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.

***

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!

the food blog

There are some people who can take pictures of food and make it look appetizing, and who enjoy posting those pictures on the internet. My friend Lindsey - to this day the only person whose friendship I owe completely to blogging - puts up pictures on facebook that I occasionally feel tempted to use as recipes. Suffice it to say that I'm not one of these food-picture-taking people. I feel about as comfortable taking a picture of my plate at a restaurant as I would feel, say, attending the Republican National Convention. But my faithful readers deserve to know about what I've been eating in Tanzania, so with apologies for my food photography skills, I present, for possibly the only time, Shawn's food blog.


Ugali. We begin our tour with the shapeless blob of starch you see on the plate above. Shapeless blobs of starch are common as staple foods in Africa, and Tanzania's version is known as ugali. Largely flavorless but undeniably filling, ugali serves as a sort of gustatory canvas for sauces, vegetables, and for the fortunate, meat. It comes in two main types, corn and cassava. Both are nutritionally marginal and are what an economist would call "inferior goods," but the cassava-based stuff, pictured above, is especially looked down upon. Which is really too bad, because I find it tastier than its maize-based sibling. If you were at a roadside restaurant in Dar es Salaam and craved the repast pictured above, you'd want to order ugali dagaa, ugali and sardines. The usual formula for a meal name is the name of the starch followed by the name of the protein, with no conjunction in between; thus wali samaki is "rice and fish" and chipsi kuku is "chips [fries] and chicken."


Instant coffee. Coffee lovers, weep. East Africa may produce delicious coffee beans, but from what I can tell, most of them are exported elsewhere. Instead in our office we have the product pictured above, which I drink out of desperation. In my normal life I take my coffee black, just like Dad taught me, but this stuff requires a hefty dose of powdered milk and sugar before I will consider drinking it.


Chipsi mayai. I don't know if there's a term for comfort food in Swahili, but chipsi mayai (the latter word is pronounced like "my eye!") certainly fits that bill. The name means "chips and eggs," and it's really just a mass of precooked french fries glued together with eggs. It reminds me a little of the omelette spaghetti I enjoyed in Cameroon. The specimen above is topped with shredded vegetables, and on the side of the plate you can see a pile of salt and a some pilipili (chili peppers) in case you want a little kick. It's also good with ketchup, though be warned that the Tanzanian stuff is watery compared to good ol' Heinz.



Ndizi nyama. This may be my favorite Tanzanian dish so far. Ndizi nyama means "bananas and meat," and it consists of beef cooked in a tomato-based sauce with bananas. Not plaintains, mind you, but real, honest-to-goodness bananas. I haven't tried making it myself, and I can only assume that they use slightly underripe bananas to prevent the finished product from becoming chunks of beef floating in fruit puree. In the other segments of the plate you can see some greens and maharage (beans), which are common side dishes.


Machungwa. It's not my most photogenic moment, but I wanted to illustrate the proper Swahili technique for eating machungwa (oranges). The oranges here are absolutely delicious, and they're sold in abundance by the side of the road anywhere you go. They are delivered sliced in half, often with the rind partially peeled away in an artistic-looking fashion. Rather than peeling and eating--a procedure I personally don't much like owing to sticky hands and that bitter white layer--people squeeze and slurp the juice and pulp. You probably lose some fiber this way, but it can't possibly be worse than drinking it from a carton.

night swimming

By now I’ve been through the process of moving to a new place and fitting together all the pieces of a new life many times. Sometimes those pieces come together easily and seamlessly, and other times the process is long and fraught with difficulty. For the most part, Tanzania has been easy. For about my first month, though, there was one serious conundrum: how to get my normal dosage of exercise.

Four factors conspire to make working out a challenge for me here. The first is my commute, which can take up to an hour depending on traffic. The second is the daily rhythm of light and dark: Tanzania is on the typical equatorial schedule of sunrise at 6, sundown at 6 all year round. The third is the abundance of crime on the Msasani Peninsula, where I live (more on that in a moment); combined with the first two factors it means that there is rarely a time during the week when I’m home and it’s safe for me to run or ride a bike. The fourth is a shortage of options. There is one gym that I know of on the peninsula, and it charges the equivalent of $15 per workout—not really a sustainable solution for an intern’s budget. I have splurged and gone a few times, and I discovered that access to the place is controlled by a fingerprint scanner, which may explain why it costs $15 to get in. It’s the first time I’ve ever used such a device, and it frequently malfunctions, requiring a staffer to override it. This high-tech absurdity is right at home on the Peninsula.

Just as I resigned myself to returning to the U.S. flabby and out of shape, I discovered Funky’s. I struggle a little to explain what the place is to my friends, but “multipurpose family fun center” is a serviceable description. Inside its floodlit interior of its walls, Funky’s has a basketball court, an inflatable castle, a skateboard park where the teenage children of U.S. government personnel hang out, and a fast food chain that bizarrely uses Native American imagery in its advertising. More to the point, it has a 25-meter pool with lap lanes that stays open until 10 pm every night. It’s not the world’s most pleasant pool, to be sure—the underwater lights combined with the paint job give it a sickening, metallic blue-green glow. The lights themselves remind me of the headlights of an 18-wheeler closing in. Usually I have the pool to myself. Occasionally I overlap with a British woman, and we’ve exchanged pleasantries a few times, but an activity that keeps your face in the water most of the time doesn’t really lend itself to socializing. Once in a while there are some teenagers of ambiguous nationality hanging out in the water too. (Not to worry, Mom, there is always a staffer watching the pool from the sidelines.)

