27
August
2009
My first experience with death in Tanzania occurred about two months into my Peace Corps training in Morogoro. A woman who cooked lunches for our language training group at Kihonda Secondary had lost her young son to malaria. Our language teacher Petronella (Petti for short) moved ahead in the lesson plan and took us to the section in our book on funerals and their preparations. I learned then that visiting the home of the bereaved to express condolences, “Pole sana” (pronounced Poh-lay sah-nah) and offering a small donation (mchango) to help cover funeral expenses was the typical custom. We walked quietly together to the woman’s home. When we arrived, we entered one at a time, the women of our group wearing khangas that Petti brought for the occasion, each bearing a message about Death, God, or Heaven. We sat on a grass mat on the floor with the bereaved, all of them women, passing around pictures of the young boy. “Pole sana.” You would use the same words with someone over even a mild inconvenience. To a woman whose beloved child has been lost forever, the words are the same: Pole sana. Of course, we could do little more than sit with her while she cried in the arms of her family, pole sana, little more than look at the pictures of her precious, little boy, pole sana, and leave our modest contribution for the funeral costs before returning to the classroom.
The first funeral service I attended in country happened during my parents’ visit to Lupembe village in June of my first year in Tanzania. We had been planning to throw a party for all the students and teachers on the day of their arrival. However, the death of a prominent, local woman necessitated a change in plans. This woman had been the granddaughter of the tribal sub-chief and a non-voting representative to parliament. She had passed away as a young adult from “malaria,” as it was agreed in polite conversation. Several months before, she had given an inspirational talk to the students and her memory was still fresh in everyone’s minds. As we found out later, though she had long since moved away, her final request had been to be buried here, in the village where she was born. The funeral was something of a media event. Television cameras and photographers recorded the proceedings. My parents and I, and my friend Deb (she runs an NGO for orphans and vulnerable children, see www.theolivebranchforchildren.org to help support her work) were recognized by the officiant and we came forward to give our mchango, say a few words, and express our condolences to the family. We had not lingered. Not having really known the woman or her family and feeling awkward about the attention that our very presence commanded, we left after less than an hour.
Death is a common enough occurrence in Tanzanian village life. Funeral on Saturday, church on Sunday, week in and week out, it seems. Despite having been in Tanzania for almost three years, I have managed to avoid both on all but a few occasions. I went to church once with my host family in Morogoro, once when I arrived in Lupembe to introduce myself, and once when I left to say goodbye. As for funerals, I never had a desire to go for voyeuristic reasons and had never really needed to go as a close friend to the aggrieved, to support a family in mourning. Never, until a couple months ago.
The office manager at our field research station is the glue that holds the place together. She handles logistics, payroll, inventory, personnel and is always the person to look for when you have a question. She has been working here for over 20 years. She is the sort of person who is necessary at any successfully functioning organization, the sort of person who would need to be replaced by a minimum of 2-3 people and even then at a loss. When her young son, the second of three children, was first admitted to the hospital, her anxiety showed but she never skipped a beat at work. Everything got accomplished in the usual manner and on time. The initial diagnosis of malaria and the prescribed quinine drip was worrisome, nothing to take lightly, but nothing so uncommon either. Of the diseases that Tanzanian hospitals are experienced and well equipped to handle, malaria is right there at the top. The child was well over 5 years old, past the age when most malaria fatalities occur, as the body has had time to develop resistence to the parasite.
Things did not go as anticipated. He got worse, broke out in pus-filled sores and maintained an alarmingly high fever. He passed away after less than a week. Before I heard the news, I heard the wailing of grief. The celebratory drumming and dancing that had been almost nonstop since the harvest began was cut short. Loud angry cries conversed with piteous whimpers and hushed sobbing. First, the women came, one after another, khangas wrapped around their hips and covering their heads. They came to her home, filling its rooms and spilling out into the yard. They were the grief’s constant companions.
The next day, when the body was to be interred, Jessica and I went to pay our respects. She wore a khanga and I a suit and tie. I wasn’t expecting my outfit to draw so many comments. Western business dress is rather common among the professional classes, even in a small town like Kongwa. However, I was the most dressed-up person there. “Wazungu dress up for funerals,” the director of our research center explained to one of the curious staff members. Well, it’s just another thing to chalk up to cultural difference, I told myself after deciding not to change clothes. In intimate cultural matters, there seem to be wide allowances for foreigners, provided nothing comes across as disrespectful.
When Jessica and I arrived at the house, we hit another stark cultural difference. All the women were gathered out front; all the men were on the far side of the yard, where the funeral service was to be held. There was no gender mixing. Jess and I had not wanted to separate. We loitered on the outskirts looking even more out of place, if such a thing were possible, until a co-worker of mine came to lead us into the house. I say “us” even though it was Jessica who she took by the hand and brought inside. I followed, assuming I was to be included. I was less sure when we stepped indoors. All the furniture had been removed and women were sitting and standing on every square inch of floor space. Most were singing; the rest were crying. I followed Jess down the hall and stopped short of a backroom that held most of the immediate family. I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there, didn’t know who I would leave my mchango with and turned to leave Jessica there with the rest of the women. I turned around to see my co-worker and friend, a mother mourning the wicked absurbity of her child’s death. All at once she was in my arms, asking me why. I held her and told her that we would take care of her. She was led by her family into the backroom and I wandered outside.
