the parliament has just passed a new budget where they raised the tax on petrol. they called it a poor-friendly budget because the lowered the cost of kerosene. however by raising the price of petrol the price of everything that the poor depend upon has gone up overnight. my dala dala ride which was 3 hundred shillings is up to 4 hundred, and because the farmers transport their produce via dala dala the price of vegetables has also gone up. my friend working on his house suffers the price of cement going up. It's a very unpopular budget- i hear absolutely everyone grumbling about it. I hear in dar people are protesting more openly, refusing to pay the fares on dala dala and so forth, but here in arusha everyone complies. a bit polite. i wonder about the revolutionary history of tanzania because it seems everyone is too polite to object to anything, and also mostly extremely disinterested in politics, unlike the kenyans when i;ve gotten to nairobi.