The process of getting to Funky’s is not ideal either. Even though it’s within a 10-minute walking distance of where I live, a taxi is a must after dark, especially because the route passes a pair of abandoned apartment buildings that act as a base for muggers and carjackers. While I was in Zanzibar the first time, there was an incident where an expat woman and her 14-year-old son were (unwisely) driving with their windows down, and two carjackers sprang on them as they stopped at the intersection near the abandoned buildings. The attempt was foiled when the mom bit one would-be carjacker’s arm hard enough to draw blood as he reached for the keys, and the son kicked the other guy in the junk as he opened the passenger side door. Though the attempt was unsuccessful—kudos to mom and son for being total badasses— it was a good reminder to everyone not to let their guard down around here. I always keep the doors locked and windows up, and I usually ride to Funky’s with the American expat community’s favorite cabbie, a guy who goes by the name of Smoker.

It took a while for me to figure out how an underpaid mzungu can get exercise in Dar es Salaam, but Funky’s is now a treasured part of my routine. I'll be glad to return to the U.S. in something better than awful shape, and my night sessions at Funky's are a useful reminder that when there's a will, there's always a way.

fun (?) with swahili

Warning: this is going to be one of the dorkiest blog entries that I write all summer, so if you don't fancy hearing my armchair linguistical musings, you have my full permission to skip this one. Now, for whoever's left, on with the dorkfest!

The Lion King. Now’s as good a time as any to share that many of the African-sounding words in Disney’s The Lion King come from Swahili. A few of the characters’ names are Swahili words, including Simba (lion), Rafiki (friend), and Pumbaa (the root of a verb meaning “to be foolish”). Hakuna Matata is a real Swahili phrase, and it means something pretty close to “no worries,” though most Swahili speakers seem to prefer the equivalent expression hamna shida. Word about the movie has apparently gotten out among the street peddlers in Zanzibar, because hakuna matata usually one of the first things they trot out to tourists. The movie is not consistent throughout, though. While studying Swahili back in the States, I was a bit disappointed to learn that the opening call and chant in “The Circle of Life” is not in Swahili—it’s Zulu.

Onomatopoeia. One of my favorite Swahili words is pikipiki (motorcycle) and I loved it even more when I learned of its onomatopoeic origins. Apparently pikipiki is an imitation of the sound that old-school motorcycles used to make when people revved up the engine. Similarly, the village of Bububu on Zanzibar draws its name from the sound of old steam locomotives on the island’s first railway. Some Swahili words of older vintage that I suspect of being onomatopoeic are mbwa (dog), chafya (sneeze), and miayo (yawn).

Loanwords. Like many languages, Swahili is loaded with words from other languages. The big sources of loanwords that I’m aware of are (in decreasing order of importance) Arabic, English, and Portuguese. But as tends to happen with loanwords, many have gotten mangled to suit local pronunciation, with frequently charming results. This happens because while we’re all born with a lot of linguistic flexibility, our ability to form certain types of sounds atrophies quickly in childhood if those sounds aren’t present in our native tongue. This is why so many Filipinos struggle with the “f” sound, why many native Spanish speakers have to throw in a vowel before an English word beginning with “s,” and why it’s so difficult for many English speakers to master the rolled r’s and guttural sounds in other languages.

Swahili speakers really don’t enjoy ending words with consonants, so most English loanwords have an extra vowel—most frequently “i”—tacked onto the end. Therefore, a taxi driver will give you a lifti to your destination, and if you pay with a large bill you’ll collect your chenji. While traveling you will surely stay at a hoteli, but hopefully you’ll avoid the hospitali and the kituo cha polisi (police station). I and many of the Americans I know have started using some of these words even in conversation with each other, and it’s a running joke that if you’re at a loss for a Swahili word, adding “i” to an English word is a reasonable guess. I even hear lots of Tanzanians throwing in some extra i’s when speaking English—the word “just” seems to be tricky because it frequently becomes “justi.” Sometimes the letter “u” serves this function as well: you can call your friends on a simu (from SIM card) and indulge in some cold aiskrimu. Occasionally, Swahili goes the other way and deletes a final consonant; “r” is a frequent victim, giving the language a Bostonian touch whenever one plays soka or enlists the services of a dereva (driver).

Placenames. I always enjoy learning placenames in a new language because I think it provides some clues to a culture’s sense of geography. I was especially intrigued by the Swahili names for countries and continents. This is pure speculation on my part, but I imagine that one can get a sense of people’s evolving mental map of the world based on how Swahilified different placenames are. The name for Europe, Ulaya, seems pretty much unintelligible in terms of any European term for the continent, so I would guess that Swahili people had some awareness of a large land mass to the north before European infiltration took place. Portugal was the first arrival on the scene, and its name looks similarly obscure: Ureno. I learned from the Swahili wikipedia that the name comes from the Portuguese word for “king,” and it originated when Vasco de Gama and other explorers announced that the King of Portugal had sent them. By the time we get to England, Uingereza, we have a name that’s clearly derived from the real European name but still a bit garbled. The real johnny-come-latelies, like Marekani and Kanada, have names that sound pretty much like their English name with a Swahili accent- and once in a while, an extra vowel at the end.

how i learned to love world cup soccer

The story goes that when I was a little sprout, my parents brought me down to the playing fields near my future high school on the opening day of the local youth soccer league to see if I wanted to play. I'm told that I watched the proceedings for a couple of minutes, turned to Mom and Dad and said, "no thanks."