I walked to the backyard and sat with the men, inevitably getting drawn into unwanted conversations that seemed to center around how much I stood out. “Yes, I live here. . . Yes, I speak Swahili. . . Oh no, thank you very much. . . Yes, this is a beautiful country. . . No, I hope to be here for many years. . .” I didn’t want friendly banter. I wanted to cry, something all the women were doing and none of the men were. Jessica emerged from the house and was led to the benches, reserved for family members, under the tent, at the front of the service area. I excused myself and went to meet her, both of us straddling the gender line in the middle of the yard. We were sitting nearly alone, on benches reserved for the family. We were uncomfortable and kept making movements to leave, to stand up and blend back into the crowd only to be immediately attended to and motioned back into our seats. We were uncomfortable being singled out. They were uncomfortable not singling us out.
First the family came in and as they began to take seats on the benches, we were able to stand back into the crowd. I say the family came, but I mean the women and children. The young boy’s father and male relatives sat with the male guests in the backyard, dispersed among them. The women, the mother, her sisters, female friends, the grandmother walked in together, a huddled mass of shuddering and sobbing, with a rhythmic energy to their processional.
When the men brought in the boy’s body, carried in a simple but elegantly decorated casket, the grief reached a new pitch. I found it hard to stay composed. There were women who lay prostrate on grass mats, attended to by their loved ones. The women were expressive in tears and in songs. The men had a different role to play, one that required them to stay solemn and blank. The men in the family stayed by the casket, throughout the bible readings, sermon and songs. At the end, everyone was to walk by the body, to say goodbye. The men remained stoically together. When one of their number could no longer hold back the tears, he covered his face and faded into the background.
At the end, the men loaded the casket into a truck and the people crowded into several cars and trucks, packed in, hanging out the sides. We drove just down the road to a place where one patch of land was incongruously decorated with grave markers. A hole had already been dug. A mat was already prepared on the hard, dusty ground for the women, the immediate family. The men lowered the body inside and began to cover it with dirt, with hoes and with their hands. I again felt out of place in suit and tie. I watched as the men covered the body with handfuls of dirt and then as the women covered it with flowers.
Namkumbuka (I remember) Ezekiel. Pole sana.
Posted: Tanzanian Society & Culture
14
June
2009
Here in Kongwa, it’s the time of the year when girls and boys are ushered into adulthood. Drums, whistles and songs can be heard at all hours as everyone practices and celebrates for the festivities to come. Despite how brown and dusty everything has gotten, everyone’s in a good mood. The rains have long finished, all the crops have been harvested and the locals have more time and money on their hands than at any other time of the year. Yesterday, led by the sounds of the music, I wandered down to the enclosure built for selling off surplus corn and found that several vendors were set up selling goat meat and alcohol made from every conceivable substrate: milk, bamboo juice and hibiscus to name a few. People were happy, friendly and pretty drunk for the mid-afternoon. I was welcomed to the community by a number of older men and women in typical fashion:
“We are your parents; this is your home.”
“Let me know when you get married so we can throw you a party.”
“You are a Tanzanian now.”
“Can I have 20 cents for some moonshine?”
For the new, youngest members of the adult community (ages 12+), this is the time of their lives when they learn about their tribal history and traditions and are physically marked out as being adults. Among the Wagogo (the dominant tribal group here) this often includes facial scarring, cirumcision for boys, and (all too often) genital mutilation for girls. I remember my first Swahili teacher, Jumapili, telling me about his own initiation ceremony and circumcision. After being cut, he and the other boys were led into lake Victoria where small fishes, drawn by the blood, came to feed on their fresh cuts. Any boys that tried to flee were driven back into the lake by the older men, armed with sticks. At least here in Kongwa town, it is typical for boys to be brought to the district hospital for circumcision. The level of hygiene in this practice obviously deteriorates as one travels further out into the villages. One of the reasons I was told this was an ideal time of the year for circumcision was that the weather has finally cooled down. However, it seems to me a slight consolation to feel a pleasant breeze as your foreskin is getting chopped off.
As for the girls, the practice of female genital mutiliation is illegal and therefore there exists a great deal of reluctance to talk about it. However, in all of Tanzania, it is most widely practiced from this area of Central Tanzania up to the north towards Arusha. Traditionally it was quite common among both the Wagogo and the Masai, still highly populated in those areas of Tanzania today. One NGO associated with battling this practice is the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) in Tanzania. Although the organization’s programs in Kongwa are quite limited, they are the only group doing anything here on this front.
