more notes from a magical island

Swahili time. No, it's not a euphemism for "chronic lateness," but if you've spent much time in developing countries you'd be forgiven for making that assumption. ("Filipino time," "African time," and other such expressions all carry that connotation.) Swahili speakers really do have their own timekeeping system, which is simply Western time offset by six hours. So saa moja asubuhi, one o'clock in the morning, is 7:00 am; conversely, saa saba mchana, seven in the afternoon, is 1:00 pm. The photo above is of the most prominent clock tower in Zanzibar's Stone Town, and it was taken just after 3 pm. Most Tanzanians are equally conversant in both, and I've noticed that they seem to use Western time exclusively when speaking in English and Swahili time exclusively when speaking Swahili.

Why this crazy dual system, you ask? As I mentioned before, Tanzania has the typical equatorial schedule of sunrise at 6 am and sunset at 6 pm year-round, so Swahili time is like a running total of the hours in the day (or night). I've noticed that when I think in Swahili time, particularly in the morning, I feel a bit more urgency. (Saa mbili- two hours of daylight gone already and I haven't done anything yet!) It certainly makes sense for a preindustrial society, where daylight is all-important for doing almost anything.


Zanzibar's referendum. I just returned from another week of fieldwork in Zanzibar, and Stone Town was plastered with posters urging people to vote "yes" on a referendum that occurred last Saturday. In a previous post I mentioned Zanzibar's troubled electoral history; in recent times, the ruling party has eked out narrow wins over the main opposition party in elections marred by violence and allegations of tampering. The referendum was on a proposal for a Government of National Unity, in which the party that wins October's elections would get the Presidency and the Second Vice-Presidency the runner-up party would capture the First Vice-Presidency. Almost all of the posters I saw were for the "yes" side. The poster above says "Zanzibar Referendum 31 July 2010 / Choose Yes / A Yes Vote is a Vote for Zanzibar." The bottom of the poster below says "They all said yes! What about you?"


The referendum passed handily, with (not surprisingly) the most fervent support in areas dominated by the main opposition party. The Zanzibaris with whom I felt at liberty to discuss the referendum seemed pleased and guardedly optimistic about the result. However, a newspaper article I read back on the mainland expressed concern that voters were poorly informed about the referendum and that many had been intimidated into voting "yes" by discourse suggesting that voting otherwise was wishing chaos and instability on Zanzibar. I don't know how true that is, but gee, underinformed voters and demagogues questioning the patriotism of dissenters... good thing that doesn't happen in America!

[By the way, if any Zanzibaris happen to find my blog, I want to stress that I have no opinion about this referendum, the CCM or CUF, other than wishing a fair, peaceful and democratic process for Zanzibar. And that last comment about the U.S. is sarcasm- our politics are in a very sorry state indeed.]

But wait, isn't Zanzibar part of Tanzania? I haven't gone into detail about this before, but for those who are interested, here's a quick primer. The modern nation of Tanzania was formed by the union of the former colonies of Tanganyika and Zanzibar during the wave of African independence in the 1960s. That union has persisted to the present day, and it gives Zanzibar a status somewhere between a semiautonomous region and a nation-within-a-nation. The best analogy I've come up with so far is Scotland's position in the UK since 1999, when the Scottish parliament came onto the scene. Zanzibar's government has jurisdiction over "non-Union matters," while the national parliament (with a more-than-proportional share of Zanzibaris) controls defense, monetary policy, and the other usual suspects.

There are perennial rumblings about independence for Zanzibar, but I think the islands are too entwined with the mainland for that to be a realistic possibility in the near future. As different a place as this may be, I find a lot of uncanny parallels with American politics. There is an ongoing debate over how big a share of the national pie Zanzibar receives, with one side shouting "Zanzibar only has 3% of the population!" and the other shouting "it doesn't matter, we're equal in the Union!" Americans have been struggling with that one since the Constitutional Convention. The mainland is also a favorite whipping boy for Zanzibaris and a frequent target of blame for the archipelago's woes, in a way that will sound vaguely familiar to anyone who's heard someone rail against the evils of Washington, DC. I will readily admit that I don't have data to back this up, but I suspect that the relationship, far from being exploitative, redounds to Zanzibar's benefit. But even if that is the case, the question is always whether nationalist dreams trump material benefits. To quote our own President, that's a question far above my pay grade.

thievery in tanzania

Last weekend I made my first trip to Dar es Salaam's sprawling Kariakoo market, the largest in Tanzania. For block after block, merchants line the streets selling fruit and vegetables, cheap Chinese-made manufactured goods, kitchen utensils of dubious quality, suitcases, shoes, underwear, and all other necessities of life. A surprising, perhaps disconcerting, number specialize in long-bladed knives, which are usually presented in a haphazard pile on a mat by the side of the road. Kariakoo's crowded streets and passageways make it a perfect environment for pickpockets, so I came prepared. I left all plastic cards at home, stashed my phone at the bottom of my backpack (which was secured to my torso with a sternum strap), and brought a modest sum of cash under my clothes in a money belt, with less than $10 worth of Tanzanian shillings left in my wallet.

