Arusha

There are many attractions in the city of Arusha and the northern regions of Tanzania. With my time running out it was time to visit.

Sites to see include Mount Kilimanjaro, Serengeti Plains, Ngorogoro crater, Olduvai gorge (where the first hominoids were discovered) as well as many other national parks with flora and fauna not seen elsewhere. As well this is the home region of the Maasai tribe who mostly live a traditional village life grazing cattle.

It would be easy to spend a lot of time and money exploring the region, both of which I do not have. I took a 10-hour night bus from Morogoro to Arusha, spent 4 days seeing things and then returned on a 10-hour night bus back home.

I did not have a plan nor did I really narrow down what I wanted to see. I am pathetic making decisions on what to do via internet research. Everything looks amazing in pictures and the prices for doing any of these things seem insane.

Many of the people I work with are from the Chagga tribe who originally resided on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, the wealthiest tribe in Tanzania who got that way from the growing crops in rich volcanic soils around the mountain. The agricultural aspect intrigued me.

I took a daladala to Moshi from Arusha. Daladala are local buses that never refuse a passenger, stuffing people on top of each other and they stop everywhere to pick and drop off passengers. I have never seen other muzungos take these buses, but these contact sport transport options are where the life is. Daladala don’t run on a schedule, instead they wait at the bus stand until there is absolutely no more room to fit anybody on the bus and then they depart. While waiting, vendors outside yell selling food, drinks, cell phone chargers, shoes, jewelry and more to suffering passengers. Somehow it all works, albeit uncomfortably so.

Moshi is a town on the foot of the volcano where I took a hike in a forest on the edge of town with some giant trees hosting Black and White Colobus and Blue monkeys (Rau Forest Reserve) and later rode on the back of a bodaboda (a motorcycle) up the side of the volcano to an organic coffee plantation.

There were no signs at the plantation so we drove up and down the mountain asking villagers for the location. Coffee grows best in the shade and here the coffee is grown under banana plants amongst taro root and random avocado and mango trees. Removing husk, winnowing, grinding and roasting were all done with manual devices. I had a nice cup of coffee made from fresh beans after I watched the processing and men dancing as they worked.

In Arusha I visited the natural history museum and learned about Tanzanite, a blue/green/ruby gem stone. The only place in the world it is found is in a mountain fold near Arusha. The Maasai used this stone in a rudimentary board game for centuries until in the 1960’s somebody had the mineral analyzed and found out it was a blue zoisite (very rare). Tiffanies named it Tanzanite and wanted lots of it. It is no longer used in board games. For Tanzanians, this is an engagement gem.

The one big financial plunge I took was to take a one-day safari to Ngorogoro Crater. This is the biggest intact (unbroken) volcanic caldera on Earth. A caldera is a large depression formed when a volcano erupts and collapses. The Ngorongoro Crater is also a natural sanctuary for some of the densest populations of large mammals in Africa and contains the big five ((elephant, lion, leopard, buffalo, rhino).

Due to its enclosed nature, the Ngorongoro Crater is its own ecosystem. Livestock belonging to Maasai tribe graze alongside wild animals – and Maasai are allowed to kill lions stocking their herds. Killing a lion traditionally was a rite of passage for young Maasai men but this practice is minimized due to declining lion populations.

Safaris are big business in Tanzania and especially in Arusha. For a year I have been negotiating prices for everything from the price of a mango to the cost of a bodaboda ride. I feel proud when I save the equivalent of 25 cents. On principal I want to spend the same amount as a Tanzanian. But for Ngorogoro Crater, you have to pay Mzungu prices. So, I bit the bullet.

This is high season for safaris because it’s the dry season. Along with roughly 200 other safari vehicles, each filled with 4 – 10 tourists, we drove the circuit inside the crater. I shared the vehicle with 3 Brits and an American. We saw elephants, wildebeest, water buffalo, lions, hippos, baboons, zebras, warthogs, ostrich, several verities of antelope and gazelle. I enjoyed this very much.

I am finishing tasks in my last 10 days in Morogoro. I have many feelings about this.

