I finally got to visit not one, but two informal settlements this week! On Wednesday night, Christiane brought Luke and I to Keko, where she’s done a lot of her research, and we watched the Germany-Ghana soccer game at the community police station. We were outside, in the dark, with about 60 other people crowded around one TV in a space roughly the size of my dorm room last semester, and it was a great way to watch the game. Most of us were cheering for Ghana, but there were a surprising number of Germany fans, and the interactions between people were the best part of the evening. Everyone was so into it! And they kept up a banter that, from what I could infer and what Christiane translated for me, was teasing in a really good-natured, inclusive way (Ghana supporter: “You’re so loud, you should go into the valley and cheer from there!” Germany supporter: “But I have to be here with my mzungu friends!”) A sharp contrast to the very boring England-Algeria game I watched at the fancy mzungu hotel where Bree works.
Then on Thursday, I went to Tandale with two guys who work for Luke and can more or less speak English, between the two of them. Tandale is a sprawling informal settlement of one-storey homes and some shops. It feels a lot more like a village than a city (no concrete, everyone knows each other, you walk through your neighbors’ plots to get places—in sum, the line between public and private is blurred/nonexistent), but much more closely-packed. Houses are small, so a lot of daily life happens outside by the sides of the narrow, not-quite-roads. Women sit outside, trying to earn a few thousand shillings (about $2.30) cooking basic Tanzanian food or washing used water bottles. People were generally quite willing to talk to me after my guides introduced me, though we did get yelled at by the head of the prostitutes for trying to talk to one of them during peak mid-day hours—but even she told me I could come back at night or in the morning if I wanted.
The main problem I ran into was that there really aren’t any aid projects in the informal settlements. I mean, I had kind of figured that out, but I still didn’t quite make the connection that it would be really hard to ask people about how much of a say they have in projects that don’t exist. I think I need to change the kind of questions I’m asking, or the way I’m looking at my overall question. Overwhelmingly, the help that people want is money to start a business—a remarkably internally-driven perspective on improving their lives (even they’re if appealing to me, an outsider). They do talk about the other problems of the settlement like hospitals and roads, but the solution they want is money for their own initiatives. I wonder if the difference between this outlook and that of the refugees in Uganda is due to the fact that slum-dwellers don’t see their living situation as temporary, or feel the same longing to return to their home country. Or does it have to do more with living in an environment devoid of aid projects and the message that they need someone else to come in and do everything for them?
It’s interesting that when asked “who do you think should provide water/build a secondary school/improve the hospital/etc?” the answer was always, unequivocally, the government—and the government is responsible, but it’s surprising to me that no one suggested that an aid organization could do it, especially given the general disillusionment vis-‡-vis the government. Almost no one said they were planning to vote in the next elections; instead they laughed at me and told me they didn’t trust the government, because it had forgotten about them.
I’ve been thinking about why there aren’t more aid projects for the informal settlements. African slums are somehow less romanticized than Asian slums (with the exception maybe of Kibera in Kenya). Instead, the West glorifies the small African village, devoting tons of energy and resources to projects for the rural poor and practically nothing to those who leave the villages. It’s like, the city is the realm of the rich, where businessmen and UN people can live in posh neighborhoods with beautiful houses and fancy cars and almost no contact with poverty, which only exists Out There, in the pure, innocent, backwards rural villages. (That said, I don’t think it’s a bad thing that people living in informal settlements want their government to help them, instead of NGOs).
After a surreal weekend in mzungu-land (I went to a movie! Like, in a mall and everything! Bizarre), spending time in these settlements has felt refreshingly “real,” as much as I hate that term. I’ve been having a strange bout of Gulu nostalgia, something I never thought I’d say. There’s something about the sound of a rooster crowing that completely brings me back there, though.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Monday, June 21, 2010
Ventriloquism in Refugee Boy
I don’t have much new to say about Tanzania, and it’s a little hard to write intelligently while Swahili rap music is blasting outside of my window (never mind that it’s 2:30am—or that the song’s chorus is “Mambo vipi [what’s up?] I’m a star” over and over again…) but I do want to talk about this book I just finished reading, Refugee Boy, by Benjamin Zephaniah. I picked it up from the awesome bookstore, having already finished all three fiction books I brought with me and not really wanting to delve into Mamdani’s Citizen and Subject yet (though now that I’ve also finished both of my new books from the bookstore, I guess I have to…) Anyways, I got it because I’ve been on the hunt for stories from a refugee’s perspective, preferably those told in the voices of refugees themselves.
Zephaniah isn’t actually a refugee, and I don’t think he’s from Africa, but it’s still interesting to see him try to represent the refugee experience through the fictional story of an Ethiopian-Eritrean boy. Alem is persecuted in both Ethiopia and Eritrea for having mixed parents until his father leaves him in Britain, where an organization helps him find a foster family and apply for political asylum. Zephaniah writes in the introduction,
Since I just spent a semester reading autobiographies/first-person narratives and dealing with these questions of representation, I noticed that Zephaniah borrows from autobiographical tradition in a couple ways. First, in claiming that refugees will recognize themselves in this story, he establishes that he has some right to speak for them. This is a lot like the way Rigoberta Menchu speaks for indigenous Guatemalans, except for the fact that she was actually an indigenous Guatemalan and Zephaniah isn’t a refugee (but the latter doesn’t claim that this is his experience). The second thing he does is claim that the reader will recognize herself as well—encouraging us to engage in autobiographical reading as we go (and since we’re all refugees, that means that he is too, and therefore it’s ok for him to speak on their behalf). Just like an autobiographer, Zephaniah runs into the tension between individuality and generalizability, but in order to assert his authority, he has to prioritize generalizability.
(Uh, ok, judging by the sounds outside, I think someone is killing a cat. Am a little concerned.)
I have to give Zephaniah a lot of credit for recognizing the limits of his ability to speak for his character. The book is written almost entirely in the third-person, and while we do hear a lot of Alem’s point of view/inner thoughts, the author backs off at really emotional moments that are clearly outside of his personal range of experiences. Usually bad news comes in a letter and Alem gets to read it and react before we find out what it is. The author doesn’t try to express how Alem is feeling during traumatic moments: we see his physical reactions but the emotions behind them aren’t explained to us. We have just as much insight into his well-being and psychological state as the nice British foster family he lives with does.
