Finally a kanga which doesn't include the word 'mungu'.
But what does it say?
Big confusion in Uhuru Street last week.
The man selling it to me, said: it means 'kiss me'.
And true the Bengali word chumu does mean kiss according to the Urban Dictionary.
But in Kiswahili it should be 'good luck'.
Also very appropiate, though I got a lot more crazy associations out of the first one. This is gonna be a favorite kanga (among the 100s on board the cargo ship sailing to Denmark).
In Copenhagen I say: 'The bridge was up, sorry I'm late!'
Living on the Kigamboni site in Dar I say: 'Two big cargo ships just passed before my eyes.'
Here's a greeting to the ones of my friends who know exactly what it means when an African woman grabs your beer bottle and balances it on her head (and then sometimes lie down on her stomach to perform a snake dance).
Here, you'll have to do with a water bottle.
You can say what you wanna say about conflicts and political turmoil in Africa, and how those ones never seem to get it together.
What I can't help noting, coming from where I come, Tanzanians are masters of finding ways to make it function in practical life. I'm not talking about politics, but about everyday life.
Maybe because that is your only option: to make it work.
In Denmark you've got options, and you can choose to make things complex. One of the biggest political issues in Denmark over the recent years have been if women can wear a veil in public space. 'I wouldn't feel comfortable if my doctor wore a veil,' people argue with nothing but an irrational emotion to draw upon.
The debate, it seems, somehow really is more about acceptance of Muslims representing a culture most Danes know too little of; and of (not) knowing your own grounding ( (or boiling it down to some presumably Danish core concept monopolised by the Danish People's Party. The arguments raised are in my opinion ridiculing a modern democracy and the people living in it.
To me one of the biggest assets of a community is namely the ability to accept diversity and find a way to gain from it, instead of rejecting it.
I myself have been raised in a rather conservative, safe, Danish setting, and on a positive note I believe it has given me the solid grounding of who I am before I went exploring diversity (I also went through a period of my childhood where I though I had to be adopted originating from somewhere more exotic).
This also means that I think one has to try things before you reject it. The Tanzanians live with diversity everyday, and I am rather impressed on occasion how it isn't an issue.
The camera woman from TBC wore a veil - and a flowery dress - when she recorded the parade at the Sauti za Busara. I have no idea of her qualifications as a camera woman, but it is evident that she lived in a community where I'm the only person paying attention to what she wears.
There are three countries where I have lived for longer periods of time - Serbia, Uganda and Tanzania. All three places have the tendency to work against you when you have made the decision to leave.
In a positive and complimenting way, and it always made me smile when the Serbs said: 'When will you be back?' and the Tanzanians 'Lakini, you must stay.'
As if there is no other alternative.
I come from a country that indulges in law-making which can keep foreigners out; make integration an everyday challenge; who don't involve people who are not part of their usual circle; who do dinner table dinners with pre-set guest lists; and who aren't very good at complimenting foreigners. After almost 40 years they'll still criticize the Prince Consort for his Danish prononciation, though he speaks Danish grammatically correct. And they will never say: 'Oh, you speak Danish!' like the waswahili positively conclude: 'unasema Kiswahili' when you're embarrassing yourself trying to figure out the right tense.
Maybe that's why I've always noted the hospitality in other countries.
Africans love Africa. I used to know South Africans, Congolese, Nigerians and Tanzanians in Copenhagen who got lonely and restless. Europe will always only be a middle station to most Africans, at least mentally. You go to Europe to educate or work, to use your skills to send money home. There was the Zulu who poured alcohol on my door mat in my Copenhagen flat back in June 2005 as a fare safely ritual; and Prince, Prince, Emeika and Sonny, the Nigerians, who would take me to Guinea Bissau, the African bar, drinking Carlsberg Elephant Beer.