Oct. 2023 https://twoacres.blog/2023/11/02/a-month-in-morogoro-tanzania/

Nov. 2023 https://twoacres.blog/2023/11/24/learning-to-wait/

Dec. 2023 https://twoacres.blog/2023/12/29/genetic-brothers-and-sisters/

Jan. 2024 https://twoacres.blog/2024/01/22/being-ki-rafiki-friendly-and-other-stuff/

Feb 2024 https://twoacres.blog/2024/02/26/ah-to-be-young/

April 2024 https://twoacres.blog/2024/04/14/meandering-mzungu/

May 2024 https://twoacres.blog/2024/04/30/direct-aid/

June 2024 https://twoacres.blog/2024/06/12/remember-the-future/

June 2024 https://twoacres.blog/2024/06/21/mobile-money/

July 2024. https://twoacres.blog/2024/07/18/gansta-rap-and-the-goat/

August 2024. https://twoacres.blog/2024/08/27/tribal-tendency/

August 2024. https://twoacres.blog/2024/09/17/arusha/

September 17, 2024 0

Gansta Rap and the Goat

Eating has been a challenge for me. I very rarely feel like I have satisfied my palate.

For many months I could not figure out what was safe to eat. Early on I had several bouts of traveler’s diarrhea/food poisoning but now I think my gut bacteria has changed somewhat. Yet it is always an act of faith eating because getting sick from food is normal, even for Tanzanians. The other day a Tanzanian friend got typhoid, most likely from salad washed in tap water.

Food is everywhere. Fruit and veggies are sold in road side booths and every night women put down tarps and sell what they are growing. In Morogoro, there is a huge permanent market where all kinds of food is sold. For reasons I cannot explain to you or myself, I have not figured out my food situation. I haven’t gotten into cooking and can never figure out what to cook.

Recently I was a BBQ party. Several weeks prior to the event, the organizer created a whatsapp group for invitees. Deciding on the menu took many days of texting, more importantly how much money they were willing to spend. At the core of the discussion was the cost of the goat to be slaughtered. Everyone knew somebody who knew somebody who had a goat. Eventually an appropriately priced goat was chosen.

The party started mid-afternoon and preparing the food together started before I arrived. Initially they wouldn’t let the mzungu (white man) do anything so I wandered around watching.

In the corner of the large compound were several guys butchering the goat – men’s work. They were chopping it into pieces with a machete on a rusted piece of corrugated metal. Flies and ants were very excited.

There was a pervasive odour of blood and shit. One of the guys was cleaning out goat intestines with a garden hose and a bucket. Together they were laughing, chopping and squeezing shit out of rubbery intestines.

Meanwhile, in another area the women were chopping vegetables. Nobody uses a cutting board, instead vegetables are cut by holding the veggie in one hand slicing it against the palm. One of the women handed me a potato to cut into chips (French fries) and the women all laughed as I struggled to cut using her instructions – of course I was used to cutting on a board.

Eventually, the first dish was ready – utumbo – intestine soup. Without knowing, I was the guest of honor – mzungu – and was handed the first bowl of soup, clear goat broth with those same beige intestines I saw recently. They all watched as I took my first sip feigning appreciation and praises to the cook. When eyes were off me, I handed the bowl to my friend and quicky took a good slug of beer.

Tanzanians love meat. Meat is cooked everywhere and men claim if you don’t eat meat, you are not a man. I regularly go to a cafeteria near the farm where I can get chips mayai. This is French fries mixed with a couple of eggs, cooked on a grill in a small pan – a French fry omelet. One of the guys I go with reminds me that I am eating women’s food, with the caveat, “for you mzee (old) it is ok.”

The go to fast food here is mishkaki and is cooked everywhere. Mishkaki is skewered chunks of beef, sometimes chicken, bbq’d on a grill. Everywhere there are booths with chipsi (French fries) cooked in large woks filled with sunflower oil along with small charcoal grills to cook mishkaki. Chipsi and mishkaki are always available – meat and potatoes.

