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.

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.

life, smørrebrød, and the pursuit of happiness in denmark

Some pictures and musings from my time in Denmark with my good Gates friend Talia. It was likely my last weekend jaunt to a new country, sad to say, as I reach the limits of Papa Gates' munificence.


Danish Patriotism. From my limited pre-trip reading about Denmark, I learned about the Danes' remarkable levels of patriotism, marked above all by gratuitous flag-waving. The Danes did not disappoint. As we exited customs and immigration at the Copenhagen airport, there was a throng of people awaiting their friends and relatives, about half of them with Denmark's red and white banner in hand. In one of Copenhagen's spacious city parks, we spotted a group of young adults lounging with an evenly spaced phalanx of Danish flags around their picnic blankets. City buses and street vendors, like the one pictured above, also show their national spirit. (By the way, just to the left of the bushes in the picture you can see Denmark's most undeservedly famous landmark, the Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen harbor.)

I tried to figure out what accounts for the Danes' patriotic streak, and I wonder if it has something to do with the country's small size and its tendency to be thrashed around by the broader currents of European history. One of many fascinating episodes was an early and short-lived experiment with Enlightenment-style political liberties, led by King Christian VII's personal physician, who made himself de facto ruler as his boss descended into schizophrenia. During World War II, Denmark folded relatively quickly in the face of a Nazi invasion, but the resistence movement did manage to smuggle 90% of Danish Jews into Sweden. Today the country continues trying to find its voice among the much bigger players of the European Union.



Minor Obsessions. Talia's petty obsession for the weekend was sandwiches (more on those later); mine was spotting Sweden. Copenhagen is at the far eastern end of Denmark, separated from the Swedish city of Malmö by a narrow channel. We got a good long look at Malmö from the air during an aborted landing, a go-around and a successful landing, but I wanted to see it from the ground. This isn't as easy as that map might suggest, but I did spot Sweden from a train station and then from the clock tower of Copenhagen's city hall, pictured above. Sweden now joins Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, and Jordan among the ranks of countries I haven't actually visited, but have looked into while standing in another country.



Damn Hippies! During our meandering walking tour of Copenhagen, we happened on a ragtag protest proceeding through the streets. Most of the protestors were disaffected-looking young men, and they paraded behind a tractor rigged up with a stage and a sound system. It didn't take us long for us to figure out what they were after–legalization of marijuana–and where they were going–the same place we were headed, the bizarre social experiment known as Christiania.

In 1971, a previous generation of disaffected young adults broke into an abandoned army barracks in Copenhagen and declared it to be the "free state" of Christiania. Politically and culturally, the founders of Christiania were pretty similar to the hippie counterculture in the United States. Christiania continues to exist in a strange quasi-legal limbo: its residents pay no taxes and have created their own currency, but Christiania's streets are regularly patrolled by police, mostly to crack down on drugs. Mainstream Danish attitudes seem to vary from mild resentment to amused acceptance, but it's clear that despite calls to "normalize" Christiania, no government has yet found it to be in its political interest to forcibly dismantle it. Talia and I spent a little bit of time walking around and checking out Christiania's small shops and street art (taking pictures inside is forbidden).

My visceral reaction to Christiania was very negative, and its intensity surprised me. On paper, my politics probably look a lot like those of a Christianian: I'm all for decriminalizing pot (though I won't touch it myself), I'm for peace and environmental protection and all that hippie stuff. Resentment of authority is part of my makeup. However, I found the smug self-righteousness of Christiania to be too much. It made me reflect on what I would have been like if I'd grown up in the '60s. I suspect that I would have hated Nixon and the war, and idolized MLK and RFK, but there's no chance that I would have been a flower child. I also wonder if this is part of what turned me on to Obama- in some ways I see the same combination of liberal politics and conservative temperament in myself that I see in him.



So why are they so happy? I can't say that I discovered the secret to the Danes' remarkable levels of happiness, but I did collect some clues. The pastries can't hurt, and neither can smørrebrød, the popular open-faced sandwich composed of a slice of rye bread and all manner of delicious toppings. (Above, I prepare to chow down on three smørrebrød with curried herring, shrimp and eggs, and bacon with a liver-mushroom paste. The Danes may be known for being happy, but they're not particularly famous for being healthy; Lonely Planet goes so far as to say they "make the Scots look like Jane Fonda!")