Today I had my farewell reception at work. My second last day for the NGO I have worked for for the past 10 years. Whereas the Danes will say what they think I want: that obviously I'll get a new job in Copenhagen just like that, the Tanzanian auto-reply is straight forward, lovely naive: 'But you have to come back! How can you not be in Africa?'
I'm obviously flattered. I know a great deal of it is based in the swahili politeness. That it really hasn't so much to do with me as a person, as it has with the fact that Africa per African definition is just a better place to be.
Enchanting, considering the image Africa has in the rest of the world and how many empty words we fill into our poverty reduction strategies. Nevertheless, Africa is just so much more self-confident.
OK, Karibu Inn has a hard time.
I know. I stayed there for four nights last week. The notice on the wall in our hotel room only makes up a 5th of the total amount of notices put on display in the hotel.
The kali way. Kind of like the style, though it did make me feel that I would be punished (with no one to blame) if I left valuables in the room.
Interesting example of a behavouristic way of running a hotel.
The port of Dar es Salaam is often the subject of many conversations if you're waiting for goods to arrive. Well, the ships usually arrive - but have to park at the entrance to the bay of Dar es Salaam.
According to a report, referred to in the Citizen on January 22: 'a ship now waits for only 3.8 days at the outer anchorage compared to an average of 12.7 days in January 2009. The time needed to prepare a ship for a return trip (turnround time) has improved to 6.7 days from 18.9 days in January 2009.'
On clear days, going down Ocean Road, you can watch the long line of cargo ships waiting in the distance at the outer anchorage.
Fascinating sight. So full of resources, so difficult to turn when in motion. Such an expensive parking place, though probably among the most beautiful in the world.
However, on January 22 the Citizen also wrote that:
I might have been around too long to really really believe so.
Nothing like going through your collection of business cards after a night out.
This one is a diamond.
Hamna changi!
I bet you've heard that line many times if you have been to Tanzania.
Lakini, I know where the Tanzanian small change is.
On Kawawa Road, as on many other big roads in Dar es Salaam, it is a business to sell change to the conductors of the daladalas. A stack of coins might be 500 or 1000 Tanzanian shillings, which is sold for 500 and 1000 shillings + 50-100 shillings in extra charge. The conductors are then able to give change to the millions of passengers which every day pack themselves into a crowded daladala once, twice or thrice a day, every working day of the week.
'Here I am where I ought to be.'
But hey, where was she (sort of geographically) when she came up with that quote?
Africa?
Denmark?
The photo is from a street in central Kampala.
Yesterday I took an extra look at my book shelf in the office and found this book:
It is called ‘Frivillig og Fremmedarbejder’ a title which can be translated into English as ‘Volunteer and Emmigrant Worker’. The book is revising the personnel programme of the NGO I work for.
20 years ago. The book is from 1988.
I brought the book home to share it with the variety of people who live here at the moment.
The photos are fantastic.
Like this one of a smoking, female, Danish plumber.
Or the volunteer wearing a bikini on the beach in Zanzibar, the caption explaining it is a great way to make contact with locals.
But the three women of us all had one favourite. This man.
The caption says he’s a farmer from the northern part of Jutland who volunteered in Kimuli in Tanzania in the early days of the programme, which must have been the 1960ties
He looks as if he hasn’t showered or shaved recently, he’s wearing sandals of old car tyres and his clothes are worn out. He’s smoking, too. He’s into music.
Generally, he looks as if he’s really into what’s he’s doing.
A bit like a Marlboro Man but in a Danish volunteer way.
Not many of his kind around any more, I’m afraid.
We'd really like to have known this one.
When you park around here it says 'at your own risk'.
At the swimming pool or play ground it is the same.
Maybe the Tanzanian authorities ought to put up an 'Entrance at your own risk' at the border?
This December/January it has been raining in Kilwa, Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam. Basically everywhere I went.
Climate change? It isn't supposed to rain like this at this time on the Swahili coast.
Ironically, the vitenge with the rain motives were all over on display in Uhuru Street last week.
