An Australian Volunteer in Africa

Some stories about an Australian volunteering in Arusha, Tanzania, Africa.

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    10 Scary Minutes
    A World Trip
    Starting Inventory
    London: Pre Africa
    A Girl in Blue & Guy in Red
    Mama Happy and the Swahili Lesson
    Dalla Dalla's and Old Moshi Road
    Mr Sauni
    The Baby Sister
    Health is Life
    The Cavalry
    Seeds for Africa
    Africans on Africa
    The Mamas & The Babas
    Reliance On Aid
    The Hard Path
    Help
    Developed to Where?
    Sarah's Lament

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Africa


A World Trip

By the time you finish reading this rant, you will find out what happened to me in Africa. Some of it to my body, some to my brain and a big chunk to my soul.

Who am I to have these big strong opinions? Certainly no one really qualified, but I went there and I did stuff and this is what I think. So feel free to nod agreement or shoot me down in flames. It's all welcome.

Travel is almost a rite of passage for Australians. I was told many times on my travels, that “If they all went home the place would be full.” I think it is partly because Australia is a long way from everywhere (except New Zealand which is great but just like Australia just colder and every sentence ends in bro). It is also because most of us have at least one ‘motherland’ whether it is one or ten generations ago. This doesn’t mean we are going on a pilgrimage back ‘home’, but it just means that many of us think about other parts of the world every once and a while. If you think about it enough and find a mate that will go with you, then you save up, pack up, get up and go.

 

Most Australians do this early in adult life. After university or after working for a couple of years to save the money. Around 21 to 25. It took me five more years. Why? Well I wanted to go earlier but work, work, work. So what changed? Well I quit, quit, quit. Sold everything. A week of planning (which I was later to find was completely in alignment with my Event Tense Ratio (see below)), purchase of a round the world ticket, four more weeks of work, some last minute purchases and I was off.

 

So what was the plan? Roughly (very roughly) to go to England roam around Europe for about three months (including a couple of weddings), make my way to Africa for three months if I could work it out, then head to North America for three months. Nine months doing all the things I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I think that’s all you need to know before we get started.

 

Except that I was really looking forward to seeing people. Churches, fountains, statues and museums are nice but I was really hoping that they would be more remembered as places where I met or spent time with locals and other travellers than the physical structures themselves. That is why this book is laid out by people and not by countries. It was the people that I met which taught me things and made me laugh, smile, cry and enjoy the world.

Posted by Mick on September 27, 2005 at 07:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Starting Inventory

I got told to pack light.

1x

Backpack

The shine has gone but it’s holding up well.

1x

Day pack

Beaten up and protected by one tiny padlock.

1x

Cotton pants

The zipper in the pocket has started to break.

2x

T-shirt

Grey and My Name is Jeff

1x

Singlet

Blue Santorini one.

1x

Work uniform

A pair of beige trousers and a long sleeve shirt.

1x

Merino sweater

No longer smelling of petrol.

1x

Fleece jacket

With a cigarette burn from Giorgio in Tallinn.

1x

Rain jacket

 

1x

Board shorts

 

1x

Speedos

 

3x

Underpants

 

1x

Boxer shorts

 

4x

Socks

 

1x

Walking boots

 

1x

Sandals

 

1x

Sport shoe

Smelly and wearing down.

1x

Medical kit

 

1x

Toiletries bag

 

1x

Drugs bag

Now loaded with Doxycylcine, the anti-malarial.

1x

Digital Camera

 

1x

Mobile Phone

 

1x

MP3 Player

 

1x

Bag of cables

 

1x

Leatherman

Now full of wax from surfing in Ireland.

1x

Head lamp

 

1x

Camelbak

A water carrying device with a long straw.

1x

Dark Star Safari

By Paul Theroux.

1x

LP Tanzania

Now coming in good use.

1x

LP Swahili

My cramming was going OK. I had lots of the basics.

1x

Modern Philosophy

OK, I hadn’t read much yet, but Africa would be the time.

1x

Big journal

 

1x

Little journal

More than half way full.

1x

Diary

 

1x

Sunglasses

Pair number seven.

1x

Sun hat

 

1x

Pack of cards

 

1x

Set of dice

 

1x

Yoga routine

 

1x

Wallet

 

1x

Travel docs

 

1x

Binoculars

 

1x

Mosquito Net

 

 

Anything else?

 

 

Shoulder holster bag.

 

Posted by Mick on September 27, 2005 at 07:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

London: Pre Africa

I had a week in London to Dsc05445
get ready for Africa and enjoy the safety of my sheltered life, buying supplies, enjoying hot showers and eating fancy food. In a café at Earls Court I sat reflecting on the three months on the road in Europe that had hardened me as a traveller and made my backpack my ally. I felt I was ready for Africa.

 

Posted by Mick on September 27, 2005 at 07:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A Girl in a Blue Shirt and a Guy in a Red Shirt.

Africa welcomes everyone uniquely. I will never forget my first twenty four hours.


Chaos, queues and confusion greeted me in Nairobi the capital city of Kenya. Bustling with the masses I realised that I was a minority and was going to be for four months. My taxi driver was friendly enough, so taking my first conscious breath, I looked at Africa going by. Billboards, buses, cars, trucks, fields, and people. Even if we weren’t speeding, I think it would have been a blur.


I showered under a spluttering of warm water from a hose and danced with my mosquito net all night adjusting to the claustrophobia.


I had been booked on the 8am Impala Shuttle from Nairobi to Arusha and I sat waiting for it to fill like I was on any minibus in any city in the world. Bus travel would be something I’d begrudgingly get used to, but for now I was actually content, soaking up Africa and it’s people.

Earlier that morning, a man driving a rusty old truck full of onions left a Tanzanian farm for Nairobi. He was tired and he was behind schedule but he’d driven this route a hundred times.


We got to the border crossing at Namunga and I got my stamp without incident, even with a cursory bag check.  On the way back to my bus, I saw another mini bus packed with locals and tourists about to drive off. I caught the eye of a girl staring out the window. She was young, maybe twenty five, with brown hair held back and a light blue shirt that looked as well travelled as her. We exchanged a smile and her bus chugged forward. I wondered if she was a volunteer or just here for safari.

Dsc03155
The mini-bus conductors tieing the bags down again in Namunga, on the border of Kenya and Tanzania.


Meanwhile, the onion truck driver is speeding along the rough roads dodging vans, bikes and people, making up time. He rounds a corner and is too late to notice a group of donkeys who have strayed onto the road. He ploughs into them, killing some, scaring himself. No one is with the animals to yell at him, so he quickly drives off, avoiding any trouble.


Back on my bus, the excitement of the past twenty four hours got to me and I fall asleep. I was in Tanzania now and was smiling, looking forward to the next couple of months, no idea what was coming. I normally don’t sleep on buses, but I slept now. I wish I remembered what I dreamt about that day.


I awoke to a commotion. Everyone on our bus was pointing and looking out the window. Up ahead there was about ten other buses pulled over on either side of the road. What was going on? Was their some wildlife? Had we stopped to see some elephants or giraffes? I was trying to see through the people on my bus who were standing up, but couldn’t make out anything.


Then we drove past something in a ditch. It was twisted metal. A mass of white and red.


The onion truck driver, speeding away from the donkey accident, had begun to sweat. What if someone had seen him? What if he was going to lose his job? What was going to happen? Drive faster. Moments later he came around a wide left hand corner and was just going too fast. He crossed the white line in the middle of the road as a white and red minibus came the other way. They collided with a roar of crushing metal and screaming people. The drivers and five people died instantly.



22689
The mangled mini bus lieing in the ditch. (The web site where I got the photo from said that the photographer was 'A. Correspondent', but I'm guessing that's not 100% accurate.)


I don’t know whether this is actually what happened, but it is my story based on the facts I found out later. As our bus drove slowly past the twisted wreckage, a gap opened and I caught the full view of the carnage. I saw bits of clothing and almost indiscernible human shapes in the still dusty shadows. I saw a young man in a red shirt lying in a ditch. His clothes were torn and he looked like he was passed out.


I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t believe it. I’d seen car crashes many times, but I knew that this was death.  I thought about the girl in the blue shirt. I thought about the guy in the red shirt. I was panicking and I was scared. Our bus stopped and the driver spoke to someone on the side of the road. A local on the bus translated and told us all that six people were dead and six injured. I was almost in shock.


If I could have walked in circles I would have. I felt lost. A lady on the bus mentioned first aid and I snapped back to reality. The local said that an ambulance was coming but would be another hour. This was the reality of Africa. There was help, but it was a long way away and it would not be fully equipped. The lady offered to help. I opened my mouth and was surprised to hear sounds come out. I wanted to help too. I had done basic first aid and had a kit in my bag.


Our driver told us that help was coming and that there was nothing they could do. He started driving off. I asked again to stop so I could help. I smelt something strong. I looked out the back window and saw a scattering of onions on the road leading to the helpless scene. I didn’t know what to think or what to do. I felt so useless. I had never felt anguish like I felt as that scene disappeared around that corner.


“Please drive carefully. Please.” I said out loud in the silence of the bus. I knew it would have been too late if it was us, but it made me feel better to say it. I had stories about how dangerous roads were in Africa, but to see this. On my first day, to see this. To feel it so personally. To have it feel like it was just a bit of bad luck. I thought about going back to Nairobi and going home.


I found out later that eleven people died. Five instantly and six in hospital more than three hours later. They were Africans, tourists, drivers and volunteers. Two victims were a mother and father of a volunteer. Their son, who they were visiting, was sitting behind them in the bus. The son survived the crash.


This was my welcome to Africa.

Posted by Mick on September 27, 2005 at 08:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Mama Happy and the Swahili Lesson

A week is a long time in Africa. I was also reading Earnest Heminway’s ‘True at First Light’ which is semi-autobiographical about his time with one of his wives in Africa. He says in it that a year in Africa is like two years anywhere else in the impact it has on your wisdom. I agree with him.

Within a week I knew how to catch the local transport, knew where to eat, had phone numbers of three taxi drivers, knew the local greetings, and knew that I was a Mzungu.

A Mzungu is the word that is used to describe any westerner. You get used to it being yelled out to you but you never get used to it being yelled to you because you’re different. Interestingly, the root of the word Mzungu comes from the same word for confused. When you ask Tanzanians about this, they just smile.

I thought that after a couple of weeks people would start to get used to me being around. That I would start to blend in, if not in looks, but just in daily repetition. I was wrong. I was a Mzungu until I got back on the plane and that makes me a celebrity. You get attention everywhere you go. Every time. Every day. And it weighs down on you. You start to ‘deal with it’.

Dealing with Celebrity Status

  • First week – overwhelmed, stop and listen, but polite rejection of request for money.
  • Second week – I get it now, no thanks, straight out rejection. Plus you can speak enough now to say it so they know that you are not a tourist.
  • Third week – Ignorance is bliss, don’t even acknowledge them, keep walking.
  • Fourth week – OK, enough. Aggressive rejection. “HAPANA. Habari za schule? Twende. Hapana, schule humna pesa. Twende schule!!!!”. ‘NO. How is school? No, school is free. Go to school!!!.”

Then you cycle through the options based on your moods. It sounds harsh, and we all talked about the realities of it. The fact that we are relatively very rich, but there was something about us coming to Africa to do volunteer work that we felt gave us the right to feel poor. XXXX

Mamma Happy was different. She was the lady who ran the home stay where I lived for three and a half months. She wasn’t exactly like the African Mamma that you picture, but not too far off. She is probably about forty years old, and mid sized, not a huge mamma like some of them are. She wears blouses with a kanga, which is a cloth covered with a colourful print or pattern. She also wore either a big smile or a concerned scowl. She had some challenges.


Dsc03760

It’s funny thinking about Mamma Happy’s difficult life, because it is not difficult in terms of food, clothing and shelter. It’s complicated, busy and sensitive. Mamma Happy ran the home stay where there were multiple borders, volunteers, a house girl and work to be done. It was a business and she ran it well, being efficient and diligent, as well as planning for the future and growing.

She also played a role of community wise woman. Young mothers would bring their problems to the door and depending upon the situation or the person, it would be solved sharply on the stoop, or be taken inside to sit with. Family problems also seemed Mamma’s domain. Everyone was a brother or sister, whether by law or three steps removed and everyone’s problems were shared.

I only saw Babba Happy, the husband, on two occasions. He lived and worked in the capital, Dar es Salaam and came back for the rare weekend. Mamma Happy was usually stoic, but occasionally you could see the look of sadness, loneliness and disappointment on her face. The cultural differences when it came to family were perhaps the most difficult to understand.

Mamma Happy was named after her youngest daughter Happiness. The tradition is for the mother to be named after the eldest or youngest daughter. I think the father is named after the eldest son. Dsc03957 Happiness lived in the same house as me and I think in the same room as Mamma Happy. She was about nine years old, going to a local school and seemingly very happy. She had a number of friends who lived close to her, and the she enjoyed the fruits of her mothers hard work. Happiness had two sisters who lived with their father in Dar who I never met.