In our own project on the ancillary benefits of Azithromycin, we are looking at sexually transmitted infections (STIs), among other disease categories, and are therefore asking women about pain with urination. Given not only the existence of female genital mutilation but the taboos against its open discussion, this naturally poses a research challenge. Finding out more about the prevalence of this practice and its disease consequences would be both important and logistically-challenging medical research. It is a topic long overdue for study here and one that ought to be implemented in the context of a broad-based series of preventative, educational, women’s empowerment programs.
Posted: Kongwa Trachoma Project, Tanzanian Society & Culture
13
March
2009
I met the nicest witchdoctor last week. I was spending the day in one of our study villages, supervising village health workers, biking around to points of interest and taking GPS coordinates. It started out as a joke when Steve Schachterle and I agreed to write a paper on “Distance to Witchdoctor” as part of our analysis of relevant variables correlated to different disease categories: Malaria, Acute Respiratory Infections, Diarrheal Disease and Sexually Transmitted Infections. The more I thought about it, however, the more I felt it was actually important to include witchdoctors among our identified local resources, since they justifiably serve as dispensers and repositories of traditional medical knowledge.
First, I suppose I should say something about the term “witchdoctor.” Although not the sort of thing that anyone would self-apply where I come from, Tanzanians often use the English word “witchdoctor” in a completely neutral sense. Like the word “half-caste” for people with mixed race heritage, it sounds much worse to the American ear than to the Tanzanian. As for the far more unfortunate tendency of Tanzanians to use the N-word as a label for black Americans, well, that’s painful to hear for many reasons – not the least of which being a lack of consciousness that anyone would find it offensive. In any case, for the sake of propriety, perhaps I should substitute “traditional healer” for “witchdoctor,” although I am not entirely sure whose sensibilities I would be protecting in this instance. Maybe they have decided to take back the word “witchdoctor.”
Despite the freedom available in English usage, I have found it more important to be careful with my terminology in Kiswahili. In looking around the village for traditional healers, I explicitly used the term Mganga wa Kinyeji (village doctor) or Mganga wa Asili (traditional doctor) in my search. While “witchdoctor” may be a neutral term, Mchawi (witch/wizard/sorcerer) is not. To make matters a bit complicated, Tanzanians generally consider the terms Mganga and Mchawi to be synonymous, the former a nicety disguising the underlying malevolent reality of the latter. “Is it possible to be Mganga without also being Mchawi?” I asked some Tanzanian colleagues. “If an Mganga only helps people,” I was told in the tone of voice suggesting the concession of an unlikelihood, “then he is not Mchawi.”
Medicinal elements of traditional beliefs and practices can be touchy subjects to broach, especially coming from a white American. Among the more harsh criticisms I have heard Tanzanians level at one another is the claim that some tribe/ethnic group (Kabila) is barbarous or unchristian, as evidenced by their traditional religious/magical/spiritual practices. I hear gossipy backbiting about who wears amulets, buries good luck charms, or talks to their dead ancestors along with the typical denunciation that such people are not real Christians. Of course, the longer I stay in Tanzania the more convinced I am that most people have not so much given up traditional beliefs as they have incorporated them into Christianity, Islam or modern science, as the case may be. “I don’t believe in witchcraft since as I Christian I believe all power comes from God,” a primary school teacher friend told me, “therefore God protects me from the witchcraft.” If this quote leaves you a bit confused, trust me, it’s better to just embrace the paradox.
Taking GPS coordinates at the homes of local healers, I made sure to sound a positive note about what I was doing. “I am using this computer to identify important locations in the village so we can make a map,” I explained to the kindly old man, the fourth and final of the villages’ Waganga. “We are marking the village government office, school, churches, water sources, dispensary, drug store, and the homes of the Waganga,” I continued as he looked at me somewhat worried, “places where people can get local medicine” I added in my best nonchalant tone. “We would also like to see some of your medicines,” one of the village health workers added, anticipating my interest.
The old man immediately struck a pleading if defensive note. “All of my medicines come from tree roots,” he insisted, “I am not Mchawi.” I emphasized that his work was important and that I was only interested in knowing where people could get medicine in the village. “People just pay me with food,” he continued, “I only work to help people, not to make money.” In addition to being known for their ability to get rich from their spells, Wachawi also use sinister ingredients in their medicines: blood, bones, hair, skin – often requiring a brutal collection. In my former village, a local man was found dead in the woods with much of his skin missing. Witchcraft was the universal suspect. Albinos are in particular danger on this account, as many Wachawi agree that their skin possesses magical properties. White, European skin, I was assured by everyone, has no magical benefits, though some regard European hair as potent. The old man said he used only tree roots to distance himself from such practices.