Conspiracy? I'm beginning to think so (it is siku kuu tomorrow, so of course it will be raining).
Check the weather forecast here.
Another important moment from our safari to Selous.
Baltasar brought the right equipment; a small torch, when the ants attracted by the light from the kerosene lamps joined us for dinner.
What else can you do?
Same day, last year I wrote abstractly about my New Year resolutions here.
I've had a 2009 in high speed, a year which never took me off the continent, but on the contrary to many far corners of interesting places in Africa.
I have met a great variety of people; I have met some absolutely fantastic personalities; and 2009 gave some new, extraordinarilyy good friends.
I've tried not to overwork, and I believe that the extra time given has been spent exploring an learning. In general, I do think I made the most of it.
Here at the last day of 2009 my house is booked down to the last bed; People are arriving here for drinks and then we're off for a roof top party on Kimweri Avenue.
I'm still struggling with sensible New Year resolutions for 2010, and I can't really transfer them into words. However, I do think it is something about finding my way out of Africa; about (a new) course and direction; about making real money; and probably about getting to terms with some waiting time before I realise what will be.
For me it is a huge thing to leave Africa, and I don't feel like thinking about it in details. Lakini, that will happen in 2010.
Twentyten, I'm sure will offer a lot of new opportunities. Europe can't be that bad after all, can it?!
I wish you all a Happy New Year:
Heri ya mwaka mpya!
The life of a mzungu in Dar es Salaam is a challenging one:
What moustache and what sun glasses to wear today?
To put the fan on 3 or 4 or 5?
So many kali cigarettes to be smoken.
This mzungu is not a classical one, I can assure that, this one even has one thing in common with Bi Kidudde.
What exactly did I miss here? I thought the whole point of being a revolutionista is that you don't read UN resolutions?
Lakini, while we are at it, I think we should take it further and suggest more official UN protocols. For instance:
Climate change now; wars should stop; poverty must end sasa hivi; albino killings gives Tanzania a bad image; traffic accidents kill people; gender based violence is not good for families; mob justice is a mess; traffic jams make blood pressure go up; low tide (especially at Selander Bridge) makes Dar es Salaam stink, and high tide just looks nicer; corruption make the wazungu sleepless; kito kidogo is too much; you cannot wear malapa if you don't lift your feet; bascially we must decrease uswahili behaviour (a friend of mine is already working on that protocol); we must tell wazungu males, who live in the illusion that they work for change in Africa, to get real; that fax machines belong in the 80ties; and that education should be free (really free)....
Now I'm all exhausted.
I'm almost giving up on the Tanzanian newspapers!
No respect of copyright. No idea of context:
Just found myself on page 7 in the Guardian.
The photo caption says: 'Tanzanians in the diaspora. Most of them are academic, economic and social refugees'.
Hata mimi...??!!
The photo is from Banana, an area close to the airport in Dar es Salaam. The photo portrays Adrian Nzamba and me on an assignment for Tanzanian Youth Coalition in June 2009. I'm an expat, Adrian a Tanzanian, who at the moment is attending training in Copenhagen.
I must admit the caption still makes me laugh: Does it really look as if we are Tanzanians in the diaspora?
The photo is in low resolution and obviously taken from a previous blog post here, where I clearly state that the photo is by James Seigel.
This is stealing. You cannot copy a photo from the Internet, print it in the paper without the photographer's accept. Even if you had the accept, it would be decent to acknowledge the photographer.
So, what do you do when that happens?
You ring the editor of the Guardian (who maybe calls you back).
I just realised that I knew exactly what to do when I saw this road sign on the road between Moshi and Tanga.
It didn't even feel strange, but relatively normal.
Per intuition, though. I still can't explain what it really means in practice.
Praise to the Tanzanian (road) sign makers. This is indeed an area where creativity seeps through.
Reintegrating into Danish traffic might have consequences.
I'm not ready.