Mamma was a good woman and in the early days we used to have lots of talks. One of my prejudices was that Africans don’t travel the world because they can’t afford it. Mostly this is true, but Mamma Happy had travelled with her brother when he was an ambassador and Tanzania was communist. In the sixties, communism spread through Africa, being pushed by Lenin and the Chinese, and Tanzania adopted a form of socialism that would lead to economic disaster and food shortages. Mamma Happy visited Russia so her brother could be educated, and they also visited France and Italy before returning home.

She had also had volunteers from around the world for more than two years, and it all added up to an interested worldly view. She was particularly interested in the Australian Aboriginals. She wanted to know what they looked like, how they lived and how they got on with Australians. It was quite a confronting conversation given that I knew that my knowledge was limited, as was my opinions. It was hard for me to articulate and it was hard for Mamma to understand that the Aborigines are a very small minority when it was their country. She asked around the question of whether they were wiped out, and I spoke about the near genocide, less than 140 years ago. I felt like an ignorant, colonial Mzungu.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasmanian_Aborigine

Along with the deep conversations, life at the homestay was good, and much better than I expected. To begin with, Mamma Happy spoke excellent English, as did Happiness, but they both pushed my Kiswahili every day. There was also a toilet. It didn’t flush, and it didn’t have a toilet seat, but it was better than a hole in the ground.

There was also a shower, and Mamma hoped it would work in a year or two. We showered with a bucket of warm water provided every morning. For some reason we never had night showers even though we were filthy with mud and dust. You would tip a plastic cup full of water over your head, wash with soap, and then tip more water over your head to rinse off. I never appreciated a shower head as much, but you get used to it and it starts to have the same soothing effect. My routine also included underwear washing from the day before. African norms say that you don’t hang your underwear outside, so I’d wash mine after washing myself and hang it in my room.

My room was also luxurious compared to my expectations and to other volunteers. I had a proper bed with the typical foam mattress. My pillow was a brick, but I bought a new one for two dollars. I had a Dsc05005_1 desk, a seat, a chair and a string with five coat hangers. It was small, but more than enough for my backpack and I.

The house had three bedrooms, one for Mamma Happy and Happiness, one for Kevin, another volunteer and one for me. There was also a store room right next to the kitchen that the house girl lived in, which was tiny, barely fitting a bed. The lounge room was decorated with pictures of Mamma and Babba, as well as calendars and pictures of past volunteers. It was furnished with a table with four seats for dinner and four chairs covered in coloured macramé. The chairs faced a reasonable sized TV and video recorder.

I didn’t expect to see TV for four months and was not bothered in the slightest. The family watched TV every night, including a couple of news programs and some comedy shows about drunk guys yelling and beating people up. All the Tanzanians would laugh uproariously but I never quite got it. Seeing the look of confusion on my face, someone would invariably point to the TV and say something like “He is very stupid.”

They also watched a lot of videos, with the content varying. They seemed to have a library with four genres.

  1. Gospel Music – Rose Muhando singing Hallelujah, and other church songs.
  2. Kids movies – Spongebob Squarepants, Harry Potter or the Lion King.
  3. B-Grade True Stories – a husband and wife go to Romania to raise orphans, a man joins the Foreign Legion to escape America or a lady, played by Sally Field, is trapped in the Middle East with her Islamic husband.
  4. Violent Action Flicks – Predator, Bloodsports or other movie with fighting and death.

Regardless of the movie, the room was always silent and everyone looked bored, whether they were watching a cartoon or a kickboxing fest. It is also strange to watch Lion King in Africa. It’s a great movie, but the sense that there is more life just outside your door has never felt stronger. It is like that Leunig cartoon where the dad and son are watching a sunset on TV when there is a sunset out the window.


http://www.curlyflat.net/

One of my favourite things about the house was a big map of the world on the wall next to the dinner table. Every breakfast and dinner I’d look over the map, and read the extra bits about the size, Dsc03645 population, and density of each country. It was a good way to learn some geography and I vowed to get more maps in more houses during my life, or at least make sure one is in mine.

The house was made of twelve centimetre concrete walls, painted orange, white or light blue, as they all are. There was a tin roof that I loved in the rain and hated on hot nights. A garden was being nurtured around the house, including thirty or so paint tins and other vessels holding plants of different kinds. Beyond the garden was a compound of dirt and rocks, bordered by other houses and rubbish.

Strewn plastic bags and other garbage, this was one of my issues with Arusha. I went through stages with it. Initially I was just shocked that there was so much rubbish. Then Mamma Happy told me that there are no facilities to get rid of rubbish. That even if people collected it, that they would then just have to throw it in the street or stream. I had taken our garbage collection services for granted. It is easy for me to say that when I put the bin out and the rubbish is collected that my job is done. Later in my stay, I changed my mind. I took the opinion that whilst it is difficult at first, if it is important then you will find a way. The reason why my town had a good garbage collection service was that someone once said that they didn’t want garbage in the streets anymore.


This was one of the issues that I felt combined with others to reduce pride in the town and led to a vicious circle of apathy. In the town of Moshi nearby, the streets were much cleaner and the people of the town seemed much happier. They didn’t have better facilities or more money, they just did something about it. I remember once in Arusha walking with Christoff, a boarder at Mamma Happy’s, and talking about the rubbish. Then he just dropped a plastic bag on the ground. I couldn’t believe it, but knew that whilst I’d been talking, I hadn’t taught him anything. Although Christoff taught me to say ‘tunavook bara bara’, which meant ‘let’s cross the road’.

Apart from garbage, life in Africa is dirty. The streets were tarred in the town and the main roads from the airport to the safari parks were in good condition, but all other roads were rough. Every day you Dsc04882 and everything of yours would be covered in dirt and dust and after the first week, when you graduate as a veteran, you barely notice. I remember one of the previous volunteers had written a ‘life in Arusha’ email and it said ‘just get comfortable with the fact that you will be dirty the entire time you are there’.

I did one load of washing myself. It is part of my general philosophy that if you are going to pay someone to do something, you will appreciate it more if you have done it yourself at least once. This was the most compelling example of the principle ever. Washing a single t-shirt by hand is tough. Washing trousers, three shirts, four pairs of socks and a pair of shorts is a days job for a manicured office boy like me. Two buckets of water, some cloth, a sachet of Foma soap and start scrubbing. Washing machines were high on my ‘I miss’ list.

Subsequent washing was done by the house girls Ana or Rahema. Ana, the first house girl, was very shy, but pretty. She really loved living and working with Mamma Happy who spent time talking to her and teaching her things such as cooking and Kiswahili. With only a language barrier separating us, we may have become friends, but there was a subservience to me as a guest, a man and as a Mzungu which made it impossible in the short time I was there to form a friendship. Ana had to leave us in December to go back to her village near Tanga as her mother was sick. We gave her a good tip and I gave her a picture I’d had printed of Mamma Happy and her. It was a sad day for everyone.

Rahema, the second house girl was different. She was confident and talkative. It took her a week to start making fun of Kevin and I, mimicking our voices or just laughing at us when we did normal things in our Mzungu ways. She also didn’t speak English, but had less of a barrier up between us. I got the impression that Mamma Happy would have preferred her to be more like Ana, but ever she would laugh at the antics.

Weekly washing of all my clothes would cost 2,000 Tanzanian shillings, or about US$2. This was the going rate and Mamma Happy probably would have done it for free if she wasn’t trying to grow the home stay. Looking at it now, it feels like sweatshop labour, but when you pay 50 shillings for a banana and 150 shillings for a dalla dalla ride it makes sense.

Dalla Dalla’s were a part of the culture. They are mini vans that have seating for fifteen people comfortably. However, there is no law in Tanzania restricting passengers per vehicle, so the business minded conductor made sure that full was full. Sometimes more than 25 people were squeezed in. As  one of the ‘extra’ passengers, you either stood stooped with your head banging against the roof, half hanging out the door holding onto what ever part of the van you thought least likely to fall off, or completely hanging out the door.

Adding to the fun of the squash game was the ever present pickpocket. So you had to somehow also hold onto any bag or money that you may have on you. These guys were fast and normally you didn’t even notice that you were ‘done’. I don’t think I ever was, but I usually carried most money in a money belt and had my bag padlocked.

Fortunately you were distracted from the lack of personal space and pickpockets by the reckless driving. The more trips you do, the more money you make, so each driver goes as fast as possible. There are no real laws about overtaking or speeding, so it is every driver for themselves. The good seats were those where you were at the back of the van and had your view of the upcoming intersection obscured.

The Dalla Dalla industry was huge, and to own one was a great investment. Money changed hands from passengers, to conductors, to drivers, to guys in the streets with blue vests and little pieces of paper. It was somehow organised. Each region had a different colour and each conductor would yell their final location as they clung to the side of the van. I remember my first day when I was left at a stop with the guy showing me around saying “Just get on the one that is going to “kajeng banana.” Or that is what I heard anyway?

It seemed like Dalla Dalla drivers who were too crazy got to drive buses. After seeing the first crash, I was wary and as often as I could I told every bus driver “Please drive safely, my life is in your hands.” Sometimes they would say “Yes, of course” and sometimes “OK”, but mostly they would just nod, both of us knowing that there was no communication going on. I felt better about it. A little bit anyway.

I never got comfortable on buses. They scared the shit out of me and I couldn’t help looking out the front windscreen and saying “Oh my god” or yelling “Pole pole” which means slowly. There were times when we were overtaking a truck on the wrong side of the road, around a blind corner and a souped up four wheel drive would over take us. Three cars going the one way on a single lane road in bad condition. They all had a death wish and unfortunately they were the only way to get around.

So I walked as often as I could. Healthier, and as long as you didn’t get hit by an errant Dalla Dalla, it was safer too. One of my fondest memories was walking home from town each day. I’d walk along Old Moshi Road, past nut vendors and the guys who sold pot plants. Past the AICC clinic and the Everest Chinese restaurant. The shady side of the road depending on what time it was.

There would always be hundreds of people walking up and down Old Moshi Road. Only the rich or taxi drivers had cars, and a few people had bikes, so walking was the way you got around. Old Mammas and their daughters carrying baskets on their heads as if they were light as a feather. Groups of men in collared shirts walking slowly. Children in bright school uniforms, girls and boys with short hair.

My route took me up to the Impala Circle, the round about next to the fancy Impala Hotel, with the rough soccer pitch next to it. Then I walked up into Kijenge Chini, which means the down part of the Kijenge suburb. It was a busy intersection of people, taxi’s, dalla dallas, hair salons and other shops. Every day I walked past every taxi driver would rush to their cars expecting that I wanted a lift because I was Mzungu. Initially I was scared to walk past this area because it was so busy and crazy, but I got used to it.

After the madness was the sawmill which looked like a noisy ant colony, with people rushing everywhere and piles of wood in random spots. I don’t know if they worked shifts, but half the men seemed to be working hard and the other half were not working at all.

Down the hill past the notorious Colobus Niteclub, so serene during the day and so nuts at night. The big right hand turn off towards Kijenge Mwanama, pronounced Mwa-nar-ma (OK that didn’t’ help much did it). From here on in I was a local celebrity. “Mzungu, Mzungu!” with occasional kids following all the way home. Down the hill past the bar that is also a car wash. Over the bridge where a bunch of volunteers had been robbed late at night. It was also where the water was, and nearly twenty four hours a day people would be filling buckets.




Over the bridge and up the hill past more hair salons, a couple of Internet cafés and Big Sister bar, the local hang out where you could get beer, chicken and chips with your game of pool. My Internet café was opposite, where the lovely ladies were who looked after me and put up with me burning disks and telling them how to fix the network. I really miss those ladies.

A big left hand turn, or kushoto XXX and we were almost home. Here I was a regular, but still a Mzungu. Some people even knew my name, and neighbours kids would want to hold your hand, or grab your shirt and follow you home. Walking past the local toilets that you smelt before you saw and overflowed during rain. Past Peter’s, my tailor, a good man who never overcharged me. Past a teachers college that was a shack and a room where the girls would practice their English and then giggle as they hid their faces. Past the last fruit and vegetable stand where bananas hung, and spinach wilted in the sun.

Another left and a quick right and you’re on the lane home. Here you were known. The first kid who saw you got the honour of yelling “MZUNGU!!” to the other kids. Then the madness would begin as they ran from all directions. If Kevin and I were walking together it felt like New Years Eve. If you were in a good mood, you’d pick them up, one at a time and put them down gently. Then you’d admonish the kid who pushed their little sister to the ground to go next, but they never quite understood why it was a bad thing.

Plucking children off your clothing like thorns, you pushed open the wooden gate, covered partly by many pieces of corrugated iron in varies degrees of rust and decay. Safety in the compound. Sometimes a few kids would be playing here and you’d ask about school. Walking down the side of the house and coming out to the back area was coming home.

