Today I woke up in Namanga on the border to Kenya. The morning rain wet the dust, and messed up the front screen of the car, which was covered in a fine layer of red dust from the night before. Soon me, too. When you take off from Namanga, you have a great landscape ahead: Kilimanjaro, Meru and Longido. Later, when we drove into the bush, again the peak of Ol Doinyo Lengai.
Quite a few of the people interested in 'my' job as communication adviser ask me;
How much do you travel and how much time do you spend outside the office every month?
I answer: as much as possible.
Probably not a very useful answer (if you like the idea of staying a lot in the office), lakini, true. In general in Africa, I see an increasing tendency to cluster expats in the bigger cities and tie them to desks. This is certainly the case of the NGO I work for, which in my opinion now is putting a greater focus on its programme and overall objectives in favour of the smaller civil society organisations we work in partnership with (and which often reside at the end of a dust road in rural Tanzania).
Moreover, it is a fact, that it is difficult to place European expats in rural areas because of the lack of amenities. It is also a common joke between local organisations that sooner or later one of their donors will be ask them to arrange to fly them in to places where there are no airstrips. We laugh when we imagine how the wazungu think they can get from Dar es Salaam to Kiteto to Arusha in only 5 days. Even me, I once had someone requesting me to pick someone up at the border between Tanzania and Uganda, and then take them to Iringa. (I told them I liked to drive, but doubted the visitors would like it as much as me, when they eventually got to look at a map of East Africa).
However, in times with wide network coverage, mobile Internet modems, Nissan Hardbodies and the majority of the African population living in the rural areas, the only thing which makes sense, is to get out there.
I love having my base in Dar es Salaam, but I am not a writer of fiction.
Besides, this is what Africa is made of.