A commenter on my blog raises an interesting questions in terms of my previous post here, where I quote Transparency International's list over corrupted countries.
Denmark is 2nd on the list, Tanzania 126.
'Not so weird after all! The courts are full of former ministers accused of taking large sums of money, and present ones continue grabbing. Where theft and corrupt practices has been accepted as 'kawaida', where the speaker of parliament has laughed off double allowances by law makers as acceptable, where jourmalists take brown envelopes every day in exchange for story placement, where citizens pay nurses to see a doctor, where traffic officers are not concerned about road safety, etc. etc. But the donor countries keep on talking of "ëncouraging developments" and continue with budget support!! Supporting corrupt countries should get negative marks too, maybe Danmark's position would change.'
Tanzania is the country which Denmark has supported over the longest period of time, and the country which get the highest percentage of Danish development aid.
As long as I'm working for the Danes I'll keep pretending that I do understand the finer concept of budget support.
Maybe you remember this article by Alex Renton which was published on September 6 2009 in the Observer?
Within this article Alex Renton interviewed the manager, Liz McKee, from Thomson Safaris, which later has changed name to Thomson Family Adventures. The company is on their website offering an active family’s dream come true and meeting the native Tanzanians.
That is if there is still any natives left, I'm noting.
The Loliondo saga which makes up an essential part of Renton's article, is namely still cooking with fresh details.
Later in September the Danish Ambassador, Bjarne H. Sørensen, formally handed over 15 years of Danish support to the Maasai as part of the ERETO celebrations, but it was overshadowed by recent events that have seen the pastoralists being forcefully evicted from their homes, and their bomas burned down. ERETO has assisted in supplying water, animal health-care, restocking livestock, women’s economic groups and HIV/AIDS awareness, also in Loliondo.
Afterwards the topic heated up Bunge in Dodoma, the Tanzanian parliament, as referred to here on November 7.
Back to the Thomson Family Adventures. The company still uses the term 'natives', which I find rather curious, taking into consideration that the term in a British post-colonial context is considered patronising.
In this case, in particular, as the natives here are reduced to a bunch of colorful Maasai expected to live up to the tourists' stereotypical ideas of natives - and then stay off the land of the safari company (according to Renton's article).
Many, myself included, come to Africa with some sort of wish to have our stereotypes confirmed.
However, my annual income has so far prevented me from getting that done at Thompson's.
It simply makes me feel like an idiot if I have to pay for engaging in a meeting with the population facilitated by a safari company who try to pretend they are philantropists.
It is as simple as that.
Paying for meetings like these make people stay with their stereotypes; It makes the natives believe that all wazungu are rich, while the wazungu believe that all Maasai are poor people in need.
Last week I went along with the natives - the cheap way - and not that far from the Ngorongoro. I travelled with the natives to Kiserian and Moirowa villages (photo). Poor, yes. But also strong and resourceful people.
Natives all over, too, in the Lion Guest House in Namanga on the border to Kenya, in fact very few wazungu - and that costed only 5,000 TSH for a room, and I even got to see a lot of natives only dressed in towels when we shared the communal bathing facilities!
If you want my opinion on the colourfull variety of wazungu who think they contribute to change in Africa, while making money, read here. Again, this is not rocket science, this is only another example of capitalism mixed with arrogance.
The logo on my car refuses to stay white.
Gradually it has taken colour after the red dust, and it won't go off, even after lots of rain.
Metaphorically speaking: Not too sure if it symbolises the rest of the NGO I work for.
Lakini, personally I do feel that it is more difficult getting the dust off than getting dusty. It is easier coming to Africa, than returning. It is easier summing up what Africa has changed in me, than what I have changed in Africa.
I know some of you will laugh, but months ago I collected a little bag of red soil from the Kilimanjaro region, where the soil is blindingly red. They have my favourite colour soil in that area, and Kilimanjaro is one of the most astounding places in Africa. To take with me home and stare at when I am going to blend in with the Danish landscape.