But there are two chapters written in the first person: the first is his testimony, given to two people who work for an organization called the Refugee Council (this organization really exists and its contact information is given at the back of the book, which gives a slight impression that the book is meant to be an advertisement), and the final chapter, entitled “Let Me Speak.” These chapters both begin with “My name is Alem Kelo” (which is also the last line of the book) – a bold way of saying “this is my voice,” given that it isn’t, in fact, the voice of Alem Kelo. I don’t have a problem with the first of the two chapters, since it reflects the amount of information that would be available to the judge deciding his case. This is the only time in the asylum process when the voice of the refugee is allowed to come through: when they are explaining why they are refugees. They are only allowed to use their voices to self-define as refugees.
The final chapter is a bit trickier for me. It’s a statement asserting the personhood (as opposed to the mere refugee-ness) of the protagonist: “Look at me, look at all the things that I am capable of, and think of all the things you could call me – a student, a lover of literature, a budding architect, a friend, a symbol of hope even, but what am I called? A refugee.” This is the only time when I think it’s a bit of a problem for Zephaniah to manufacture the voice of a refugee, in part because Alem in the story shows no desire to make political speeches of this sort and is pushed into doing so against his will.
There are four poems at the end of Refugee Boy, in a section called “Refugee Writes.” Not totally clear if these poems were in fact written by refugees or are also fictionalized, but I’m inclined to believe the former. I don’t know why, but for some reason poetry seems to be the vehicle of choice for refugees’ voices.
There’s a lot of scholarship about how refugees are silenced by virtue of their being labeled “refugees,” and there’s even some scholarly literature about how that scholarship excludes refugees’ voices, but so far I have yet to find anyone who really engages with texts written by refugees – except for poetry. Peter Nyers’ Rethinking Refugees is a great example of a book that excoriates other scholars for not effectively taking the opinions of refugees into consideration, but then only devotes a few pages to looking at a couple of poems written by refugees. (N.b. it’s also a great example of a book that should never have been published without a real editor going through it: Nyers completely misinterprets international law, and writes such NONSENSICAL CRAP as “For instance, conflict within the refugee community and between refugees and the local community surely represent a qualitative difference than does the presence of agents of genocide.” Gahhhhhh!). Anyways, my point is that for some unknown reason, either refugees don’t write anything other than poetry or nothing else they write is ever publicly available.
In terms of the political aspect of the story, the book is a call to think about the way we treat asylum seekers and immigrants. Zephaniah writes, “When I hear politicians saying that we are being ‘flooded’ by refugees, I always remind myself that each ‘refugee’ is a person, a person who for some reason has left everything they know and love to find safety in a strange and sometimes hostile country.” This is definitely a perspective that gets drowned out in the xenophobic reactions to outsiders who dare to enter our zones of privilege. Sorry, but we don’t have any more of a right to safety because we happen to have been born in a certain place at a certain time.
Zephaniah partially succeeds in showing the inhumane way in which refugees are treated, but probably doesn’t go far enough. The book is a children’s story, a fact which doesn’t diminish it in the slightest, but I do think it’s convenient that Zephaniah gets to use the child to embody the innocence of the refugee population. Alem is kind of a poster-boy for refugees (“look at this cute, intelligent, well-behaved, innocent little child! How could you possibly advocate for kicking him out!?”) Because Zephaniah chooses to use this plot device, he probably doesn’t really convey the confusion and overwhelming-ness of the process of applying for asylum: most of these complications are dealt with by the Refugee Council and a lawyer. And I can only imagine how difficult a process it is… I mean, even the much, much easier tasks of renewing my green card and applying for American citizenship have been frustrating and a bit confusing (and I am incredibly privileged for a number of reasons, especially including the fact that I don’t look or sound like a foreigner). For some insight on the experiences of immigrants in the US, look here and here and here and here. I’d also highly recommend the movie “The Visitor” which deals with some of the same issues.
Zephaniah isn’t actually a refugee, and I don’t think he’s from Africa, but it’s still interesting to see him try to represent the refugee experience through the fictional story of an Ethiopian-Eritrean boy. Alem is persecuted in both Ethiopia and Eritrea for having mixed parents until his father leaves him in Britain, where an organization helps him find a foster family and apply for political asylum. Zephaniah writes in the introduction,
For Refugee Boy I borrowed from the many stories that I have heard, and created a story that I believe many refugees would recognize. I would hope that anyone who reads the book would think before they accuse refugees of looking for a free ride. We all want to live in peace, we all want the best for our families. The Celts, the Angles, the Saxons, the Jamaicans are all refugees of one sort or another. What kind of a refugee are you? And what are you scared of?
Since I just spent a semester reading autobiographies/first-person narratives and dealing with these questions of representation, I noticed that Zephaniah borrows from autobiographical tradition in a couple ways. First, in claiming that refugees will recognize themselves in this story, he establishes that he has some right to speak for them. This is a lot like the way Rigoberta Menchu speaks for indigenous Guatemalans, except for the fact that she was actually an indigenous Guatemalan and Zephaniah isn’t a refugee (but the latter doesn’t claim that this is his experience). The second thing he does is claim that the reader will recognize herself as well—encouraging us to engage in autobiographical reading as we go (and since we’re all refugees, that means that he is too, and therefore it’s ok for him to speak on their behalf). Just like an autobiographer, Zephaniah runs into the tension between individuality and generalizability, but in order to assert his authority, he has to prioritize generalizability.
(Uh, ok, judging by the sounds outside, I think someone is killing a cat. Am a little concerned.)
I have to give Zephaniah a lot of credit for recognizing the limits of his ability to speak for his character. The book is written almost entirely in the third-person, and while we do hear a lot of Alem’s point of view/inner thoughts, the author backs off at really emotional moments that are clearly outside of his personal range of experiences. Usually bad news comes in a letter and Alem gets to read it and react before we find out what it is. The author doesn’t try to express how Alem is feeling during traumatic moments: we see his physical reactions but the emotions behind them aren’t explained to us. We have just as much insight into his well-being and psychological state as the nice British foster family he lives with does.