I loved that walk home. It was something about it more than a safari or eating beans that made me feel like I was not only in Africa but that I was, in some small way, being African.

Posted by Mick on September 27, 2005 at 08:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

Dalla Dalla's and Old Moshi Road

Dalla Dalla’s were a part of the culture. They are mini vans that have seating for fifteen people comfortably. However, there is no law in Tanzania restricting passengers per vehicle, so the business minded conductor made sure that full was full. Sometimes more than 25 people were squeezed in. As one of the ‘extra’ passengers, you either stood stooped with your head banging against the roof, half hanging out the door holding onto what ever part of the van you thought least likely to fall off, or completely hanging out the door.


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A Kijenge dalla dalla screams by Milk and Honey, a local restaurant. The conductor hangs out the door, yelling to anyone who might be looking for a ride his way. The passenger seat position has the luxury of space but the dangers of taking a head on collision.

 

Adding to the fun of the squash game was the ever present pickpocket. So you had to somehow also hold onto any bag or money that you may have on you. These guys were fast and normally you didn’t even notice that you were ‘done’. I don’t think I ever was, but I usually carried most money in a money belt and had my bag padlocked.

Fortunately you were distracted from the lack of personal space and pickpockets by the reckless driving. The more trips you do, the more money you make, so each driver goes as fast as possible. There are no real laws about overtaking or speeding, so it is every driver for themselves. The good seats were those where you were at the back of the van and had your view of the upcoming intersection obscured.

The Dalla Dalla industry was huge, and to own one was a great investment. Money changed hands from passengers, to conductors, to drivers, to guys in the streets with blue vests and little pieces of paper. It was somehow organised. Each region had a different colour and each conductor would yell their final location as they clung to the side of the van. I remember my first day when I was left at a stop with the guy showing me around saying “Just get on the one that is going to “kajeng banana.” Or that is what I heard anyway?



 

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The back of Kevin and Jessica's heads on the way to Arusha National Park in a fairly empty Dalla Dalla.


It seemed like Dalla Dalla drivers who were too crazy got to drive buses. After seeing the first crash, I was wary and as often as I could I told every bus driver “Please drive safely, my life is in your hands.” Sometimes they would say “Yes, of course” and sometimes “OK”, but mostly they would just nod, both of us knowing that there was no communication going on. I felt better about it. A little bit anyway.

I never got comfortable on buses. They scared the shit out of me and I couldn’t help looking out the front windscreen and saying “Oh my god” or yelling “Pole pole” which means slowly. There were times when we were overtaking a truck on the wrong side of the road, around a blind corner and a souped up four wheel drive would over take us. Three cars going the one way on a single lane road in bad condition. They all had a death wish and unfortunately they were the only way to get around.


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Mike 'fixing' a pretty broken bus with some duct tape on the way to Mombassa. We got the back seats just above the engine which liternally burnt our feet. The six hour bus trip took nine hours.



So I walked as often as I could. Healthier, and as long as you didn’t get hit by an errant Dalla Dalla, it was safer too. One of my fondest memories was walking home from town each day. I’d walk along Old Moshi Road, past nut vendors and the guys who sold pot plants. Past the AICC clinic and the Everest Chinese restaurant. The shady side of the road depending on what time it was.

There would always be hundreds of people walking up and down Old Moshi Road. Only the rich or taxi drivers had cars, and a few people had bikes, so walking was the way you got around. Old Mammas and their daughters carrying baskets on their heads as if they were light as a feather. Groups of men in collared shirts walking slowly. Children in bright school uniforms, girls and boys with short hair.

My route took me up to the Impala Circle, the round about next to the fancy Impala Hotel, with the rough soccer pitch next to it. Then I walked up into Kijenge Chini, which means the down part of the Kijenge suburb. It was a busy intersection of people, taxi’s, dalla dallas, hair salons and other shops. Every day I walked past every taxi driver would rush to their cars expecting that I wanted a lift because I was Mzungu. Initially I was scared to walk past this area because it was so busy and crazy, but I got used to it.

After the madness was the sawmill which looked like a noisy ant colony, with people rushing everywhere and piles of wood in random spots. I don’t know if they worked shifts, but half the men seemed to be working hard and the other half were not working at all.

Down the hill past the notorious Colobus Niteclub, so serene during the day and so nuts at night. The big right hand turn off towards Kijenge Mwanama, pronounced Mwa-nar-ma (OK that didn’t’ help much did it). From here on in I was a local celebrity. “Mzungu, Mzungu!” with occasional kids following all the way home. Down the hill past the bar that is also a car wash. Over the bridge where a bunch of volunteers had been robbed late at night. It was also where the water was, and nearly twenty four hours a day people would be filling buckets.

Over the bridge and up the hill past more hair salons, a couple of Internet cafés and Big Sister bar, the local hang out where you could get beer, chicken and chips with your game of pool. My Internet café was opposite, where the lovely ladies were who looked after me and put up with me burning disks and telling them how to fix the network. I really miss those ladies.

 

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A roadside stall selling everything from bread to batteries, and football calendars to beach balls.


A big left hand turn, or kushoto and we were almost home. Here I was a  but still a Mzungu. Some people even knew my name, and neighbours kids would want to hold your hand, or grab your shirt and follow you home. Walking past the local toilets that you smelt before you saw and overflowed during rain. Past Peter’s, my tailor, a good man who never overcharged me. Past a teachers college that was a shack and a room where the girls would practice their English and then giggle as they hid their faces. Past the last fruit and vegetable stand where bananas hung, and spinach wilted in the sun.

Another left and a quick right and you’re on the lane home. Here you were known. The first kid who saw you got the honour of yelling “MZUNGU!!” to the other kids. Then the madness would begin as they ran from all directions. If Kevin and I were walking together it felt like New Years Eve. If you were in a good mood, you’d pick them up, one at a time and put them down gently. Then you’d admonish the kid who pushed their little sister to the ground to go next, but they never quite understood why it was a bad thing.

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The kids in the lane near Mama Happy's that used to want to be picked up. (Thanks for starting that one Kevin...) "Na mimi!!" They got quite rough with each other.


Plucking children off your clothing like thorns, you pushed open the wooden gate, covered partly by many pieces of corrugated iron in varies degrees of rust and decay. Safety in the compound. Sometimes a few kids would be playing here and you’d ask about school. Walking down the side of the house and coming out to the back area was coming home.

 

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The gate to Mama Happy's compound. My favourite image of Africa.


I loved that walk home. It was something about it more than a safari or eating beans that made me feel like I was not only in Africa but that I was, in some small way, being African.

Posted by Mick on September 28, 2005 at 09:13 AM in People | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Mr Sauni

The only Tanzanian I knew of before I left Australia was Mr Sauni. He was in all the pictures and I knew that he was the main man. He looked like the great grandson of a village chief. He was big and looked at you slightly leaning back to gaze down his large nose at you with scowling eyes. He would be the focal point the good, the bad and the ugly of my volunteer experience.

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Mr Sauni in the TCBA Office. The noticeboard with our schedules and a window into the cockpit is behind. The cockpit is where the accounts team squeeze into to collect money.

The volunteer program I was with was called Mondo Challenge, a UK based group who were small scale but flexible. In some way they are like a travel agent for people looking for a volunteer holiday. They get you to a third world country, meet you off the bus or plane, get you into a home stay or guest house, then introduce you to your project. From there you are more or less on your own.

Bree, the Mondo Challenge country manager for Tanzania, introduced me to Mr Sauni. The office was on the second floor, and Bree had broken her foot tragically while working with a volunteer in Pangani on the coast, so we got Mr Sauni to come down. A rock solid hand shake and an all-face smile with a slight chuckle and I was in. Mr Sauni started reading from a piece of paper he had prepared and I got my first taste of Tanzanian’s love of formalities.

Within the first hour I worked out that what I had been told I was coming to do was nothing like what anyone here thought I was doing. It would be the way of things to come, but for now I went along with the ride.

Talking with the UK crew previously, I had in my mind that I was coming to do an impact assessment on a grant program that supported HIV/AIDS widows. They were given a small amount of money to start a business, usually selling charcoal, clothing or food of some sort. It sounded worthwhile and challenging, and I was promised that I didn’t need to speak much Swahili to get the job done right. I was told immediately that this was impossible. That even if I spoke perfect Swahili, the widows would not tell me the same things that they would tell a Tanzanian.

As Mr Sauni read from his list of things that he wanted me to do, I proffered a scowl of my own.

1.    Help with the finances of TCBA until Mr Bull arrived. [The dynamics of a microfinance NGO  really interested me, so this sounded good.]
2.    Create another marketing lesson for the clients. [OK, not bad, I could do this.]
3.    Make a web site for TCBA. [Hmm, I’d come to Africa to do something different. Building a web site that I know would be average didn’t interest me.]
4.    Teach the team how to use computers. [OK, no. I’d been teaching people computers since I was thirteen and it was a labour of love for family and friends, but that was my limit.]

And that was it. Three or four months doing these four things. I wondered for the first but not last time what I was doing in Africa.

We had been told countless times that it is hard and slow work in Africa. Things take five times longer and five time as much effort as in a Western World. So maybe this was just setting realistic goals, something I have never been very good at.

A week and a bit of working things out and Kevin arrived. I’d seen his name next to mine on the white board in Northampton and on some emails, but hadn’t thought much of it. He arrived on the day of the quarterly board meeting of TCBA (held three times per year) and we thought it was better to make his head spin than to miss out.  I remember meeting him on the street and giving him a ten second brief on the way up the stairs. He looked travel weary but up for the task.

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Kevin and I in the TCBA office. Early in the piece because we are still there, still smiling and still have hair.

The board meeting turned out to be quite important to me. I picked up a hint about what I could focus on. The ‘light bulb’ moment went something like this.

“Yes, there is a problem. Many of our clients want to do training,” Mr Sauni declared with his borrow frowed.

“Are there training centres in Arusha?” I asked.

“Yes, but they are expensive and our clients cannot afford it. We must provide it to them for free.” He replied.

“Well, you give them loans don’t you? Why don’t you give them loans to do the training?” I suggested.

“Huh. No, we give them loans for business not for training.” He said, confused or thinking I was confused.

This went back and forth for a while and I realised that this wasn’t going to be simple, so I just made a note of it for later. Bree and I talked about it a bit, and as my frustration with my lack of work with TCBA grew, I decided to work on it. Or a fifteen year old school boy did anyway.

I was walking up Swahili Street towards the office and this smiling boy in a blue uniform was next to me. Young students were a great way of practising Swahili, because normally they could correct you as their English was often better than adults.
[http://www.acc.habari.co.tz/maps/a00.html map]

“Habari za schule?” (Tell me news of school?)

“Shikamo. Ahhh, nzuri sana. Habari za asabuhi?”  (Honour to you older person. It is good. What is news of the morning?)

“Marahaba. Nzuri sana. Twende iko wapi?” (I acknowledge you honouring me as an older person. It is good. Where are you going?)

“Ninakwenda nyumbani. Wewe?” (I’m going home. You?)

“Ninakwenda kazi. Unapenda schule?” (I’m going to work. Do you like school?)

“Ndiyo. Ninapenda schule.” Smiling. (Yes, I like school.)

This was my limit, so I shifted into English, just to test him.

“What are you studying?”

“I’m studying chemistry, physics and biology.” Smile getting bigger.

I was pretty impressed. “So what are you going to do when you finish high school?”

“I’m going to go to college to do chemical engineering.”

“And what will you do when you finish?”

“When I graduate, I will get a job as a chemical engineer at the brewery.”

I was thoroughly floored. The boy waved and walked off with a skip in his step. I decided then and there that I was going to work on education and try and get a student loan facility off the ground. I did it without much help from Mr Sauni, not because he wouldn’t help, but because I didn’t want it. We had a few run ins.

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Tania at the graduation ceremony for the adult English class at Ngaremtoni. There was soda and bites (small cakes). Some of the students did a dance and a song. The song was a mix between traditional and hip hop with a young man improvising. He seemed to run out of ideas, but it was amazing.

On one occasion, I confronted him about the Needy Hospice web site. After building the TCBA web site [www.wheel.blogs.com/tcba] Mr Sauni asked me to build one for another NGO. The needy hospice gave our medical provisions to the very poor in town and was certainly a good cause. I started on the project and looking through the files found an invoice for 80,000 Tanzanian Shillings ($80US) dated more than a year ago and marked paid. It also seemed like it had been issued by a previous volunteer. I just didn’t get it. How can a volunteer working for free charge their own time out to an NGO so that another NGO makes money? It was crazy.

I raised it with Mr Sauni and he scratched his head and said he didn’t know about it. It was a reasonable chunk of cash and I knew he would have known about it. I got pretty mad and said that I’d do the site but he would have to refund the money. He said he couldn’t and tried to change the subject. I’d even found a web address and worked out that the site was done, it was just not finished and it was a bad job.