Does red African soil fade over time if you move it out of its original environment?
I have taken the first photo at this year's Sauti za Busara in Stone Town, Zanzibar. a
The second is from Mafia Dance Festival announcing dates for a coming festival in August.
Seems like the wazungu go to Mafia, and that people wear clothes on Sauti za Busara.
Kweli...(?)!
So much more reason to go to Sauti za Busara 11-16 February 2010.
This one is from Stone Town on Unguja.
The grafitti puzzles me a bit.
Is it rooted in Islam, as in religious love?
Is it the rasta way of dedicating their appreciation of Bob Marley?
Or is it a Zanzibari off the track making a statement against the legal polygamy allowing men to marry more than one woman? (I have seen a few men walking around the Swahili Coast who would make me produce statements like this all over the place if I had to be their first wife or nyumba ndogo.)
Unfortunately not (yet) in English. But if you read Danish, please read about my admiration for his work here.
Jacob Ejersbo died last summer of cancer at the age of 40. Much too early. He grew up in Moshi at Kilimanjaro where his father worked for Danida over two periods of time, and he went to ISM, International School of Moshi. Before he died he wrote three books centred in Tanzania.
Literature which is already now proclaimed to be a milestone in Danish literature on Africa. Personally, it has made me look differently at what I see in Tanzania.
This is what Klaus Rothstein writes about Ejersbo for a Danish Literary Magazine: 'Seldom has anyone written anything so insistent and impassioned, so glowing hot and ice-cold, so heartfelt and so cynical'.
I'll keep you posted when the books are translated into English.
Still, the largely weak consumer purchasing power in the country - where half of the population still lives on less than a dollar a day - puts a looming ceiling over how high telecom executives can expect profits to climb.
By comparison, for example, in South Africa where the country’s GDP stands at $280billion per year, the ARPU is $40 per month.
According to a survey conducted by Tele World, across Africa, Latin America and Asia, the number of people who do not have a bank account but do have a mobile phone is set to grow from 1 billion today to 1.7 billion by 2012. These ‘unbanked mobile’ individuals represent a compelling market opportunity for operators.
Read the full article from the Guardian on Sunday here.
Friday I managed to stirr my head well with all vital, practical things related to my own (small) role in Danish development aid, electricity, Internet, water, traffic, corruption - to the music pouring out loud from the container bar next door run by the self-acclaimed peaceful rasta (who once told me that he sold drugs for the Nigerians in Hillbrow, Johannesburg, which means I don’t complain when a bar customer cranks up his car stereo outside my gate.);
And that's where I had had it:
He mimicked ‘chakula’. Food.
I got a lump in my throat, and I then went for notes in stead of coins, though it is against all principles (which ones exactly, I’ve luckily forgotten). I thought; World Food Day, my ass. I just blogged about it, and here I face my own limitations one hour later a kilometer away from the office. It made me feel like I was paying a monthly subscription for a lighter conscience in return for representing a nation which have prioritized Tanzania in their development support budget, but not the boy in the street ‘because he is outside the strategy which is focusing on another district, cluster, group or theme.’
Some days it just doesn't stop.
When I finally got home to my neighborhood, all traffic had come to a halt. Two cars had crashed, one driver still stuck in the front seat behind the wheel, people gathering like flies on sugar, hovering like hyenas. Just up front Kikwete's house in the crossing between Ursino and Migombani Street, which got tarmac last year so that people now can drive as if no one else exists.
There is only so much you can deal with in one day.
Your friends at home think you’ve finally lost it, and that Africa has beaten you. They tell you, they told you. That Africa wears you out. That it is time to return home.
So, you stop telling them what's really going on.
Or you insist that this is normal. That Danish psychological interpretations appear absurd in Tanzania. That this is what most people in Africa go through, and you are not excempted just because you are white.
If so, that is because you close your eyes and have lost touch with your feelings and conscience.