But there are two chapters written in the first person: the first is his testimony, given to two people who work for an organization called the Refugee Council (this organization really exists and its contact information is given at the back of the book, which gives a slight impression that the book is meant to be an advertisement), and the final chapter, entitled “Let Me Speak.” These chapters both begin with “My name is Alem Kelo” (which is also the last line of the book) – a bold way of saying “this is my voice,” given that it isn’t, in fact, the voice of Alem Kelo. I don’t have a problem with the first of the two chapters, since it reflects the amount of information that would be available to the judge deciding his case. This is the only time in the asylum process when the voice of the refugee is allowed to come through: when they are explaining why they are refugees. They are only allowed to use their voices to self-define as refugees.
The final chapter is a bit trickier for me. It’s a statement asserting the personhood (as opposed to the mere refugee-ness) of the protagonist: “Look at me, look at all the things that I am capable of, and think of all the things you could call me – a student, a lover of literature, a budding architect, a friend, a symbol of hope even, but what am I called? A refugee.” This is the only time when I think it’s a bit of a problem for Zephaniah to manufacture the voice of a refugee, in part because Alem in the story shows no desire to make political speeches of this sort and is pushed into doing so against his will.
There are four poems at the end of Refugee Boy, in a section called “Refugee Writes.” Not totally clear if these poems were in fact written by refugees or are also fictionalized, but I’m inclined to believe the former. I don’t know why, but for some reason poetry seems to be the vehicle of choice for refugees’ voices.
There’s a lot of scholarship about how refugees are silenced by virtue of their being labeled “refugees,” and there’s even some scholarly literature about how that scholarship excludes refugees’ voices, but so far I have yet to find anyone who really engages with texts written by refugees – except for poetry. Peter Nyers’ Rethinking Refugees is a great example of a book that excoriates other scholars for not effectively taking the opinions of refugees into consideration, but then only devotes a few pages to looking at a couple of poems written by refugees. (N.b. it’s also a great example of a book that should never have been published without a real editor going through it: Nyers completely misinterprets international law, and writes such NONSENSICAL CRAP as “For instance, conflict within the refugee community and between refugees and the local community surely represent a qualitative difference than does the presence of agents of genocide.” Gahhhhhh!). Anyways, my point is that for some unknown reason, either refugees don’t write anything other than poetry or nothing else they write is ever publicly available.
In terms of the political aspect of the story, the book is a call to think about the way we treat asylum seekers and immigrants. Zephaniah writes, “When I hear politicians saying that we are being ‘flooded’ by refugees, I always remind myself that each ‘refugee’ is a person, a person who for some reason has left everything they know and love to find safety in a strange and sometimes hostile country.” This is definitely a perspective that gets drowned out in the xenophobic reactions to outsiders who dare to enter our zones of privilege. Sorry, but we don’t have any more of a right to safety because we happen to have been born in a certain place at a certain time.
Zephaniah partially succeeds in showing the inhumane way in which refugees are treated, but probably doesn’t go far enough. The book is a children’s story, a fact which doesn’t diminish it in the slightest, but I do think it’s convenient that Zephaniah gets to use the child to embody the innocence of the refugee population. Alem is kind of a poster-boy for refugees (“look at this cute, intelligent, well-behaved, innocent little child! How could you possibly advocate for kicking him out!?”) Because Zephaniah chooses to use this plot device, he probably doesn’t really convey the confusion and overwhelming-ness of the process of applying for asylum: most of these complications are dealt with by the Refugee Council and a lawyer. And I can only imagine how difficult a process it is… I mean, even the much, much easier tasks of renewing my green card and applying for American citizenship have been frustrating and a bit confusing (and I am incredibly privileged for a number of reasons, especially including the fact that I don’t look or sound like a foreigner). For some insight on the experiences of immigrants in the US, look here and here and here and here. I’d also highly recommend the movie “The Visitor” which deals with some of the same issues.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Why I need to be patient
So research is going, or at least, going on Africa time. At the moment, I’m facing precisely three problems with this first half of the research:
1. I can’t figure out which organizations work in informal settlements, let alone get in touch with them.
The Citywide Action Plan for the Upgrading Unplanned and Unserviced settlements in Dar es Salaam says, "There are at least three distinct projects aimed at improving water and sanitation in unplanned areas in Dar es Salaam... [One of these projects] involves three international organizations: Care International, Plan International and WaterAid Tanzania.” Care Int’l doesn’t give a phone number, email address or physical address on their website, and I’ve been trying to get in touch with WaterAid for days. Shockingly, Plan International has all their Tanzania contact info online!
Me: “Hello, is this Plan International?”
Woman #1: “Yes”
Me: “My name is Danielle [blah blah blah]. Does your organization do any work in informal settlements?”
Woman #1: “Yes”
Me: “Great! Would it be possible for me to meet with someone to talk about your organization’s work in informal settlements?”
Woman #1: “Uh, you want to talk to someone regarding the informal environment?”
Me: “…Regarding informal settlements”
[muffled sounds]
Woman #2: “Hello?”
Me: “Hi, my name is Danielle [blah blah blah]. I was hoping to talk to someone about your organization’s work in informal settlements.”
[silence]
Me: “Does Plan International work in informal settlements?”
Woman #2: “No.”
2. It’s really hard to find things to take photos of for BGI
Me: “I’d love to come see one of your projects sometime!”
WAT guy: “Hmmm… I can’t think of anything to show you. If you’ve already seen [other organization’s work], that’s probably the best thing”
3. There are several other researchers in Dar, all of whom are following the same trail of contacts.
Me: “Hello, is this [municipal leader]?”
Guy: “Yes, who is this?”
Me: “My name is Danielle—“
Guy: “How do you have this number?”
Me: “Rachel at City Council gave me your number”
Guy: “Oh! Yes, yes, I remember you! So I will see you when?”