Most local food establishments do not have menus because there are only a few dishes available. The standard fair is grilled, deep fried or roasted meat, deep fried or boiled bananas, overcooked stewed vegetables, cooked beans and some kind of overcooked green. Most times there is also some kind of tomato sauce and pilli pilli (habearo pepper sauce) on the side.

There is rice or ugali. Ugali is a stiff dough prepared with cornmeal, cassava flour, sorghum or millet. Most ugali in Tanzania is cornmeal based but in other East Africa countries and West Africa, cassava flour is favoured. It is tasteless stuff but fills the belly. Rice and cassava are important crops in Tanzania.

Ugali is a staple food with a big lump of this is placed on the side of the dish. Tanzanians eat with hands. A chunk of ugali is torn off the lump and rolled in to a bite sized ball then dipped into the plate of food to combine ugali with each mouthful of meat, veggies, or sauce. I have become accustomed to eating with my hands, a visceral and tactile feeling. Plus, it stops me from picking my nose.

Recently I traveled 16 hours to the very south part of the Tanzanian coast where the UN has funded a flood relief project. I traveled with a work associate Mkushi, an engineer, in his car. It was a gruelling trip –200 km of the road had big washouts and destroyed bridges from a big storm that blew through in April. He played gangsta rap and gospel loudly, sung in Swahili for the entire trip.

The next morning, we drove to a village affected by floods. On the way, we pulled into a village and under a corrugated metal roof we orded chai and chapati – a typical breakfast except Mkushi wanted meat. So, he got a big bowl of supu ya ngomno – beef broth with big grey chunks of boney meat. Meanwhile chickens were pecking under the table, a mother was rolling out chapatis with her crying baby wrapped in a kanga on her back.

The UN project is just getting started 2 weeks after I returned home by bus to Morogoro. Mkushi is still there where he is building components for the project, eating lots of meat and rapping gansta.

July 18, 2024 1

Remember the Future

My time is running short here in Tanzania and I have already started some planning for the end of my placement which is September 30.

I recently read A Brief History of Time and grasped about 3 % of the concepts about time and space. But one thing I picked up was in “the theory of relativity, there is no unique absolute time but instead, each individual has his own personal measure of time that depends on where he is and how he is moving.” Hawking implies in his twisted logic that in certain conditions, one would be able to remember the future. This idea contradicts traditional African cultures where there is no concept of the future. In the traditional African setting, time is a two-dimensional phenomenon, with a long past, a present and virtually no future. This is because the events in the future have not taken place. What does not exist, cannot be real.

On a very practical level, I am confused regularly about the time of day. Telling time in Swahili is similar to the biblical system. Each new day begins at sunrise, that is 6 AM. There are 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness. Thus, there’s a difference of six hours between Swahili time in English time. 12 o’clock in English time will be 6 o’clock in Swahili time. This means that 7 AM global time is 1 AM in Tanzania. Some people use Swahili time and some use global time, so I always have to ask which clock we are using. I have been 6 hours late and 6 hours early on some occasions.

Somewhere in-between these disparate concepts, I experience time as it is for me. What seemed like forever when I started – I now have just 3 ½ months. And there is a lot of this country I have yet to see. I will be traveling soon to the south near the Mozambique border for a project and then later to the east near the border of Malawi for travel and hope to go to the north to see Kilimanjaro and visit some archeological sites.

I was able to push through a major funding proposal that we hope will stimulate a value chain for cassava in the western region of the country. The concept is to introduce drying technology to dry fresh cassava. There is a huge demand for premium grade dried cassava in neighboring countries of Rwanda, Burundi, Congo and Uganda where they use for ugali – a daily staple in most meals as well as in bread and to make beer. Small holder farmers traditionally dry their cassava on the ground in the sun and significant rot and mould results meaning they get lower grade prices. We are introducing flash drying technology and new higher yielding varieties of cassava which together would increase farm revenues 10-fold.

Am also following through with a project to improve economic opportunities for fishers. On Lake Victoria, in the north west part of Tanzania and important fishery takes place, Sixty percent of all sardines eaten in Tanzania come from Lake Victoria. Sardines are harvested in small boats and transported to Ghana island where they are piled on a sandy beach and left to dry in in the sun. Up to 50% of total harvest is lost due to inappropriate drying conditions including contamination from contact on the sandy beach. We are proposing the use of large greenhouses with drying racks to eliminate the losses and increase the volume and quality of the end product.