I didn’t know it at the time, but Mr Sauni wasn’t a bad guy. We was no saint, but he compared to others he wasn’t half bad. More like 90% good. He was better than most.

Posted by Mick on September 29, 2005 at 08:42 AM in People, Projects | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

The Baby Sister

The comments I’m about to make about third world aid and volunteering are by no means universal truths. They are based on my experiences, observations, thoughts and conversations with Africans and other volunteers. Some of the stories are trusted hearsay, but hearsay none the less. Through all of the ‘bad’ stories I want the reader to keep in mind that most people have good intentions and that there is also good work done.

I came to Africa for a number of reasons, one being just to visit and see a different continent. Another reason was to meet African people. There are a very small population of Africans who have emigrated to Australia and in my life I had met less than five. Playing basketball I had met a dozen African Americans, but that was only a mildly different perspective to Australian life. I really wanted to get to know Africans and go some way towards understanding them.

So while I was in Africa, seeing the countryside and meeting the people, I thought I might as well do some good. In hindsight, this thought nags me. Why did I think that I needed to do good? Why did I think that Africans wanted my help? Certainly no where in the process did I think about asking an African whether they wanted my help, and if so, what help they wanted.

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Some of the kids in the street. Initially they were scared of me, but after a while, and after Kevin befriended them, you couldn't walk by without them screaming "Mzungu!!" and wanting to be picked up.

 

Hindsight is easy. Foresight when you know that you are a babe in the woods is harder. My only hints ahead of time were a couple of emails from previous volunteers who said that it was hard work but well worth it personally. I can handle that. A bit of hard work never worried me. Nathan, a friend of mine who has done some work in international relations and aid asked me whether I thought I could save the world.

“Of course not. I’m just going to do my bit. I’ve been fortunate enough to learn some skills that can help and I’m going to help out.” I replied full of confidence. ‘Do my bit’ is such an interesting thought.  What I was really saying is that I’m a star and I’m going to make significant change and they will hold a celebration in my honour.

So I arrived in Tanzania with an expectation that I was going to apply my massively superior intellect and experience to solve problems that millions of people have been working years on. I expected that Africa would be waiting for me like I’d seen in the ads and documentaries. Mothers with malnutrition bloated babies. Dirt and misery. People crying out for my help. It was not what I found.

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Two of the Masaii kids in Longido posing for a photo.

Africa is Africa and that is the most important lesson I learned. We are on the same planet but Africa is not, will never be and should never be Australia or anything but Africa. Africa is wonderfully different and that is a good thing.

Part of my prejudice was that I felt sorry for Africans because they weren’t like me. That was even part of what I thought was just a lack of understanding. ‘When I understand them I will be able to relate to them and help them be more like me. To have my life and therefore have the things that I have.’ It was such a naïve way of looking at the world, especially when I considered myself worldly and open minded.

The small part of Africa that I caught a glimpse of was full of life and living. People, families, communities, towns and countries were living. They woke up everyday and got on with life. Most of them without thinking that they wish they were somewhere else with some other life. That is not to say that they don’t wish for a better life, but they don’t wish to be whisked away from this life to another country. They want to have a better life in their village with their family.

Things were certainly different, but things were certainly not doom and gloom. In fact ‘things’ were the primary difference. We (meaning western cultures) have lots of shiny, expensive, convenient things to support our shiny, expensive, inconvenient lives. In Tanzania they had what they needed, or a bit less or a bit more. Some people had some things that they wanted, like a radio or family TV, or they may have wanted them, but lived without them.

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Maro (left) was the eldest child of three who lived next door. His mother had recently died. He studied hard but had no faith in politicians "They will always be corrupt." Christoff (right) was studying hospitality and worked around the house to contribute to his board. He had an enormous smile and helped with my Swahili.

 

The absence of things from an outsider was obvious visually, but otherwise the impact was rarely felt. Sure, I wished that I had a washing machine for my clothes, a fridge that worked and a toilet with a seat that flushed, but I’m not sure I ever appreciated these things back home.

Travel is also something which is different. I take it for granted that I can be in another country within a day and that my life will be full of travel. For a Tanzanian, going into town is a big thing, going to another town is huge and going to another country is rare. Still, thousands travel every day by bus and I’m sure many fly in and out of the country all the time, but it is just not something that most people will do often in their lives. Hearing stories later about many Americans never leaving their state and wondering if that is true of Australia, perhaps this is not such a difference.

Communication is complex. I had a mobile phone I had brought with me and within forty eight hours I had my own number and was texting and calling every day. Without the copper cable infrastructure that we take for granted, many African people are leap frogging technologies. I remember playing pool in the Hard Rock Café in Longido, not an officially licensed venue, with a Masai in traditional blankets and beads. I was enjoying the rustic African experience when I though I could hear the tune to Waltzing Matilda, the unofficial Australian anthem. The Masai reached into his blanket and pulled out a shiny mobile phone and started chatting away. It was his ringtone and I was simultaneously thrilled and disappointed. Even my laughter ruined the moment for me.

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Katherine showing her camera to some old Masai. Just before this they had picked up her diary and started looking through it. They couldn't read English but they were facinated by it. The guy on the left asked to take a photo and was amazed to look through the view finder.


Along side modern mobile phone technology was no pay phones, expensive and  poor quality international calls made through the Internet. Though they do have pretty good Internet, which surprised me. Being a nerd I’d been expecting to ‘live without’ for my time there, but there were five or six cafes in town and one even in my local village. Sometimes the power went out and you lost everything, but otherwise it was pretty good.

Really though, communication is a bit tougher but they manage. They just do what we used to do before mobiles – be more organised but occasionally have things go awry. Actually, thinking about it, combined with the attitude of ‘turn up or not turn up, it’s really not important’, I don’t think communication bothers them at all. Maybe that is more chicken and egg than I understand.

Despite having internet cafés, the general spread of computers is low. A business might be lucky enough to have one computer, which everyone would share. It is quite obvious that the generation now working did not grow up with computers and are just coming to grips with them. I think it will be at least five years before they are widely spread business tools with networks and infrastructure.

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Kevin and Susanna in the cockpit doing the accounts. I was able to get out of the cockpit pretty quickly after Kevin arrived.

 

The impact of a computer-less work place was obvious when you went to do normal things, like print, copy files or even just to type something out. I bought a notebook that I did more work on then in my computer. You could also feel the network effects. If I manage to get onto a computer to type something up, then I have to copy it to a disk, walk it to the internet café email it to you and hope that you check your email soon. It was strange and sometimes frustrating.

However, computers and technology are certainly coming into touch with the lives of most Africans at some point, either through school or through a service like a bank. They appear to be adopting technology at a measured pace in line with their own development.

The health side of life had the strongest formed preconception, leading obviously to the largest reality gap. The images on TV are dramatised to cause emotional impact but they do exist, even in relatively developed towns in relatively prosperous countries. So if they exist, where is the reality gap? The gap exists because the people in these shanty towns were not lying around suffering and asking for help, they were getting on with their lives as best they could.

That is not to say there weren’t beggars, because there were lots of. But the beggars seemed either to be either handicapped people with some right to sympathy, street boys with nothing better to do, or ‘career beggars’ who you got to know.

It is worth reiterating here that the breadth and depth of my experience with all areas is limited. I didn’t work in a hospital, I didn’t visit the depths of Sudan and I didn’t visit a morgue. I did visit HIV/AIDS widows through a number of community groups through the grant program assessment work. I went around different villages and sat on the ends of beds, on top of boxes or squeezed onto an old arm chair, listening to the mothers talk about food and education.

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Two masai women at the market space in Longido. They were selling rice, flour and coffee.

 

These situations were the closest I got to experiencing the tough life of Tanzanians and the reality was hard for me to process. It was shocking to me because I had a very different life, and I felt very conscious of what I had in comparison. However, the families were all very proud of what they had and were all working together to keep living. Most of the children went to school up until high school and most families ate three meals a day, including meat a couple of times per week. There meals were mainly ugali (flour and water) but everyone appeared healthy and the kids were always full of smiles, maybe just because there was a Mzungu in their home.

Posted by Mick on October 12, 2005 at 10:13 AM in Opinon, People | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Health is Life

This doesn’t really cover health, or the challenges of health in Africa. Issues don’t really arise until there is a problem, until your sick. This is where the shock is. This is where most people, especially children just die. Either they are too far away from treatment, there is no one to take them, they realise too late that they are sick, or they cannot afford the treatment. This is the scary part of life that you take for granted ‘back home’ and don’t fully comprehend the risks of when you visit Africa. If nothing happens, then you’re fine, if something happens, hope that you are near good facilities that are open, staffed and stocked. Like when I got malaria. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria

I don’t know when I got bitten, but it was probably when I was on safari. About six days after we returned, I was out with some friends at Via Via, the hang out for volunteers and locals with money. I was feeling very tired, but otherwise okay. I got up to go and buy a drink, when I almost fainted. I sat back down and my friend Olga asked if I was okay. I tried to stand up again and nearly passed out. Olga called me a taxi and I went home. Maybe I was just really tired?

Before I got to Africa I was concerned about malaria, but not obsessively so. In the first couple of days I met about three volunteers who had had malaria, including Ang, the twenty two year old Australian principal of the local St Judes school. Ang had been in Arusha for nearly two years and had had Malaria three times. I was initially shocked, but as she told me about what happened with calmness I relaxed.

“If you feel like shit then just go get your blood tested and find out straight away. Then you rest it off with medication and it’s over.”

She was right. When the doctor told me I had malaria, he could have been telling me that I had a cold.

“Yep, you’ve got six parasites out of two hundred red blood cells. Take two of these today, and one of these and one of these each day for the next five days. Get lots of sleep, try and eat as much as you can. Next?” Okay, he didn’t say next, but that is how it felt.

At this stage I was still walking around and functioning fine. For the next four days I slept solidly for about eighteen hours a day. I was too tired to read, too tired to talk and after walking the fifteen steps to the toilet I would sleep for an hour to recover. Conveniently, I was also hit with a bout of diarrhea, a word I will never learn to spell, which mad it more interesting. I had four different medical remedies for diarrhea in my kit bag, but it just added to the displeasure.


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This is the view from my window of my room when I had Malaria. Energy sapping and boring, but I didn't die like more than 1.3 million people do each year.

I remember standing on the third morning in the bathroom where we showered and tipping a bucket of cold water on my head because there was no hot water. I thought to myself, ‘I don’t want to be here anymore. I want to go home.’

Millions of people die each year from malaria. I was lucky to only have a small dosage, probably because I got to it early and this is part of the problem. Children are generally weaker and when they are hit with malaria, the subtle signs of fatigue or fever may not be apparent until it is too late. Also, for me, 1,000 shillings or one dollar for diagnosis is nothing, but for a poor family it is a week of food. Also, I lived ten minutes from three or four good clinics. People in villages could be a day away from diagnosis, meaning that you could not just drop in and have a check up. Although, the second time I got malaria I was pretty sure what I had.

Yes, twice. Not a single other volunteer got malaria once, but I got it twice. And it was the second day of the year, not a great way to start. No diarrhea this time, but a cold was my malaria side dish. At least this time I could read. I can’t sit still at the best of times, so being able to read was a relief. I read five books in four days. This time I only had four parasites out of two hundred red blood cells but there were times when I felt weaker, and couldn’t even walk to the toilet or make it to the dinner table. The second time felt more physical, whilst the first time was more mental.

I was not in much danger. I was near medical help, could tell if I was sick, could afford the services and medication and my problems were within the skills of the clinic. The health gap as I saw it, was the responsiveness, cost and quality of treatment for the average person, and especially the average child.  These were the main reasons why people are dying at a higher rate than in other countries.

The average life expectancy is only 45 in Tanzania, as compared to 75 plus for most developed countries. These are complex challenges and are also tied into the development dilemma that I’ll talk about later. Interestingly, United Nations research suggests that life expectancy in Tanzania will rise to about 65 by 2050, while Australia will rise from 79 to 83. Perhaps the biggest difference between the two with regard to health is nearly 100 infant deaths per 1,000 births in Tanzania, compared to 3.5 for Australia. Nearly 10%.

http://www.un.org/popin/data.html
http://www.worldpolicy.org/globalrights/econrights/maps-life.html
http://www.hksrch.com.hk/life.html

The doctors, nurses and clinic staff who looked after me were all Africans. They were professional and certainly trained for the help I needed. All the volunteers regularly agreed that if anything happened that was more serious than Malaria (which sounds funny saying it now), you would be on the next plane home. We didn’t have much faith in the depth of services or the quality.

