On a different note

Two years ago, I spent a few months working in Northern Uganda. It was an eye opening experience. Northern Uganda has been wracked by a long running civil war, the hallmark of which has been the abduction of children by the Lord's Resistance Army. These abducted children become child solidiers, porters or sex objects. An article in Saturday's Globe & Mail (www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081024.wongwen1024/BNStory/International/home) examines how international law deals with people who were abducted by the LRA and who commited crimes during the course of the civil war while they were still legally considered to be children and after they crossed the legal threshold into adulthood. It makes for an interesting read.

If you are interested in supporting the children of Northern Uganda, donations can be made through the Gulu Walk website at http://guluwalk.com/

These are the days of my life

It has been a quiet couple of weeks in Dar, as we have started to fall into routines and established something of a social network. There is a crowd of young expats that live in or around our apartment building, which makes socialising very easy. We have fallen into the habit of having dinner together once or twice a week. This week, it was our turn and crepes were the order of the day. Thankfully, Cristiano had packed a little Canadiana in the form of souvenir bottles of maple syrup. The maple syrup definitely added a little something to our dinner.

We have also taken advantage of the European film festival that has been running for the past 2 weeks. Its big selling point is that it is FREE and that it has great movies. My favourite so far was “The Lives of Others”. It is a German movie about East Germany when it was behind the iron curtain and the role of its secret service, the Stasi. I would highly recommend seeing it, if you haven’t already.

Other than that, we continue to take Swahili lessons and, on my part at least, experience marginal improvements in my ability to communicate in Swahili (Cristiano has fast-tracked his Swahili with a three week intensive course). When our Swahili teacher arrived at our apartment on Monday night, she asked if she could put her chicken somewhere. I offered to put it in the fridge so it would stay cold. She laughed at me and opened the plastic bag to reveal a little, white chicken peering out at me. It was a very African moment.

I wasn’t thrilled when I first found out I was going to Dar. I had gone through Dar a couple of years previously and my impression was of a dirty, chaotic city teeming with somewhat unfriendly people. It is still a dirty and chaotic city, but I have had a change of heart. As I did my aerobics class yesterday morning to the beat of African bongo and the enthusiastic yips of a little Indian woman in front of me, I realised I really like living in Dar. I like the energy, the good natured joshing on the dalla dalla in the mornings, the generally helpful people and just about everything else. There are moments when I wish I was elsewhere like when the dalla dalla is stampeded or the power goes out for several hours. However, all in all, I heart Dar (or at least for the moment I do).

Hitting the Trail

In a quest to explore more of Tanzania, I headed to the Usambara Mountains for the weekend. The U Mountains are in northern Tanzania, approximately a 7 hour bus ride from Dar. Unfortunately for me, it turned out to be a 12 hour bus ride. There is one main road connecting the coastal region with northern Tanzania and a semi-trailer had jack-knifed on one of the bridges on this road, completely blocking it off. It took 4 hours for the semi to be moved. In the meantime, the traffic backed up the hill and into the horizon, passengers lounged under trees, and enterprising local villagers stopped by to hawk boiled eggs, cashew nuts and drinks. There was an audible sigh of relief when we crossed the bridge. An hour later, the bus grated to a stop in the middle of nowhere. It had run out of oil and the nearest garage was more than an hour away. After admiring the horizon for a while and watching other buses steam by, it became apparent that there were local dalladallas going to Lushoto, my ultimate destination. With the aid of a fellow passenger, I flagged one down and continued on my way.

In Lushoto, I stayed at a church-run hostel, Tumaini. I highly recommend it. It is cheap, comes with all the good stuff (power, mozzie nets & hot water) and has a great restaurant attached to it. While eating dinner, I met an American couple and we decided to sally forth the next day on a 2 day hike. Little did I realise that we would be hiking 16kms a day; I would have ditched my guidebook. The hiking was amazing. We went from subsistence farming plots to rain forest to rugged hillsides. Over the two days, we went through numerous little villages where “hellos, hellos” rained down on us from the hillsides and little feet shyly followed us. In front of us, beautifully erect women put Eliza Dolittle to shame as they walked up the hill with perfectly balanced hoes/rocks/baskets on their heads. From the villages we walked through, I got the impression that the income level is fairly low and the women work incredibly hard.

The highlights of my visit to the U Mountains were tromping through the rainforest while it poured and the frogs commented full throatily on the state of the world; and then, we stayed at a convent. There were a score of young, black nuns who seemed delighted to see us and even happier to fill us up with fresh bread and hot tea. Both of which were welcome after our hour long soaking. The convent was beautiful and extremely quiet. Hiking through the mountains was an amazing way to see what rural Tanzania is all about and to enjoy being outside. However, by the end of the 2 days, I was more than happy to put my pack down and curl into bed for a long sleep.