On a more serious note, Talia and I both observed a quality of Danish life that is rare in cities of Copenhagen's size: trust. Even in Denmark's largest city, people regularly leave bikes unattended and unlocked. Most restaurants offer outdoor dining, but since it's still a little chilly at this time of year, they also provide all patrons with blankets, as you can see in the picture above. Running off with a blanket or two would be child's play, but there's no indication that anyone does. There is a downside to this kind of social cohesion–consider the Danes' reputation for xenophobia–but I was struck by the realization that, if I lived in Copenhagen, I don't think I would have a whole lot to worry about.

cambridge gives wen the bush treatment

I don't think this was as well covered in the US media as Monday's snowstorm in the UK (really people? does the whole country need to fall apart over a few inches of snow?), but a strange thing happened in Cambridge on Monday. Chinese premier Wen Jiabao was giving a speech here about the global economy after meeting with Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister. Toward the end of the talk, a heckler in the audience called Wen a "dictator" and threw his shoe at him. My knowledge of the Chinese government is pretty limited, but my understanding is that Wen is at the helm of the Chinese bureaucracy, while the President, Hu Jintao, is the head of state. Throwing shoes at government leaders, of course, has a history going back at least as far as... the month before last, when President Bush got the same treatment in Iraq.

I didn't manage to get a ticket to his talk, so I wasn't there to witness the event personally. It should go without saying that the incident reflects poorly on Cambridge as a place for a free and civilized exchange of ideas. What was most interesting to me, though, was seeing the reactions of my Chinese and non-Chinese classmates, primarily through the flurry of facebook commentary that followed. The general reaction among the non-Chinese students was bemusement, similar to the way I think most young Americans reacted to Bush's "shoeing." The act was violent but posed little real threat to the speaker; the primary source of the gesture's force is its breaching of the deferential treatment usually accorded to heads of government.

Chinese students reacted quite differently. Here is a passage from a comment written by a Chinese Development Studies classmate of mine: "Apparently, this lad is just one of the young people here who are ignorant about the history and reality of China, yet filled with blind ideologic passion. If you hate Communist Party, you have no idea how much the Party has evolved. If you love a free Tibet, you are ignorant about the brutal and ruthless theocratic regime of serfdom once ruled by Dailai [sic] Lama, the 'smiling budda.' If you hate China, yet you chose the wrong person to make this 'heroic' move, whom happens to be probably the most respected and beloved leader in China, across all age groups. It can only be viewd by Chinese as an insult and humiliation, which put shame on the guy himself, which I don't care, but also cast shadow on this great University." A Chinese friend of his remarked that it was "a shame to Cambridge." My friend later added: "I just reviewed the video and found that Wen made very sincere bows to the audience, saying 'this is not a courtesy. This is my due respect for knowledge, teachers and professors, as a humble student. ' What a shame for this scum showing up today, humiliating this great university."

I bolded certain words in those passages because I think they point to something very, very vital about Chinese and other East Asian cultures that a lot of Westerners fail to understand, to everyone's detriment. I wrote about the importance of avoiding shame and "losing face" in Filipino culture in my previous blog-- almost three years ago to the day, in fact. This economy of honor and shame is linked primarily with the self and one's family in the Philippines, but in China it's also very much tied up with national identity. So throwing a shoe at the Chinese premier is committing a certain kind of emotional warfare even against our Chinese friends. I seem to recall that a few years back, early in Hu Jintao's presidency, the White House declined to host a full-fledged state dinner when Hu came to visit Washington and a lot of Chinese people regarded it as a deep insult. I'm not saying that Westerners always and everywhere need to do whatever it takes to avoid hurting China's pride, but we've got to start understanding this stuff better, especially as China continues its climb as a world power.

I have found many of my own preconceived notions about my Chinese friends to be wrong. Recently one of our professors lectured on development and the media, and naturally media censorship in China was a topic of discussion. I think I had been expecting, or perhaps wishing, that I was attending class with some young Chinese Patrick Henrys or Tom Paines. That turned out not to be the case. While not necessarily endorsing the current state-run media, they presented a nuanced view of government control that gave nods to stability and gradualism. I was similarly surprised when a Vietnamese friend (again 3 years ago this month) expressed some gratitude that the communist government there keeps a lid on things, while the democratic Philippines has been rent with political unrest and violence. I realized that in my ideology I might have more in common with the George W. Bush of his second inaugural address than I care to admit.

the election from over here

I haven't said much about the presidential election in this blog, but it has obviously been on my mind every single day I have spent here. The level of awareness and knowledgability about the election among my non-American friends and classmates has been amazing, and I have been startled by how much everyone feels is at stake for themselves and their countries. They have watched the Tina Fey-as-Sarah Palin SNL clips, editorialized in student newspapers, and followed this fall's debates. Even before I left the States, I knew that the outcome of this election would have an enormous impact on how non-Americans would react to me. The last six weeks have proven that I was not only right, but underestimated the impact.

Yesterday and today, I have been getting high fives and congratulations everywhere I have gone. For the first time in my adult life, there's some serious cachet in being an American in Europe. And I don't think the enthusiasm is excessive. People here are realistic, as I believe I am, about what Obama's election means. Nobody believes he is a messiah, or that he won't make mistakes or always take the course that will make him popular abroad. America's image has gotten so bad under the Bush administration that merely the repudiation of the last eight years is itself a huge relief. There's a recognition, voiced by Americans and non-Americans alike, that President Obama will have very little to work with given the poor economy, the debt, and our military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. But above all, I think people are just impressed with who Obama is. I don't think the phrase "American dream" will be used in an ironic way here anytime soon.