My feelings about soccer changed little over the two decades and change that followed. I confess that before this summer's tournament started, I learned that the Philippines did not even try out for the Cup and took that as further proof that the Philippines and I were made for each other. I watched the Team USA's opening match, against England, with a rowdy group of Americans on a big outdoor screen here in expat-land. I could barely pay attention during the game, and I expressed incredulity when it ended in a draw and everyone went home. What kind of game is fine with not even having a winner?

Yet being in Africa for the first World Cup ever on African soil made a convert even out of me, as I secretly hoped it might. Tanzanians are passionate about The Beautiful Game, and even though the national team did not make the Cup, it was still the talk of the country for the last month. Since watching soccer was the only way to have a social life here for most of June and the first part of July, I resolved to make the most of it. I watched Cameroon play Denmark - two disparate countries I visited a span of 19 days last year - from a roadside dive bar packed with Tanzanians. The atmosphere was raucous, the Konyagi (a gin-like Tanzanian liquor) freely flowing. A smattering of vuvuzelas, uhhhh, enlivened the festivities. (You think they're annoying on TV?) In spite of myself, I started enjoying it. I also had the honor of providing real-time updates by text message to a bunch of Peace Corps volunteers in Cameroon, who were stuck without electricity when the demands of all those TVs blew out the grid in the extreme north province. Sadly, after Cameroon's opening goal I had no further good news to share with them.

I was on safari in Mikumi for the U.S. team's elimination at the hands of Ghana. I watched that match the way I imagine the majority of people on this continent watched it: standing, huddled around a 22" screen. The only TV at our resort was in the staff quarters, and they graciously accommodated our group of Americans. By that point, the continent's hopes for World Cup glory were pinned on Ghana, and the pan-African solidarity was palpable here. When the Ghanaians scored, the place erupted in jubilation while the Americans fretted. Well, all but one of the Americans. The prettier half of "Elawn" was rooting for Ghana, owing to her two years working there after college. Traitor.

After Team USA's elimination I pivoted quickly to rooting for Ghana as the sole remaining represenative of Africa. I witnessed their heartbreaking loss to Uruguay in a quieter setting: at home with my American host dad. It's hard to sustain the claim that soccer is not an exciting game after such a match. When Asamoah Gyan's late-game penalty shot deflected off the crossbar, my heart hit the floor. Somehow, in the span of just a few weeks, I'd come to care about soccer.

My conversion hasn't just been about the game itself, of course. Shakira's "Waka Waka" and K'naan's "Waving Flag" are now indelibly etched as part of the soundtrack of my Tanzanian summer. (Funny that it took Coca-Cola to bring forward a World Cup anthem that features, you know, an actual African.) I have also had the pleasure of reading How Soccer Explains the World, which certainly doesn't live up to the promise implied by its title but still offers a lot of great storytelling. Most of all, I have appreciated the way the World Cup has enabled me to interact with Tanzanians on - pardon the expression - a more level field than almost any other topic. There are a lot of things that can get in the way of mutual understanding across cultures, but not many of them apply to soccer. Nelson Mandela, whose country hosted the Cup so well, grasped the power of sport to unite and reconcile. I am starting to see what he was getting at.

there's something about tanzania

Apologies, dear readers, for my long absence. I spent the last week doing another round of field work in Zanzibar, and both time and internet access were once again scarce. I have a little bit of a backlog of topics to write about, so look for posts in the coming days about how I learned to love the World Cup, some more musings about Swahili, and what I do for exercise in Dar es Salaam. Surely they will all be as fascinating as always.

Among the countries in its East African neighborhood, Tanzania is something of a model citizen. As I mentioned in my first post, Tanzania has an enviable record of peace and stability. Its résumé of large-scale armed conflict is breathtakingly short. There was a short war with Uganda in the late 70s, and before that one would have to reach deep into the colonial era to the Maji Maji Rebellion in 1907. Contrast that with the troubled histories of many of its neighbors: Uganda (see Amin, Idi), Rwanda (self-explanatory), and the Democratic Republic of Congo (site of the bloodiest, most hellish and least-known war of the 21st century). Kenya, Tanzania's closest relative, teetered on the brink of mass electoral violence while a man of half-Kenyan ancestry was mounting a successful campaign for President of the United States. Tanzania has won plaudits in the international community for successfully absorbing refugees from its neighbors' conflicts. Tanzania's term-limited presidents have regularly left office voluntarily, and the current President, Jakaya Kikwete, is by all accounts sincere, competent, and well-liked.

Tanzania's record is all the more remarkable given that its boundaries are no less of a colonial fiction than those of any other African country. In most African countries, it is often said, people identify first and foremost with their tribe and ethnic group and little, if at all, with their country. Tanzanians, in contrast, really think of themselves first as Tanzanians. In fact, it is considered bad form here to make a fuss about or inquire too extensively into someone’s ethnic heritage. One of my coworkers, a Muslim from the north, is married to a Christian woman from the middle of the country. This fact obviously gives him pride, but he is also quick to emphasize how unremarkable such a pairing is in Tanzania.