Day 3 started bright and early, as we had a 4 am bus to catch. We had spent the night in a town called Mtae. There is no power in Mtae and there is only one bus a day, which leaves at 4 am. If you miss that bus, you have a long walk ahead of you, as there aren't any private vehicles and you would be hard pressed to find someone who would lend you their bike. A quick bus change over in Lushoto and several hours later, and I was back in the heat of Dar.

You may have noticed, I'm not gifted with posting multiple pics directly into my blog. However, I've added a new link to my the pics from the Usambara Mountains in the side bar.

Death to the Death Penalty

Tanzania is one of 25 countries that retain the death penalty. In Tanzania, the offence of murder carries a mandatory death sentence, while a person may be sentenced to death for committing various treasonous offences. It has been 14 years or so since the last person was hung, but the death penalty continues to be on the books and death row continues to fill up.

October 10th is the world day against the death penalty. The LHRC marked this occasion by organising an early morning march from the suburbs of Dar to downtown Dar. The march ended on a large field where a band of actors depicted the less savoury side of the death penalty and activists gave impassioned speeches calling for the end of the death penalty. The government has rather infamously stated that it will abolish the death penalty, if the public makes it clear to the government that they want it to be abolished. This stance was adopted by the Court of Appeal in a 1995 decision in which it quashed a trial judge’s finding that the death penalty was inhumane and thus unconstitutional. Until last week, the use of the death penalty remained unchallenged. On October 10th, the LHRC, the Tanganyika Law Society and a regional NGO filed a petition challenging the constitutionality of the death penalty. It will be interesting to see how the government addresses this petition. There is increasing international pressure for Tanzania to abolish the death penalty and a study done by the Law Reform Commission of Tanzania recommends the same, despite its finding that the public still support the use of the death penalty.

I have all these fun facts about the death penalty because I’ve just drafted the subsection of the Human Rights Report that deals with the death penalty. After 2 months of solid research, it seemed like an appropriate time to start writing the report. Besides, if I let the research material pile any higher, it will irrevocably swamp my desk and I would never find my keyboard. The next few weeks will be a big push to get a skeleton version of the report drafted before the heady days of late November hit. November is going to be a busy month, as I am meant to be travelling to Zanzibar to train the Zanzibar Legal Services Centre on how to write the human rights report; the LHRC is having its annual retreat to assess its performance this year; and, LHRC employees (at least those who choose to) are going to climb Mt Kili to mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to promote women’s rights in Tanzania.

To be or not to be a public holiday

On mainland Tanzania, approximately half the population is Muslim and the other half is Christian. These percentages change when you get to Zanzibar where there are approximately 90% Muslim and 10% Christian. For the past month, the Muslim population has been celebrating Ramadan. The outwardly signs of Ramadan are that the evening call to prayer is extended from about 10 minutes to 30 minutes (there are 5 calls to prayer per day) and several restaurants close, as there is a sharp reduction in business because the Muslim population is fasting. The fast lasts from 4 a.m. until 6:30 p.m. when the sun sets. The end of Ramadan is marked by Eid al Fitr, a two day holiday. As Eid occurs at the first sighting of the new moon, it is a little difficult to predict when exactly Eid is going to fall. It is not enough that a calendar says there should be a new moon; the new moon has to be sighted by a specially appointed person. On Tuesday evening, we eagerly awaited text messages confirming that Eid started on Wednesday. The moon was sighted and the holiday was on. It all worked out rather well for me, as it gave Wes and I a chance to hang out on Wednesday before he left on a jet plane to the UK.

As Eid fell on Wednesday and Thursday (and not Thursday and Friday as hoped), plans to get out of Dar for the long weekend were scrapped. Instead, Cristiano and I took off on a dalla dalla to visit a village called Gezolole that, according to our guidebooks, had a budding local arts scene. After bumping down a dirt road, the dalla dalla stopped and we were gently told that we had reached Gezolole. My first impression was that there was not a lot to Gezolole, other than a few scattered buildings and some extremely healthy looking chickens. We quickly found out that the budding arts scene had died on the vine. However, Gezolole does have a beautiful beach that is populated by groups of young children harvesting molluscs from the low tide pools.