I am happy to report that young Virgillia, mentioned in the last post, delivered a healthy baby girl in early June. She is healthy. Her mother is with her assisting. All good!

I had been working with Abisola, another CUSO volunteer, for the last 8 months but Abi’s placement ended a week ago and she is now back in Brampton. Abi is an incredibly intelligent, sensitive and caring person whom I miss dearly.

June 12, 2024 0

Meandering Mzungu

On Easter long weekend I had some time take a trip and see some sites. Many people were traveling for the holiday. Approximately 60% of Tanzanians are Christians, and 35% Muslim. This year Easter was in the middle of Ramadan and this only happens every 30 years. So, folks were on the move.

I made the mistake of waiting till the morning of Good Friday to buy a bus ticket. So, I sat on a concrete bench, waiting for my bus arrive. The bus depot was full of families and everybody was waiting. Tanzanians have a nonchalant look about them when waiting. I started to wonder if they were frustrated and anxious like me or if it even feels like waiting to them.

Using the computer in my hand, I learn there is a different concept of time and a deeper meaning of the proverb – “the white man has the watch and Africa has the time.”

Some anthropologists who study these things claim that traditional African cultures did not have a concept of the future. In traditional cultures, time is composed of a series of events, and since future events have not yet occurred it follows that the future is nonexistent and meaningless. They claim that the western linear concept of time as past present and future is foreign to African thought.

Events have occurred – past – and are in the process of being experienced – present – or may be certain to occur in the rhythm of nature. But these rhythms are not considered a future, they are inevitable like – the rains will come.

In Swahili, present is Sasa and the past is Zamani. No word for future exists. I pondered these things as I was waiting for my bus. Which did come in the future – five hours later.

There are layers of the past in Tanzania, some of which I wanted to investigate on my weekend excursion.

Slave Trade Route. Ujii-Bagamoyo-Zanzibar

Deep Deep Past
In fourth grade I learned of Louis Leaky and Olduvai Gorge where some early findings of our deep past were unearthed. At Olduvai Gorge, near Mount Kilimanjaro in northern Tanzania, Mary Leakey found a 2-million-year-old skull of the “ape like” Australopithecus. And Mary and Louis’ son Jonathan found the mandible that proved to be from Homo habilis, a link to Homo sapien. I’m sure they had timeless conversations around the Leakey family dinner table. Olduviai Gorge is a likely destination for me, but for a 14-hour bus ride I need more time.

My objective for the weekend was a little closer to home, in distance – a place called Bagamoyo, which was the centre for a couple of layers of human history.

Arab Colonists

In the 8th century Muslim traders from Arabia and Egypt began to settle and trade in centers along the Swahili coast. Very close to Bagamoyo is an ancient site of one of the first permanent Arab settlements on the East African Coast – the Kaole Ruins. This includes the remains of a Mosque built in the 13th century and graves of prominent community members – the oldest such site in East Africa.

The site is a 15-minute ride on the back of a motorbike dodging potholes, chickens and children. The ruins are not spectacular although the building material – coral has a surprising stability. I had an enjoyable time with the guide – washing my feet and hands in holy water and praying to a couple of Profits – dropping 1,000 Shillings at each site, where the guide promptly took my offerings to the office – that’s why they call them profits.

The Slave Trade

Slaves from the interior of Africa were gathered at Bagamoyo port by native, Arab, and Portuguese traders for shipment on to Zanzibar, which, in the 1700s, began providing slave labor for local plantations, European colonies in Africa, and a small number of American plantations.

Bagamoyo for this slave route serves as the terminal which starts from Ujiji (where I was in December). From Bagamoyo, slaves were shipped to the island of Zanzibar (where I was in Oct 2023) and at the slave market men and women were sold and taken to destinations. One can see Zanzibar across the ocean from Bagamoyo. The port where slaves were put on dhows and sailed to Zanzibar is where the current Bagamoyo fish market is.