Tanzania's cohesiveness is, more than anything else, a product of public policy. In that first entry I also briefly mentioned Julius Nyerere, the founder and first president of Tanzania, still known and loved as mwalimu (“teacher”). Nyerere launched a program of African socialism known as ujamaa (“familyhood”). In economic terms, ujamaa was an unqualified disaster, a fact that Nyerere ultimately recognized and that drove him from office. Still, Nyerere managed somehow to build a Tanzanian national identity, glued together with his promotion by word and policy of Swahili as a national language. “The policies didn’t last,” a senior official at the Embassy observed to me and some other interns, “but they were in place long enough for something to gel.”

There is one big caveat to everything I've said so far, and that is Zanzibar. I will save a discussion of the archipelago's complicated relationship with the mainland for another time. But its last two rounds of elections, in 2000 and 2005, were marred by violence, most notably a massacre of protestors in 2001. On political freedoms and human rights, the islands compare unfavorably to the mainland. Zanzibar's independence from the Sultanate was born of a bloody revolution in 1964, which killed and drove out many of the formerly powerful Arabs and South Asians. Among those who fled was the family of young Farouk Bulsara, whom the world would later come to know as Freddie Mercury.

There are two great ironies built into this contrast between Zanzibar and the mainland. The first is that Zanzibar, unlike the mainland, has significant competition between the two major political parties. Part of the mainland's political stability is, arguably, thanks to the overwhelming advantage of Kikwete's party in what we Americans call "party identification." Zanzibar, however, is close to evenly split, and "party ID" there has deep roots in historical power relationships and grievances. It's a useful counterexample if one is tempted to lazily equate liberal democracy with competitive elections.

The second irony is that in my experience, Zanzibar is a safer and gentler place than the mainland. In Stone Town, I regularly walk from place to place alone, after dark, with a laptop bag over my shoulder. I can do this without fear, while in Dar any two of those three things together would be inviting serious trouble. The welcoming spirit I have felt everywhere in Tanzania is especially strong in Zanzibar.

Both the mainland and Zanzibar are slated to have elections in October of this year, and Zanzibar's current president (again, explanation to come another time) is term-limited. Zanzibar's troubles are far from insoluble, and I sincerely hope that this will be the breakthrough election that sees a peaceful and untainted process. Zanzibaris have been waiting a long time for this, and they certainly deserve it.

happy birthday, america

The Fourth of July comes early to the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania: June 30 and July 1 this year. Through my "Embassy connections" (read: living with State Department interns), I was fortunate enough to attend two events on back-to-back days. The first was a community barbecue on the grounds of the Embassy itself, and the second was a swank party on the lawn of the Ambassador's house.

Of course, both of these invitations came at a price. At the barbeque, I bartended on behalf of the Marines-- who apparently are in charge of supplying these events with social lubrication-- while the Marines were busy doing this:



I imagine that being on an Embassy detail as a Marine would be a little like being an airline pilot: grinding boredom on a day-to-day basis, with a tiny but ever-present risk of things suddenly becoming really stressful. (Keep in mind that the Embassy in Tanzania was one of the two that was bombed in 1998.) Those Marines do know how to have a good time, though-- here's one busting a move later in the event:



Later, naturally, came the fireworks.



In exchange for my ticket to the Ambassador's place, I accepted what was possibly the most awkward task I have ever been given. I and two other interns served as "pullers" for the receiving line... or in my preferred description, our job was to "manhandle the dignitaries." Our job was to watch the receiving line for people who were monopolizing the attention of the Ambassador, his wife, and the Deputy Chief of Mission, and as politely as humanly possible move them along. We lurked nervously in the background, careful not to stand too close to the pathway lest anyone think we might be bigwigs who needed greeting. As Tanzanian government officials, leaders of NGOs and international organizations, and ambassadors and consuls from other countries shuffled past, we debated the exact length of the delay required before a dignitary triggered a "pulling." I subscribed to the fire department theory of pulling: ideally, our services would not be needed at all. For a very long time it looked like we wouldn't need to jump in, but then two older white women were yukking it up for an awfully long time while the line built behind them. I stepped up -- too suddenly, according to my fellow pullers, a verdict supported by the flash of bewilderment on the ambassador's wife's face. As soon as I and the talkative guests were clear of our hosts, I smiled, apologized, and explained the task I had been given. Much to my relief, they both burst into laughter. One introduced herself as Sister So-and-So, and they told me that they belonged to the Maryknoll order. I had "manhandled" a pair of Catholic nuns.

After that, we were free to enjoy the event. Many of the Tanzanians congratulated us on our 234 years of independence, which I found quite endearing. The party had a lot of nice touches, including a welcome speech in English and Swahili by an American boy and a Tanzanian boy. Here they rehearse before the guests arrive:



There was also time for a little intern family portrait. Unfortunately Yvon, whom we call mzee (elder) owing to his advanced age of 32, is missing. Still, it's a pretty good looking group, if I do say so myself:



Hope everyone has a wonderful Fourth!

my first safari

Located just 300 km southwest of Dar, Mikumi National Park is a poor man’s Serengeti: a great option for those short on money, time, or both but who still want to see some of Africa’s most majestic animals. I went there for my first Tanzanian safari this weekend, joining a motley group of ten people connected in various ways to the U.S. Embassy. Half the group left on Friday afternoon in an Embassy car, while the poor schmucks who have to work a full day on Friday (yours truly included) got up at 5:00 on Saturday morning to take a taxi to Ubungo, Dar’s fearsome main bus station. We arrived in time to join the rest of the group for lunch and then set out for an afternoon game drive.