As the Mganga took me and the other village health workers to his shaded treatment area, he continued to plea his case. “If my medicine doesn’t work,” he continued, “I tell people to go to the dispensary. If that doesn’t work, then they need to go to the hospital in Kongwa or even Dodoma.” I was impressed. By the far the biggest problem with local healers is their potential opposition to western medicines. Especially given much of the widespread skepticism regarding AIDS and the western powers (“Americans put HIV into condoms,” I have heard from suspicious Tanzanians on more than one occasion), there are plenty of Waganga who implore their HIV+ patients to take traditional medicines in lieu of Antiretroviral medications. Obviously this Mganga was concerned with the health of his patients, not his medical market share.
“I only have one medicine right now to show you,” the old man apologized. I assured him I was happy to see whatever was on hand as I took the proffered gourd-bottle. “What does this medicine treat?” I asked. “It is a topical oil,” he explained, “for injuries, pain, malaria,” he gave as examples. I had to admit that I was hoping for a slightly less grandiose claim, given how circumspect he had been up until this point. Nevertheless, I understood him to be sincere and thanked him for his work. I am not inherently opposed to placebos, especially when accompanied by the appropriate referral for serious cases.
Undoubtedly much of the magical approach to illness stems from an inherent sense of powerlessness in the face of disease and uncertainty. When a patient comes to you clearly suffering, it feels like doing something, anything, has to be better than admitting defeat. There is little consolation in telling someone to just get bed rest and let nature run its course. I can relate to the witchdoctor’s woes, as I get asked for medical advice on a regular basis these days. I am not a medial doctor, nor do I have at my disposal any diagnostic tools other than a rapid malaria test kit, a thermometer, and the knowledge gained from countless, paranoid hours spent reading my Peace Corps issued copy of Where There is No Doctor, analyzing my mysterious skin inflammations and unpredictable digestive cycle.
During the course of our current study, our village health workers are dispensing Coartem and Quinine for malaria, Amoxacillin for acute respiratory, ear and some skin infections, oral rehydration salts for diarrhea, Azithromycin for chlamydia, Ciproflaxin for gonorrhea, Paracetamol for non-malaria fevers and cough syrup for coughs without rapid breathing. Naturally the villagers have come to expect us to have a medicine for every illness and have expressed feeling neglected or cheated if we cannot provide them with such. It is in fact the reason we are giving out limited amounts of cough syrup. Our initial treatment regimen called only for treating coughs accompanied by rapid breathing. Mothers were getting annoyed at reporting their child’s persistent coughs during the health workers’ twice weekly visits without getting anything for it.
As I continue to talk with villagers about their symptoms, I find it is often the case that the best treatments are simple, common and throroughly unexciting. In this arid environment with limited access to clean water, most people are not drinking enough. Even for those with better than average access to water, this still seems to be a common problem. I have had several people tell me about muscle soreness and headaches at the end of the day. These same people are reporting that they often drink less than a half liter of water per day. Additionally, the local diet is dominated by starches and other carbohydrates with limited fresh vegetables. Telling people to drink more water and get more vitamins in their diet feels a bit like a brush off – to me and to them. It would be nice if I had my own tree root oil to dispense.
The most common requests of Waganga/Wachawi in this area appear to be exorcising demons and producing rain. Being bothered by demons seems to be a common complaint and one for which the local solutions are viewed as rather reliable. The bad news for my work is that the first requirement for the demon-afflicted is cutting out all western medicines. Apparently they are contra-indicated for the local stuff. A trip out into the wilderness for up to a week commonly comes next. Finally, local medicines, prayers, drumming and dancing generally finishes things off. As for rainmaking, and I swear I’m not making this up, the local spiritual and meteorological practitioner climbs up onto the roof of a house with a mud-baked roof, takes off his clothes and moons the sky. I guess I shouldn’t knock it until I’ve tried it.
Further reading:
Newspaper article on witchcraft and the law in Tanzania
Insightful commentary on witchcraft in Tanzania by a public health worker
Posted: Kongwa Trachoma Project, Tanzanian Society & Culture
14
February
2009
Although nearly ubiquitous throughout Tanzanian schools, corporal punishment is a demonstrable failure. Even if one were to discount its blows to student self-respect and human rights, corporal punishment quite simply fails even in the simple task of deterrence. Discipline problems are usually in direct proportion to the amount and quality of teacher supervision. Too often, teachers and administrators are absent, leaving students alone in classrooms for most of or all of the school day. Is it any wonder then that such students fail to arrive punctually, to stay put in the classroom all day, or to study quietly?
As a secondary school teacher at a rural Tanzanian school for two years, I often bitterly joked with my fellow teachers that if corporal punishment were so effective, it ought to be used right up the chain of command. Absent teachers ought to be flogged by the headmaster, absent headmasters to be flogged by the District Commissioner and so on, right up to the members of the National Examination Council of Tanzania (NECTA) whose examinations are filled with fractured English, poorly chosen questions and numerous outright mistakes.
To give one truly horrible example from these tests, students were asked to explain why Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation does NOT apply near the surface of the Earth. So much for UNIVERSAL gravitation. Where is the oversight of NECTA? Why are students routinely punished for their poor performance on poor-quality tests?
