Postcards from Zanzibar
tea & travel Bernie Mshana tea & travel Bernie Mshana

Postcards from Zanzibar

Zanzibar! Can you believe this was my first time in Zanzibar? Wow, I am slacking. But not anymore, I am determined to travel within this country and this continent from now on… starting with this city that is so close to home yet so far off my reach -or so I thought.

Read More
Haas Coffee
tea & travel Bernie Mshana tea & travel Bernie Mshana

Haas Coffee

Haas Coffee comes highly recommended on Google. It is indeed a beautiful and cosy coffee shop and, I am sure their coffee is great. I lie. I am not sure. I wouldn't know because I don’t drink coffee 😂.

That is why this post isn’t about coffee. It is about tea. Chai tea to be exact. So, what’s my verdict on their chai?

Read More
Café Aroma
tea & travel Bernie Mshana tea & travel Bernie Mshana

Café Aroma

First week back home in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and best believe it I am already Chai finding!

The heat in Dar es Salaam is unbearable at the moment so we are all in an everlasting search for the shade and/or air conditioning. Coffee shops are a great place to find both a shade and free air conditioning in Dar es Salaam. So, I just had to enter the first one I could find. Close to where I stay is Cafe Aroma. Any trip to a coffee shop is a chance to try a fresh Chai and today was not going to be any different.

Read More
MUD aka Mudspot
tea & travel Bernie Mshana tea & travel Bernie Mshana

MUD aka Mudspot

In October, my work took me to New York. New York! The city of lights! Such a fave! Though there are many things to do in New York, this was not the trip for it. Like I said, I was here for work. So, the least I could do in the few days that I was there was to Chai find, and I did. I found Chai at MUD aka Mudspot.

Read More
Chai Diaries: An Introduction
tea & travel Bernie Mshana tea & travel Bernie Mshana

Chai Diaries: An Introduction

Chai, the Swahili word for tea is perhaps the third most popular Swahili phrase next to “Hakuna Matata” and “Jambo.” The reason for the word’s popularity is that there is an Indian spiced tea that has taken over coffee shops worldwide also called Chai.

Being a tea fanatic and coffee shop lover, it was only a matter of time until I stumbled upon this drink.

Read More
Road trip-ing in South Africa
tea & travel Bernie Mshana tea & travel Bernie Mshana

Road trip-ing in South Africa

By the time you are reading this, I would have had a great Easter with one of my best friends in Johannesburg, come back home from a week-long road trip, and had a whole week of classes. That’s right! I went on a road trip! I flew to Johannesburg, spent Easter there and then drove (well someone drove) all the way back down to Cape Town.

Read More
Postcards from Touws River
tea & travel Bernie Mshana tea & travel Bernie Mshana

Postcards from Touws River

Hi loves!  This past weekend the ISA Program, which I am a part of, arranged a weekend getaway to the Aquila Private Game Reserve. Having grown up in Tanzania, I was naturally sceptic of this whole trip because my whole student life in Tanzania involved going to national parks so I thought to myself, what could a tiny private reserve offer a girl? 

Read More
Hiking Rhodes memorial at dawn
tea & travel Bernie Mshana tea & travel Bernie Mshana

Hiking Rhodes memorial at dawn

I challenged myself to go on a hike loves. If you know me, you sure as hell know I do not sweat on purpose. Yet here I am, 6 am on a Saturday morning walking up to the Rhodes Memorial at UCT. Even though I voluntarily signed up for this, I cannot help but say how bizarre I find the whole idea of hiking and camping “for fun.” I understand that my opinion is absolutely my own, so take it as just that, my opinion.

Read More
Wakati album launch at Goethe Institute
tea & travel Bernie Mshana tea & travel Bernie Mshana

Wakati album launch at Goethe Institute

Isack Abeneko, a friend and a very talented young artist from Nafasi Art Space, launched his album titled WAKATI at the Goethe Institute in Dar es Salaam yesterday. If you enjoy live music and were not there last night then sister, girlfriend, you absolutely missed out! Isack is one of the most amazing performers I have ever seen. He is so lively! You can really tell he is passionate about music in the way he performs. 

Read More