Me: “Um, well…”
[momentary debate over whether to try to explain that he has no idea who I am or take advantage of his willingness to meet with me]
Me: “I’m free this afternoon, or tomorrow.”
Guy: “Ok, I will see you tomorrow. Ten o’clock?”
Me: “Great! Where?”
Guy: “At the office. See you then”
Oh, and the not speaking Swahili doesn’t really help much either. Anyways, time to fall asleep listening to the sounds of the neighborhood (at the moment: some distant yelling, Celine Dion & R Kelly belting out “I’ll be your angel,” and those blasted horns—if you’ve been watching the World Cup, you know what I’m talking about, and I can promise that they’re every bit as obnoxious in person as they are on television).
1. I can’t figure out which organizations work in informal settlements, let alone get in touch with them.
The Citywide Action Plan for the Upgrading Unplanned and Unserviced settlements in Dar es Salaam says, "There are at least three distinct projects aimed at improving water and sanitation in unplanned areas in Dar es Salaam... [One of these projects] involves three international organizations: Care International, Plan International and WaterAid Tanzania.” Care Int’l doesn’t give a phone number, email address or physical address on their website, and I’ve been trying to get in touch with WaterAid for days. Shockingly, Plan International has all their Tanzania contact info online!
Me: “Hello, is this Plan International?”
Woman #1: “Yes”
Me: “My name is Danielle [blah blah blah]. Does your organization do any work in informal settlements?”
Woman #1: “Yes”
Me: “Great! Would it be possible for me to meet with someone to talk about your organization’s work in informal settlements?”
Woman #1: “Uh, you want to talk to someone regarding the informal environment?”
Me: “…Regarding informal settlements”
[muffled sounds]
Woman #2: “Hello?”
Me: “Hi, my name is Danielle [blah blah blah]. I was hoping to talk to someone about your organization’s work in informal settlements.”
[silence]
Me: “Does Plan International work in informal settlements?”
Woman #2: “No.”
2. It’s really hard to find things to take photos of for BGI
Me: “I’d love to come see one of your projects sometime!”
WAT guy: “Hmmm… I can’t think of anything to show you. If you’ve already seen [other organization’s work], that’s probably the best thing”
3. There are several other researchers in Dar, all of whom are following the same trail of contacts.
Me: “Hello, is this [municipal leader]?”
Guy: “Yes, who is this?”
Me: “My name is Danielle—“
Guy: “How do you have this number?”
Me: “Rachel at City Council gave me your number”
Guy: “Oh! Yes, yes, I remember you! So I will see you when?”
Me: “Um, well…”
[momentary debate over whether to try to explain that he has no idea who I am or take advantage of his willingness to meet with me]
Me: “I’m free this afternoon, or tomorrow.”
Guy: “Ok, I will see you tomorrow. Ten o’clock?”
Me: “Great! Where?”
Guy: “At the office. See you then”
Oh, and the not speaking Swahili doesn’t really help much either. Anyways, time to fall asleep listening to the sounds of the neighborhood (at the moment: some distant yelling, Celine Dion & R Kelly belting out “I’ll be your angel,” and those blasted horns—if you’ve been watching the World Cup, you know what I’m talking about, and I can promise that they’re every bit as obnoxious in person as they are on television).
Sunday, June 13, 2010
From Kariakoo to Sea Cliff Village
I’ve moved out of the hostel! Yay! I mean, the hostel was fine, and I met some wonderful people, but I hated knowing that anyone in the surrounding area who was friendly to me couldn’t be trusted, while the people who could be trusted (i.e. hostel staff) were so unfriendly. In that neighborhood, it’s a job to hang out around the hostels and “make friends” with the backpackers and travelers and try to take advantage of them. But I’m out of there now!
I’m staying with a German couple who have been in Dar for six months and who live in this great apartment in Kariakoo, which is a huge market-like neighborhood near the city center. It’s a little disappointing not to be living with Tanzanians, but it just hasn’t worked out. Christiane and Luke speak Swahili very well (she’s fluent and he’s learning), have that ease of people who are clearly comfortable in their surroundings. It’s really nice to be able to talk to more people who know Dar and its inhabitants, and Christiane is doing research for her PhD on housing microfinance in informal settlements – making her an infinitely useful source of information. From the balcony of the apartment, we can look out over the sea of metal-sheeting roofs to watch the day-to-day bustle of the city and peer down into the homes of our neighbors as the noises of their cooking, conversations, and screaming babies drift through our windows. The call to prayer rises from one of three nearby mosques every so often, and last night the funeral prayers lasted for hours. For pictures, go to Christiane and Luke’s blog here.
There aren’t any mzungus in this area, other than us, and it’s a shame for them, because they miss out on what seems to me the most “real” part of Dar I’ve seen so far. Not that the city center area wasn’t real, but it was shaped in a lot of ways by the hostels and the nice hotels. Here the city ignores its visitors and gets on with life, selling whatever people will buy, narrowly avoiding dalla-dalla collisions, and honking, yelling, jostling, greeting, clinking coins, etc etc
Luke drove me through the “nice” part of the city yesterday, to (I kid you not) “Sea Cliff Village.” Suddenly we were in American suburbia. Sprawling plots of land featuring huge houses—palaces, by Kariakoo standards—walled off from the world by high-security fences that are only necessary because there’s no life in the area (I’m sure the dark, empty, gate-walled streets are terrifying in the night, but only because there are no people!). To be fair, some of the older buildings in the posh neighborhoods are a lot more like what I expected to find here, and they are beautiful.
The “Village” reminded me of Wrentham Village outlet malls, or of shopping areas around Tucson, Arizona. We went to a newly-opened, glistening mall with if-only-that-was-ironic kitschy Greek statuettes, where Luke is providing the ex-pat children some much-needed boredom relief: after seeing something similar in South Africa, he’s constructed a pool of water with huge person-sized balls that kids get inside and play in. I’m doing a bad job explaining it, but the kids seem to have fun. And those kids! The preteens in their booty shorts (never mind that the majority of the community is so Muslim the mall isn’t allowed to play music) look like they walked out of my middle school. Well, ok, my middle school is never going to be that diverse, but still! I had always thought that it would be so glamorous to grow up moving all around the world (“well, then we moved to Tanzania for a while, and then we lived in [insert exotic country here]…”) but now I think I understand. These children haven’t lived in Dar. They’ve lived in a nowhere, a falsely recreated New America, that doesn’t belong anywhere—not here in Dar, but not in the US either.