Now it seems that reality also has a dark sense of humor. The BBC has reported the beating of primary school teachers in the Kagera region, ordered by the District Commissioner.
The teachers who were flogged reported that they were too ashamed to continue teaching. Yet students throughout Tanzania deal with such indignities daily and teachers still argue that beatings are necessary pedagogical tools. Even worse, there are those who argue that beatings are an inherent part of African culture and the only way to make African students behave. This is not African culture. This is the culture of slavery, colonialism and humiliation. Since independence, Tanzania has been governed by the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) “Party of the Revolution.” When will the revolution throw off the shackles of corporal punishment in the educational system? The problem is not unique Kagera’s District Commissioner Albert Mnali. It is a country-wide problem that needs to be addressed now.
Posted: Tanzanian Society & Culture
30
June
2008
Every Friday at the end of the school day, the students of UL Secondary, bring their chairs into the Dining Hall for the week’s scheduled debate. A student committee chooses the motion to be discussed and moderates the proceedings. It is an English-only event, although the administration has decided to allow a Kiswahili debate sometime in the upcoming term. Although secondary schools are supposed to be English-only (with the exception of Kiswahili class), the weekly debate is the one-and-only time you only hear English spoken at my school. This most certainly includes English classes. It also includes all of my classes. My own proportion of Kiswahili-to-English in biology teaching goes from 90-10 (Form I), 80-20 (Form II), 75-25 (Form III) and 50-50 (Form IV) – to make up some numbers on the spot. In short, the students have a rough time with the debate.
Last year, I started attending these debates somewhat regularly out of my own curiosity. What do these young people believe? What do they consider to be a valid argument? What counts as evidence and what counts as a convincing explanation? Sometimes, the answers to these questions come out. Other times, it is work simply deciphering their attempts at complete answers to the questions at hand. When the confrontation is intense, the logic gets even more undecipherable. Having had my share of heated arguments in Kiswahili, I can sympathize. Recently, for example, I was involved in a bus-wide discussion concerning the claim that the American government infected condoms with HIV in order to kill black people. Personally, I believe there are enough real examples of bad American foreign policy decisions (including malicious ones) to mention without resorting to this kind of conspiracy-mongering.
As for the school debates, however, past motions have included:
Teachers are more important than doctors for society.
Life in the village is better than life in town.
Single-sex schools are better than co-educational schools.
Domestic work is a woman’s duty.
It is better for a country to be self-reliant than to depend on other countries.
It has truly been fascinating to see (particularly the harder-working) students out-reasoning one another on issues that range from moral to practical to political to cultural. Of course, these debates also mirror the larger problem with the country’s entire secondary school system: the central problem of English language instruction. Until this country decides to offer Kiswahili-medium secondary instruction, rural students at schools such as mine are getting cheated out of a truly higher education. Some students can excel at math and the sciences without necessarily having a gift for languages. Since English instruction really only begins at secondary school for more than 90% of my students and since this is the 3rd language (after Kibena and Kiswahili) for these students, it is safe to say that their language-skills are already being taxed far more heavily than most American (including 1st generation immigrant) students.
The government should experiment on a limited basis with Kiswahili-medium secondary schools.
I’m suggesting this for the next motion of the next debate. It would be appropriate if the students got to articulate their thoughts on this subject in at least their second language.
Posted: Tanzanian Society & Culture
26
April
2008
Tanzania is not the first place I’ve ever had to deal with the issue of students cheating. As a university professor, I have received research papers that were copied in full from articles available on the internet. The thinking must be that historians don’t know how to use search engines. As an adjunct professor, however, my protocol in such matters was rather straight-forward. I assembled the evidence, turned it in to the department chair, and recorded my grade sheet accordingly. At that point, everything was out of my hands; case closed.
The situation is a bit different in a Tanzanian secondary school. For one thing, there seems to be no standardized policy on cheating. With 60+ students crammed into a room that would accommodate 20-30 in the United States, stopping students from stealing glances at other’s test papers is difficult to enforce. Moreover the combined lack of adequate teachers along with lax invigilation of examinations only exacerbates the problem. I have for some time taken an austere view of the problem and stalked the classroom aisles, telling students to cover their papers and occasionally taking away tests from obvious cheaters. However, this only stops one classroom from cheating (or else simply makes it more difficult).
While grading weekly tests from my Form II students (about 180 in total spread out over three streams: A, B and C) I found 16 that seemed to have obviously copied from their neighbor. Wrong answers that used the same awkward phrasing and bad spelling were a fairly obvious tip. The only guideline I had observed before involved students that were caught in the act. They generally received 3 strokes with the fimbo (thin stick) and a zero on the test. Not a fan of beating (nor a believer in its effectiveness), I took an alternative approach. After writing all the correct answers on the offending students’ tests, I wrote which student/s I believed they cheated with. I then brought the test papers to morning assembly.