I just read an odd article in 'The African' from today (page 3): 'Snow on Mount Meru is an added attraction to Arusha', the headline tells us.
In an exclusive (!) interview the director of The Tanzania Metheorological Agency, however, explains that it really isn't news, it has been going on for a while (but that people might not notice as the mountain often is covered by clouds).
However, what I find interesting is that the journalist of the article is focusing on the fact 'that tourists are often fascinated when viewing the snow capped mountains in the Equator', and in the photo caption and headline name the snow to be a tourist attraction.
Sure.
Especially now that the snow on Kilimanjaro is melting only 75 kilometres down the road towards Moshi, Tanzania must master another mountain with snow.
While the researchers disagree of the reasons behind the snow melting on Kilimanjaro, the article here states that the fact 'that Mount Meru is covered by vegetation from top to bottom makes it possible to trap the cold air which again form snow.'
But why, all of a sudden, if The Tanzania Metheorological Agency says it isn't news (which it really isn't - the All Africa already wrote about it back in February 2008) has this become an attraction?
Anyway, if curious, best chances are June to October according to the newspaper.
The first photo is from February 2008 taken over Arusha, and the second from last year in October facing Mount Meru from the Kenya side.
A colleague lead my attention to this photo which is listed here under the following title:
School classrooms Tanzania: Left was built in 2008 and the right in 1932.
Last week I completed an article in Danish about the fact that the Tanznians, like many other Africans, use symbols, signs etc. to explain something which isn’t necessarily said in words.
Tumaini means hope in Kiswahili.
Last week I saw the sign on top of a driving school car which were stuck on a road in
Says it all.
Mvuli, the short rain season (October to December) might have begun already this morning, where it drizzled gently over Dar Es Salaam.
Tanzania need the rain badly.
More on the Kiswahili weather vocabulary here.
If someone asked me for a best advice when settling in a new country and culture, I’d say make friends a high priority.
In Dar Es Salaam I see a lot of expats arriving, focusing on getting a house in the ‘right’ place (preferably close to the Yacht Club and the International School of Tanganyika (IST), preferably far off the traffic jam and the kelele), getting IST to accept their children (so they can meet other appropriate children), buying a car (‘always saw myself driving that land rover when moving to Africa…’); locating where to buy the European style food; and how to get invitations to cocktail parties, receptions or the right people’s houses.
The despair is always tangible when the Danish Embassy has invited the Danes for the June 5 celebration of Constitution Day, and someone didn't receive the official invitation card with the royal gold stamp. The Danes ask; ‘Why did you get one, when I haven’t got one?!’ as if the embassy personally tried to punish selected Danes.
It is hard to be cool. The desperation of a newly arrived is immense. In my culture it is a taboo to admit that you don’t know anybody, or even worse; that nobody knows you. At the same time the expat hierarchy decides without consultation on what level to fit you in. The expats who have been here longer than you, quiz you; how long have you been here? Where did you work before? How long are you going to stay?
The less time, the further away from
(Me, I was in the fortunate position that I could answer: ‘I’ve been here before’; 26 months along and across the Ugandan border to
It didn’t give me friends, though.
It has been bloody hard. Moving to a new country is considered one of the most stress provoking actions, together with leaving your safe environment. Your best friends are somewhere else. Your work is crazy. You desperately need new friends. But you are expected to have things under control.
For me,
I think a lot of expats confuse making new friends with a membership to the Yacht Club; hanging out with the Coastal Air pilots (who really should sleep more hours) while getting drunk and singing karokee in the Irish Pub; Joining the Hash Runners Club; Or trying to be accepted among the experienced selection of sundried, white male expats at the High Table at Jackie’s Bar on Haile Selassie Road or getting integrated by the Diplomatic Spouses Community (where one can look forward to saving the world in a way more sophisticated way than my patience would ever allow).
