I’m super loving the in-season (for at least 1.5 months now) mangoes! I don’t think I can ever eat the pineapples, mangoes, or any other tropical fruit back in Canada anymore….so spoiled.
The mangoes here are huge, juicy, fresh, sweet, and cheap…jealous yet? Indescribable taste and texture…mmmmm….
I’m think I should do a food post. I have some interesting food I like here :) I guess I just need photos of all of them.
Five out of seven days of the week, there’s no electricity from when work starts until the sun sets (8 am to 7 pm). Call it whatever you like – rationing, failure – it makes no difference. There’s actually a schedule put out by Tanesco (the para-statal that controls the electricity distribution) telling people at what time which parts of the city will have power cuts. In true Dar style though, the schedule is rarely followed.
Currently, it’s the hottest part of the year. Sitting in an office without even a fan is equivalent to a non-functioning brain. Of course, when there’s electricity, we get air conditioning; such luxury.
So, generators are essential. Not only to power our laptops, printers, and telephones, but to maintain our sanity. Unfortunately, due to an unequal office sharing agreement, the generator at my office is sometimes turned off without notice. Plus the generator breaks down without notice either. I’ve had more than once when I’ve nervously watched the minutes pass on my computer clock, crossing my fingers for the electricity to come on so I can print documents needed for a meeting. Thank goodness for a laptop with an 8-hour battery.
The fact is, this doesn’t happen because Tanesco is unable to provide reliable electricity. When I first arrived in August, there was electricity every day and night, dry season notwithstanding. It’s because the elections have passed and the politicians can’t be bothered anymore. Rumour has it that Tanesco signed a contract with an electricity provider, paid all the money in advance, and the provider squandered it all. Now the whole city is down. Can you imagine paying that much money in advance for a whole year of electricity for a city as big as Dar? Especially without anything to hold the provider responsible if they don’t provide as agreed? I simply can’t even fathom it. Of course, the government doesn’t admit to this rumour. I’ve only heard of it from my friend who is a reporter who heard of it from her reporter friends (yes, that’s how things work here, you hear it from someone who hears it from someone).
I take so much for granted back home. It’s humbling to be here, to experience how dependent I am on things to run as normal. There’s never a normal. At the most important timing, what can go wrong, will go wrong. We’ll just have to deal with it.
** Plus, the price of electricity went up by 18% after the elections. Surprise much?**
Land tenure in this city is just so messed up. Coming from two places where privatised individual ownership of land is the norm, it’s really, really hard for me to get my head wrapped around how badly the land reform was done in Dar es Salaam.
The fact that the urban farmers I work with don’t actually farm on legal land is old news. But I recently heard that the ferry terminal downtown is going to be teared down, because the terminal owner doesn’t actually own the land!
Can you imagine? Pour money into building a huge ferry terminal, just never bothered to make sure you owned the land that it’s going to be built on.
The land actually belongs to the Tanzanian Port Authority (TPA). And now the authority wants it back to build their new office complex.
Oh dear oh dear oh dear. I’m sure the story is more complex than that. It’s probably because the TPA didn’t want to sell the land, then the terminal building people paid someone in some high place, then they got the rights to build. But in the end, the land never officially changed hands, so now the TPA can come back to demand the land. Corruption seems to always crop up in stories of land. In fact, I heard that 95% of the planning department staff of one of the Municipalities in Dar got fired due to corruption charges. 95%. Blows your mind, doesn’t it?
I don’t think it’s possible to develop this city any further without a serious and coordinated attempt (with teeth) to formalize land tenure. If you want to work on a capitalist economic model, private ownership of land is one of the first things you need to get right!
According to this article:
“The success of the land reform is often mentioned among the factors which laid the groundwork for the “economic miracle” of the 1960s and 1970s, a nearly unprecedented transformation of once rural and impoverished Korea into a modern and developed nation.”
The thing is, there is so much corruption and not enough checks on people in power (i.e. whatever people in power say gets done, no opposition, no consideration of what feasibility studies say is the best to do) that without a strong political will from the high leadership, a good land reform would never happen.
I’m starting to doubt if making Master Plans actually have any effect at all. What’s the use when people high up can just simply say “no” after the whole process?
Sorry I haven’t been posting recently. I’ve been feeling a bit down; one part homesick and two parts stressed at what’s going to happen after this internship ends.
