Mbeya

Mbeya is a young city by Tanzanian standards. The settlement was founded in the 1920s as a gold-mining town serving the rush in the goldfields of the Chunya country north of it, and the site chosen in the valley below the Mbeya Range gave it a cool climate and good water. Prospectors, traders and colonial officials arrived first; when the gold thinned out, the town survived because of its position on the road between the coast, Lake Nyasa and the copper country of Northern Rhodesia.

Independence and the decades that followed turned that position into the town's main asset. The Tanzania–Zambia Highway was built to carry Zambian copper to the sea without crossing white-ruled Rhodesia or South Africa, and the Chinese-built TAZARA railway, constructed between 1970 and 1975, was laid through Mbeya on the same errand. The town became a regional capital, a customs and transport hub and the market for one of the most productive farming areas in the country.

Growth since then has been rapid, driven by the highway, cross-border trade with Zambia and Malawi and the steady movement of people from the surrounding countryside. The city has spread along the valley and up the slopes ever since, with new wards, colleges and a university campus, and the airport at Songwe, opened in December 2012, gave the Southern Highlands a direct air link to Dar es Salaam.

Mbeya is a meeting point of highland peoples. The Nyakyusa of the Rungwe hills and the lake shore, the Safwa of the ridges around the city, the Nyiha to the west and the Kinga and Bena from the east all have communities here, and the city's Swahili is spoken with a distinct southern accent. Christianity is strong, with Moravian and Lutheran churches founded by German missions in the nineteenth century, Roman Catholic parishes and a growing number of Pentecostal congregations; choirs are a serious pursuit, and Sunday singing carries across whole neighbourhoods.

Because the city sits on a corridor rather than at the end of one, it has a trading culture — Zambians, Malawians, Congolese and Burundians pass through, and the markets and bus stands work in several languages. Football fills the stadium and the bars, the national clubs from Dar es Salaam draw most of the loyalty, and Bongo Flava plays from the shops as it does everywhere in the country.

Manners are those of highland Tanzania: unhurried greetings, respect for age, modest dress in town, and hospitality that assumes visitors will be fed. Initiation customs, harvest gatherings and funeral observances remain important in the surrounding villages, and many city families keep a plot of land and return to it at planting and harvest.

About 649,000 people lived in the urban area in 2023, making Mbeya the main city of southern Tanzania and one of the fastest-growing in the country. Life is organised around trade and farming. Lorries from Dar es Salaam, Zambia and Malawi keep the highway and the Uyole junction busy; Mwanjelwa's market handles the produce of an unusually fertile hinterland, and much of the maize, potatoes, avocados and beans sold in Dar es Salaam is grown in the highlands around the city. Coffee from the slopes around Mbeya and Mbozi, and tea from Tukuyu, are the main export crops.

Housing climbs the lower slopes in low, iron-roofed blocks, with the older residential quarters shaded by planted trees above the centre and newer, poorer wards spreading along the roads out of town. Offices, banks and colleges cluster near the middle; the university campus and technical colleges have added a large student population.

Mornings begin early and cold, with mist on the ridges and traders setting out before dawn; afternoons in the rainy season are broken by heavy downpours. Current concerns in the city are the pressure of growth on water and housing, road safety on the border highway, and the price of maize and coffee, which swings the whole region's fortunes from one year to the next.

Highland farming shapes what Mbeya eats. Ugali made from local maize is the daily staple, served with beans, greens such as mchicha, and stewed or grilled meat. Potatoes, which grow well in the cool soils around the city, appear as chips with almost everything and in the stew-like chipsi mayai, chips cooked into an omelette. Avocados grow to a size that surprises visitors and are sold by the basket, along with bananas from the Rungwe slopes, which are boiled, fried and stewed rather than eaten as fruit.

Fish comes up from Lake Nyasa, fresh when the road has been quick and more often dried or smoked, and is cooked in tomato and onion or simply fried. Kyela, on the lake plain south of the city, is known across Tanzania for its fragrant rice, which is the rice people ask for by name. Nyama choma — goat or beef grilled over charcoal and eaten with kachumbari, a salad of tomato and onion — is the sociable meal, and the stalls around the Uyole junction and the bus stands do most of it.

Mornings start with chai, brewed strong and sweet and often with ginger, and with mandazi or fried cassava. Arabica coffee is the region's cash crop but is drunk here less than it is exported; in the villages people also make a thin maize beer, and ulanzi, the bamboo wine of the highlands further east, reaches the city in the rainy season.