Our sweet ride: it’s a little embarrassing how excited I was by our vehicle- a triple-decker, open-air affair that resembled something out of an amusement park ride.




Impala: the most underrated of the savannah animals, in my humble opinion, the lovely impala is abundant enough to be hardly noticed after the first few minutes of the safari. Female impala travel around in harems consisting of a few dozen females and one lucky stud, while the rest of the males prowl around in big groups of bachelors, waiting for their opportunity to fight for their shot with the ladies. The females do get their say, rejecting a suitor if they’re not sufficiently impressed with the length of his… horns.



Giraffes: the giraffe is the national animal of Tanzania. Giraffes are held in the kind of reverence Americans reserve for bald eagles, and killing one brings a stiff prison sentence. The giraffe’s Swahili name is twiga, and many businesses try to burnish their image by invoking it, from the Twiga Cement Company to a cell phone promotion called “Twiga Time.” In the interest of preserving the giraffe’s dignity, I won’t post any pictures of the attempted giraffe seduction that we witnessed. The male giraffe was sniffing around the object of his attentions, trying to catch a whiff of the telltale hormones that lady giraffes produce when they’re in heat. A couple of times he appeared to be, errr, assuming the position, but then she demurred and walked a few feet away. From there the process repeated itself. We didn’t stay long enough to find out if he finally got lucky, but apparently this is all part of the ritual.



Wildlife/scenery overload: This was our first sighting of elephants, and you can also see impala in the foreground and wildebeest in the background. Not long after, this elephant family provided us with an equally photogenic late-afternoon stroll:



Later we saw another group of elephants giving themselves what appeared to be a dirt bath. They would grab some dirt with their trunks and fling it over their heads, sending a dust cloud over their backs. In this picture you can see the one on the far left in mid-fling:



Our guide explained that this is the elephants’ way of keeping themselves cool. Given that this is winter in the highlands—the night was cool enough for us all to put on long-sleeve shirts—they must be throwing tons of dirt on themselves during the hotter parts of the year. We stayed and watched these elephants for some time, and after a while we got complacent about the amount of noise we were making. The elephant on the far right expressed his displeasure by facing us head on, fanning his ears, and apparently getting ready to charge. It was a bluff, just like what grizzly bears usually do when they feel threatened (this was not my first reminder of Alaskan wildlife during the safari), but it was a little bit disconcerting nonetheless.

For the trip home, the five who came in the embassy car went back the same way, leaving the rest of us to wait for a bus at the roadside by the park entrance. We grew increasingly nervous as bus after bus barely slowed down, the driver making a downward motion with his hand signaling that the bus was already full. (As an aside, speeding vehicles colliding with wildlife is a huge problem around the park, as the grisly photographic display of roadkill in the visitors center will attest. Several dozen speed bumps along the highway have not solved the problem, so the authorities are beginning to send out traffic patrols to crack down.) Many Tanzanians work in Dar during the week and then head home for the weekend, meaning that the buses coming back from the sticks are always jammed with people on Sunday. Then by sheer luck, we saw some familiar faces: a Canadian couple with whom Elana and I have played frisbee was leaving the park in their own car. They only had three empty seats, so we sent Elana with the two other group members we deemed most likely to freak out. The two of us who remained were soon rescued by some kindhearted strangers, a guy from Northern Ireland and his English wife. Unfortunately for them, the traffic coming back into Dar was much worse than anticipated, so they followed England’s drubbing by Germany via text messages from their friends.

I’ll conclude with a self-portrait of our merry band. With me in the front row are intern housemates Jasmine and Hammad, and in the back row next to my head you can see the other half of “Elawn.”

dispatches from the house of peace

*New nicknames: my fellow intern, Elana, and I were inadvertently given a Brangelina-style combined nickname by our overtired DC boss: “Elawn.” The last time I was part of a combined nickname I was on the Danvers High track team, when Chris Abram and I, the only two freshman distance runners, were combined into the fearsome “Abramspowers.”

*Strangest thing I’ve seen a street vendor selling in Dar es Salaam traffic: an aquarium full of water and fish, balanced precariously on his head. It was unclear if he was trying to sell the entire aquarium or individual fish. Runner-up: laminated, wall-sized maps of East Africa.

*Tanzanian fashion: if you’re sporting a necktie, apparently the style around here is to tie a big, fat knot so that only a little more than half of the tie’s normal length hangs down the front of your shirt. I’m intrigued, but I can’t say I plan to adopt this fashion myself. It seems especially ill-advised if you have the slightest bit of a gut, since the tie acts like a big arrow pointing right at your extra poundage.

*I get evicted: the American family with whom I was staying has temporarily kicked me out of their guest room to make way for grandma, who is visiting until the end of the month. I’ve moved into another house—also a fortified mansion in expat land—with the other half of “Elawn” and a bunch of Embassy interns. The living/dining room is big enough to hold a wedding reception, but there’s barely any furniture and no decorations in the whole place. Nice.

