As projects take place Monday through Friday, interns and volunteers have the weekends free for trips and other activities, such as visiting the National Museum of Dar es Salaam.
Last Saturday, my two other interns and I took a trip to Dar city centre. Starting in Tegeta, the journey lasted about two hours due to the need to connect buses in Mbusho and typical weekend traffic. Once there, beMuseumeading to the Museum, we stopped at the local fish market located near the ferry port for some lunch where we were able to have some elicious fresh fiMuseum route to the museum we passed some notable buildings such as the offices belonging to parliamentary members and the official office of the Prime Minister, Kassim Majaliwa.
Working with Art in Tanzania, the Dar es Salaam National Museum has partnered with our organisation to create the program: Arts and Music Against Corruption in Africa. This program explores how the arts, such as music and dance, can be used to promote anti-corruption in an engaging and creative way.
Opened to the public on December 7, 1940, the National Museum is located along Shaban Robert Street, at the junction of Sokoine Drive near the Botanical Gardens. It is one of the five museums in the country that form the National Museum of Tanzania. Known as the King George V Memorial on its opening, the museum was dedicated to the head of state at the time. The museum began its expansion when Tanganyika gained its independence between 1962 and 1964. With the expansion, which led to the creation of five branches, the King George V Memorial transformed into the National Museum, displaying a range of exhibits from historical and contemporary art to ethnographic collections on Tanzanian cultures.
One of the most famous exhibits in the museum is named ‘The Cradle of Humankind’, which displays fossils found in the Olduvai Gorge, a 50km long canyon in northern Tanzania.
Tanzania is one of the most important paleoanthropological sites. One of the most famous facts in the museum is located in this exhibit. In 1959, British Archaeologist Mary Leakey discovered the skull of the Paranthropus boisei, an extinct hominid. Some of the fossils in ‘The Cradle of Humankind’ exhibition date back 2 million years and have formed the basis of our understanding of human evolution!
Being able to travel to the city and other places around Dar-es-Salaam is the best way to explore Tanzania’s culture, and the National Museum taught us a lot about the country’s history and its people. If you would like to learn more about the National Museum of Dar-es-Salaam or any of the other five museums that are part of the National Museum of Tanzania, then head over to their Facebook page, give it a like, and have a browse!
