LETTERS

I have read ‘Tanzanian Affairs’ number 70 from cover to cover and I am afraid I find it slightly depressing. I believe it is generally recognised that the only news is bad news, but there must be plenty of good stories if only people would send them in. One tends to have our fill of politicians; what about the ordinary people, the people my wife wrote about in her books ‘A Patch of Africa’ and ‘Heart of Africa’? Surely they still exist and are getting on with their lives in their cheerful ways and doing interesting and useful things. I have just finished reading ‘Tales from the Dark Continent’ by Charles Allen (1980). That too I have found depressing, dominated by the memoirs of administrative officers and virtually nothing of the work done by the professional officers and their staff. I had met a few of the administrative officers mentioned. But the ones I most admired were not included, though they were very senior when I knew them in Tanganyika. There seems to be no mention these days of Tabora; once the most important town after Dar es Salaam, the Provincial Headquarters of Western Province, with its railway workshops and the Mint, and the centre of the very gifted and talented Wanyamwezi people. What has happened there?
Dr Francis G Smith, Nedlands, Australia.

I have received a letter from Ella Models Ltd. offering to provide ‘experienced models, new faces, extras and dancers’. I always wondered when someone would give a different interpretation to the title of this publication! -Editor.

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