As of now, I still don’t know if I would be able to stay here for another year. I would really love to keep my job, since it’s work that I’m interested in, can learn a ton from, and it’s in Tanzania! But it will all depend if we get funding from one of the embassies that we applied to. Basically, if we do get the funding, there will be a large chance that I can stay with Sustainable Cities International (we changed our name) for another year. The announcement deadline was supposed to be in December… and then it was pushed to January. As with a lot of things here, deadlines pushed a few months late are nothing to be surprised over. Although it really doesn’t help my anxiety. And as per normal Tiffany behaviour, whenever I’m anxious or stressed, it’s hard for me to focus on work (or anything else for that matter). But my concentration is coming back, so I’m happy.
But maybe because of the anxiety, I’ve been (again) in addicted to dramas mode. Except this time it’s Korean dramas, not Japanese. Although watching Japanese ones would help me keep up my Japanese (goodness I haven’t said or read anything in Japanese for so long), Korean dramas are too awesome! I also use the excuse that I can study (simplified) Chinese with the subtitles :) and I’m picking up really random Korean words and somehow figuring out some basic grammar structure. Seriously, I almost wished I was learning Korean. And Swahili.
Anyways. More later.
There are two ways of understanding ‘happenings’ in life:
1. They happen for a reason.
2. Believe that they happen for a reason and act accordingly.
In reality, there’s no difference between the outcomes of the two ways of understanding. Whether they actually happen for a reason or that you believe they happen for a reason is actually the same thing.
Am I not making sense? Maybe. My eye is still swollen. I’m still stuck at home during my precious holidays. I’m pretty disappointed I won’t be able to go on my epic trip down to Zimbabwe.
But I guess since this infection and stay-at-home restraining order happened for a reason, I’ll use this time to sort out my life and my work (actually I started working again yesterday because I was just so damn bored. If anyone ever tries to tell me to stay at home and not work, I will instantly die from boredom). Maybe even get around to sending holiday greetings to people.
I’m mainly interested in the impacts of economic systems on marginalized communities. Most can agree that the capitalist system has failed to deliver its promises to the poorest of the poor in the drive for globalization. In my perspective, the capitalist model is fundamentally incompatible in servicing the poor and must be systematically changed for more equitable and sustainable development. My question is thus divided into threefold:
My intention is to use food security as an indicator to focus my research. Food security is chosen for a number of reasons:
Hence, I propose to investigate the linkage between the current global economic system and marginalized communities by looking at food security as a case study.
Riding on the dala dala is always eventful. If not the dripping sweat, sardine-like cramming type of eventful, then it’s the interesting cultural difference type of eventful. Here’s a few recent little surprises:
– someone just plopped their baby on my lap. According to my friends, this is quite common. People just trust you with their babies when the bus gets too crowded. Plus, everyone needs at least two hands, if not three, to hang on tight when there’s a crazy driver.
– people also plop their belongings on your lap. I guess if they can trust you with their babies, they can trust you with their belongings. I’ve also had people offer to take my bags when the dala gets crowded. Nothing has ever happened with any of my belongings. Apparently people just don’t steal on a dala (people on the street, however, often reach in through the windows when there’s a traffic jam; no texting in a traffic jam if you sit next to a window!). I guess mob justice can happen pretty badly in an enclosed space.
– for some reason, I often have lots of 50 Tsh coins (the smallest denomination). Conductors (there are two people who run a dala, the driver and the conductor who collects money and shouts out destination names/stuffs people into the dala) love changing money with me. Walking along dala routes, you would find tables with stacks of small coins. Apparently it’s quite a business, finding 50 Tsh coins and exchanging it with dala conductors.
– one time, a dala dala conductor had to jump off for a while (I’m assuming he really had to go to pee). People started getting off left, right, and centre (probably those who hadn’t pay). The other passengers actually jumped out and stopped some of them, saying something to the extent that you haven’t paid! Then even asked the driver to come off and get money from these people. But no one seemed ashamed at anything. As an aside, I find that here sometimes, people would tell you that you just paid 12,000 instead of 15,000, when you are sure you paid 15,000. When you tell them you don’t owe them anything, they don’t have any small facial expression of shame (as I would imagine at home, anybody would) that you had just caught them trying to cheat you. I’m not sure if this only happens to foreigners…
– music is always on in a daladala. Most likely very loudly. Though apparently not as loud as in South Africa.
