Black Soles

I spent last night craning my neck to get a glimpse of a documentary being projected onto a worn piece of cloth.  The small auditorium was packed and I couldn’t resist responding ‘when the fire starts’ to the person ahead of me who asked when they would stop letting people in.  Thankfully, the only fires that started last night were those of hopeful aspiration, kindled by the passion of the subject of the film.

We were all gathered to watch one of our own: a woman who adopted Tanzania, and later the world as her home – Jane Goodall.  

Jane’s Journey traces the life story of Jane Goodall and how she transformed from a famous field biologist to an infamous conservationist, with a mission to take her message around the globe.  If you can imagine, at 77 she travels 300 days a year to relay the urgency of protecting the natural world and inspire hope that the youth of the world can and will meet the challenge.  I recommend you find and watch this film.

After the documentary, Ms. Goodall took the stage and for a moment the small room was filled with snapping shutters and flashes of light as everyone raced to capture the moment.  Some impassioned remarks, fervent applause and a few more pictures later, the floor opened to questions. 

There were a number of young students from the international school in the audience.  Immediately the room filled with the laughter and self-assured voices of twelve year olds who were not going to miss their opportunity to talk to Jane.  Among my favourite questions: ‘do chimps like vegetables?’

The concrete floor was hard (the perils of running late) and as I shifted I caught a glimpse of the feet of the eight year old perched in front of me.  They were black.  I stole a glimpse at the soles of my own – grey.  Those of the man next to me? Slightly less so.  All of us had dirty feet.

A digression from paying attention to one of the most famous scientists of our time? Maybe.  But since then I’ve been trying to work out what was so striking about this to me.  There’s a saying about not being afraid to get your hands dirty. But you can get your hands dirty making a cake or with ink from your pen.  In contrast, when your feet are dirty, it’s almost guaranteed to be because you have made contact with the earth.  Our feet root us to the world and when they are dirty, they scream ‘I’ve been there!’  It’s a beautiful thing.  As Theoreau said: “Think of our life in nature, — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! the actual world! ...Contact! Contact!’  Sure, the blackened soles of Dar es Salaam aren’t likely to be from a day of hiking in the wild but they are a daily testimony that nature is inescapable.

In my opinion, this is the essence of what Jane is trying to preserve for the next generation: a chance for contact with the natural world – in our own back yards as much as in the opportunity to explore the pristine jungles and star filled skies of her youth.  The truth - that you don’t have to live in a jungle (urban or otherwise) to make efforts to be at peace in the world and work to sustain it – is inspiring.

Beauty in Arusha

I was back in Arusha last week.  On the way to town from the airport, one of my companions, a Tanzanian, looked up at the heavy peach clouds surrounding Mount Meru and said ‘wow, it’s so beautiful’.  It was, but what struck me was that to her it was still beautiful, after a lifetime of living in this country.

I’m currently reading In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro and recently came upon a passage about how visitors to Africa and more specifically the Rift Valley often feel like they are ‘home’.  In a way, it’s no wonder, the type of beauty that endures a lifetime in combination with our primordial yearnings is a potent cocktail.  Having stood and looked over the sweeping panorama of the cradle of civilization more than once in my time here, I’ve felt a glimpse of what the author described.  However, up until now, I would have called that feeling connected to, and overwhelmed by, a past more distant than I could imagine.

However, Africa (in general) as home is a concept I have always struggled with.  This is ironic, as I am literally a daughter of the continent.  In spite of this, (or because of it), for much of my life I have thought of my relationship with Africa, and specifically Nigeria, from where I hail, in terms of what I owe.  I have ruminated about the price for my good fortune to have been raised in a land of opportunity – my debt to the world.  True to this, I moved to Tanzania under the auspices of ‘development’ and ‘doing good’.

A year into my time here, I think I am finally letting down my defenses.  I think it’s because I’ve started realize what this content has given me.  My earliest interactions with the continent gave me perspective – there are other things to worry about than having the latest of anything.  As I grew older, it gave me courage – I still maintain that if you have left Murtala Muhammed Airport into a chaotic Lagos night, you can go almost anywhere.  And now that I am even older, it has given me a sense of belonging.  People recognize my name, joke about where I’m from, call this tawny-hued girl their sister.  And in that albeit partial acceptance, I think I’m finding freedom.  To explore the world and myself and with any luck, share the story.  When my friend said 'beautiful', I immediately responded – ‘yes, it is’.

"If ministers get sick, they go to India"

 “(undecipherable Swahili) wanasharia” came the response to our cab driver’s inquiry about why traffic had ground to a standstill.  The one word of a sentence I understand always catches my attention, but this time I was especially interested: wanasharia means lawyers.

I turned to my companion and asked with incredulity “the lawyers are protesting?”  He could hardly believe it either and responded “I don’t think so, I never heard anything about a protest today”.  Our cab driver, lamenting his misfortune at taking an ill-fated fare, made and abrupt turn into the shoulder of the road, cutting off a person doing the exact same thing.  A few minutes of weaving, heavy braking and intermittent cursing brought us to the main intersection that was the source of the blockage.