My friend Bree broke her foot in Pangani, Tanaznia and at a local clinic a friend snapped a shot of a blackboard scrawled with services. It looked sort of like this;

Operation Ngogo [small]                5,000 TSH
Operation Kubwa [big]                  10,000 TSH
Blood test                                      1,000 TSH
Malaria                                           2,000 TSH
Talk to doctor                                4,000 TSH

Education is sometimes referred to as the silver bullet to societies ills. It could solve health, morality, crime, employment, and poverty challenges. The potential impact of good education is perhaps more obvious in Tanzania where the lack of quality in previous generations is more obvious. It wasn’t as obvious as lacking the ability to read or write, it was a general feeling that many adults were just not very smart. This prejudice was heavily influenced by differences in language and culture  and exacerbated by arrogance, but it was there none the less.



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Mike from San Francisco teaching an English adult class in Longido. The classes were voluntary and were attended by local men and women from different tribes including Maasai.


Interaction with this perceived lack of intelligence included waiters who could not cope with a minor modification to the menu, conductors who had trouble counting out change and locals trying to get money out of you by telling you an obviously untrue story. The other impact on the apparent education level was that the vast majority of volunteers would be considered relatively well intelligent most places in the world. University educated, broad thinking, worldly adults, who could afford to take time off work or study to come and volunteer. Myself excluded of course.

However, I feel that out of the many challenges facing Tanzanian society, education is one that is developing well.  The people have a high respect for education and generally  strive for as much education as possible, what ever that meant. Unfortunately, the education is often of a low standard although it was generally improving. It should be appreciated that the education of a generation is influenced by the education that the educators received. This basically means that if the teachers weren’t taught well, then it is difficult for them to teach well, taking generations to improve. In 2005, if a twenty five year old teacher was fifteen when they were taught by a twenty five year old teacher who was taught when they were fifteen, then their education is potentially twenty years old. Do you get me?

 


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My trying to keep a small group of 8 year olds entertained while they waited to do an entrance test for St Judes School, where smart kids who may not have gone to school at all get a great education.


Our education systems have disciplined and regular feedback loops, and investment in improvement and reforms, however this took years to develop and will probably never be perfect. Tanzania is struggling through this at the moment, dealing with the multitude of problems that all conspire to make progress difficult. There is some good progress being made, but from what I could see the government was one of the major stakeholders not doing enough about it. I’ll get to government later, but it must be said that in recent years the Tanzanian government had made a commitment to provide free education to all students up to a primary level, which is a big and positive step forward.

Following closely on from education are opportunities, and I’m speaking mainly about opportunities for macro and micro economic growth. Okay, that was a bit of my economic nerd coming out, but basically I’m talking about the chances that individuals throughout the country have of improving the livelihoods through making more money.

An observer might think that the opportunities are very good, because you interact with them every day. Shopping, arranging travel, staying in guest houses, eating in restaurants, or drinking in pubs. However, the truth is that the tourist trade is dominated by a few safari company, taxi, hotel and restaurant owners earning most of the money.  The way that unskilled locals take their small, unreliable cut is by hawking cheap souvenirs in the streets, selling food and drinks to travellers at the bus station, or by helping travellers get onto a bus or into a hotel.

The real opportunities for good jobs or businesses is between Africans. The widows who were granted some money to start a business generally started selling charcoal for cooking, food or basic clothing in their local area. They made good margins and could start supporting their families quite quickly. Local men could push goods around town in wooden carts. These situations are certainly not enough to employ everyone, and it seems like those who don’t find jobs either work in agriculture, or just don’t work at all.

The space between employment and unemployment in Africa is complex, and I only ever got hints of the reality. Idle men and hard working women seemed like the rule. The men would be walking around, or sitting under a tree talking at all hours of the day. Women appeared to work hard from dusk till midnight, carrying water, buying food, cooking and cleaning.

This highly visible generalisation appears to be derived from the cultural role of men and women. This is the topic of a book or two written by an expert but my experience gave me a lot to think about. I was quite uncomfortable at times with the submissive role of women and the apathetic role played by men. My feelings were probably heavily influenced by the more developed equality in my country and at times it was difficult to be a passive spectator. I never witnessed beatings, which apparently is very common, but seeing someone as intelligent and together as Mama Happy not standing up for herself is a challenge. You can’t just tell her what to do and even if I could, I wouldn’t know where to start.


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Two of the kids from Longido with wonderful smiles.

Photo by Mike K.

So that was my view of the people of Tanzania. My rough impression was that about 90% of Tanzanians were happy with their lives and didn’t want help from anyone. 9% saw that people wanted to help and thought it was an opportunity to either make money or improve their standing in the town. 1% saw that there were problems that needed work, that they genuinely wanted to solve them and that foreign aid could help them do it.

Posted by Mick on October 17, 2005 at 10:08 AM in Opinon, People, Projects | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

The Cavalry

“Don’t worry Africa, we’ll save you from your horrible lives!”

This is more or less what I think my ‘pre-Africa attitude’ was. ‘I’m skilled and experienced from my developed world, so I’ll go over to poor, unskilled Africa and show them how to do it properly. Three months should be enough to get things back on track and do my bit.’

Of course, I hid all of this bravado underneath the premise that I just wanted to experience Africa and see if I can help out in any way, but my underlying attitude was clear. I was a small part of a large group of people who thought we had good intentions and that Africa would welcome us with open arms.

My view now is that is must be like someone knocking on your door on a Saturday morning and saying that they are wealthy and retired and are going to help you out around the house. Then they walk in and say ‘no, no, no, this is not the way to do things. Do it like this.’ Then they do it for you and leave five minutes later saying ‘no, no, no, don’t thank me, I just wanted to help.’  After they are gone, you are not quite sure what just happened, why were they helping you, and why they messed everything up?

The problems with this tale are that the help wasn’t asked for, no one asked what help was needed, there was no education, and the time frame was inexcusably short.

It sounds like such a simple, easy thing to do. Go and help. How can that be bad? I was to discover that it certainly can be damaging if the program is not very well thought through and all the factors considered. Here are a couple of examples.

Teaching

Teaching English sounds like a simple and worthwhile task. You can never have too many teachers, and having people who speak English as their first language must be useful. However, the impact that volunteer teachers has on the teaching system can be negative. Local teachers are frustrated by the foreign teachers are treated like celebrities by principals, administration and the students. There are already significant challenges in getting local teachers working diligently, and favouritism creates further apathy.


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  Scott up in front of the graduating class that he helped learn English. A healthy pile of warm soda sits waiting to be drunk.


The other impact of foreign teachers is caused by transience. Volunteer teachers usually only stay for three to six months. They teach with enthusiasm and interest and then they leave. Relationships with the children, particularly those coming from a difficult situation are important to their education and general development. Some of the volunteers work with orphans who have generally suffered from a past where abandonment has been a theme. After the teachers leave, the children miss them and the local teachers, who are already not happy with the situation, are left with the burden.

This again is a simplistic approach and every teacher I met was trying their best to do a sustainable, balanced job, including working with the teachers themselves. There was more than one occasion where the volunteers where completely disrespected by the teachers or the school administration, and in one instance books and supplies were denied to them and the children.

The best example I saw of a good education institution that was not a private school for expatriate children was St Judes in Arusha, and that’s not just because it was run by Australians. Gemma Sisal started St Judes in 2001 with a handful of students. She called upon family and friends back in Australia to sponsor children who she found to be bright but languishing in their current situation. Three years later, there is a well equipped school with local teachers and administration, teaching over three hundred children.


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Gemma giving the informal, but quite life changing entrance test to some young children from Mama Moshi's Women In Action.

The school operates without any government support or funding, probably without much idea that it is going on. The success of the program will not be known for twenty years, the time it takes for a child to be educated and enter the workforce.

Another challenge is that volunteer teachers are often untrained. I saw multiple instances where the attitude was ‘If you can speak English, it can't be too hard.’ Just because someone has come through a more advanced program does not give them the ability to teach. This adds to the negative impact when they are treated like near perfect celebrities, yet cannot teach effectively. Students and watching local teachers can learn bad habits.

Microfinance

This was the area that I was supposed to be working in, and was certainly not without it’s contentions. Microfinance is a relatively new economic mechanism whereby instead of giving a country a million dollars, you give each person one dollar and let them spend it as they want. The theory goes that the top down approach loses money in administration and corruption, whereas the bottom out approach gets the money to the people who need it. It relies upon the premise that people will spend the money on what they need most.

This microfinance theory is usually combined with the ‘earn it’ and sustainability principles to make the money given out as loans, not as free handouts. This ends up being loans of very small amounts, from a western perspective, of between $50 and $500 which can go a long way in Africa. The general idea is that the person will spend the money on a business or some sort of money making venture and be able to repay the loan, making that money available for someone else at a later point.


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Kevin and Ana working in the 'cockpit'. Ana is the business development manager. She is a good women with good business sense. Her husband was away one night and her house was robbed by twenty men.


This program is doing some great work and I think is very well principled. It does have it’s share of challenges, some caused by clashes of culture and some caused by under developed infrastructure. Firstly, the interest rates are 30% per annum with the first repayment due in the very next week. So generally, you don’t spend the full amount, you keep some for the first couple of weeks repayments. However, the 30% rate puts a lot of pressure on good margins, especially on people who have had no serious business training. The NGO I worked with provided basic training up front, and though it was probably a good starting point, it certainly didn’t make anyone a business person. If the business was kept simple and the margins were high enough, which they often were, then the loans would get repaid.

The second issue was that the money wasn’t always spent wisely, or from my perspective, it wasn’t always spent on an asset to provide return. Okay, some economic bits here, but the gist of it is that they loaner would be asked what they were going to do with the money, they would say they are going to buy food to sell or rent a sewing machine, then the money would be provided and the loaner could do what they want with it. So this is a big question of trust, which is probably a reasonably good thing. Most people used the money to pay off some debts, buy some food and then buy the business tools. Some other people used the loan to pay off another microfinance loan and then skip town.


Health

Working in the area of health is tough under any conditions, and in Africa, conditions are tougher. My experience with health challenges was limited to getting malaria twice, speaking to some people about their work and meeting some Medical Sans Frontier (MSF, Doctors Without Borders) people. 

An army of volunteers were interested in helping with the HIV/AIDS challenges. What appears to be only describable as an epidemic, is the most confusing and complex issue I’ve ever seen. Witnessing as a distant spectator from the outside and then experiencing the life, still as a distant spectator, from within, did not get me any closer to a clear perspective. That is not to say that all things are not clear.

  • People are dying every day from HIV/AIDS.
  • HIV/AIDS is spreading fast.
  • The impact of HIV/AIDS on families, communities and countries is widespread and devastating.
  • The culture of promiscuity is clearly one of the biggest factors affecting the spread of the disease.
  • Many Africans do not trust what westerners advise.
  • Most Africans cannot afford the HIV/AIDS medication at its current price.
  • Some Africans would have difficult keeping to the precise regimen of taking the medication.

So all of these elements combine to cause a situation which is getting worse, has no clear leader and no clear solution.


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Two young children from the village of Longido.

The promiscuity is a significant factor and some of the stories I heard were alarming. The assistant country manager lamented to me one day that his girlfriend is finding it very difficult to find a job because she won’t perform sexual favours and wouldn’t be prepared to perform them on a regular basis. He told me that many women are either kept as mistresses to the ‘boss’ and some are asked to be married to him.

Youth sexuality is also an issue. From Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux comes the story about the aid worker trying to run HIV/AIDS education. She left the job after a couple of months because she couldn’t stop the youths having sex and eventually they all tried to have sex with her. While I was in Arusha, there was an event aiming to be educational for youths about HIV/AIDS and safe sex. Following some talks, there was some local hip-hop music played and all the youths got up and started bumping, grinding and gyrating on stage. The local paper reported it as alarming and disgusting. Then there is the situation that Kevin faced, but more on that later.

One thing that I don’t understand is that Africans do not appear to be learning from the consequences. Perhaps it is difficult to see the correlation between promiscuous sex and death, but it has been a growing issue for more than ten years now. Potentially there is a denial or a lack of responsibility which I believe in some way may be tied to the reliance on aid.

Another factor which causes indirect problems is that many Tanzanians do not have a will because it is considered bad luck. Following a death, it is not uncommon for a widow to have all her possessions taken by her husbands family. She now is normally alone with children, no way to make money, debts and no possessions. She may also have HIV, but no money or time to find out, and even if she did, she could not afford medication.

It is a dreadful cycle with many complicated challenges and no end in sight.

Posted by Mick on October 25, 2005 at 08:12 AM in Opinon, Projects | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Seeds for Africa

yep, I always envisaged that I would go to Africa and dig wells. Because that is what they obviously need. More water. It’s so hot and dry there, if they just had more water everything would be fine. In some ways that is true, they do not have regular and easy access to clean drinking water, nor enough water to irrigate crops consistently, but they certainly don’t have a shortage of labour. If I were to bring some well digging tools with me, that would be a different matter.

http://www.seedsforafrica.org/

One of the projects I saw in Africa that looked to be quite interesting was Seeds For Africa. Someone who had visited Arusha decided to donate some money in the form of seeds to grow more crops.