Which isn’t to say that I’m not also sheltered, here in the aloof top floor of our apartment where I can safely spy on the outdoor kitchens, where mothers stir ugali (Tanzania’s version of Uganda’s posho) and girls wash laundry in those ubiquitous plastic buckets. Just… it’s surreal to go to a place where you could almost forget you’re in Africa, if it weren’t for “Lake Tanganyika” outside the entrance, as Luke calls the giant pool of muddy water flooding the street, thanks to the mall’s poor drainage system.
Dar grows at an exponential rate: Christiane and Luke point out buildings that have been completed in the past six months or so, and it’s astonishing. One is inclined to compare it to Shanghai, or other parts of China, but I think the wealth gaps are much, much greater, with the wealthy being almost exclusively the Indians and the politicians.
The growth is already causing problems. The road system simply can’t handle the amount of traffic as it is, and 500 new cars are registered every day. Like most cities that have developed since the invention of the car, you can’t really get anywhere in the city on foot—a fact which is endlessly frustrating for someone who’s used to Boston and NYC! But you can’t really get anywhere by car, either, since there are about 15 major roads (“major” here meaning “tarmac-ed but now deeply potholed after the recent rains”) in the city, and the traffic on these roads sits at an absolute stand-still for hours. I’ve never seen traffic so bad, and it can only get worse, as far as I can tell. Boosting the dalla-dallas won’t improve things since they drive on the road, and in fact cause a lot of the traffic when they pull over to make a stop. Underground subways aren’t really feasible (or so I’m told) because of the dirt quality. They need to do a proper job paving all the roads, and a floating, zip-line public-transportation system, or something. Wish I knew more about urban planning.
I’m staying with a German couple who have been in Dar for six months and who live in this great apartment in Kariakoo, which is a huge market-like neighborhood near the city center. It’s a little disappointing not to be living with Tanzanians, but it just hasn’t worked out. Christiane and Luke speak Swahili very well (she’s fluent and he’s learning), have that ease of people who are clearly comfortable in their surroundings. It’s really nice to be able to talk to more people who know Dar and its inhabitants, and Christiane is doing research for her PhD on housing microfinance in informal settlements – making her an infinitely useful source of information. From the balcony of the apartment, we can look out over the sea of metal-sheeting roofs to watch the day-to-day bustle of the city and peer down into the homes of our neighbors as the noises of their cooking, conversations, and screaming babies drift through our windows. The call to prayer rises from one of three nearby mosques every so often, and last night the funeral prayers lasted for hours. For pictures, go to Christiane and Luke’s blog here.
There aren’t any mzungus in this area, other than us, and it’s a shame for them, because they miss out on what seems to me the most “real” part of Dar I’ve seen so far. Not that the city center area wasn’t real, but it was shaped in a lot of ways by the hostels and the nice hotels. Here the city ignores its visitors and gets on with life, selling whatever people will buy, narrowly avoiding dalla-dalla collisions, and honking, yelling, jostling, greeting, clinking coins, etc etc
Luke drove me through the “nice” part of the city yesterday, to (I kid you not) “Sea Cliff Village.” Suddenly we were in American suburbia. Sprawling plots of land featuring huge houses—palaces, by Kariakoo standards—walled off from the world by high-security fences that are only necessary because there’s no life in the area (I’m sure the dark, empty, gate-walled streets are terrifying in the night, but only because there are no people!). To be fair, some of the older buildings in the posh neighborhoods are a lot more like what I expected to find here, and they are beautiful.
The “Village” reminded me of Wrentham Village outlet malls, or of shopping areas around Tucson, Arizona. We went to a newly-opened, glistening mall with if-only-that-was-ironic kitschy Greek statuettes, where Luke is providing the ex-pat children some much-needed boredom relief: after seeing something similar in South Africa, he’s constructed a pool of water with huge person-sized balls that kids get inside and play in. I’m doing a bad job explaining it, but the kids seem to have fun. And those kids! The preteens in their booty shorts (never mind that the majority of the community is so Muslim the mall isn’t allowed to play music) look like they walked out of my middle school. Well, ok, my middle school is never going to be that diverse, but still! I had always thought that it would be so glamorous to grow up moving all around the world (“well, then we moved to Tanzania for a while, and then we lived in [insert exotic country here]…”) but now I think I understand. These children haven’t lived in Dar. They’ve lived in a nowhere, a falsely recreated New America, that doesn’t belong anywhere—not here in Dar, but not in the US either.
Which isn’t to say that I’m not also sheltered, here in the aloof top floor of our apartment where I can safely spy on the outdoor kitchens, where mothers stir ugali (Tanzania’s version of Uganda’s posho) and girls wash laundry in those ubiquitous plastic buckets. Just… it’s surreal to go to a place where you could almost forget you’re in Africa, if it weren’t for “Lake Tanganyika” outside the entrance, as Luke calls the giant pool of muddy water flooding the street, thanks to the mall’s poor drainage system.
Dar grows at an exponential rate: Christiane and Luke point out buildings that have been completed in the past six months or so, and it’s astonishing. One is inclined to compare it to Shanghai, or other parts of China, but I think the wealth gaps are much, much greater, with the wealthy being almost exclusively the Indians and the politicians.
