Report from Tanzania – Installment #3

This past weekend, I decompressed after a very full week by going shopping on Saturday and on Sunday hiking to a beautiful waterfall, followed by an educational tour of a coffee farm (for you coffee experts, I discovered the world’s best coffee, right here in Tanzania!). The week was very full of driving from place to place, meeting with women’s groups, talking to the business women, and interviewing the boys who are in detention. Through it all I was taking in all the sights and sounds and smells and colors and textures that make up our existence in this fascinating country. The environment here is such that I am always on sensory overload. Here are some random things I have observed or experienced in the past week:

• The scared face of Simon, the newest boy to be detained this week. He thinks he is 17 because that’s what his father told him, but no one is really sure and he has no idea when his birthday was. He looks to be about 14 or 15. He is from a Maasai village and has never attended school. In his community wealth is measure by how many cows and goats you own, and Simon told me he owns 6 goats. He got into trouble when he and two other boys were tending the herd of a farmer and the 2 friends got the idea to kill one of the goats. They did so, and roasted it, then all three got caught with the meat. Because Simon was caught carrying the skin of the goat he was deemed the primary thief even though he is adamant that he had no part in actually killing the goat. The other two boys were able to remedy their situation by paying the neighbor one goat each, but 2 goats were demanded of Simon because he was deemed more culpable. Simon refused to pay the neighbor. At that point the father turned him into the police, where he spent a week at the police jail before being sent to detention. This is a classic clash of cultures, communities and systems as Simon, who has spent his entire life in the bush tending cattle and goats, must now figure out how to navigate an environment totally alien to him. He says his father (who has 2 wives and 8 children) doesn’t know where he is. He said to me, as I was wrapping up the interview that he just wants to “go home and be forgiven.” All I can do for him is listen, care, and try to explain that he is going to have to be patient while the wheels of the court system grind ever so slowly.
• The dala dalas that I have talked about are everywhere all the time. Each one is uniquely decorated and painted in wild colors and symbols and messages and pictures. One might be covered in Christian imagery and messages while another is covered with Muslim or Jewish imagery. Others seem to have more random and totally secular images, such as advertisements or pictures of famous figures (sports or otherwise). There is often a mix of both English and Swahili on the signage, but the English is frequently a little “off” – my favorite so far is the dala dala that had “Holly Bibble” painted boldly in large bright letters across the side of the bus (sadly, I was not able to get a picture of it).
• The roads are something else, and everyday I feel like we are traversing in, around and over craters on the Mars rover as we drive around town and through the neighborhoods. The streets all look exactly the same to my unpracticed eye, and no streets have any names, nor are there any working street lights anywhere in the city. There is no mail delivery to anywhere except a post office because there aren’t really any clear addresses. The biggest roads are paved, but the side streets and driveways are all dirt. To understand what I’m talking about, try to imagine the worst possible pothole you have ever encountered, then turn that pothole into a rut that runs the length of the street and twists and turns like the rivulet it once was during the rainy season just past. Add similar ruts alongside the first one and then add some incline and decline in front and behind you as well as on either side of the road and you’ll begin to get an idea of what it is like to drive in and around Arusha. The streets are often very narrow, and lined by individual businesses and shops, bordered by deep drainage ditches for the rainy season. Yet the taxis we take to get to the neighborhoods where we do our work make their way slowly up and down these streets, kicking up big clouds of dust wherever they go, as do the private cars, big trucks, and motorbikes. I really have no idea how anyone can tell where they are if they are calling a taxi, or tell the taxi driver where they want to go. But we always seem to get to our destinations. Apparently not all taxi drivers are trustworthy, so Projects Abroad has an understanding with 3 very nice men who speak pretty good English and make themselves available to us whenever needed. This adds some security to the lives of the volunteers, who always have a safe way to get home after being out and about after dark.
• Corruption is rampant, and although the current President was elected on a platform based on stamping out the corruption, he has also been seen giving a public speech telling the police they aren’t charging enough for their traffic stops. We have seen these stops in action numerous times on the main roads. The police stand in the road and wave someone over. They then carefully inspect the vehicle and the occupants looking for minor violations, like not wearing a seatbelt or an expired insurance sticker, or something else. To avoid a formal ticket, which would be much more expensive, the driver must pay the police a bribe in order to continue on his way. Today we were stopped and as he slowed down Walter, our driver, quietly said to us “Put on your seatbelts!” and we all quickly buckled up. The police officer was determined to find something wrong, and finally settled on telling Walter that he had not come to a complete stop when he drove over the crosswalk. He got out, went behind the car with the officer for a few moments, then got back in and we drove on.
• There are many large, partially constructed buildings all over Arusha and the surrounding area. It’s as if the initial investors put in the money for a big hotel or office building or something, and then backed out of the deal halfway through the project. In many cases Tanzanians are working toward the day when they can own their own property and homes. They don’t wait until they can afford the finished product, however, but instead simply build as they can afford it. So in addition to the empty shells of big buildings, there are many many smaller ones dotting the countryside.
• I visited some homes that were built by the women business owners that we see each week. They are so proud of what they have accomplished – owning a business that is successful enough to allow them to buy land and build a home. A number of them have been able to expand and diversify their businesses so that when one season’s customers ebb and flow (people don’t buy as much water in the winter) they have another business to take its place (selling charcoal instead of water). Most of you reading this blog could never imagine yourselves living in such conditions as these women do, but who are we to judge them or their circumstances?

  

  I continue to be honored by these women who are so willing to invite us into their homes and share their achievements that they have worked incredibly hard for. We volunteers show up every week to review their legal rights with them on various topics so that they can stand up for themselves when they run into legal entanglements, which can happen around divorce, custody, inheritance, property rights, etc. Here is an example of a question that was asked during one of our presentations about divorce and custody rights: “How does the marital property get divided when the husband has multiple wives but is divorcing only one of them?” (it seems that polygamy is tolerated as a religious practice while not quite being acceptable under the regular government law.).

I am happy to be here with an organization like Projects Abroad, which is clearly trying to support and improve the lives of the women and boys we work with. But at the same time I and my fellow volunteers are intensely frustrated by the apparent lack of accountability of the systems that should be protecting the rights of the people, but are instead used for more nefarious purposes and the convenience and gain of the bureaucrats. The laws are there in black and white, but there is no ability to enforce them if magistrates or other “gatekeepers” choose to ignore them or worse, demand bribes for doing what they are supposed to be doing in the first place. As a result, children remain in detention, women don’t get to see their children, or she must pay big bucks to get a magistrate to grant her divorce. It is not at all unusual for volunteers to step in and help out financially on a case by case basis, to pay a child’s school fee, or pay for a witness to travel from out of town to court in Arusha to testify for one of our women, or to pay a court fee that someone can’t afford. But the reality is that these are all very small drops in a very big bucket, and it is rather overwhelming when we stop to think about how many other organizations besides Projects Abroad are also working in this country (and many others in Africa) trying to accomplish many of the same goals.

As I begin my final week here, my mind is spinning with thoughts and questions about how to help a country like Tanzania meet the basic infrastructure needs of its citizens and also provide the appropriate social safety nets for the poor and vulnerable. At the same time, how do we avoid imposing our Western, first world standards on a culture and people that deserve our unconditional respect and the preservation of their personal dignity? I am all too aware that I have no real knowledge or appreciation for the intense complexities that plague a country like this, but my short visit is filling me with intense curiosity and drive to learn more. My nagging impression is that the people I am meeting in the neighborhoods who are barely surviving don’t need to be suffering to the extent that they are.