In Longido, a predominantly Maasai town an hour north of Arusha, seeds were going to be useless because they didn’t have enough water to grow the plants. Being mainly Masaai, who often only eat meat from their cows or goats, growing vegetables was not a high priority. However, now days there were other tribes in town and the Maasai were being educated to try and eat more vegetables to avoid eye problems, so the water problem had to be solved.


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Collecting water in Londigo. (Click the pic to see bigger picture)


The Mondo Challenge crew settled on installing a gutter and tank system at the nearby school by which to capture enough water to feed a vegetable garden. It was interesting to see them going about making it, with the townspeople and children watching them wondering what they were doing and why.

Aid Money From Other Countries

I met a guy in Dar es Salaam who worked for the British Government’s Department of International Development. He told me that the British Government give more than 75 million pounds a year just to Tanzania. And 65 million of that has no strings attached.

My initial thoughts were, ‘wow, that is a lot of money’ and ‘that is very generous’. Then I thought about what all the countries must donate to Tanzania. And how much all of Africa must receive. And how much all developing countries must receive. I just checked the facts and in 2004, $US78 Billion dollars was spent on aid. I guess if there is 500 million people in poverty then this is just $150 each per year, but if poverty is below $1 a day, then this might just be enough to push them all over the line. I wonder how much of the $78 Billion goes to administration and corruption?

As a reality check, in 2004, $1 Trillion dollars (that’s one thousand billion. $1,000,000,000,000) was spent on arms, armies and ammunitions. The United Nations estimates that if 30% of the arms budget was reallocated, they could sold most of the worlds problems. Considering $78 Billion in aid in 2004 doesn’t seem to have changed much, I’m not sure if I believe them. Especially when they allocate $2 Billion dollars to build democracy and $10.5 Billion dollars to stabilise the population. I’m just not sure what you actually spend that money on.

Back to Tanzania and their 75 Million pounds from the U.K. Why do they give so much money? Is it because they want to help? Is it because they feel guilty about colonialism? John Readers book “Africa: A biography of the continent” is the best read I’ve found to give you a good overall sense of the history of Africa and the influences that have shaped where it is today. It’s coverage of pre, during and post colonialism in Africa talked of varying stages of arrogance, greed and complacency. My view is that following World War II, where Africa played a bigger role than most people know, western countries, particularly the U.K. developed a sense of paternal responsibility.


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Kevin, Bree and I at Moshi at the KIWAKKUKI clinic for HIV/AIDS. This was a very well run group that was both caring and competent. It was the day that a young girl had a seizure and Kevin passed out.


The sense of responsibility is also influenced by media and lifestyle.  Lifestyle in developed countries provides time to consider issues outside of your own community and media provides information and awareness of the issues on the other side of the world.  It is interesting to consider that the people whom we are thinking about and caring about probably don’t think or care about us, just because they are more concerned about their own lives.

Doing Business In Africa

I’ll cover ‘trade, not aid’ below, but a quick note about the business climate in Africa, from an outsiders perspective. I hitchhiked one day and got picked up in a luxury four wheel drive by the regional chief financial officer of a global engineering firm. The man had responsibilities for all East African countries and frequently moved between them. We talked about business and what it was like to work in Africa.

I was interested in labour and labour costs, and I suggested that there must be some cost savings in Africa given the large quantities of unskilled labour available. He said that you would think so, but the reality is that the cost of managing the labour makes it relatively more expensive. The key problems he was facing was that workers would turn up late, if they turned up at all, training was frustratingly slow and supervision was next to impossible.


Bombing from Afar

People visiting Africa may be as misguided as I was, but at the very least they are getting some exposure to the realities and understanding Africans.  I found that people sitting in their comfy chairs at home can be just as dangerous. The group of volunteers I was with took great pleasure if finding cheap shirts in the markets that seemed to have been left over from the 70’s and 80’s. My SPAM shirt is now a part of me, and there are parts of the world who will only ever know me as ‘the Spam guy’. These shirts were donated from around the world to clothe the unfortunate people of Africa.

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Kevin with his 'Cheerleader' shirt which I brought for $1 for a joke.

I was explaining my appreciation of these shirts John, the assistant country manager for our volunteer group, and he shook his head. Once again, I’d shown my blinkered ignorance and missed the true impact. My understanding of what actually happens is that the shirts arrive by the container load and are given to the government at the port. The government has no means to distribute them, so they sell them bulk to local merchants for next to nothing. The merchants then distribute them to markets around the country, mark up the price and sell them to Africans. A free shirt at port ends up being about 1,500 shillings at the market, which is about $1.50US. This doesn’t look so bad. In the end a local person can get a good quality shirt, with a whacky print on the front, about an average days work.

The impact that this story doesn’t tell is that Tanzania used to have quite a good textiles industry. Globally it is an industry with high competition, high volume and low margins. Tanzania found it difficult to compete with next to free second hand clothes, and then impossible to compete when cheap Asian textiles hit the market. I was stunned by this, and equally stunned when I bought a bright purple Kanga for my mum in the local market and it had a sticker on it saying that it was made in India. I just couldn’t believe that a traditional African fabric with Swahili quotes on it, gets imported.

http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=9241&ThisURL=./ecjustice.asp&URLName=Economic%20Justice
http://www.newsfromafrica.org/newsfromafrica/articles/art_9610.html


'Just $1 a day'

Like T-shirts, donating money to a good cause has great potential, but the way the money is spent, and by who has an effect on the impact. I saw a few examples but I can’t possibly do justice to the hundreds of programs that are currently in affect in developing countries. Every project I saw appeared unique in circumstances, operation and results. This may be a very effective method to tackle a wide range of challenges, however it also give the impression of a disorganised, low collaboration mess. Everyone is doing their own thing, in their own way, for their own reasons and they have very little idea what the next aid group is doing.

In Arusha alone, we discovered only when we arrived that there was more than twenty aid and volunteer groups operating. Some members of these groups would meet informally in the pubs on a Friday night, but other than that there appeared to be little discussion or organisation. When a few of us volunteers wanted to have a group meeting, some of our organisers said no, I believe because of fear of losing ‘customers’.


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Jane and Roseanne show off the Mondo Challenge sign in Longido.


Other groups operated independently and the only indication of their presence was a big, white Landcruiser four wheel drive with a logo on the side. Some of these were religious based and, to varying degrees, these traded aid for commitment to a belief.

The multi attack approach suits the government and the corrupt local operators who can play one off against the other, or even draw funds from more than one source to do the same role. We were aware of one lady who was running a woman and children group in Arusha who was claiming the same work from at least two international organisations, neither was aware of the other.

For corrupt governments, a disorganised, uncoordinated approach ensures that aid groups evaluating the situation see that nothing appears to be being done and no one appears to have responsibility for anything. Further exacerbating this challenge (or opportunity) is the lack of trust and willingness to work together each group has. Religious groups have obvious conflicts, however I found that many non-secular operations also displayed a behaviour of jealousy and myopia.

With the $78 Billion dollars in government aid from one hundred countries added to the billions of dollars that people donate each month through hundreds of groups such as Oxfam and World Vision, along with the thousands of volunteers and incorporating the many thousands of local NGO’s, you would think that some sort of coordination or at least communication would improve the results.

Tourists

My initial scowls at fly in, snap, snap, snap, fly out tourists evolved over time to distinguish between people who came for a country and people who came to take photos of things. There were bus loads of high paying tourists in Africa who get picked up at the airport, whisked away to their fancy hotel, driven to safari, staying at luxury bungalows, and then back to the airport. With this group, there is very little cultural exchange, with no understanding of the people or appreciation of a different life.

There is another big group of tourists who do step out of the air conditioned comfort and have a look around. They include backpackers doing it tough, seasoned senior travellers relishing in a new landscape, the overlanders in their behemoth vehicles, and even hotel guests who at least wonder around each town for a couple of hours.


Me trying to be a good tourist with Felecity, Sarah and Adam half way up Mount Kilimanjaro.


This sort of tourism is good. People are visiting, seeing the country, meeting the people, eating the food and in some small, brief way, living the life. There is some cultural exchange, however small, and they take it with them always. They talk about it when they get home and they hopefully encourage other people to do it too. Idyllic tangent, imagine if every person in the world could meet and get to know every other person in the world. Tolerance might become understanding.

Human Rights Charter http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/eng.htm

They are also injecting money into the economy in a positive way. Of course, most of the money for a  trip to Africa goes to the airlines, hotels and safari companies, but not all of it. The souvenir hawker, newspaper seller, the waitress at the local restaurant, the taxi driver, the bar man, the tour guide, the currency exchanger and the bus conductor all take a share of the money. 

My suggestion to people who want to help Africa is to save $1 a day and 7 years later go to Africa and spend two weeks there. It is a worth vacation and much better for the world in my opinion. Perhaps save the $1 into a economic development fund to be used by African businesses to grow.

Religion

My thoughts on religion in Africa are unresolved. It is a big subject and all I have are my observations and personal feelings. Some other volunteers were strongly against organised religions in Africa and their work, but I think this was a subjective view based on their own conclusions about spirituality.

On the bright side, was the moral guidance and meditation or prayer that comes with regular attendance and commitment to a religion. With the attendance comes being a part of a group that is positive, caring, and considerate. Being a part of this group can make someone and their families lives better just through the support they receive.


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The local church where Mama Happy goes. I only went once. It was quite interesting, especially when a hole in the roof shone a light on me.

I saw a number of orphaned youths who had used religion as a stable and reliable base through which to rebuild their lives. They had found a place that accepted them and they found guidance and role models who they could talk to and would listen and provide wisdom.

On the down side for me was the big, fancy church in a village of squalor. I understand that a church needs to be a cathedral in the way it is an inspiring building, but I subscribe more to the St Francis of Assisi principle of living amongst the people and improving their lives. Also, there were stories of missionaries who would trade food and clothing for coming to church. I don’t think that is a good approach.

This was certainly not the only way these groups ran. There were other groups who very open and honestly had a principle of helping and caring and if people found religion through that then they were happy to share, but would never impose it upon someone.

Posted by Mick on October 25, 2005 at 08:57 AM in Projects | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Africans on Africa

The concept of aid, charity and volunteering, as I mentioned previously, does not logically fit alongside food, water and safety as a basic instinct. Here is Maslow’s hierarchy of innate human needs, with my comments on how they fit in with aid work and Africa;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

1.    Physiological – getting food, water and medicine to sustain life, a key reason why people donate money and volunteer.

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The school principal shaking hands with Scott before the graduation. Sometimes Tanzanian men would hold you hand for the whole conversation. It was uncomfortable at first, but then it became meaningful.


2.    Safety – wars are a significant cause of harm, poverty, regression and unhappiness in many African countries.

3.    Love and belonging – my view is that this human need is easily met when the first two are present in the groups I saw in Tanzania. Family and community can be strong. This is perhaps where aid work starts to fit in with some people wanting to be part of a broader community or leaving theirs for another.

4.    Esteem – feeling respect and self respect is perhaps the biggest challenge facing Africa, both on an individual and a national level. Woman and youth are an obvious area where nurturing self-respect is needed. However, I feel that the development of the work ethic of men will have a sweeping, positive impact on the men’s lives and the communities they live in. On a national level, the self respect gained through fair trade and reducing the reliance on aid is paramount to achieving sustainable positive lifestyle. Again, some aid work fits in here as people want to do something that will give them the respect of others and perhaps respect themselves for ‘doing the right thing.’


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This Maasai lady was selling her wares outside of Longido. She wanted to put her neck jewellery on before I took the photo. She was very proud of her works and her appearance.


5.    Self actualisation – as the lower needs are being met more consistently people are able to start making the most out of life. Comments on this would require a deep understanding of the African culture to understand whether this level of motivation is being achieved or even considered.

However, for the average Tanzanian it is unlikely that they are spending too much time thinking about self actualisation, focusing instead on the more basic motivations. For volunteers, this level is definitely a reason to get on the plane and rough it for a couple of months or years. For me personally, spending eight years in the business world fighting over profits and markets shares, I definitely took off with the thought that there must be more to life.

At the end of this exercise, the best we can say is that each person is motivated by different things and appreciating and understanding those things is important in understanding the person. In developed and developing countries there are people who are hungry for food, hungry for love and hungry for purpose. You have to meet them and say hello to understand what it is they are hungry for.

Posted by Mick on October 26, 2005 at 08:33 AM in Opinon, People | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

The Mamas and the Babas

Paying someone who is poor to look after someone who is extremely poor is potentially messy. It is even more difficult when the payer is perceived as being rich. This is what has happened in a number of situations in Arusha.

The idea is that projects should be run by Africans and not by foreigners, which is the right way to encourage sustainable development that maintains the African culture. However, it is almost as irresponsible to just give the money over to an African without managing them as it is to tell them how to spend it.

What happens on some occasions is that the foreign charity finds a local person who appears to be doing good work and decides to pay them to do it. Then the charity people leave and they keep sending money. With no one arrange to manage them, the local person starts spending the money on themselves and their families. Some money is spent on the project and some results are achieved, but inevitably they are underachieving and will ask for more money.

