Many streets in Dar Es Salaam have no names. In fact, only main roads and those next to important facilities have official names – and this, to be fair, is enough. People use names of areas, districts or some significant landmarks to identify their location. In other words, you're supposed to know the city and its topography. It makes a lot of sense, especially if you go for a walk to those poorest areas, get off the main road and delve into the maze of little dirt roads with razors, empty plastic bottles and cigarette butts being the most common inventory found there. It is then when you understand the idea behind the 'no-name policy'. These streets change a lot, some of them expand, sometimes someone decides to build a house (well, 'shelter' is probably a little bit more fitting) in the middle, diving the street into two.

Thinking about this triggered another thought in my mind – how does the post get delivered? Clearly these people regardless of their living standards receive various sort of post. I figured it out after one of my trips to the city centre, where the main post office is situated. Behind the office located are tens of rows with thousands of post boxes with numbers on them. In Dar Es Salaam (and I'm assuming in the whole country too) post does not get delivered. You have to come to pick it up yourself. I regret not checking it properly, but I think there are more such points of post collection as even thousands of post boxes would not be enough for an almost 5 million people city. Anyway, credits to the person who came up with this solution – GREAT IDEA!!! First of all, it minimises the costs of delivery and therefore lowers the prices of post service. However, more importantly – the post doesn't get lost. It would be physically impossible to deliver the post in such conditions – it would either get lost, stolen or delivered to a wrong person. Two thumbs up.

post boxes in Posta, Dar Es Salaam