*Big daddy: within a matter of days I will become an uncle, and then in November I will become an uncle again. Interestingly, Swahili makes a distinction in my relationships to my two future nephews. To young Michael, my sister’s son, I will be mjomba, or uncle. To young Bradley, my brother’s son, I will be baba mkubwa, or “big father.” In Tanzanian families, the father’s brothers are also considered “fathers,” and the mother’s sisters are also considered “mothers.” Since I am older than the father-to-be, I am baba mkubwa, while our youngest brother will be baba mdogo, or “little father.” Those who know our family will find this very amusing since "little father" could eat father and big father for lunch.

how to say "hi" in swahili

The most delightful aspect of Tanzanian culture that I have seen so far is the greetings. Whether you’re meeting someone for the first time, seeing your officemate in the morning, or approaching a stranger on the street for directions, it’s absolutely mandatory to exchange greetings, and failing to do so it the quickest way to distinguish yourself as an obnoxious foreigner. And while one greeting is a necessity, more greetings are better. While in Zanzibar, we traveled around the island with a government official who is a master of the craft. He can fire off a succession of greetings so quickly it practically gives the listener whiplash. This guy also appeared to know everyone on the island. No sooner would we stop at a police checkpoint on the road (the checkpoints are as ubiquitous as their purpose is inscrutable) than he would practically leap from the car and commence greeting, laughing, and backslapping with the cops.

A standard formula for greeting someone is habari _____? Habari means “news,” and the blank can be filled with lots of different things depending on the situation. Options include habari gani (how are things?), habari yako (how are you?), habari yenu (how are y’all?), habari za kazi (how’s work?), habari za nyumbani (how’s home?), habari za safari (how was your trip?), habari za leo (how’s your day?), habari za asubuhi (how’s your morning?)… you get the idea.

Though the possibilities for asking someone how they’re doing are nearly endless, the answer is always some variation of “good.” Acceptable replies include nzuri (good), njema (good), salama (peaceful—in other words, good) or safi (literally “clean,” but in this context, good). No matter how bad things are, things are good—“even if you are about to die,” according to my Swahili tutor. If your house just burned down or you lost your job, the time to bring that up is later in the conversation, not during the greetings. If things are really good, you can add the word sana to your reply, and if things are merely a little bit good, you can add the word tu. Another way to exchange greetings—actually, the first way most visitors learn—is for the first person to say hujambo? (literally, “you have no problem?”) and the other to reply sijambo (“I have no problem”).

Go ahead and laugh, but Americans basically do the same thing. Europeans enjoy mocking us for using “how are you?” as a substitute for “hello,” and most of the time we really only expect to hear some variant of good, well, or fine. I was once in a bookstore in the Philippines and found a guide to American culture written for prospective immigrants and visitors. Thumbing through this book was an immensely educational and eye-opening experience, and I recommend it if you can get your hands on such a book. The book cautioned would-be visitors to the U.S. not to interpret a casual “how are you?” as an invitation to discuss how their house burned down or they just lost their job.

A special, extra-respectful greeting reserved for one’s elders is shikamoo, to which the elder replies with a marahaba. Neither word has any other usage in Swahili, though I read that shikamoo is derived from “I hold your feet” (nimeshika miguu yako is my possibly erroneous translation). Some people claim that the terms originated as an exchange between slaves and masters, but their use today is widespread enough that no such associations remain. I have found that being greeted with a shikamoo by a foreigner is often a source of delight for the recipient. I share office space in Dar with a Tanzanian woman who is old enough to have teenage children, and I once asked her if shikamoo was appropriate or called for in professional settings. “Yes!” she replied with a laugh. “You should be greeting me with shikamoo every day!”

I have also waded, gingerly, into the world of slang. Someone near to my own age could be safely greeted with a mambo?, a vipi?, or a mambo vipi? I wouldn’t try any of these on somebody who is old enough for a shikamoo, since I imagine that would be like approaching an elder American and going “whasaaaap?” Slang replies include poa (roughly translated as “cool”) or, my favorite, freshi (from the English word "fresh"). I’m told that the better your slang greeting, the lower the fare you are quoted by a taxi driver is likely to be, so I have an economic as well as a cultural incentive to learn more.

I see two main virtues to the Swahili greeting system. Once is that the greetings, even if they’re formulaic, make every interaction a little friendlier. The other is that they put a little speed bump on the pace of interaction. With our frantic pace of life in the U.S., it’s easy to blow right past people with our heads completely wrapped up in our own business. If culture demands that you exchange a greeting, or preferably two or three, it’s that much harder to let those opportunities for connection go by.

when the lights went out

On December 10, 2009, the lights went out across Unguja Island, the main island of Zanzibar. A power outage is usually not a noteworthy event on Zanzibar, as the island’s electricity supply comes from an aging, decrepit undersea cable from the mainland, and the mainland has plenty of power supply issues of its own. This time, though, the power didn’t come back on for 3 months.

The outage scarcely made a ripple in the international media. Thousands of tourists continued coming to the island blissfully unaware of what was happening, since the nice hotels all had diesel generators to keep things running 24/7. Only the buzzing chorus of hundreds of generators in Stone Town would have clued a well-heeled traveler in to what was going on.

