Standard of Living

Heroes Remember

Standard of Living

Transcript

They built special quarters for us, the Canadian government had and we were living in rooms that were air conditioned, we had our own cooks over there to cook the meals for us. We lived quite well, but it was seeing how other people lived and the Brits, the Germans, they all lived quite well there but it was just.... I guess the average Tanzanian was still a village person and they lived in the villages and they did their little community pots and you had to be fairly well off to have your own house as such and be in with sort of the level that we were used to. Interviewer: And what type of housing did they have? Well, most of it was thatched roof houses just like you see in the movies from Africa. Most of them were, but when you get into the main city of Dar es Salaam that was built up, apartments and the big hotels, Hilton Hotel was there and they had a place called “A Mission to Seamen” where all the ships stopped coming in at the port, Dar es Salaam was a port, a sea port and that was built by Germans a way back when so swimming pools and all that so we used to go there a lot in the afternoon after we finished work, swimming and having the odd beverage, but yeah it was, they had lots of places to go. They had an Italian club there too that was there from, the Italian of the community built a club. Airport, they had a great Italian, no, Indian restaurant at the airport so we'd go there once in a while on a Sunday and have a special meal of Indian cuisine but it wasn't, for our living bit stayed fairly the same as we were used to almost, but the other people that lived around us and some of the people you worked with their standard of living was not close to ours.

Description

Mr. Kish describes the type of living conditions in Tanzania for the military and the local people.

Erl Kish

Mr. Erl Kish was born January 3, 1935 in Inverary, Ontario. Coming from a military family, with a grandfather in WWI and an uncle in WWII, Mr. Kish always felt the desire to join the military and made the decision to join the army first with the Royal Canadian Service Corp. In 1963, he took on the trade of mechanic and amalgamated with the Royal Canadian Electrical Mechanical Engineers. After several tours and 30 years service, Mr. Kish held the rank of Sergeant until his retirement as Chief Warrant Officer. Returning to civilian life, Mr. Kish remained a mechanic until retirement. Mr. Kish joined the Legion and remains a proud member.

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