and nyama choma. Ugali is the national meat dish of Tanzania.

ugali and chicken wali (rice) meet and vegetable

Meet andTomato

Tanzania run art residences for the artist's worldwide. We have facilities to produce fine arts, carvings (the world famous Makonde tribe ebony carvings), hand made paper, gem stone jewelry, East African batik, African music (drumming and dance) and other arts sectors. A volunteer with interest and skills in various sector of arts will be conducted to work with the local Tanzanian artists to join skills and experiences, to produce shows and exhibitions or just to enhance the skills of both parties in the grassroots level. All art activities are placed in Dar es Salaam.We are printing our own youth magazine "Fiesta - (Mzuka) and all a prties interested in journalism are welcome. Our music studios will provide placements for mucisians and producers and this work is also combined to music video making.