The growth is already causing problems. The road system simply can’t handle the amount of traffic as it is, and 500 new cars are registered every day. Like most cities that have developed since the invention of the car, you can’t really get anywhere in the city on foot—a fact which is endlessly frustrating for someone who’s used to Boston and NYC! But you can’t really get anywhere by car, either, since there are about 15 major roads (“major” here meaning “tarmac-ed but now deeply potholed after the recent rains”) in the city, and the traffic on these roads sits at an absolute stand-still for hours. I’ve never seen traffic so bad, and it can only get worse, as far as I can tell. Boosting the dalla-dallas won’t improve things since they drive on the road, and in fact cause a lot of the traffic when they pull over to make a stop. Underground subways aren’t really feasible (or so I’m told) because of the dirt quality. They need to do a proper job paving all the roads, and a floating, zip-line public-transportation system, or something. Wish I knew more about urban planning.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Optimism
Well my first set of pictures for BGI are uploading now (and good God it’s taking forever!!!) so I figure it’s time for an update. Plus, maybe if I stop opening up new web pages, the uploading will go faster. It couldn’t go much slower.
The past week has been pretty slow, on the whole, but there were a couple of highlights. Sunday was a fantastic day here. I woke up around 5:30 to the sound of chanting going down the street outside my window, groggily wondered, “what the hell?” and went back to sleep. Or at least, to half-hour increments of sleep: the chanting kept coming back – is this a protest? A political campaign? A traveling church service? Soccer hooligans? Finally got up and got ready for a morning of taking pictures around the city center. The streets are remarkably empty--peaceful even!--on weekend mornings, and Netta had agreed to go with me. We stepped out of the hostel entrance and were nearly swept away by a rush of young Tanzanian men, chanting and running. The crowd had grown since the first group had run past my window, and now it seemed to stretch on forever. We asked the hostel staff, and they explained that this is just something people do, a fun Sunday morning activity. Why anyone would choose to go running in the middle of such a swelteringly hot morning is beyond me, but Alex says he used to do it in Zambia.
Anyways, we set out to take pictures and ended up seeing a monkey! A whole bunch of monkeys, in fact! Hanging out by the side of the road, and clearly not very intimidated by us. I was also surprised to run into a State House and a Parliament building, given that the government is based in Dodoma, the nominal capital of the country, but that was less exciting than the monkeys. There are some quite pretty streets lined with trees, next to some not-so-pretty streets lined with garbage heaps and construction sites.
When I got back, Bree told me about this soccer (er, “football”) match on Monday night between Brazil and Tanzania with fairly cheap tickets (at least, by Western standards. They were still pretty expensive for Tanzanians.) Apparently Brazil is really good or something, so I agreed to go, even though I know almost nothing about soccer (Bree: Who are you going for in the World Cup? Me: Uh, who’s playing?). The game ended up being great fun, though I realized afterwards that I’d (embarrassingly) had the teams mixed up… I was wondering why Tanzania was beating Brazil so handily!! Clearly, I shouldn’t bother cheering for any team other than the Red Sox. Anyways, we went to go buy tickets to the match on Sunday morning, and discovered the amazing bookshop mentioned in my last entry and the beautiful streets of the Indian zone. The class division between Indians and Africans is so clear, and I wonder how much the two groups talk about it...
After buying tickets, and my first trip on the public bus, we got on a ferry to go to the beach on a nearby island! The beach was so, so beautiful: soft, cool sand, warm water, ice cream stands, and very few people. I couldn’t imagine anything better than running into that water. The six of us (representing five different countries – felt very international) stayed on the beach chatting and watching the sun slowly set, before we walked back through the stands selling familiarly tacky beach gear, which looked like the sort of things beach resorts try (unsuccessfully) to recreate to look “authentic” and “charming.” We got back to the ferry stop and the market there had come to life. We ate street food, including calamari cooked in front of us, and enjoyed the bursting energy. Ferry was packed, then unpacked, and we were let loose among the fruit vendors lining the walk back to the city center. I can’t put my finger on exactly why the whole trip was so perfect, but I’m hoping to return many more times.
The other main highlight of the week was finally connecting with this organization, Center for Community Initiatives, which is the subject of my photo essay thing for BGI this week (and probably for another couple of weeks, too). Their organization is so exciting! I know I’m getting a pretty biased picture, since I’ve only really got their word to go off of so far, but the programs and approach sound so perfect! Like if I had to imagine exactly how assistance to slums should be done, it would be pretty close to what this organization is doing. They’re essentially a micro-lending/savings program, but they use the savings schemes as a foundation to organize networks of people and empower them to start improving the community. They teach community members to conduct massive surveys, so that the community holds interviews with each household. CCI recently went to every neighborhood in Dar and compiled massive amounts of information on all of the informal settlements in the city. I can’t wait for it to be published. Anyways, CCI also teaches people how to analyze that data and use it to decide on the community’s problems and priorities. I’m particularly interested in their community policing program, supported and trained by the state police, and in finding out where the drawbacks are (since there are always drawbacks…)
They’re eager to help me – or at least, to show off the work they’re doing – and the head of the organization, Tim, is so infectiously enthusiastic that it’s hard not to feel like I’m actually getting somewhere. Yay. Now I just need to work on getting out of the ex-pat bubble and talking to more Tanzanians….
The past week has been pretty slow, on the whole, but there were a couple of highlights. Sunday was a fantastic day here. I woke up around 5:30 to the sound of chanting going down the street outside my window, groggily wondered, “what the hell?” and went back to sleep. Or at least, to half-hour increments of sleep: the chanting kept coming back – is this a protest? A political campaign? A traveling church service? Soccer hooligans? Finally got up and got ready for a morning of taking pictures around the city center. The streets are remarkably empty--peaceful even!--on weekend mornings, and Netta had agreed to go with me. We stepped out of the hostel entrance and were nearly swept away by a rush of young Tanzanian men, chanting and running. The crowd had grown since the first group had run past my window, and now it seemed to stretch on forever. We asked the hostel staff, and they explained that this is just something people do, a fun Sunday morning activity. Why anyone would choose to go running in the middle of such a swelteringly hot morning is beyond me, but Alex says he used to do it in Zambia.
Anyways, we set out to take pictures and ended up seeing a monkey! A whole bunch of monkeys, in fact! Hanging out by the side of the road, and clearly not very intimidated by us. I was also surprised to run into a State House and a Parliament building, given that the government is based in Dodoma, the nominal capital of the country, but that was less exciting than the monkeys. There are some quite pretty streets lined with trees, next to some not-so-pretty streets lined with garbage heaps and construction sites.