For everyday Zanzibaris, however, the blackout was a calamity. It’s enormously costly to run an entire hotel on diesel, so lots of local workers were laid off—a hard blow for a place where tourism is the main industry. The layoffs happened at both small establishments struggling to survive the blackout and large resorts under pressure from headquarters to cut costs. As the blackout dragged on, many educated workers with the means to leave abandoned the island, a small-scale incident of what the development field calls “brain drain.”

At home, the biggest problem was not the lack of electricity but the lack of running water as the island’s water pumps stopped working. Open any World Bank or UN report about water, and you’re likely to read about the enormous burden that gathering water places on people, especially women, in areas without an adequate water supply. In a sense, the blackout turned back the clock on Zanzibar’s economic development. It forced people to divert time, energy, and resources that they otherwise could have spent working or caring for their children to figuring out how to get enough water for basic needs.

The impact on people’s health, naturally, was awful. Communities around the island suffered deadly outbreaks of cholera. A study of an earlier, month-long blackout on Zanzibar found that the blackout significantly reduced birth weights (a key marker of infant health and nutrition). We still don’t know exactly what the impact of the long blackout will be, since the youngest babies who were in utero for the blackout still have not been born, but it seems likely that this generation of children will suffer lifelong problems because they were unlucky enough to pass that critical window of development in a time of crisis. Another issue I heard about over and over again was stress. Mental health gets hardly any attention in development circles—heck, we hardly consider it a “real” problem in the rich countries. But the stress of the layoffs, the disease, the lack of water, and the uncertainty of when it would all end will probably affect many Zanzibaris for a long time to come.

There are plans in the works to help prevent similar blackouts in the future, from a new undersea cable to large-scale public generators to keep electricity flowing to the grid. I also got the sense that the blackout has sparked interest in renewable energy sources on the island, which would be one of the best possible legacies of this tragedy. For the time being, however, there is little standing in the way of a repeat of Zanzibar’s awful season in the dark.

notes from a magical island

The name alone sounds like something out of a fanciful children’s story: Zanzibar. After the Lost finale I thought I had permanently lost my ability to believe in magical islands, but Zanzibar is making me believe all over again.

In addition to being a tropical paradise, Zanzibar is a cultural melting pot. Strategically located along Indian Ocean trading routes, Zanzibar has seen wave after wave of foreign influences, including Portuguese, Arab, Indian, and British. While the continent was being carved up among European powers, Zanzibar was colonized by the Middle East. More accurately, it became a part of the Sultanate of Oman, and the Omani Arabs liked it so much that at one point the Sultan’s court was moved here. As a result, Zanzibar’s historic Stone Town has a decidedly Middle Eastern feel, and the overwhelming majority of Zanzibaris are Muslim. They are also among the friendliest and most laid-back people you will meet anywhere. Even the most assertive of the street vendors are pretty genial, and I regularly walk around Stone Town with my laptop bag around my shoulder. That says a lot about how safe it is here, given that in Dar I was feeling a bit of the post-mugging PTSD from Cameroon.

Magical island or not, I am here for work and not for play. One component of my internship is helping implement a survey in Zanzibar, and I’m here with a nice little research team consisting of an American consultant hired by headquarters (Sam), a Zanzibari consultant (Fadhil), my co-intern for the summer (Elana), and yours truly. The pilot interviews went amazingly well, but for the last few days we’ve been bogged down with a lot of back-and-forth with DC about revisions to the survey instrument. As a result, we’re several days behind schedule and antsy to get going in earnest. That said, I can’t complain too much about the work environment. Most days we’ve set up shop in a hotel restaurant/bar with a killer view of the Indian Ocean, and the other night I had my first-ever conference call in a hookah lounge.

This has been my first time interacting in a significant way with a conservative Muslim society. While strolling through the narrow streets of Stone Town, you can frequently hear the call to prayer from a nearby mosque or children singing at an Islamic school. Most Zanzibari women wear some kind of headscarf, and a sizable minority wear the full burqa, with only their eyes showing. To avoid offending the locals, tourists are advised to keep their shoulders covered and not to show too much leg anywhere outside of the beach. During Ramadan, I am told, it is difficult to find food anywhere in town during the day.

Unfortunately, the enchantment came to a crashing halt the other night. I met a Zanzibari woman who just came home from a year of teaching Swahili in the U.S. on a Fulbright grant. She is a friend of Elana’s, and she and her husband joined us for a visit Zanzibar’s famous night market. Smart and charismatic and bursting with energy, she gave me a few rapid-fire, impromptu lessons as we strolled around the lamp-lit stalls selling seafood and sugar cane juice and Zanzibar “pizza.” Elana told me that she would be working as a secondary school teacher here for a shockingly small salary, and I asked Elana if she plans to do any individual tutoring on the side, since I have a tutor on the mainland but not on the island. Elana had already asked on my behalf, but the response that as a man, I wouldn’t be able to see her unless Elana or another woman accompanied me. I was even more astonished to learn that the day we saw her was her first outside the house in the week since she’d come back to Zanzibar (though to be fair, she’d been receiving dozens of guests at home). I don’t have much insight about how she feels about any of this and I don’t want to project my opinions onto her, but it depresses me to imagine what kind of opportunities even a woman of her caliber is routinely denied.

