By the BBC's
Joseph Warungu

Moshi is the headquarters of Kilimanjaro region, and the starting point for those wishing to scale Africa's tallest mountain.

But quite apart from the tourism that goes with Mount Kilimanjaro, Moshi is a rich agricultural area that produces the bulk of one of Tanzania's main export commodities - coffee.

So to reach the voters, politicians have to bear farming, business and tourism in mind.

But disappointing world coffee prices - coupled with what farmers see as neglect of an industry that is their lifeline - have left many a farmer disillusioned.

Add the general historical feeling that the local Chagga people were not the most popular with past regimes in Tanzania, and you have a boiling political pot which both the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) and the opposition would like to reach into, calm the waters and take credit for it.

The main presidential candidates are staging stage major political rallies in Moshi. CCM lost six seats in this area in the last election and is now in all-out battle to try and reclaim them in what has been dubbed by some as "the fight to save Kilimanjaro".

But opposition parties are determined to not only hold onto their 1995 victory but grab some more from CCM. There's even talk that parties have decided to campaign for one another - irrespective of party ideology - in an effort to lock out CCM.

The aim is to ensure that opposition parliamentary candidates who stand a good chance of being elected get the backing of other opposition parties - a far cry from the presidential race where many observers fear that the opposition vote will be split among the three candidates challenging President Benjamin Mkapa.

These political intrigues are, however, hardly evident in the town itself. The occasional poster and party flags hanging from shop corners are all there is to say that a major election battle is imminent.

Some of the residents of Moshi I spoke to explained that there's still time for political campaigns to pick up, while some describe it as the lull before the storm - which cannot be too far away as polling day approaches.