When I got back, Bree told me about this soccer (er, “football”) match on Monday night between Brazil and Tanzania with fairly cheap tickets (at least, by Western standards. They were still pretty expensive for Tanzanians.) Apparently Brazil is really good or something, so I agreed to go, even though I know almost nothing about soccer (Bree: Who are you going for in the World Cup? Me: Uh, who’s playing?). The game ended up being great fun, though I realized afterwards that I’d (embarrassingly) had the teams mixed up… I was wondering why Tanzania was beating Brazil so handily!! Clearly, I shouldn’t bother cheering for any team other than the Red Sox. Anyways, we went to go buy tickets to the match on Sunday morning, and discovered the amazing bookshop mentioned in my last entry and the beautiful streets of the Indian zone. The class division between Indians and Africans is so clear, and I wonder how much the two groups talk about it...
After buying tickets, and my first trip on the public bus, we got on a ferry to go to the beach on a nearby island! The beach was so, so beautiful: soft, cool sand, warm water, ice cream stands, and very few people. I couldn’t imagine anything better than running into that water. The six of us (representing five different countries – felt very international) stayed on the beach chatting and watching the sun slowly set, before we walked back through the stands selling familiarly tacky beach gear, which looked like the sort of things beach resorts try (unsuccessfully) to recreate to look “authentic” and “charming.” We got back to the ferry stop and the market there had come to life. We ate street food, including calamari cooked in front of us, and enjoyed the bursting energy. Ferry was packed, then unpacked, and we were let loose among the fruit vendors lining the walk back to the city center. I can’t put my finger on exactly why the whole trip was so perfect, but I’m hoping to return many more times.
The other main highlight of the week was finally connecting with this organization, Center for Community Initiatives, which is the subject of my photo essay thing for BGI this week (and probably for another couple of weeks, too). Their organization is so exciting! I know I’m getting a pretty biased picture, since I’ve only really got their word to go off of so far, but the programs and approach sound so perfect! Like if I had to imagine exactly how assistance to slums should be done, it would be pretty close to what this organization is doing. They’re essentially a micro-lending/savings program, but they use the savings schemes as a foundation to organize networks of people and empower them to start improving the community. They teach community members to conduct massive surveys, so that the community holds interviews with each household. CCI recently went to every neighborhood in Dar and compiled massive amounts of information on all of the informal settlements in the city. I can’t wait for it to be published. Anyways, CCI also teaches people how to analyze that data and use it to decide on the community’s problems and priorities. I’m particularly interested in their community policing program, supported and trained by the state police, and in finding out where the drawbacks are (since there are always drawbacks…)
They’re eager to help me – or at least, to show off the work they’re doing – and the head of the organization, Tim, is so infectiously enthusiastic that it’s hard not to feel like I’m actually getting somewhere. Yay. Now I just need to work on getting out of the ex-pat bubble and talking to more Tanzanians….
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Culture shock
It has come to my attention that my previous conception of culture shock was ridiculous. I used to think culture shock was just a fun, enlightening experience of discovering differences (“oh hey, look at that! They sing and dance a lot more here!”) or, more seriously, a realization that one’s own culture was flawed in some newly-visible way (“Woah, the US is even more wasteful than I realized!”). While both of these processes are definitely part of, or at least can complement, culture shock, they don’t really get at the heart of it – the frustrations, the unmet expectations, the nagging sense that you’re trapped in a giant game of “one of these things is not like the others” and you are that different thing.
And it’s that kind of culture shock that’s hit me here in Dar es Salaam these past few days.
The city, or what I’ve seen of it, is really different from what I expected. Since cities that are on a body of water are always more beautiful than those that aren’t, I figured Dar, a coastal city, would be nicer than Kampala or Kigali, both of which I liked. Plus, there are beaches! I’d read that the city has zones of different architectural styles, based on the colonial division of the city into the European, Indian and African regions. So I thought the diversity would, as it did in Nakivale, add texture and complexity (or maybe it’s just that New York is so heterogeneous that it feels more familiar?). I had heard that Tanzanians don’t really like mzungu’s rushing in to “save” them, and recalled my relief at the pride of the Rwandans compared to people in Northern Uganda.
These things (or at least the first two) may be true of the city as a whole, but I’ve only seen the city center, so far. The ocean isn’t incorporated into the city in the way it is in Boston, for instance, and the official beaches (the only safe places to go to the beach – elsewhere it’s isolated and dangerous) are a ways away. I went to what I’d been told was the main road of the Indian neighborhood, only to find that it looked just like the rest of the city center: full of boring, monotonous architecture, chosen for its price rather than its aesthetics. Farooq, the very nice(1), middle-aged guy who runs the internet café at which I’ve already become a regular with a discounted rate (one of the highlights of the first few days) said that all of the big buildings in this area have been built in the last five years, and that until recently, the five-storey “tower” we were in had been the tallest building around and people came from miles away to see it.
I’ve since been directed to a street lined with temples, which is beautiful and much more what I expected to find here, but for the first couple of days, I was really disappointed. I’m realizing (in one of those “duh” moments) that it doesn’t really count as diversity if the different parts are kept separate, instead of, say, bumping into each other on the street.
As far as the Tanzanian resistance to foreign assistance, I have definitely seen this, but it hasn’t been the welcome relief it was in Rwanda. I often wonder if I would have felt the same way about Rwanda if I had gone there first. I still think that the relationship between Tanzania and the West is very different. It was rare in Rwanda to encounter the sort of grumpiness and, at times, outright hostility I’ve seen directed against foreigners here. This has been by far the most jarring culture shock – the not-so-friendly reminder that “you’re not one of us.”
But I hope these things will pass. I can’t expect to love something the moment I encounter it. In the meantime, “Africa time” is frustrating (how could I forget??) and my delusions that I could just waltz in and get started on my research right away have been swept away. Some recent progress gives me hope, though.