I’ll be here for at least another week, so more pictures and stories to come soon!

bursting the expat bubble (daladalas, y'all)

If any of my gentle readers are under the impression that I’m living a rugged life in Tanzania, we should probably begin with some clarification of my living situation. What you see below is the view of the Indian Ocean from the second floor hallway of the fortified mansion I live in here in Dar es Salaam.



I have dropped in on the comfortable life of an expat, living with an American family in embassy-owned housing with a small army of guards and housekeepers, all courtesy of you, the U.S. taxpayer. It sounds a little excessive on paper, but I know that if I were in the same situation as my hosts—living here for the long haul with young children—I would want some level of security and insulation too. Especially given that I live on the only street in the country singled out for special mention under “Crime” on the State Department’s website on Tanzania… though that’s probably has more to do with selection bias than anything else, given how many American diplomats live around here.

This is my first real experience with this kind of expat life and its odd combination of privilege and inconvenience. There are moments when it’s almost possible to forget that I’ m in Africa. On Friday evening I was drinking at a yacht club with middle-aged British men, on Saturday I chased small kids around a French-style café with SUV-driving American soccer moms. Even in expat-land, though, it is never long before the fact that I’m in Africa reasserts itself, whether it’s in the potholed moonscape of the local roads, my near-total lack of exercise options, or the restrictions on my freedom of movement that I must accept for safety reasons.

I realized early on that I could probably go this whole summer without exposing myself to a single foodborne illness or sweaty, overcrowded bus ride—and that’s just not my style. So on Sunday, I made my first concerted effort to pop the expat bubble. I met up with a friend of a friend whom I’d only met once and headed outside of “Dar” for a refreshing hike in the Pugu Hills, 2 hours southwest of the city. We arranged a guide through a small resort whose owners take the Soup Nazi approach to reservations: the website urges even would-be day hikers to book in advance and “spare us and yourself the unpleasant experience.”

As is so often the case, the real highlight was not so much the hike but the experience of getting there. We had to take three different daladalas (minibuses), all overflowing with people and stuff, including in one case a stainless steel commercial sink. The directions to this place involved getting off the daladala “at the petrol station,” walking 1 km and taking “the second dirt track,” and asking a local where “Bwana Kiki’s place” is (bwana is Swahili for Mister). Needless to say, there were a few miscalculations and wrong turns along the way. During the long ascent on foot, we really started to feel like we had made a clean break from Dar. I imagine that plenty of foreigners make their way up to the hills, but we still attracted much curiosity for the people we passed by, most of whom greeted and welcomed us. I got to practice many different Swahili greetings, which will surely be the subject of a blog post all their own at some point in the summer. I am always a little camera-shy before I feel like I understand the culture of picture taking in a place, but these boys obligingly asked me to take their picture on our way back down:



Unfortunately, I look godawful in the couple pictures that were taken of me, but hopefully this will give you a sense of the scenery during the actual hike:



Happy Memorial Day to everyone back home!

karibu!

Welcome to my revived and rejiggered blog! (More geographically appropriate profile picture coming soon.) The last time I posted, I promised that if I ended up somewhere sexy for my MPA summer internship I would bring the blog back. Well, countries don’t get much sexier than Tanzania: the home of Mt. Kilimanjaro, the islands of Zanzibar, and the plains of the Serengeti. I will be here for the next 12 weeks interning with a development organization, and then for two weeks after that I’ll be cutting loose and exploring this fine country as a tourist.

In case you aren’t familiar with this part of the world, Tanzania is a Texas-and-a-half-sized, Wisconsin-shaped country just south of the Equator and west of the Indian Ocean. Though its neighbors include some of the most troubled African nations in recent times— Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, among others— Tanzania is a model of peace and stability. It produced one of the more benevolent leaders in Africa’s postcolonial history, Julius Nyerere, whose picture still adorns offices here in Dar es Salaam 25 years after he left power. Nyerere is often credited with forging a single Tanzanian identity out of the country’s many ethnic groups, but his socialist economic program (ujamaa, or “familyhood”) has been blamed for decades of economic stagnation. The country’s name reflects the merger of two separate former colonies: Tanganyika, the mainland; and Zanzibar, the heavily Arab-influenced islands.

Unfortunately, one topic I will not be able cover in as much detail as I would like to is work. Several weeks ago I mentioned the blog in an e-mail to my supervisor at headquarters (which is in the U.S.), and I asked if there were any policies on this kind of thing. I offered, depending on their preference, to put some kind of disclaimer in the masthead that the blog reflects only my personal views, or even to not mention the organization by name. The response was that she’d have to check with the lawyers, and I haven’t heard anything about the subject since then. Maybe it was one of those “better to ask forgiveness than permission” moments, but my plan is not to refer to my employer by name and to avoid discussing anything that would reveal who it is. Of course, many of my dear readers will already know, and if you don’t know but are curious, just ask. My living situation is a dream: I am staying in the guest room of an American family with adorable children and a yellow lab on the relatively swank Msasani peninsula.

Mwanamume mmarekani katika Tanzania, by the way, is Swahili for “an American man in Tanzania,” and karibu means “welcome.” It’s the Swahili word I have heard most often in the last three days, and it certainly describes the way everyone so far has made me feel.