Report from Tanzania – Installment #4

As I travel around Arusha, the city where I am based, and the surrounding region, I am bombarded by sounds and images. I am writing this blog in the Projects Abroad office on a Wednesday afternoon; the windows are open and outside I can hear children playing, roosters crowing, vehicles and motorcycles going down the road, horns honking, several radios blasting a combination of talk and music, and adults having conversations on the street below.

Inside the office building I can hear various conversations going on around me, mostly in Swahili with a little English thrown in from time to time. Sounds and people swirl around me constantly, part of the landscape everywhere I go, pretty much all day and all night. The night sounds are different, but just as constant. They include vehicles passing on the street nearby, dogs barking in the distance, roosters crowing, goats bleating, radios, and people talking. Sometimes machinery, depending on the time of day or night. The sounds come from near and far away, blending together in a cacophony of rhythms that is somehow soothing as I drift off to sleep, windows open so I don’t miss anything.

My observations of this fascinating country, which I am trying to soak up as best I can during my short visit, lead to many thoughts and questions. But I have to be very careful not to impose my first world Western values onto the environment I see and hear as I think about my experience. I was invited here to share my skill, interest, curiosity and expertise to assist my Tanzanian friends in the important work they are doing to improve the lives of their most vulnerable citizens. I am not here to impose judgment.

The problems facing Tanzania are complex and long standing, partially the result of exploitation by outsiders, partially the result of the developed world turning a blind eye to the needs of the people, and partially the result of internal corruption and despotic leadership that has prevented some of the advances and benefits that other countries enjoy. It is easy to get frustrated by the overwhelming deprivation and need I see all around me, but I don’t have the full historical context in which to interpret my experience. My new friends assure me that positive changes are indeed happening, such as in the juvenile court practices that I have found so infuriating for the boys we are trying to help. I’m just not here long enough to appreciate and witness the progress first hand.

But it is hard to understand how a country this beautiful, with such rich cultural traditions, and people who have the same lofty ambitions for themselves and their children as anyone anywhere else, can be left to suffer the hardships suffered by so many in third world countries.

It is an odd juxtaposition of circumstances, and it makes me sad to see evidence of the rampant corruption, or the absence of effective infrastructure for even basic services – reliable roads, clean streets, safe drinking water, electricity that doesn’t go on and off at odd hours for no apparent reason.  Repairs don’t happen, buildings get started but not finished, streetlights don’t work, and there doesn’t seem to be any accountability on the part of the those who should be providing these things.

I am spending my last week here giving presentations to the various women’s groups that Projects Abroad has been working with for a number of years now.  All of the groups are made up of women business owners who have accepted a microloan from Projects Abroad to get them started. The volunteers on the finance side work with them on managing and marketing their businesses, while the volunteers on the human rights side (that’s me) work to educate them on their legal rights.

The hope is that by educating and empowering these small groups of women, they will share their  knowledge with others in their community, thereby interrupting and changing some of the long standing and oppressive practices that women and children have had to live with for many, many years. Some of these practices are based in historical and cultural norms, others in religion, but the Constitution and laws of this country in recent years have made it clear that women and children have important legal rights that should no longer be ignored. And while the legal mechanisms exist to help women exercise and protect those rights, it is still all too common for families to follow the more traditional practices. In fact, many women are not well educated and still do not fully understand that they have power and that their rights are equal to a man’s when it comes to property, inheritance, custody, divorce, etc.

Given Tanzania’s long history of treating their women as second class citizens, or worse, the Projects Abroad volunteers work hard to help the women see themselves and other women as having rights worth standing up and fighting for. But the individual stories we hear as the women ask questions during our presentations make it clear that there is still a long way to go in many families.

This week the topic of the day I have prepared to present for each group is parental responsibility. Corporal punishment and worse are alive and well in this country. Tanzania has a population of almost 60 million, with over 30% of the people living in urban areas. Whereas the population density of the United States is 93 people per square mile, the population density of Tanzania is 173 per square mile, almost twice the density of the US.

The ramifications of high population density coupled with low per capita income are not hard to imagine. I see it everywhere I look as I go from place to place. Wealth is a relative term depending on where we come from, and it can be shocking to Westerners to see the level of poverty some people are living with. Yet the women I meet see themselves (and rightly so) as successful entrepreneurs who own their own property, can afford to buy the essentials for their families, and pay for their children’s schooling. These are not small things, but an outsider looking in might only see the shabbiness of the one or two room living quarters (that may or may not have windows), the broken down furniture, the dirty walls, and threadbare clothing. What I am learning to see and appreciate when I am invited into their homes is the pride with which they share their stories of struggle and success, their community spirit as they support each other, and their care and concern for their neighbors, friends and relatives. They take the information we provide and share it with other women in their communities who don’t have the same understanding about their legal rights, responsibilities and options.

My presentations this week about parent responsibilities has been somewhat revealing regarding historically accepted discipline practices and how they are changing (or not). This is an important topic because child rearing practices in this country have been known to be quite brutal at times. Corporal punishment is alive and well (and legal – in fact, judges can order flogging of a juvenile as a punishment for a crime), but many parents go way beyond that when disciplining their children. When talking about the difference between appropriate discipline and abuse, I asked the women for examples of abusive, harmful types of discipline and they came up with the following vivid examples: cutting the child with a razor blade, holding a child upside down over a pile of burning paper, tying the child’s hands together wrapped in paper, pouring kerosene on the paper and lighting it, tying them to a tree or other object, or depriving them of food and water. The different women’s groups are scattered across the Arusha region, and it was very telling that each group came up with very similar examples of these (dare I say barbaric?) practices.

While getting an education is considered a right of the child, there is no such thing as mandatory education. This means that if a child doesn’t want to go to school, there is no law that says they must. While legally the parent is responsible for the child until age 18, many parents believe that it is ok to kick the child out of the house by age 14. One woman asked me whether it was ok for a 4 year old to be left alone to watch a 1 year old, which opened a lively discussion about parental neglect and child development, and the moral responsibility to step in when a child of a friend or neighbor is being harmed.

Over the course of this week I have had some very interesting discussions with these women about what is acceptable discipline and what is not. Understanding that there are alternative ways to teach a child responsibility and what is right and wrong without always resorting to a beating doesn’t necessarily come easily to many of these women. The ideals of the law sometimes clash with the reality of culture and long-standing family practices. Yet the women have been attentive and very willing to share their experiences and ask questions. We have had many good discussions and I have a better appreciation for how complex their family lives are.

One thing I have been struck by is the silence of the children I see all around me, not only in the women’s groups but also out in public, on the dala dala, and everywhere. Babies rarely cry and toddlers rarely fuss. Small children sit with their mothers for long periods of time while we give our presentations, others get squashed into laps on the dala dala so that they can hardly move and they never make a peep. I don’t understand it, and can’t account for why these children behave so differently from the children I am used to seeing in other places, particularly the United States. Does the density and living in close quarters have anything to do with it? What about the discipline practices? Or is it simply a culturally different way of raising children that I know nothing about? Just one more thing to be curious about as I wind down my visit and prepare to depart in a couple of days.