This period of the day before the first classes is usually reserved for cleaning up the environment, receiving announcements, short English-language speeches by the students and punishments. I decided to start with a speech of my own on honesty and the problems associated with cheating. I made a particular point about cheating on the national exams, which could cancel out a year’s worth of hard work and which are invigilated by local police and are more difficult to cheat in as well. I then explained my methodology for catching the cheaters. “Kumbe! Wamekosa kwa kamili na jirani!” (How about that? They made exactly the same mistakes as their neighbors!) I then called the students to the front and handed them their examinations. Explaining that we would have to meet together as a group to discuss this problem, I said that to remind them to show up after school, I would need to take one shoe from each student.
The students balked. Some immediately started trying to talk me out of it. Others made a break for it. I realized that this type of unorthodox punishment required some back-up from the teacher-on-duty (the teacher-of-the-week in charge of all discipline and general rule enforcement). The teacher was feeling more generous than I and he asked me to instead take a sweater or belt to ensure they would meet with me later. Getting trumped on this made me question both my choice of punishment and the seriousness with which other teachers viewed this problem. I told them they needed to come to the teacher’s lounge during tea time to apologize (or defend their case) and to retrieve their belongings.
I took my case to all the teachers. They agreed that an inquest needed to be conducted and demanded the students to remove one shoe and return to class while individuals were questioned one-by-one. Interrogations elicited confessions from everyone, though some initially denied it, until the logic behind the similarity in their answers was shown to them. All apologized and spent the remainder of the day cutting grass and cleaning up the environment. I tried to also talk to each one-by-one to stress the danger of falling into this habit.
So, instead of using corporal punishment, I tried shame. Even as I write this, I feel ambiguous about the appropriateness or effectiveness of my method. I was especially concerned that the new Form I students see what fate could await them if they didn’t stop this behavior right away. Have I dissuaded anyone from cheating? Have I simply encouraged others to use more effective cheating methods? Is shame any less distasteful in education than corporal punishment? I’m still mulling over all this. I feel like something (other than talk) was needed to address the cheating culture. We never got any good suggestions from our Peace Corps trainers on this issue. I’m playing it by ear. Any ideas? I could use the help. By the way, I don’t mind if you copy your suggestions from someone else.
Posted: Tanzanian Society & Culture
1
December
2007
The new crop of education volunteers just arrived for their site installations and I’m feeling sentimental. It was this time last year that I constructed my water filter, struggled with lighting my charcoal stove, and first learned to keep myself reasonably clean and fed without the benefits of electricty and running water. My early days were spent cleaning up mounds of 2-year old decaying trash and trying to make my surroundings as livable as possible.Â
These days I’ve got a well-structured kitchen, stocked with all the basic appliances and accoutrements, a solar panel generating electricity for my laptop, a decent sized vegetable and herb garden-in-progress and a thorough familiarity with my community and its facilities, as well as a fluent knowledge of Kiswahili coupled with a working familiarity of the local Kibena.  Over the last year I faced the daunting task of teaching students 2 year’s worth of biology in a single year. Next year, all my students will start off with one syllabus topic already completed. Living well in the bush has been no small feat and one that I will undoubtedly continue to work on until the end of my service next year. It is my hope that the next volunteer (hopefully there will be a next volunteer here) gets to start off a few steps ahead because of what I’ve done. For example, my only “gardening” work this past year was composting. Right now, however, I’ve got about 15 avocado seedlings ready for transplanting and grafting, 3 hearty indigenous fruit bushes (Songu - whose leaves are also used as Typhoid medicine) cleared and surrounded with mulch, 4 major compost piles, natural fencing construction, 6 passionfruit vines growing from cuttings, a small herb garden (generously supplied with cuttings by my site mate and farmer extroirdinaire Jason Maglaughlin) and a number of double-dug beds in-progress for vegetable planting. (Thanks to Katy Wettengel for the recent package with seeds!)  But more on my gardening projects for a subsequent blog (and after more of it’s finished). Anyway, hopefully the next volunteer will have a decent garden to build on in their first year.
As for the year-in-review, I have also learned a great deal from my fellow volunteers and have had to say goodbye to far too many of them. I also continue to learn from Tanzanian friends in the village as well as those I meet in towns and while traveling. A prescient observation I made early in training has proven to ring true, that those volunteers and other foreigners with negative attitudes towards Tanzanians are those who have failed to learn Kiswahili beyond the elementary level.  Effective communication breeds understanding and understanding breeds affection – hardly surprising. Of course in keeping with the mission of the Peace Corps, I continue to find aspects of Tanzania that could benefit from American influence (e.g., aspects of the educational system, LGBT tolerance and gender rights, consumer rights) as well as those aspects of the United States that could benefit from Tanzanian influence (e.g., aspects of the community/family structure, religious tolerance, respect for seniors). There are practices common in the U.S. that I wish more Tanzanians would adopt (e.g., better business auditing and management) as well as practices common in Tanzania that the U.S. could use far more of (e.g., households growing some their own food, instead of chemi-polluting their yards for mere ornamental grasses).Â
While I am sure that, when the time comes, I will be ready to move on from UL Sec. for new opportunities and challenges, I am equally sure that I will never be completely finished with Tanzania.  In the best of all possible worlds, I will be able to continue to return here for the rest of my life. This country has gotten way under my skin. On that note, I do have another project in the works for post-Peace Corps work in Tanzania. But, more on that for another blog.