Lost in Translation

After a couple of weeks of Swahili lessons and several hours exploring the wonders of the Rosetta Stone, I have a few more Swahili words at my disposal. My ability to greet people has increased ten-fold, as I can now enquire about a person’s house, job and children. There are small victories, such as being able to bargain in Swahili or partly understand directions. However, there are also moments of sheer incomprehension. These moments tend to occur when the conversation strays away from certain basic topics and words are flying through the air at a rapid rate. For instance, I was not aware that the LHRC was holding a party to celebrate its 16th anniversary until the morning of the party when something about an anniversary slipped out in English in the morning meeting.

And then, there are the lost in translation moments. In one of my first Swahili lessons, my teacher, Mama Jengo, and I rambled our way through eight or nine different greetings. The most common greeting is “Mambo” to which there are a number of responses including “poa”, “fresh”, “sufi” and “kuku”. I expressed a bit of doubt about “kuku” being an appropriate response. “Kuku” means chicken. I was assured that all the cool kids were using “kuku” these days. Determined to be a cool kid (and show off my new acquired Swahili), I used “kuku” the next time one of the co-workers greeted me with a “mambo”. My co-worker looked at me with astonishment and then started to laugh. She laughed so hard tears rolled down her cheeks. This process was repeated about 10 times, as the “kuku” story spread through the office. Needless to say, I am a bit of a trendsetter.

In a similar vein, when Wes and I were on Zanzibar, we ate at Fordhani Gardens a few times. During the day, Fordhani Gardens is an alleyway. At night, it transforms itself into a bustling food court. Tables of all shapes and sizes line the alleyway, each piled high with either seafood kebabs or Zanzibarian pizzas and manned by an enthusiastic tout. Tucked between these tables are the more reserved drink stalls with their sodas, cane juice and chai masala. After sampling a fair amount of seafood, Wes and I headed off to the chai masala stall. My Swahili was going strong, until the man asked how many guards I would like in my tea. I was a little taken a back, until it became clear he was asking how much sugar I wanted in my tea. The word for guards, “askari”, to my ear is very close to the word for sugar, “sukari”. It is definitely a learning process and I have a fair bit of learning to go.

Mwezi, Mwezi!

Over the past couple of weeks, Wes has been steadily exploring every inch of downtown Dar. To the extent that he is now more conversant with the nooks and crannies of Dar than either Cristiano or I. On Saturday, Wes gave me an orientation to downtown Dar with an emphasis on Indian restuarants, the best place to get ice cream and traversing Kariakoo, a bustling part of town where goods of all shapes and sizes are sold. Kariakoo on a Saturday is similar to a disturbed bee hive with hundreds of people walking shoulder to shoulder in all directions. It was very alive.

While meandering around, we took a walk down the jewellery street. In Dar, like many other cities, shops that sell the same type of goods tend to line up together on the same street. For instance, there will be a stretch of hardware stores with brooms, plungers and mousetraps cheek by jowl for 500m and then there won't be another hardware store to be found anywhere else in the city. As we were walking down the street, this guy grabbed the bottom of my pants and started going off in Swahili. Naturally, I turned my body towards him to try to figure out what was going on. At the time, I was standing in front of a generator that was busily puffing out heat and gasoline fumes so I thought perhaps something from the generator had splashed onto my pants. As I turned, I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. It was buddy's partner's hand snaking towards my pant's pocket. A quick yell and our "friends" quickly merged into the crowd. As it turns out, they tried to pickpocket Wes at exactly the same time. Talk about strength in numbers. At the end of the day, they were totally unsuccessful but it gave us a little adrenalin rush. It would have been rather amusing if the guy had got his hand in my pocket and made off with the large wad of forest green....toilet paper, an essential for every female traveller. Cristiano had a similar experience about a month ago, which was also unsuccessful. Both Wes and Cristiano have a well-developed "slap my hands on my pant pockets" instinct.

I am told that mzungus are frequent targets of pickpockets. My colleagues have advised me to keep my money in my bra in future. The theory is that even the most brazen thief is not going to feel you up to get your money. They have also advised me to shout "Mwezi, mwezi!", which means thief, thief. This time, I didn't have the presence of mind to shout anything, other than "No". Very useful hey. I have little doubt that people would come to our assistance if we shouted thief. However, I would be a little concerned as to the form that the assistance may take. For the Human Rights report, I have literally read hundreds of newspaper articles on various topics that are relevant to the report. One of these topics is mob violence. There have been a number of instances this year where a thief has been caught by a crowd and beaten or killed for his alleged crime (it is almost always a man). It is my understanding that people sometimes take matters into their own hands because they are frustrated with and have little confidence in the judicial system. I can understand their position, as the judicial system seems to leak like a sieve and it can take years for a person to be prosecuted. However, I'm a bit of a traditionalist and prefer doing it the good old way, which starts with a person's arrest.