They say that there is no such thing as complete altruism. That everyone does things for their own reasons. This may be true, but in a developed society the average person doing charity or public service work is gaining a feeling of happiness for doing the work, not financial reward. Whereas in Africa, this happens regularly.

 

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This is Elizabeth who an hour before was having a seizure from brain damage. She doesn't want to go to the hospital because they treat her badly and she doesn't want to go home because they treat her worse. She stays with the Kiwakukki clinic because they are nice and she can help out.


I became aware of one case where a lady that multiple volunteers had been helping to build a women and children empowerment group was drawing income from at least two different charities for the same work.  Apart from being dishonest to her financers, the lady was also abusing the service of young girls in her responsibility by making them work long hours and only paying them in small quantities of rice.

Another lady who was running an orphanage where I did some work had a reputation for being corrupt but most of the evidence was unproven. Books and disposable cameras for the children would go missing. The money that was donated to pay for food never seemed to be able to buy enough good food when it seemed like double the amount necessary. The children were not given basic health care which was supposed to be covered by the funding organisation, which included HIV testing which was free in town but sometimes the children were not driven there. 

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Raina from West Massachusetts playing with some of the kids from Haruma Orphanage.


All of these points paled into comparison against an allegation made by another local who was one of the trusted few. He said that some of the children weren’t even orphans. That some of them had parents or relatives in town and that the Mama had coerced them into giving them up. She apparently would say things like ‘You cannot look after this child’ and the parents or relatives in their guilt would give them up. There is the possibility that she just told the guardians that she could offer them a better life, which is potentially true. Orphans often get better treatment than the average child, with volunteers, regular food and other resources. 

When I heard this news, despite lack of undeniable evidence, I decided to see for myself. When I met the Mama, she asked me what work I was doing in Africa and I told her that I am investigating corruption in the different projects. She appeared to me to have a look of fear in her eye and after that meeting she would always avoid me, which of course is still not proof. I felt strongly about it because the children were so kind and wonderful, trying very hard with school and looking after the orphanage themselves. To see that there was a couple of adults behind it, her husband was apparently involved, who had immoral motives really upset me. It was one of the moments where my own motivations and perceptions came crashing down.

Alongside these two ‘evil’ Mama’s was Mama Moshi. From everything that I saw, and everything that was said about her, Mama Moshi was a saint. She gave her all, put in her own money, truly cared and had a smile that made you smile back. She ran a group called Women In Action (WIA) where a number of local and foreign volunteers worked.  The group aimed to help women in the community through empowerment, training, grants and loans, often provided through other organisations such as TCBA. The office was a sanctuary in a rough area, with mothers with children in tow turning up looking for guidance but more often reassurance.


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Mama Moshi with some of the volunteers and some of the children at the Women In Action Christmas day. I made about 40 children cry (a record even for me) since they'd never seen Santa Claus (Baba Christmas) before. They thought they were in trouble.

Mama Moshi knew every one of the clients by name and their family background. She knew where they all lived and had ideas on how they could be helped. She certainly appeared to be a good woman doing good work.

The difference between Mama Moshi and the first two was her values and principles, but also interestingly is in some way money. Mama Moshi made some money from foreign aid and was said to do some consulting, and her husband apparently had a ‘good job’. They certainly weren’t rolling in money, but there was probably enough for her to be able to pay for a house girl to look after the house and allow her to work most days at WIA. Her income may have been more than the other two Mama’s but she still made the conscious decision to do the right thing with it when she could have followed the same path.

The other thing I realised about Mama Moshi was that she had been doing this work for a long time. Her pride and joy was a photo album which showed photos from ten years ago, working in a dilapidated office but with the same big smile. She had grown the organisation piece by piece and become a light in her community along the way.

I think if you lined up the three Mama’s and got them to tell you about themselves and what they do it would be very difficult to tell them apart, except for the big, genuine smile. This is the challenge. Who can you trust? It is the same question that you ask yourself in any culture, but it feels more important with aid work since it is someone else who is getting the benefit.

I talked about Mr Sauni before and mentioned that he wasn’t perfect, but better than most. Apart from a foggy memory about charging other NGO’s for volunteer consulting, Mr Sauni also appeared to be setting up for a political career. He would write into The Citizen, the local paper for intellectuals, about how George W. Bush was a smart man doing the right thing.

“When a man owns a chair and some rice, he has no problems. If a man owns a television and five chickens, he must be able to defend himself.”

I was so blown away by the statement that I didn’t get a chance to say that going into your neighbours house and beating him up because he might steal your T.V and five chickens is not defence. Of course, it’s a pre-emptive attack.

Politics is seen as a very good career option in Africa. My understanding is that this is because of the money and power that is associated with it. Bribes, kickbacks, favours, leniency, free loans, fast tracking, travel and social standing are just some of the benefits of being in politics. In a seemingly viscous circle, people expected politicians to be crooked and politicians happily obliged by being corrupt. People will never expect anything different and politicians are not going to give up on a good thing.

One of Kevin’s youth’s elder brothers was gloating that he had secured a transfer to the Anti-Corruption Department. He was excited about the move and openly stated that the bribes would be much better in the new job.


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On my last day in Africa, Kevin and I were in Nairobi. We tried to get into a building to see the view from an observation deck. This guy said it was closed but he would take us. I gave him a t-shirt that I didn't want to take back to London. He said thanks and then asked for the entry fee which he promptly put in his pocket.

I’m not sure what happened in our culture to get to the point where corruption is not accepted and whilst it does occur, it is highly covert, with the person knowing that if anyone found out they would be in a lot of trouble.

I must say that Mr Sauni seemed to gain great pride from being known as the man in Arusha who helps people.

“When I walk around, do you know what they call me? They say, ‘That man, he is an angel.’ They call me an angel.”

As mentioned above, motives are deeply engrained in culture, and without understanding the culture, it is difficult to work with or develop principled motives.

Posted by Mick on October 26, 2005 at 08:36 AM in Opinon, People, Projects | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Reliance on Aid

For better or worse, Mr Sauni and the Three Mamas have careers in aid, and it is a large and powerful industry. The day I knew for sure it was an industry and not just a part of the community was when I saw an umbrella body offering courses in setting up an NGO and writing proposals to raise money. It felt wrong. It felt like it shouldn’t have come to this.

I can understand support networks and services being put in place to run aid groups and to help locals get involved. However, when it is an industry, there is a tendency for it to want to keep itself alive. It is like the day when everyone gets a job and you have to let go all the people at the unemployment office. That was the feeling I got. That it was never going to finish. Never win.

The reliance is deep and broad. My brief glimpse at the countries financial ‘ecosystem’ was scary. I was told that Tanzania collects less than 25% of government revenue from taxes. The first impact is that because most Tanzanians don’t pay taxes, they don’t demand good government. The attitude is that it is just the way government is and there is nothing you can do about it. I believe that when people pay taxes, they want value for money and whilst it is always hard to calculate, you still feel you have the right to ask for it.


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Some of the children from Women In Action singing a song about saddness. Most of these children have lost one parent to HIV/AIDS but WIA is helping them with long term solutions.


The second impact of this is that they need to constantly receive foreign aid and loans to make up the shortfall. This becomes a never ending cycle of showing some improvement, but not enough, and then asking for more money. It also means that money received in foreign aid doesn’t necessarily go to improving the country as a large proportion of it has to go to just keeping the country running. This has got to be one of the main reasons for the lack of success despite the billions of dollars invested over the past fifty years.

The worse part about the foreign aid money is the way that part of the culture has changed in order to accommodate and perpetuate a reliance on it. The cycle needs to be broken and it will take strong leadership on both sides to achieve it.

Posted by Mick on October 27, 2005 at 08:35 AM in Opinon | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

The Hard Path

Amongst the life in Africa, I wondered if any developing country has actually developed in the past 50 years? With all the charity, all the aid, all the volunteers, is there a single country we can point to and say, ‘that’s great, they now have good government, economic stability and a reasonable standard of living, including food, health and education.

The answer is unclear. Apparently South Korea, Taiwan and Japan have become developed in the past fifty years and it seems they did it through a combination of moving from agriculture to manufacturing and strong government. Neither of which seem likely to exist in Africa any time soon.

The gap between rich and poor people is in some ways similar to the gap between rich and poor countries. The rich usually know how to generate wealth and continue to do so. They may invest some money into lifestyle but much of it goes towards increasing wealth. This is my understanding of why the gap gets bigger and bigger. Only by learning how to create wealth or value and sacrificing heavily for a decade or two can a poor person or country hope to become rich.


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Two of the volunteers, Claudia and Katherine arranged for some new play equipment for the Haruma Orphanage. (I painted the purple bits!)

In some ways, the aid we are providing to these countries is leap frogging the development process. The fact that these countries or regions are going through something that I, rightly or wrongly, assume our country has been through before raises some interesting questions about sequence. I believe in the theory that it is not the same to go through a problem and solve it as it is to understand the solution and apply it. An older brother can’t help a younger brother skip puberty, he can offer advice, but then it must still be gone through. Or as Morpheus says in The Matrix “There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.”

So what is the right path? My feeling is that there is two paths before the world with regard to developing countries. The first path, the path we are currently on, is a kind and sympathetic path where we offer money and support to give those who do not have the relatively luxurious lives we live a better life. They are poorly fed so we give food. They have poor health so we give medicine. They are poorly educated so we give lessons. Rarely do these kind acts actually develop the people. Even more rarely are the acts driven by the people. Not just collaborated with, but actually driven by the people.

The second path is a very hard path, for Africans and the world and I’m only suggesting this to encourage thinking about the long term. What if all the aid stopped? What if all the volunteering stopped? What if all the special conditions stopped? There would undoubtedly be years of misery and death. Things would get worse for a while. Ten years. Maybe twenty? It would be very difficult to stand idly by and witness it occurring.

But isn’t this almost what is happening now? Things haven’t got much better. People are still in misery and are still dying. Things are getting worse. For fifty years. We are standing by and witnessing it. The big difference is that the people affected are not taking complete responsibility for their situation.

So what good would come of such atrocities? At a certain point, we would hope that the mass of African people would start to demand something better. They would demand a better chance. They would demand a better life. They would demand a better life for their children. The people they would demand it from would be the government and if they didn’t get it, then they would throw them out. In their place, eventually, they would put in place someone who is going to do the right thing by the people. Someone who doesn’t want to lead for financial gain, but someone who has a sense of public service. Someone with integrity


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Adela, one of the smiley but tough young girls from Haruma Orphanage.


The new person, in this ideal future, would make changes. They would call upon world organisations to help them craft a constitution and a government that will give them a nation for, of and by the people. They would hire people they trusted will do the right thing and who also had a sense of public service. They would be tough but fair. It would take another twenty years of moving from anarchy to stability but with the right people and with the peoples faith and desire, they could do it. They would earn it.

It looks like an insurmountable task. An impossible task. An a high price to pay. Maybe another fifty years of suffering for the third generation to have something really good. But considering all that, how much more of a challenge does it feel like compared to the current approach. Will the current strategy of throwing money from a distance in an uncoordinated way without it being driven by the ones who we are trying to help work? It hasn’t for the last fifty years.

Africa isn’t a project for the developed world. It shouldn’t be something on a to-do list. Africa is a continent of people. Of good people. Of mothers and fathers and children. They are doing it tough, but they are capable and willing. They need time, support and the same incentives and risks to develop that nearly every other nation and person has in this world. And if opportunity for this doesn’t exist in our own countries, then we certainly cannot put ourselves up as the role model that we pretend we are.

Africa is developing. So are we. They are at a different place and are doing it in a different way. So they should. They are Africans and we are not.

Posted by Mick on October 27, 2005 at 08:38 AM in Opinon, Projects | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Help

With a hard future ahead, what can the average person in a developed country do to help Africa? Are you just one person against a tidal wave of opposition and negative momentum?

Firstly, you are not alone. Maybe a billion people in this world want to do something and that is a great tidal wave of potential too. The challenge is letting those people act while letting themselves run their own lives. Developed countries may have things significantly easier than in developing countries but there is no five day weekend through which to donate towards volunteering. Like you and me, people have work, families and their own lives and the action must occur around that.

Secondly, it is generally a small group of people who make significant change in this world. Large organisations might appear to be the front of change, but generally in these cases there is a small, passionate posse behind it. No single event got us to this position, and no single event can get us out of it. Small actions repeated can complete any undertaking.

That is not to say that you need to take the burden of the entire world upon your shoulders. If you have a big vision, then go for it, but there are things you can do while in your own life which can make a big difference. The most important thing is not an action at all, but an attitude.

Be patient. With small steps in the right direction it will take time to get there. We cannot expect to change something so enormous as the world overnight. Or even over years. We must take decades. Not just to appreciate that it could take decades, we must aim for decades lest our goals be shortcut our values. If in our lifetime the world is a better place then that should be worthy of our effort and principles. 