Approximately thirty people stood blocking off all corners of the T-intersection.  Many held placards saying something roughly translated as “if the ministers get sick, they go to India”.  Surrounding them were the mass of cars, trucks and bajajes, silenced by the midday anomaly.  Relieved of the false urgency that is Dar es Salaam traffic, passengers and drivers alike migrated towards the protesters – some to take pictures or record the latest on their i-pads, some to lend support, others, like our driver, to stage their own protest.

This was an impassioned, though peaceful protest.  One man implored “foreigners, see what we are doing to our people, Tanzanians, if you care, join us!”  Another woman, who I recognized, was having a heated argument with a commuter demanding that they stop blocking the intersection.  As it turns out, the protesters were lawyers.  A group from several local NGOs had banded together to block off the main artery in and out of the city’s commercial centre.  They were united by the increasingly desperate situation in public hospitals in throughout the country as a result of an ongoing countrywide doctors’ strike.  Their message: it is the government’s constitutional responsibility to protect the people’s right to health”.

Since January 23^rd, patients have been scrambling to procure frontline healthcare and were dealt another blow this weekend, when specialists who had up until then continued their services, opted to join the strike, ceding to the increasing strain.  This last move was the culmination of a deterioration of medical services that began with an intern strike over unpaid arrears late last year at Dar es Salaam's Muhibili National Hospital.

The doctors’ requests are not new: better pay, improved working conditions and the reinstating of the interns whose employment was terminated as a consequence of their strike.  The government has been engaged in negotiations with the doctors, but local news reveals that the public perceives it to be lax in its efforts to resolve the issue.  Adding fuel to frustrations is the recent substantial increase to sitting allowances of MPs (or ‘sleeping allowances’ as my assistant informed me, in reference to the frequent stream of pictures of MPs asleep during government sessions).   Many, including the opposition, see the raise as unjustifiable given the state of the country and in the context of the many other perks associated with government office. The doctors’ strike is just one of many supporting examples.

The failure to resolve the doctors’ strike is particularly egregious as its consequences can actually mean life or death, and that is exactly what is happening.  Poor Tanzanians with few alternatives are being denied treatment, including emergency services.  Regardless of the politics, their lives hang in the balance.  That was the clarion call of the lawyers this afternoon.

Never am I more exhilarated by my profession then when I see us speaking up for those without voices.  The power of peaceful protest is its ability for few to make known the plight of the many.  I was heartened by the calmness of the police and military as well as the general “there’s nothing we can do” sentiment of the crowd regarding the interruption.  Above the arguing, singing and exacerbated honking by frustrated travelers, I recalled something I once read, written by Arundhati Roy “Another world is in not only possible, she is on her way.  On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”  

Let’s hope she gets here soon.

Pictures

Circles

The Sunday before last I landed at Julius Nyrere International Airport at about 11:30 pm.  I was returning from a work trip in Nairobi and hadn’t paid much attention to my time of arrival when booking the ticket.  It was only during the course of the week when someone asked me how long I’ve been in Tanzania that I realized the significance.  I would be arriving at the airport, within minutes of being exactly a year to the date of my original arrival in Dar.

This time I knew that the signs on top of the customs terminals do not have any bearing on who can queue in which line and so made my way to the shortest.  Miraculously my suitcase was among the first off the conveyor belt and looking through the customs officers I walked out of the sliding doors and into the balmy night.  The cab driver I always use was waiting and we took the route we always take from the airport and I stared out the window at the patch work of lights and darkness and people and traffic that I always see on such trips.  A year is plenty of time to get familiar.

Later in the week I came home late one night to find a guard sleeping outside our gate in pieces of a cardboard box.  Not our guard, mind you, he was in the watch building on our compound, but another, random guard.  The following morning there was a knock on my door at 7:30 – and a request that a battery be changed somewhere in my apartment.  Returning fifteen minutes later when I was dressed for work, a man came into my apartment saying that the battery for the security service alarm needed to be replaced.  So early and so many questions: was this related to the guard sleeping outside? Where in my apartment was this alarm system?  While I was contemplating these clearly important questions, the man came back in with a ladder.  After a quick search of my apartment, he deduced that the way to the roof was through the vent above my washing machine.  Up he went.  Minutes passed.  I began to get caught up on my ever-important text correspondence.  Suddenly he’s back in my living room. “Torch?”  I dutifully retrieve my headlamp, the security of my building depends on it! Then I start to wonder – what was he doing up there all this time if he couldn’t see?  Amid a flurry of texts, my curiosity lapses and ten minutes later the exercise is finished. 

I get in my car and go to work.  As always, a dalla swerves out at me as I drive down the main road.  There is a man pushing a wooden wheelbarrow contraption on the road, like every morning.  Like clockwork, at a busy intersection, everyone remains determined to claim the right of way, to the detriment of us all.  

Yes, a year is plenty of time to get familiar.  But the nice thing is that here in Dar, I am always surprised.