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Write to: The Editor, Arusha Times, P.O. Box 212, Arusha. E-mail: arushatimes@habari.co.tz
Why do you allow these huge and ugly advert boards?Dear Editor One would not expect Arusha’s local authorities to pay particular attention to the Gospels but it seems they do. "Your left hand must not know what your right is doing," says the Gospel of Matthew. This sentence seems to depict quite well the activities of the municipality. One department is blissfully unaware of what another decrees; one destroys what another has built. The planting of trees is encouraged. I believe the idea is to transform Arusha into some type of tropical Geneva, beautifully decorated with flowers, shrubs and all kinds of vegetation. Nurseries have been installed along some of the main arteries of the town. People are given prices for the betterment of their surroundings. Very laudable indeed! If one department is keen in transforming the town and making it pleasant looking, another department seems to have exactly the opposite aim. What is the use of planting trees if they are later on hidden behind huge and ugly advertisement boards? There is a magnificent tree along Njiro Road at Nanenane grounds area. When it blooms, it becomes a huge bouquet of crimson flowers (they are orange really but crimson sounds better). Someone has had the good idea of putting a huge board just in front of it. The same happened at the beginning of the Njiro road close to Kijenge roundabout. Three brightly coloured ladies are looking down on you with predatory smiles. The town is disfigured by all types of companies intent only on selling their wares, whatever those might be (in this last case, one might wonder). If the municipality seriously wants to have a beautiful town, why is permission given to erect those huge and ugly boards all over the place? Kijenge roundabout will very soon be a solid wall of advertisement. The road department has done a rather ruthless cleaning act. What about the municipality? And by the way, dear phone company, you invite us: "Join our world!" If your world means lack of care for the environment, if it is a world of that type of painted ladies… sorry, I will make very sure I am not going to join it! You have lost at least one prospective customer.
Give me Close the Gap contactsDear Editor I am writing to you from Ottawa, Ontario Canada. I was very interested in the article written in the February 21 - 27, 2004 issue to the Arusha Times entitled "Deaf-mute centre benefits from information technology." I have checked for the website of the organization "Close the Gap" and I am unable to locate it. Would you please send me their Website and E-mail address? I am a teacher of the Hearing impaired here in Canada. And I am involved with an NGO here CACHA that is planning to do some work in HIMO with the organization MKUKI. Both CACHA and MKUKI have web sites. Any information you could send me would be most helpful. -The Belgian Chapter of the Lions Club - Ijsedal Tervuren. -Close the Cap International Official- Olivier Vanden Eynde -The school’s email address. -Even the contact at KLM.
Is there any engineer worth the name in the municipality?Dear Editor The area around lake Rukwa in Southwest Tanzania has long been an excellent breeding ground for locusts. In colonial times, the British had a plan to erase the insects by large scale spraying. To their great surprise, they never succeeded. They did not know one important detail: the local people were very carefully leaving a good area unsprayed, so that the insects would have the opportunity to multiply. Their logic was simple: next year they were employed again! This seems to be the logic behind the work done on the road of Njiro: it should be repaired in such a way that next year, you are at it again. Is there any engineer worth the name in the municipality? It does not look like it! Does it make sense to you to put gravel on a riverbed? Anybody gifted with a minimum of common sense would know this: first, you divert the water in ditches, then you repair the road. Arushan engineers do not seem to have that minimum of common sense. They keep on working on the surface leaving to the water all the opportunities it needs to dig, carry away, destroy, wreck and ruin. Millions were spent repairing the road to the dump of Muriet. A few weeks later, the road was washed away. The same is happening each year with the stretch of road below the old dump of Njiro. Loads of murram are brought, spread around, rolled under… and the first rain washes everything away. They are at it again this year, full of good will and enthusiasm, using the money painfully collected from our pockets with parking tickets. Lorries have started their journeys to and fro, dumping their loads. Will our engineers think of diverting the water? Definitely no! What would they do next year?
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