I am not saying it isn’t possible, I just think that a lot of expats trick themselves into thinking that they can get the right friends the way they get the right house, car and school, and forget that it take longer time. I am not saying I know how to do it the right way. Not sure there is one. But I have definitely spent too much time doing the wrong things.
My life in northern Uganda was very different from the one I have had for the past two years in
The thing is that I know that it usually works out. I have tried it several times, and I always make friends who fill out the extremely important spaces in my expat life, who take the most important places of the ones I left behind. In many ways, very rewarding when it works out. And right now, I consider myself extremely lucky in this regard. I do know an interesting variety of amazing people. But it took time.
Dried , chopped and neatly arranged kingfish on the market in Kariakoo.
'Wazungu, you have the watches but we have the time'
Quote: The Tanzanians
A modern rephrasing of Steve Bantu Biko's 'Black man you're on your own!?', I laughed and texted back to the sender of this SMS.
Steve who? the sender texted back.
Nothing much beats Steve Bantu Biko, but this one was funny as the sender had never heard about the man.And sometimes white women are in fact on their own.
Dear Danish People's Party,
Yesterday's Parking Guard in Moshi at the foot of Kilimanjaro was a woman.
She wore a veil.
I'm writing you as I want to tell you that it is completely normal in Tanzania, and that I was the only person in the street paying attention to it.
Probably because I'm Danish.
Probably because I'm absolutely fed up with the blurred debate in Denmark on women wearing veils or burkas, or not, the debate on mosques, on Islam, Muslims and on how Danish politicians treat refugees and immigrants. I am sick and tired, and deeply embarrased on how Danish values have been redefined into something I can't associate with.
I asked the parking guard if I could take her photo, as I wanted to prove to the Danes supporting the policies of the Danish People's Party, that at this end of the world, a famous 3rd world country, it is possible for a woman to wear a veil while holding a position as a civil servant.
And smile...!
Greetings from Tanzania
Today while driving from Dar Es Salaam to Arusha a rather unusual thing occurred on the road between Chalinze and Segera:
People all over the road, demonstrating!
When we arrived to the village of Mkata around noon, about 70 kilometres from Segera, the road was suddenly blocked by the busses which are regularly driving this distance daily.
All the busses driving this route connecting Dar Es Salaam and even the southern highlands with northern Tanzania, Kenya and even Uganda, make up a lot vehicles.
An enormous lot.
The whole scenario was mildly absurd, as the busses ahead of us had been stuck in the place since 8 AM. However, blocking the road in a place like this is an effective tool communicating a message.
A man in the road side, a former teacher from the area, started explaining the reasoning behind the road block:
Apparently the local village chairman (or the local leader) had prevented a private firm selling water to the people of the village - in favour of his own water selling business. The problem, however, was then that the village chair man offered water at 500 TSH (per entity) contra the alternative private businessman's cheaper offer on 300 TSH. The village chair man had obstructed the private businessman's business simply by emptying his water truck.
That was - literally - the drop - which made people take action. According to other people we spoke to, the villagers chased away the village chairman, and decided to block the road untill the 'cheapest' water supplier would be back in business. Not just on paper, but in practice.
Which is why the busses and cars on the route had to wait.
The police came before that, and there had just been shooting in the air, trying to split the crowd, when we arrived. People talked about additional assistance on the way from Handeni. People came running towards us, and when a thing like that happens around here, you think. One thing I was told early on when moving to Africa, was that in the case you see people running from a village towards you, you should turn your car in the opposite direction as they're trying to escape something bad - or might be targeting you.
I couldn't really turn the car anywhere, so we stayed.
When we had waited for about an hour, the water truck arrived.
People cheering on top of it and in the street.
The teacher on the sideline explained that when people know their rights, you cannot stop them.
Worth waiting for, I'll say. Seeing people escorting the water truck into town appeared to be a small revolution in Mkata. Also, I must admit that I honestly felt all the fine words the NGO I work for put on paper are nothing compared to when people take action in real life.