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Christoff working in Mama Happy's garden. He is a boarder and works to pay for food and lodging. He was studying hospitality management at a local college which included work experience. The garden was dirt when I got there and grass with flowers when I left.


The second thing we can do is change our attitudes and understanding. Instead of your money, give Africa your attention. Give it some time. Read some good books about African, it’s history and it’s people. There is some good fiction but read more non-fiction if possible. See the bibliography for some ideas, but as a start, get a copy of John Reader’s Africa: A Biography of the Continent. Increasing our understanding of something helps us appreciate what it really is and increases our chances of working with and for the entity in alignment with sustainable development.

There is also important benefits of understanding in terms of cultural exchange. Africa is not just in Africa. Africa is a part of the world and Africa is a part of your world. Directly. In you’re life you have and will continue to meet Africans, be influenced by Africa and hopefully, increasingly purchase goods and services from Africa. Knowing what makes an African different from you, and appreciating that difference as a positive thing will make both life better for both of you.

To further this cultural exchange, take every opportunity to engage Africa. Talk to African people, at work and in the street. Ask them about themselves, their country and their culture. Ask them what they think of your country and your people. Learn an African language (Swahili is easy and fun to get started).

Most importantly, I encourage you to go to Africa. One of the luxuries of a developed country lifestyle is holidays and at least once in your life, and soon if possible, invest one in a trip to Africa. It is accessible and easier than you think. You can have fun, relaxation, adventure, partying, new experiences, meet new people and do great shopping. You can be pretty much as safe as you would be in any holiday destination. (OK, if you climb Kilimanjaro you might be a couple of hours from a hospital, but they have helicopters.)

The amazing thing you’ll find is how it is not as dark and mysterious as you think. I don’t expect anyone to head into the heart of the Congo basin or Nigeria armed only with a compass, but there are many places where you can go enjoy yourself. I only went to East Africa, covering Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania and the amazing places of Zanzibar, Mombassa, and the Nile River. To the south there is Zambia, Namibia, South Africa, to the North there is Ethiopia, Egypt, and Morocco. Part of the reason why these places seem inaccessible and dangerous is because not enough people go. The more we go, the more people will know someone who has been and the more accessible it will appear and actually be. So next time you are thinking of a trip, cross off Paris and Hawaii and add an African destination, it will change you and the world.

There is no substitute to going. You can read all the books you want and watch both Gods Must Be Crazy movies, but there is nothing like being there. Meeting the people in their own country, seeing the sun over the acacia trees and feeling Africa beneath your feat is something you’ll cherish throughout your life. You’ll hear the language, see the houses, see the schools, walk on the roads and see the homes and lives of a range of Africans. One of my most startling realisations was that every African does not live like the ads on TV. There is poverty, but there is also life. You cannot visit a different place without being forever affected by it.

“A rubber band, once stretched, cannot return to it’s original shape.”

After your visit and throughout your life you will be able to share with others your wonderful experience. You can tell people about what you saw and the things you did, which will both spark their interest and pacify their fears about considering Africa. Maybe some of these people will go, and the interest and understanding will slowly spread across the world.

This will especially impact your relationships with Africans in your life and speak to them in their own language. OK, that might a stretch, but you will have some common ground to start with and will most likely be enthused about deepening your interest. Your prejudices will change. They won’t disappear, I’m not sure it is entirely possible to treat every single person as a unique creature and I’m not even sure you should.  My view is that you can treat someone as a group, as long as that treatment is not negative and includes the desire to treat that person as an individual by getting to know them. The prejudice way that people give blind people extra room if they are walking is a positive discrimination.

So it will be with your relationship with Africans, regardless of your pre-trip understanding. Yes, you will meet sharks trying to sell you cheap souvenirs like you do in every tourist town, but you will also meet the waiter who brings you a coffee and has a wonderful smile, and the business woman who is interested to know what you think of the new monument in town. You’ll get a small view of Africans in the world,  and that view will grow throughout your life.

If 1% of all the people who have donated money to Africa had actually visited the place, then things might be a lot better. In 2003, 576,000 visitors came to Tanzania, one of the premier tourism destinations in Africa with relative stability and safety, and attractions including Kilimanjaro, Zanzibar and Serengeti, spending US$731 million. In the same year, Chile in South America received 1.6 million visitors, spending just over US$1 billion. A million more visitors but less than 300 million more dollars, suggests that a smaller additional amount of tourists could have a big impact on even just one country.

http://www.tptanzania.co.tz/economy_body.html
http://www.sadcreview.com/country_profiles/tanzania/tan_tourism.htm
http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet/inimr-ri.nsf/en/gr123876e.html

Posted by Mick on October 27, 2005 at 09:04 AM in Opinon | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Developed to Where?

The final thing to consider, which ties into patience and increased understanding, is that we are not perfect. There is certainly no clear indicator that we have ‘got it right’. In fact there are some indicators that we may have got it wrong, or at least not completely correct. We seem be paying a heavy cost for our health, lifestyle, development and progress.

The difficulty in the cost is that it is not immediate and it is not out of our bank accounts. They incur slowly over a very long term, with very gradual changes each year. Some of them are so intangible that it is almost impossible to point to any one thing or number and say ‘that is the price we’ve paid’. They use the analogy of the boiling frog to illustrate how this happens, although if anyone has a more animal friendly one, I’d like to hear it.


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The daily, afternoon soccer match at Longido. I could see Mount Meru and Mount Kilimanjaro, the sun was setting and I was amonst new friends. Another great memory.


The boiling frog story goes that if you dropped a frog into a pan that was heated to 100 degrees centigrade, then the frog will just jump out. But if you put the frog in a cold pan and increase the temperature slowly then the frog will not notice the small changes and will die as the heat rises.

The moral of this story is that the opposite effect of small actions repeated achieving any undertaking. It shows that tiny negative changes will go unnoticed until it is too late. These are the types of costs that we are incurring at the moment. Tiny little costs that no body pays in dollars

Another boring theory that applies here is that of entropy. It’s the third law of thermo dynamics which basically says that unless acted upon, things in the universe move towards a state of disrepair. If you don’t maintain your car, then it will slowly rust and fall apart. When you combine this with the boiling frog principle, you get an idea why some things in our lives and on our planet appear to be falling apart.


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Darma, a cute young girl who was shy or the centre of attention. I look forward to seeing how she is going in twenty years time.

 

This is not to say that we are not looking after things or developing them. We are moving faster and further than ever before. The problem appears to be that our movement is incomplete. We are not moving in all the ways we need to be. For instance, we have more global and instant communication tools than ever before, with email, Internet phone calls and mobile phones, but many of us do not know our next door neighbours and most of us know that we don’t spend enough time with our families.

We are living longer than ever before, but we have more ways to destroy the earth and are experiencing the highest rates of suicide than ever before. We are avoiding death but not respecting life.

We work hard and long hours, earning more real value and owning more things than ever before, but our relationships with our children, spouses, families and friends are suffering. We are losing our souls.

Our growth in consumption has led us to factory farming where animals are cruelly tortured and artificially grown on hormones to feed us cheap food. Rubbish dumps have been overflowing for years but we are protected from it by services that take the garbage from our homes in neat little bins.


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A guy working hard pulling a heavy wheel barrow up a hill. Maybe it's reading too much into this but I like  that this was one of my last images of Africa.

 



 

Things are not completely dire and I truly believe that there is a growing positive force tin this world, but I’m trying to point out that for a developed country to sit back and say to a developing country, ‘follow me, I know the way to prosperity’ is ignorant and arrogant. So much of the aid and volunteer work in Africa appears to be patronizingly based on we’ve got it right and you need to do what we tell you to do.

My feeling is that the best thing the average person can do about this is to not assume that our lives are perfect. Don’t look on Africa with sympathy. Look on it with empathy. Relate to it’s challenges, don’t just feel sorry for it. Also question the benefits of our society before wondering how to give them to another society.


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Me at the source of the Nile River in Uganda. Lake Victoria on the left and the long and winding Nile on the right. I'm leaning on the Maasai walking stick that I brought back with me. I love it.

And seek understanding. As I mentioned previously, get to know Africa. Spend time with it and it’s people. Visit if you can, but if not, speak to Africans in your community, read books and watch good documentaries (and not just on lions).

There is an opportunity to let Africa develop as Africa, learning from the mistakes we have made. We should not offer our path as the recipe for successful development. We should offer them the benefits of the lessons we have learned and are continuing to learn without judgement. They may choose to apply some of the same approaches that we have but they may also ignore them all. They may choose to remain developing and preserve their families, environment and souls.

Posted by Mick on October 28, 2005 at 09:08 AM in Opinon | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Sarah’s Lament

In volunteering I met a diverse range of people from all parts of the world and everyone had their own ideas and perceptions. None of us, me included, have all the answers or even know exactly what to do, but perhaps if we combine our thoughts with those of the Africans then the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ can apply to find some solutions.

One of the volunteers who was always able to balance practicality with action was Sarah from Colorado. She was working with Visions in Action, a group from the States that sent 20-30 year olds for 6 or 12 months working on various health and education projects.


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Sarah on the old couch at French House where she lived with Bree, Olga, Amanda, Piero, Vincent and Victor.

Sarah was there when I got there and there when I left. She’d committed to a full year experience and had a sense of patience that I admired and envied. Not that she was just hanging out, she worked every day and on a variety of projects. She just had the luxury of knowing that she had time to get things done. Or that is how I saw it anyway.

I’d already landed back in Australia when I got an email from Sarah with a long report attached. Unlike me, blogging and emailing every week, Sarah struggled with group emails home and it was often the cause of anguish. I read the report with a feeling of fondness for Sarah and Arusha, considering, not the first time, jumping on the next plane to Nairobi. The first sections of the email were open and positive about the work she was doing and the challenges she faced. But then came the ending.

Sarah has let me include the full transcript of the final section here. It reflects quite accurately how I feel about the volunteer work, or at least how I felt while I was there.

SARAHS RANT

Volunteering: Misdirected endeavor or worthy cause?

OK, the following is half rant, half revelation that’s been surfacing in pieces throughout the last 6 months.  A few friends have heard it, most haven’t.  Take it at what it is, nothing more than a heart-felt declaration and nothing less than a verbalization of concern, frustration and genuine inquiry. It was written in March, and only half-finished. .. your thoughts are welcome:

Anyway, in case I’ve managed to make you believe that I’m having a ball over here offering my time and energy for effective projects and eager people, let me open a blind into the real state of my mind:  I've decided, not only through multiple case studies but through my own sweat and perseverance, that volunteering perpetuates a reliance on free foreign assistance, it's a misdirected use of energy and an over inflated method for self-aggrandizement.  i'm tired of pouring my efforts into these singular projects - football tournaments, HIV trainings, brochure holders, condom distributions and English classes, even creating a website, when really, truly and honestly, all anyone wants is money!!  no gratitude for the aforementioned accomplishments, no appreciation for my unquestioned (unsalaried dedication)  just, "so, can you buy the balls?  can you send me to school?  we need rent money . . . . " . .aaaagggghhhhh!   

Tanzanians expect free assistance, they've been receiving volunteers and donor grants for the past forty years! - 4 decades of unearned assistance, and no noticeable changes!!  AIDS is skyrocketing, unemployment inflated, education is still under funded and of disreputable quality.  where's the improvement???  negligible, if at all. 

we volunteers, in our crusade to help others more impoverished than ourselves, are stealing jobs from local Tanzanians, are making sure that companies/ngos/schools/government  never budget for local quality employees, are perpetuating this self-piteous belief that Tanzanians can do nothing for themselves.  that instead of creating jobs for themselves, instead of lobbying government for special-interests themselves, instead of demanding government transparency and accountability through civil protest and revolt, foreign charities and volunteers bypass those "inevitabilities" and offer as much unasked for assistance as their little do-gooders can afford.  indeed, the very level of foreign aid these countries get depends on the degree of poverty and malnourishment the government can maintain within its borders.  the poorer the country, the greater the aid.
 
What would happen if all the charities, all the international ngos ,all the well-wishing volunteers packed up their things and went home?  Would Tanzanians, no Africans, be forced to figure things out on their own?  Or would they continue tomorrow as they do today, albeit with less John Deer-contributed food in their gut and less church-donated shirts on their backs?  Maybe, all in all, they’d be just as happy.



Sarah’s view was shared by a number of volunteers. Like mine, it is a view that is built based on an intense mixing of preconceived experiences, ideas and ideals, and new experiences, conversations and thoughts.


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Sarah, me and my Whiney the Poo hat that everyone really liked.


I believe that no one knows the answer to Africa’s ills, but those with the best chance of knowing, wanting and working towards the answer are the African people who will benefit.  If you don’t believe me, or just want to be sure, then I again encourage you to go and see for yourself.


Thanks for reading.

Posted by Mick on October 28, 2005 at 09:09 AM in Opinon, People | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack (0)