ARUSHA DAY TWO

 I woke to a nice sunny day two in Arusha. My schedule included meeting my host Emmanuel in Arusha and also later meet one of the senior managers of Tanzania Film Company (TFC) I had been given his number by another former employee of TFC, and when I contacted him by coincidence he told me he too was in Arusha, I was really excited at the proospect of meeting him, I wanted to ask him a number of things about that company. 

But first I had to deliver a letter to the management of The Arusha Declaration Museum to officially give my intention of working with the museum in researching and providing music composed and recorded about the  Arusha Declaration. It was my intention to then meet my host but unfortunately, he suddenly was nowhere to be seen or heard, and neither did I see the former TFC official, it was disappointing but not the end of the world, life had to go on.
I began walking around Arusha touring all the old music spots that I could remember. I passed by the Metropole Cinema Hall, the AICC where bands like the Ambassadors used to perform, Arusha Hotel, Hotel Seventy Seven and other famous music places of the days gone by and by chance I also passed near a former music shop owned by the late Congolese musician Baba Gaston, and that gave me the idea of looking for old music shops.
Not very far from the Arusha Declaration Museum , there was a shop that sold only gospel music, here first I was really interested in getting a copy of one of my old favorite gospel song,  Kila Mtu atauchukua mzigo wake mwenyewe . and the guy running the shop said he had the song, it was great getting the original audio copy, I have been playing it over and over again since. Most of the shop was filed with CDs and DVDs, but there were also many dusty VHS cassettes of old gospel choirs. When I asked for the price of the VHS cassettes, instead of answering me, the young man  asked if I had a farm, that was so strange, I asked what has me having a farm got to do with the price of the video cassettes? He then gave me a shocker, he said farmers buy those video cassettes and unroll the tapes and spread them around the farms, when the wind blew the tapes would make a noise that scared away birds. That had me laughing out, I had never imagined video tapes being used by farmers for scaring away birds.

I told him I was interested in the songs in the VHS cassettes, he had a lot of the cassettes but unfortunately I couldn't buy all the cassettes I wanted for the lack of enough fund. 

Later that afternoon I thought I would check on a music shop that used to exist in the 80s just near the Arusha Clock Tower, and to my surprise it was still there, the shop was being run by a very jolly  Indian guy, who knew a lot about the music business in Tanzania. He was also now selling Masai  cultural artifacts.
On the top shelves there were some dusty VHS that were staked high on the top of each other. When I told him I was looking for old Tanzanian music video cassettes , he told to see him the next day he would have checked his store where there were more cassettes. The next day I was at the shop and it was a bit disappointing, most of the VHS that he had were of Congolese music but I did get some very interesting video cassettes. I left the shop with my big bag full of VHS cassettes and went back to my hotel room to prepare for the journey back to Dar es Salaam, it was clear there wasn't much I was going to gain for staying in Arusha presently in Arusha