Unintentionally I have visited the axis points of one of the slave routes in Tanzania.

European Colonists

In the nineteenth-century the Germans arrived in Bagamoyo and left their imprint. Ostensibly they colonized East Africa in order to stop the slave trade but ended up profiting off it like all other colonists. They did a lot of building in Tanzania in a short time (1880 – 1918), including many buildings in Bagamoyo and they built a railway from the coast to the eastern side of Tanzania – Lake Tanganyika. The Brits took over after the First World War. Interestingly enough the Germans, like the Kaole Arabs, used coral as a building material. One can only guess how much ocean habitat was destroyed.

In 1822, the British signed the first of a series of treaties with Sultan Said of Zanzibar to curb this trade. Under strong British pressure, the slave trade was officially abolished in 1876, but slavery itself remained legal in Zanzibar until 1897. Slavery was only abolished in Tanganyika in 1922, so there are many monuments and memories remaining in Bagamoyo concerning the slave trade. Tanganyika and Zanzibar were separate countries but united on 26th April 1964, forming the United Republic of Tanzania.

Being White in Black Culture

Waves of dominant cultures have levelled abuses and injustices on these peoples. Yet Tanzanians are a proud peaceful people, focused on developing their country and raising the standard of living for all. Fortunately, the country is devoid of tribalism and the influence of extremist factions.

There is nothing overt, or blatantly racist I experience, yet my skin colour and my height draw a lot of attention, and not all of it is positive. Indirectly, I encounter a lot nonverbal or obvious resentment. I am a mzungu. There are different connotations of this. How I hear being referred to as mzungu and how I interpret is different in different situations. At the basic level, a mzungu is a white person. But there is a lot of baggage from centuries of abuse at the hands of white people and white people are most often associated with wealth and power. There is also strange kind of respect, admiration and status associated with mzungus. Example – leaving Bagamoyo I was shuffled onto one of two busses going the same place because there is status having a mzungu riding on your bus.

Mostly I just accept the commonness of being called mzungu but often times I hear some of the baggage behind the “cat call.” It usually happens as I walk past a group of men who look at me with resentful eyes and then I hear discussion as I walk past as they refer to the mzungu and laugh.

“Mzungu” is simply a factual acknowledgement that here is a “white person” for most, but for some it is everything a white person represents for the person saying it. And what is represented are the layers of history.

Previous Posts

Oct. 2023 https://twoacres.blog/2023/11/02/a-month-in-morogoro-tanzania/

Nov. 2023 https://twoacres.blog/2023/11/24/learning-to-wait/

Dec. 2023 https://twoacres.blog/2023/12/29/genetic-brothers-and-sisters/

Jan. 2024 https://twoacres.blog/2024/01/22/being-ki-rafiki-friendly-and-other-stuff/

Feb 2024 https://twoacres.blog/2024/02/26/ah-to-be-young/

April 14, 2024 0

Being Friendly and other stuff …

I am well. I was sick for over a month and was in the hospital but am well now. It took up a month of my life, my thoughts and my energy and I’m tired of thinking about it. Many thanks to those who knew and reached out.

I am focusing on happy things and encouraging encounters now. There is so much of this.

Why don’t you say hello?

When we were driving around Ruaha National Park in October looking for lions and elephants, we would encounter other safari vehicles on the narrow dirt tracks punched through the Savana. Ben our driver, would pull up to their vehicle and the Tanzanians would have a 5-to-10-minute conversation in Swahili with lots of laughing and gesticulations. The white folks in both vehicles most times didn’t even say hello, maybe provided an uninterested nod, but that was it. Ben asked me, “why don’t you say hello. If I was in Canada and I saw a black man and I could talk to him in my language we would be instant brothers, I’d want to know everything about him … .”