On September 6 2009 this article here by Alex Renton was published in the British Observer. Renton reports on the plight of the Maasai as they are evicted from their homelands to create vast 'nature refuges.
It begins like this:
Twilight is swift near the equator. As the cloud castles on the western horizon turn a tandoori red, the children are hurrying the goats into the thorn enclosure that keeps them from the leopards. A Masai elder passes on the path up the hill, striding easily into the slope. His purple plaid wraps him from shoulders to knees; there's a long-bladed spear in his left hand, a furled umbrella is strapped to his back. With his free hand he is busy with a mobile phone. He looks up to nod a greeting. I can smell the smoke of cooking fires from the nearby Masai village. It is an ordinary evening in the highlands of East Africa.
So it's particularly odd that I've just received a text message welcoming me to the United Arab Emirates. "Enjoy the best network coverage and other unmatched services only with Etisalat," it says. "Enjoy your stay in the UAE!"
Read on here to find out why it is poosible to receive this kind of text messages in northern Tanzania.
The article is extremely well-written and critical, while presenting many different perspectives of a problem not just present in Tanzania, but in several other places in Africa; there's the conflict between capitalistic interests - some call it development - and the promotion of a culture/tribe as a touristic object (with the idea of profiting on it, while the wazungu observe it), the role of the government, the investors and tourism companies - and then finally the people of the land.
Which again leads on to a debate about what people have the right to what land?
A question which is going to be more and more relevant for Africa in the time to come.
the writing of the back of the truck claims.
I don't.
I've just completed editing a 70 pages long document which can be counted among the most boring pieces of paper I've ever had my hands on.
I'd rather drive 10 hours, than doing it again (unless I get paid specifically to do it).
Two Fridays ago I did drive 10 hours on a Thurday, and was out of my office and in Mtwara on the Friday. While sorting my photos from this trip, it appeared to me that this is so much more the real thing: Serene, blue sky, people wearing nothing but basics, simple food from the ocean next door and direct contact to the soil.
I've been trying to find time for the Economist' Thinking Space, answering the question on where I get my ideas. A lot of people have used their desk/office as the case illustrating their source of inspiration.
I ask myself why?
Because that's what you do in Europe? Get ideas in your office? Are European office environments so much more stimulating than mine (which on occasion is a little conservative in comparison to the European offices I've been around, I must admit)? My office here in Dar Es Salaam from the inside resembles a European one if I shut my ears ears and turn on the air condition. This is the space where I process, not the place I get my best ideas.
For that I have to be out there. So, every week I grant myself a trip into Kariakoo or to Kisutu to find the perfect kanga; a dinner at the Badminton Institute to eat kachori and check out the wonderfull appearance of men experimenting with black hair dye. These places out there are exactly what good ideas are made of.
I don't know what I'd do back in Europe.
I'm not as cool as I try to come on.
While taking this photo yesterday somewhere between Bwejuu and the airport on Zanzibar, you'd hear me talking very fast and in C A P I T A L letters: I don't want this fishy stuff on my clothes or my luggage!
Our driver, Isidori was fasting, but it didn't prevent him from shopping food on his way home. We stopped at a road side tree, whereunder, I thought, the women were selling nuts or vegetables. No, they were selling mussels of all sorts!
A tray went in through my side screen, faster than I could prevent it. Dripping off mussel juice and salt water, and soon the whole cabin smelled dense and raw like the Indian Ocean.
While the driver, his cousin and the four children and my Italian companion on the backseat, picked the best.
'Are you gonna prepare them with coconut?', I joked, referring to our meal the night before.
Isidori smiled back confirmingly.
A friend of mine is visiting Copenhagen.
Our home town.
He took this photo of one of the biggest cathedrals in Copenhagen - during World Outgames.
Imagine, what a different world I come from, compared to the world I live in now.
Why rainbow colours? Please, check this link.
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