For those who have continued to keep up with me, in emails, letters and delicious candy-filled packages, I cannot thank you enough. I will do my best to keep the blog updates coming along with the pictures. For the next couple of months, my work is moving from that of teacher to farmer. But more on that later.
Peace, Dr. Josh
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Posted: Peace Corps Tanzania, Personal, Tanzanian Society & Culture, Uncategorized
12
March
2007
Conor Sullivan, a friend and colleague of mine in the southern highlands, asked that I share with you a piece he has written about a particularly memorable incident that occurred during our training back in mid-October. Enjoy!
“Conor’s Adventures in Bongo Flava”
Conor Sullivan
Seldom in one’s life does the opportunity arise to capture one of those ever-elusive “defining moments,” knowing at the time that whatever reckless whims guide our behavior have stumbled onto something truly sublime. Most of the time, we can merely recollect through the hazy shades of memory some period of past time that now seems important through corrected hindsight. Not so long ago, however, at the Morogoro Hotel in Tanzania, East Africa, such an opportunity came my way.
The taxi careened around the rain-carved ruts and furrows which constitute all but a few of what passes for roads here in Tanzania. Heavy rains were wreaking havoc on the red clay roads carving up the surface like the face of Mars. The dead weight of the teenager on my lap was making it hard to breathe as the driver recklessly darted and dodged the trenches in the road on his way to the hotel. The sharp musk of sweaty bodies lay heavy and thick through the air adding to the sensation of weight wedging deeply me into the cracks of my seat. Morogoro cab drivers, virtual magicians of human flesh, can manage to cram 8 or more bodies into a mid-sized coupe. As the taxi slowed, I was greeted by stares from countless numbers of Tanzanians lined up to buy tickets for the annual music festival, coinciding with the Muslim holiday Eid Al Fitr, which this year occurred on the first full moon in October.
It was a circus-like atmosphere as the eight of us flopped, stumbled and cartwheeled out of the taxicab and onto the street, only to be immediately swept into the crowd surging forward towards the narrow opening of the hotel. We tried to lock hands but the force of the crowd soon ripped us apart, separating us for what turned out to be quite a long time.
As the flood of people whirled around the bottleneck opening and became increasingly aggressive, the enormous bouncers armed with nightsticks began lashing out at the encroaching crowd. Barely ten feet in front of me, a giant physical specimen of a concert-goer was cracked across the face, lost consciousness and came crashing down onto two “Angels of the Night” (prostitutes), bringing them down with him. Seconds later, a young daring (if not reckless) teenager was ruthlessly kicked in the stomach for trying to get too close.
At this point I felt as though maybe I had made a mistake. I tried to break free from the whirlpool funneling ever more rapidly into the billy clubs of the angry bouncers, to no avail. I felt suffocated and trapped. The line was no longer a mob of individuals but a bathtub, and somebody had pulled the plug. Another surge from the bodies behind me propelled me towards the 6’5” 300 lb. manimal waving his beating-stick and barking threats at me in Kiswahili. I was preparing to duck, dive, dip, dodge and fall when the bodyguard noticing the one white face in the crowd called, “Hey Mzungu! Kom here.” I apprehensively made my way forward as a bouncer simultaneously grabbed my arm. aking a vicious swing at the crowd behind me, this gi-normous Tanzanian pulled me along with three African girls into the concert.
The stage was a massive wooden monstrosity standing about 10 feet off the ground, about 50 feet long. On both sides giant black speaker boxes towered into the night sky. The speakers silhouetted by a raised DJ stand with turntables, woofers and electronic synthesizers. Six DJs stood before the milling crowd of 8,000 playing various rap and bongo flava tracks. The crowd anxiously awaited the arrival of Nameless, Fid Q and Dully Saks, three Tanzanian Hip-hop artists out of Dar es Salaam on the evening’s playbill. I inhaled the clean, moist African air and headed towards the concessions, hoping to catch up with my friends.
After a long time spent meandering through the crowd without a single Mzungu (white person) in sight, I made my way to the DJ stand. As the concert carried on, with the requisite cheering and screaming for each subsequent performer, I decided to climb up the DJ stand to better survey the crowd. (It seems in retrospect that only Mzungu-privilege let me get away with this.) As I reached the top of the stand, the stage was getting set-up for Dully Saks and one of my favorite songs, “Ridin’ Dirty” ( a song I’d first heard in New York), came over the loudspeaker. Overcome by the spirit of the evening and the thumping of the bass, I started free-style rapping to no one in particular. As the song ended, I noticed that 4 of the 6 six DJs had turned around and were staring at me.