It didn't take long for my presence to be noticed. Within minutes of stepping off the daladala, and still on the outskirts of Kariakoo, I felt my leg briefly make contact with another pedestrian as we walked past each other in opposite directions. He called out for my attention and pointed to his leg, and I immediately thought, with some annoyance, that I was in for some bullshit claim that I had hurt him. As I watched with bafflement, he proceeded to scuff his foot on the ground, as if to suggest that I had just stepped in something and needed to wipe my foot off. I knew I hadn't stepped in anything, and it flashed through my mind that this was probably some bogus helpfulness intended to serve as a distraction--enhanced by the kinetic distraction of scuffing imaginary dog crap from my shoe. While this was happening, I sensed someone else at close range in my peripheral vision and felt something brush my right leg. Instinctively I clamped my hand over my right pocket and my wallet inside, and I whirled around in the direction of the second guy. As they both melted into the crowd, I hustled on my way, my wallet still safely inside my pocket. The whole thing probably went down in about two or three seconds.

The rest of my visit to Kariakoo passed without incident, and I returned home with all of my money, having been neither successfully robbed nor enticed to buy anything. Although the apparent pickpocketing attempt was unsuccessful, and although the sum of money I stood to lose was trivial, the experience left a bad taste in my mouth, and I made little effort to interact with anyone at the market.

Tanzania's U.S. government-assigned crime rating is "critical." I've been told by a knowledgeable person that the "critical" rating usually belongs to countries where gangs of armed bandits roam the streets with impunity. As my dear readers should know by now, Tanzania has no such gangs of armed bandits; in fact, violent crime against foreigners is extremely rare. But petty theft against Westerners is so overwhelmingly common here that, according to whatever grim calculus our government uses to decide these things, it adds up to roughly the equivalent of armed bandits in the streets. I see two related reasons for this, the first an indisputable fact and the second a little more speculative: (1) Tanzania is very poor, with a per capita GDP of just $1,416 per year. (2) Tanzania, I suspect, has more mainstream tourist appeal than most similarly impoverished countries. Few countries in Tanzania's income bracket can boast a roster of attractions comparable to the Serengeti, Mount Kilimanjaro, and Zanzibar, which draw backpacking college students and rich celebrities and everyone in between. Egypt is one African country with more blockbuster attractions than Tanzania, and it has staggering numbers of tourists to match, but the average Egyptian is over four times wealthier than the average Tanzanian. So I would hypothesize that it's the combination of severe poverty and abundant opportunities for theft that contribute to Tanzania's crime problem.

The other oddity about crime in Tanzania is that those who make their living from petty theft do so at great physical risk. For reasons I don't know and wouldn't care to guess, Tanzania has developed a culture of vigilante justice against thieves. If someone is caught in the act, witnesses will often yell out "mwizi!" (thief) and a crowd will converge to beat the criminal to a pulp. There is a story in circulation on the Peninsula about an American man who was tackled by a mugger while jogging and relieved of his wedding band. (As is almost always the case in these incidents, like the attempted carjacking I mentioned in the nightswimming post, he was acting against official advice by running alone in an area known to be unsafe.) When he recovered from the initial shock, he started to chase the assailant, drawing the attention of onlookers. The thief was beaten within an inch of his life and then hauled off to jail. The story goes that the American felt so bad for the thief that he located the jail and bailed him out.

The whole thing raises some interesting ethical quandaries. I could imagine presenting this scenario to an ethics class. The thief has full knowledge of the risks, and he initiates the first act of violence, if only violence against property. The victim of the theft could recover her property by making a ruckus, which will result in a high probability of serious physical violence against the thief and, let's say, some small but non-negligible probability of death. The victim knows she would be seriously inconvenienced, but not irreparably harmed, by the loss of her assets. The thief could be a polished professional or some guy desperate to feed his kids, the victim doesn't know. What, if any, ethical obligations does the victim have toward the thief? Discuss.

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And what better blog post could I choose than this one to announce that my parents are coming to Tanzania! The clock is running down on my internship, and I have two weeks of fun planned for afterward. For week 1 I will be joined by the lovely Kate, of Cameroon Peace Corps fame, and for week 2 Mom and Dad will join the traveling posse. As usual, you can expect a preview before the trip, followed by little to no posting during my actual travels, followed by lots of pent-up posts afterward. As Kate would say, yewaaaaaa!