Shanga Glass blown from recycled bottles, by a team of disabled Tanzanian artisans.
- Watch glass blown from recycled bottles
- Employs deaf, blind and disabled artisans
- Set among coffee bushes at Arusha Coffee Lodge
- Buy direct from the makers
Shanga is a social enterprise built around a simple idea: employ deaf, blind and physically disabled Tanzanian artisans making genuinely good work, rather than running a charity shop. It shows in the quality — the glass, jewellery and furniture sold here would stand on their own without the story behind them.
The centrepiece is the glassblowing, done from recycled bottles in a furnace you stand right beside. Watching a formless blob of molten glass become a bowl or a bead in a few minutes is the kind of thing people describe when they get home, more than almost anything else from a city day.
It sits in the grounds of the Arusha Coffee Lodge, among working coffee bushes, and the setting is deliberately calm — a contrast to the market bargaining and gallery browsing that usually surrounds it on a full city day. Most visitors find it the quietest and most memorable hour of the tour.
Half-day and full-day trips from $195
Most of these can be arranged for tomorrow morning. Transport, a licensed local guide and entrance fees included — booked direct, no agency markup.
- Chemka Hot Springs Day Trip Swim in a clear, palm-fringed natural spring from $195 per person, shared
- Arusha City & Cultural Highlights Tour Markets, museums and craft workshops around Arusha town from $195 per person, shared
- Meserani Snake Park & Maasai Culture Reptiles, a Maasai cultural museum, 25km from Arusha from $195 per person, shared
Useful businesses in Arusha
Real places we have checked — somewhere to stay, eat, hire a car or fix a phone. Not a scraped list.
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