This happens when I am in Morogoro too. I see white people, which is seldom, and our encounters are rarely vocal, no more than a nod of recognition and maybe hello. Another mzungu …

Friendliness is a nationwide phenomenon. When Tanzania gained independence from Britain (1961), the founder Julias Nyerere encouraged all tribes to think of themselves as Tanzanians first and their tribe affiliaton second. This had profound implications. With the exception of Kenya, the many conflicts of boarding countries to Tanzania are the result of tribal fighting, religious differences and corrupt iron fisted dictatorships. Note – one million Tutsis murdered in 100 days during Rwandan genocide. Since 1998 over 5 million have died in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) due to territorial and tribal disputes. Tanzania is a bastion of stability surrounded by unstable nations. Can a leader influence friendliness? It’s very evident a leader can instill anger – i.e. – The Donald.

Does this have anything to do with an economy? Tanzania just recently (2020) rose from being designated a poor income economy to lower middle-income economy and is poised to become a middle-income country in the next 5 to 10 years. Countries with less than $1,035 Gross National Income per capita (the dollar value of a country’s final income in a year divided by its population) are classified as low-income countries, those with between $1,036 and $4,085 are lower middle-income countries. Will friendliness ride along with an improved economy?

My theory, there is no relation between friendliness and personal income. Friendliness is a cultural quality. Perhaps there should be a GFI – Gross Friendliness Index. Tanzania would rate high on this. Many studies show that being friendly to strangers creates a feeling of wholeness and well-being and … happiness. Tanzanians are very friendly to me. Hmm, I could learn from this. Personal commitment – be friendly to one stranger every day.

One can fall into a google abyss searching for definitions and lists rating the friendliest and happiest countries in the world – I just pulled out of this google crevasse, don’t go there. But I learned that in 2011, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution “Happiness: Towards a Holistic Definition of Development,” but looking at the list of the happiest countries I am skeptical of the criteria and metrics used. All of the countries in the top ten for 2023 are “developed” countries.

Food Beautiful Food

I rarely see my Tanzania colleagues at work eat. The farm is on university land and we are close to student residences where there is a cafeteria a 15-minute walk away, few go there. I see the field staff hanging out by a fire mid-day where they drink tea and cook ugali – a staple food consisting of corn meal boiled in water or milk. I bring nuts and a sandwich to the office and I have learned to bring a lot more than I can eat because if you have food you must share. So, half of what I bring goes to several of the people who drop by my desk to say hello. I know I have created expeditions, but food is to share. The five or six cashews I give them may be the only food they eat during the day – its’ hard to know. Nobody is starving, but I can’t figure out when they eat.

When I was driving with Ben recently, he stopped to buy some mangoes on the side of the highway. He bought four dozen – I commented, “wow, you must love mangoes,” but found out he must distribute most of them to his brothers and sisters’ families – it’s expected. Ben comes from a Muslim family of 30 brothers and sisters – his father had four wives and four families. They have a good time when they get together, and they eat a lot of mangoes.

On the Work Front

I wasn’t able to work for over a month from being sick in December and early January. But I am continuing to develop a project involving cassava and finding many challenges with getting good information. My job is to take the idea and work out all of the elements, processes and costs. And every few days a new idea comes to me from managers and I try to incorporate it into a proposal. It’s a really good project with massive potential and if it ever gets off the ground it will change the lives of farmers, provide employment and generate entrepreneurial opportunities for youth and or women to develop agriculture businesses. I’m hopeful.

The designated location for this project is in the western region of Tanzania – Kigoma. I travelled to Kigoma in December and was there for 10 days to see bit of the country. Much of my time was beside Lake Tanganyika – the longest freshwater lake in the world (660 km) and the second deepest (1,436 meters). DRC, Burundi and Zambia boarder Tanzania on the lake. I went there because I like lakes and I wanted to see Chimpanzees. Jane Goodall did her work where I visited, it’s now a National Park. Gombe Stream . Swimming in the lake was fabulous. Some English folks I met in the town went to a different park along the lake – more remote – and they were not allowed to swim because hippos and crocodiles hang out on that beach. Christmas in the town of Kigoma was very nice beside the lake with beer and mishkaki (kabobs) and where many families go to celebrate. The 19-hour bus trip back to Morogoro was not beneficial to my health. Note to self – travel when healthy.

Videos and Pictures below.