At this point, I half-expected to see another of the ferocious bouncers en route to kick me off the DJ stand. Instead, someone was patting me on the back and asking who I was and if I could do it again. A huge African by the name of Hans (apparently a friend of one of the DJs) kept patting me on the back, repeating “Man! Vizuri sana!” I laughed and said, “If you really like it, put me on stage. I can rap.” With the wild crowd getting jacked up as Dully Saks set up, Hans escorted me from the DJ stand to the stage, leaving me backstage while he talked to the producer. Happy that I’d at least scored a great view from the stage, I started scanning the 8,000+ crowd for my friends.
After a few minutes, Hans returned with the producer JD, a national radio personality synonymous with bongo flava in Tanzania. In perfect English he asked, “Have you ever been on stage before?” After a brief daze, I managed to spit out, “I’ve rapped at parties for my friends.” He stole a hesitating glance at me in all my honkiness and motioned for Hans to follow him. A few minutes later, Hans returned alone and said JD had his doubts but was holding out the possibility. “Are you serious?” he asked me. “Can you do this?” Half-convincing myself, I sputtered out, “Hell yeah, I do this all the time! Just show me the mic.” With that, my new manager left me back stage. As the backstage VIPs eyed me warily, I could hear Dully Saks starting up one of his famous songs, in which he compares a girl to a giraffe. Hans then runs up to me out-of-breath, sporting a toothy-grin. “Are you ready? Because you’re up next!”
Now I have to confess, only at this point did it hit me that I was actually getting on stage to rap in front of 8000 Tanzanian bongo flava fans. I was stunned and scared, wondering why I had such a big mouth. I kept feeling like I was in the movie, “8-Mile,” with Eminem looking over my shoulder. (Incidentally, Eminem was the first rap artist I saw in concert, in Austria when I was 16.) I had one refrain running over and over through my brain: “You’ve got one shot. Listen to the music. One chance, that’s it.” My mouth went dry.
I managed to croak out, “Water? Anybody, um… Maji?” Someone handed me a glass and taking a deep gulp I realized it was Konyagi, a clear alcohol about as refreshing as warm gin. Shaking off the rocketfuel, Hans thrust a glass of water into my hands, saying “Here, take it. Remember Eiddi Wakilisha 2006 (Eid Represent 2006).” Looking out over the lit stage as Dully finished up his song, I felt the rush of adrenalin. I felt chills up and down my spine and started hopping around giving high-fives to the random VIPs backstage and shouting, “This is it; this is it! Are you ready?” At that moment with Dully Saks heading off stage, JD announced to 8,000+ Tanzanians and 4 astonished Peace Corps Volunteers, “UP NEXT, KAAAAAAAAH-NAAAAAAAH!”
I bounded up the ten stairs and was greeted by the bright stage lights as someone handed me a microphone. I didn’t feel strange, scared, happy or even out of place. It just felt like a plan coming together.
I started jumping up and down and tearing across the stage, as the decibel-level swelled. I lost one shoe and then kicked the other off stage, flipping the mic upside down and bellowed, “TAAAAN-ZAAAA-NIII-AAA” in the 4-syllable bass announcement style that I’d heard so many times in concerts before. I then followed Hans’ one piece of advice and followed with, “WAAA-KAAA-LIII-SHAAA” in the same tone. The crowd erupted as I strode across the stage like an old pro, getting down low and slapping hands with the crowd. I was absolutely high.
At this point, JD is DJing my set as I squat down mid-stage and say to the crowd in a slow, deliberate tone, “I don’t know about you guys, but I love Tupac (the crowd goes crazy) Do you love Tupac? (even louder cheering) I bet JD has some Tupac. JD do you have any Tupac? (insanity)” All of a sudden, RRRRRRPPPPP as the track screeches to a halt, interrupted by a Tupac instrumental. The speakers are cranked up so loudly I can only hear my own voice through the monitors. “JD ninakupenda!” Declaring my love for the DJ in my limited Kiswahili send the crowd into further hysterics. With the bass blaring in the background, I launch into the best 3-minute freestyle I’ve ever performed, bobbing and weaving across the stage, before I finish, toss the mic and jump off the stage.
Soon after my set, I was greeted by all of the other artists, invited to a recording studio to lay down some tracks, bought drinks and geneally treated like a famous rap artist. The other volunteers who were instantly promoted to “Friends of the Mzungu Rap Artist” were absolutely shangaa’ed (shocked). They explained how during my set, the audience backed away from them, creating a kind of Mzungu Isle in the crowd. They just kept repeating to me, ”Unbelievable man, unbelievable.”
A few days later, JD talked about my performance on the radio, referring to me as a “rap artist” and “musical genius.” I have continued to meet Tanzanians who saw me that night, sometimes spontaneously rapping me their own songs. I’m still waiting to see the videotape of the show that JD’s holding for me in Dar – to be able to show all of you as well as make it seem real, even to myself.
Posted: Tanzanian Society & Culture