– most of the daladalas are imported Japanese used school/hospital mini-buses. Some Hong Kong minibuses too (very nostalgic if I run into one). There smaller dalas that look like the school buses I rode when I was in primary school in HK. I keep thinking one day I’ll actually see one with a HK school name painted on it.
I was trying to find something in my email and I came across this little gem…a heated exchange between my parents and I:
i am not going to masters immediately because
1) I have had enough of only studying, I need some real life experience to motivate me to study more.
2) I don’t really know which field within development I want to focus on. It would be useless of me to go do a masters without really knowing what I want
3) I can find jobs that I am satisfied with for now without doing a masters.
4) I know I will go back and do my masters because I like studying, just not now (I have been studying non-stop for 16 years!!!!!!!)
5) I need real life work experience for me to learn better in graduate school
6) most of the programs I have been looking at encourage people to work for a few years before going into their graduate programs.
7) times have changed since you were in school. people now routinely take a few years off before going back to graduate school
8) everyone who has worked in the field that I have met this year has said it was better to have a few years of work experience before going into graduate school
9) everyone has a graduate degree these days when they are finally going out to look for long term work. Having a graduate degree doesn’t make you stand out, having good work experience does.
10) i am still young and i want adventure. i want to travel and meet more people before I have more responsibilities
11) I have not really started looking at graduate schools. I have not talked to enough people to know which school is good for my field. And grad school usually starts in september, so the application deadline is in january. there is not enough time!!!
12) i want to enjoy my last few months at ubc without having to worry about all this. i want to do well in my classes, organize more activities and get to know more people
13) i don’t want to. i have a good feeling about taking one or two years off. most of my life i have followed my feelings and they have not yet disappointed me.
14) one or two years taken out of my education is nothing. it will help me gain much more than what i will lose. in fact, i cannot think of anything i will lose by starting graduate school one or two years later.
In solidarity with those whose parents love you but are pushy about getting “more educated.”
There were no fans. My head was pounding. My eye was tearing. Rapid-fire Kiswahili echoed in the room.
I was in a meeting today where I was supposed to be the facilitator. I was a bit sick and I felt it would be better if the flow of the meeting wasn’t interrupted as much with the translation of every sentence. So I asked the stakeholders to facilitate the meeting. Result: much boredom and more energy to dwell on my now raging headache.
Honestly, though, I’m glad. This network we’re trying to form has to come from their initiative. I’m just the facilitator. My job is to sit there and just jump in when needed. At least we got a lot discussed.
Unfortunately, I’m not really sure when I’m needed because of the language barrier. It’s so hard to facilitate a meeting in a different meeting culture in a completely different language.
I’m sick with conjunctivitis*; first time sick since I’ve been on this continent. Darn, I can’t brag that I’ve never been sick here now.
Come to think about it, I’ve been remarkably sick-less these days. In Canada, I would have had at least two colds by now. I think it’s the stress. When you’re at school, all nighters are so common. Here, nothing would make me sleep less than I need, except maybe the occasional day where I have something at work I need to finish. (actually, I don’t usually get sick in summer in Canada…no school!)
I’m not that careful either. I tend to have this silly philosophy that if I slowly introduce potentially disease-inducing materials into my body a bit at a time, it would make me less susceptible to major sicknesses. Hence, I don’t carry around hand sanitizer (nor wash my hands with the really harsh soap that is usually provided; sometimes I think it’s probably worse to wash with that…I eat mostly with a spoon anyways). I occasionally drink tap water from home if I’m just lazy or there’s no bottled water. I don’t fret if muddy water splashes on me on the road. I eat street food all the time. In Canada, if things drop on the floor, I still eat it (most of the time). Yeah, gross, I know.
I went to see a doctor at CCBRT. My friend who lives upstairs works there. They have amazing doctors there, thank goodness. Plus, they run on a model where the rich patients subsidize the poor ones. I pay more and those who can’t afford don’t have to pay. Definitely something I can support.
But now I have fever-like symptoms of a headache and a sore throat. And a swollen and itchy eye. Doubly great since it’s almost the holidays…
*More commonly known as pink eye. Apparently, it’s called red eye here (just like in Cantonese).
