From: Dr Georg Retzlaff <?????????????????????>
Subject: Tanzanian Pipes

Dear David,
 I read your Pipe Digest remarks with great interest. My wife and I
lived and worked in Tanzania from 1987-91 (Daressalaam). TANganyika
merged with ZANzibar after independence from Britain to form Tanzania
(uneasy relationship to this day).
I bought many Tanzanian pipes while there. Tanzania is, next to Turkey,
the only place where Meerschaum has been discovered. A German company
was exploiting the mineral near Mt. Kilimanjaro for many years. A whole
range of pipes were made with it, either block or lining types. They
have the word "kiko" (Kiswahili for "pipe") stamped on them and a
rhino). Tanzanian Meerschaum is of, reputedly, much poorer quality than
the Turkish kind: it's brittle and soft. Tanzanian woodpipes are no
good: they look nice but have all the same kind of intertwining African
faces carved on them. The wood is definitely not briar. Just around the
time we left Tanzania, the company (located in Arusha, next to Mt.
Kilimanjaro) was transferred to Tanzanian hands and management and that
was the end: the usual corruption ruined the company. Fewer and fewer
pipes were produced, of increasingly inferior quality. The last I heard
was that the company went under (same thing happened with Tanzanian wine
production, started by German monks who produced some fine stuff until
the company was nationalized and all was ruined).
I own about 12 Tanzanian pipes: calabashes, bulldogs, straights, bents:
all in all very Europeanish styles that sell on the Tourist market.
"Real" Tanzanians do not smoke pipes but prefer cigarettes or "banghi"
(hemp).
So, whatever pipe you own: hold on to it. It'll be rare by now, unless
the Tanzanians begins mass producing again sometime in the future.
I'm holding on to an old pack of Tanzanian pipe tobacco (Sweet Nut), the
most vicious weed I have ever burnt. Don't know how I could have done it
for all these years out there. Guess I was desperate.
Greetings
Georg


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