Moshi Town Feb 15.

It's always hard to describe third world cities because it's too easy to fall into the comparison game. Comparison degenerates into pointless because it becomes just a list of have and have nots. To be fair, one must look at what a city has given its location, not what it could be somewhere else.

World's highest free standing mountain. Dusty, dry, did I say dusty, plains. On the edge between the two sits Moshi, a town that might typify the African urban experience.

When you first enter, thankfully it's on a paved road. But paved doesn't mean less dusty, as the broad two lane avenue is paved in the middle, and has wide shoulders of plain dirt. As you proceed inward, the small stalls and roadside vendors increase in density, until the dirt disappears under the throng.

Activity increases, mostly the walking kind, because cars are out of reach for just about all except industry use or the wealthy. Motorcycles are becoming more common, and tend to be smaller, older models, that aren't seen much elsewhere.

There's no let up in the buying and selling, and Moshi has a mini industry made up of cobblers and foot treadle sewing machines. If not prosperous, they all look busy, making and repairing shoes and clothing.

You can be measured in the street, pick a fabric and design, and your shoes or suit will be made up on the spot. Workmanship, surprisingly or not, is quite good.

Every direction you look, you see street vendors, portable stalls, and fixed stores. There is a market of some kind going on constantly. But as you continue on a certain sameness strikes you. Everyone is selling the same thing differentiated only by the apparent means of the merchant. A fixed stall will sell new clothes or shoes, a street vendor laying his or her wares out each morning will have a mix ranging from new to well used. Shoes and belts again range from the new to well used. Slipped in now and then, for tourist benefit, are small curio and handicrafts stalls.

There are food stores, a meat market, and "supermarkets" with a limited stock consisting of the essentials, simple foods, some candy and cookies, and cleainging supplies.

As we move along we cross the occasional paved road, but other than the few main streets, the side roads are dirt. It hasn't rained for a few days, and everything is coated with dust.

The buildings are a mixture of late colonial and recent concrete block. The only reasonably maintained ones are the banks and hotels.

Everything else has what can best described as a "deferred maintenance" look. Peeling paint, chipped concrete and plaster, broken windows patched with wood and cloth. While these would be considered the signs dereliction in the 1st world, here is it a sort of norm.

Make do with what's available. When a can of paint costs a week's salary, other things take priority. While money for repairs can be a problem, what's puzzling is that despite the general delapidated quality of the city, it is reasonably clean and otherwise maintained in a way that is difficut to describe, and really must be experienced.

There's a certain dilligence to cleanliness to be observed despite the dust, and there only a small amount of trash lying about.

Part II to come.