On a similarly positive note: I’m still in the hostel for now, but I’m meeting a woman I may move in with later today! While I’m looking forward to interacting with more Tanzanians, it’s been really nice to meet other travelers from all over (a few Canadians, an Israeli, a Kiwi and her Zambian boyfriend, an English couple, a German…).
Also, today we found a fantastic bookstore! I want to buy the whole thing! There are all these African books you could never find in the US. Wonderful.
(1) Part of me suspects that I like him in large part because he lived in Germany for a long while, and knows how to make mzungus feel welcome.
And it’s that kind of culture shock that’s hit me here in Dar es Salaam these past few days.
The city, or what I’ve seen of it, is really different from what I expected. Since cities that are on a body of water are always more beautiful than those that aren’t, I figured Dar, a coastal city, would be nicer than Kampala or Kigali, both of which I liked. Plus, there are beaches! I’d read that the city has zones of different architectural styles, based on the colonial division of the city into the European, Indian and African regions. So I thought the diversity would, as it did in Nakivale, add texture and complexity (or maybe it’s just that New York is so heterogeneous that it feels more familiar?). I had heard that Tanzanians don’t really like mzungu’s rushing in to “save” them, and recalled my relief at the pride of the Rwandans compared to people in Northern Uganda.
These things (or at least the first two) may be true of the city as a whole, but I’ve only seen the city center, so far. The ocean isn’t incorporated into the city in the way it is in Boston, for instance, and the official beaches (the only safe places to go to the beach – elsewhere it’s isolated and dangerous) are a ways away. I went to what I’d been told was the main road of the Indian neighborhood, only to find that it looked just like the rest of the city center: full of boring, monotonous architecture, chosen for its price rather than its aesthetics. Farooq, the very nice(1), middle-aged guy who runs the internet café at which I’ve already become a regular with a discounted rate (one of the highlights of the first few days) said that all of the big buildings in this area have been built in the last five years, and that until recently, the five-storey “tower” we were in had been the tallest building around and people came from miles away to see it.
I’ve since been directed to a street lined with temples, which is beautiful and much more what I expected to find here, but for the first couple of days, I was really disappointed. I’m realizing (in one of those “duh” moments) that it doesn’t really count as diversity if the different parts are kept separate, instead of, say, bumping into each other on the street.
As far as the Tanzanian resistance to foreign assistance, I have definitely seen this, but it hasn’t been the welcome relief it was in Rwanda. I often wonder if I would have felt the same way about Rwanda if I had gone there first. I still think that the relationship between Tanzania and the West is very different. It was rare in Rwanda to encounter the sort of grumpiness and, at times, outright hostility I’ve seen directed against foreigners here. This has been by far the most jarring culture shock – the not-so-friendly reminder that “you’re not one of us.”
But I hope these things will pass. I can’t expect to love something the moment I encounter it. In the meantime, “Africa time” is frustrating (how could I forget??) and my delusions that I could just waltz in and get started on my research right away have been swept away. Some recent progress gives me hope, though.
On a similarly positive note: I’m still in the hostel for now, but I’m meeting a woman I may move in with later today! While I’m looking forward to interacting with more Tanzanians, it’s been really nice to meet other travelers from all over (a few Canadians, an Israeli, a Kiwi and her Zambian boyfriend, an English couple, a German…).
Also, today we found a fantastic bookstore! I want to buy the whole thing! There are all these African books you could never find in the US. Wonderful.
(1) Part of me suspects that I like him in large part because he lived in Germany for a long while, and knows how to make mzungus feel welcome.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Welcome to Dar es Salaam
Just a quick update to say that I’ve arrived in Tanzania and some first impressions.
I’d like to take Tanzania on her own terms, without comparing it to Uganda and Rwanda, but it’s so hard not to make those comparisons, and I guess it’s inevitable, to a certain extent. So far, Dar es Salaam reminds me of Kampala, though it may just be that the force of the first impression is equally powerful – maybe by the time I reached Kigali, I was so used to certain regional qualities (like the humidity and the smell) that I didn’t notice them. But as soon as I stepped off the plane, that spicy, humid smell that I’m beginning to associate with Africa assailed me once again. The drive from the airport brought on flashbacks of my first drive from Entebbe to Kampala, as the balmy night air swept its sharp, complex aroma into the taxi.
I’m staying in a hostel at the moment, where I’ve met a few really nice girls who have been in Dar for almost a month, and who are set to show me around. The hostel seems to be right in the middle of the downtown, so everything is really convenient – I got all my errands (changing money, buying a SIM card and plug converter, and now internet) done in one quick outing this morning. More later.
Oh! I can also report that Zurich is charming, with a hodgepodge of architectural styles and lots of tiny cobblestone alleyways and pedestrian walkways and LOTS of Lindt chocolate. Not sure how one navigates the narrow alleys with all that chocolate around, but it does lead me to believe that Zurich would be an excellent place for me to live, if only I spoke any German.
I’d like to take Tanzania on her own terms, without comparing it to Uganda and Rwanda, but it’s so hard not to make those comparisons, and I guess it’s inevitable, to a certain extent. So far, Dar es Salaam reminds me of Kampala, though it may just be that the force of the first impression is equally powerful – maybe by the time I reached Kigali, I was so used to certain regional qualities (like the humidity and the smell) that I didn’t notice them. But as soon as I stepped off the plane, that spicy, humid smell that I’m beginning to associate with Africa assailed me once again. The drive from the airport brought on flashbacks of my first drive from Entebbe to Kampala, as the balmy night air swept its sharp, complex aroma into the taxi.
I’m staying in a hostel at the moment, where I’ve met a few really nice girls who have been in Dar for almost a month, and who are set to show me around. The hostel seems to be right in the middle of the downtown, so everything is really convenient – I got all my errands (changing money, buying a SIM card and plug converter, and now internet) done in one quick outing this morning. More later.
Oh! I can also report that Zurich is charming, with a hodgepodge of architectural styles and lots of tiny cobblestone alleyways and pedestrian walkways and LOTS of Lindt chocolate. Not sure how one navigates the narrow alleys with all that chocolate around, but it does lead me to believe that Zurich would be an excellent place for me to live, if only I spoke any German.
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