I spent election day in a weird state, full of nervous energy but mentally in a fog. It was the first time I can remember since high school when I worked out twice in the same day, with a swim in the morning and a run in the afternoon. Most polls on the East coast didn't close until 1 a.m. GMT, but luckily I had some evening entertainment to keep me distracted: a James Bond "Casino Royale"-themed formal dinner at Christ's College, to which Emma's MCR was given an allotment of tickets. After that it was back home to change out of my tux and then to the college, where I was hosting the election night party in the MCR.

I stayed up until 6 a.m. with a small but hardy band of Emma folks who wanted to hold out for the speeches. I thought John McCain was incredibly gracious. He could have dodged the momentousness of the election, but he embraced it. Unfortunately, his supporters were ugly, and I think it bodes ill for the Republicans if this is what's left of their rank-and-file. I also thought President-elect Obama's speech was great. I expected I might cry, and I did tear up at one point... I'm a little embarassed to admit it, but it was when he told his daughters that they could have a puppy in the White House. I guess it was a combination of the overwhelming significance of our first black president, my sense that the "moral values" that I subscribe to finally carried the day, and a tender moment that tapped into my own ambitions for fatherhood.

The news wasn't all good-- the loss for marriage equality in California and the congressional races in Alaska put a damper on my glee. But on the most important battle, for the first time since I gained the right to vote, I feel like the good guys won. I am proud and thankful to be an American every day, but today there's just a little bit of extra relish.

holy %^&#: palin fever goes national

Banff, Alberta / Mile 2,160 – Obviously, we're going to have to shelve the Great American Road Trip for a minute and talk about Sarah Palin.

I'm shocked and oddly excited about McCain's choice, even though I'm not particularly a fan of Sarah Palin, nor do I think it was a smart decision on McCain's part. Maybe it's just because somebody I've actually met is running for the second-highest office in the land. It may also be a little bit of Alaska pride. Alaska often seems to feel, with some justice, like the neglected youngest child in the family (and it's spoiled like one too). Having the governor as a major-party veep candidate is sure to electrify the state, especially at a time when Alaska's national reputation has been sullied by scandals, indictments and the "Bridge to Nowhere" brouhaha.

There's no question that Sarah Palin is a gifted politician. She obliterated a sitting governor in the Republican primary and saved a corrupt and arrogant state party from itself. She promised cleaner government, and she has by and large delivered on that promise. (There is currently a scandal afoot re: whether her administration pressured a police commissioner to fire a trooper who was involved in a nasty custody battle with the Governor's sister, but I suspect there's more smoke than fire there. She's too smart to do something so transparently stupid... probably the work of an overzealous "Palin-bot," as they are called in Alaska.) And, as the media never fail to point out, she is hot. I never would have expected that the sentence "Don't look at the Governor's legs" would pass through my brain, but it happened.

That's about as much as I can say in her favor. My biggest beef with her... well, my biggest non-ideological beef with her... is that she also came in promising a government that would listen to the public, but her administration has been just as opaque and imperious as the one it replaced, albeit in a different way. She's mercurial, often needlessly confrontational, and attention-hungry, and it's not at all clear who she listens to or why. Granted, it's impossible for me not to evaluate Alaska politicans through the lens of how they treat my former employer and its clients, and she disappointed me on that front.

Taking off my erstwhile-Alaskan hat and putting on my armchair pundit hat, Palin's selection strikes me as a desperate choice by McCain. Faced with an opponent who is both the potential first black President and a reincarnation of JFK, it looks like he decided that a ticket of two old white men wouldn't cut it. Sarah Palin brings youth, diversity, and flash to the ticket. But with her experience limited to less than two years as governor of a small and idiosyncratic state, along with a couple terms as mayor of a small town, it's hard to imagine that voters will want her to be a heartbeat away from the launch codes. I also suspect that those Republicans who hoped for a "real conservative" to balance McCain will be disappointed when they look at her record in Alaska. Just before I left, she championed an expensive government handout-- a $1,200 "energy rebate" for every man, woman, and child in Alaska, which will be added onto a Permanent Fund Dividend that is already likely to top two grand. (Note: I am not opposed to energy assistance per se, I just think the government can do better things with that money than shelling it out to people in my income bracket and richer. I won't be getting the rebate or a PFD myself.) I also suspect that Biden will clean her clock in October's vice presidential debate.

Despite that electrifying-the-state business I mentioned earlier, the reaction in Alaska has not been uniformly positive. The outgoing Senate President -- a woman, by the way, and a Republican, who represents the Governor's home town -- said she thought it was a joke when she heard the news, and asked, "Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?" The Speaker of the House -- also an R, but a man from Valdez -- helpfully observed, when asked about the Governor's qualifications to be veep, that "she's old enough. She's a U.S. citizen."

Perhaps what is most disappointing to me is that there is another Republican woman from Alaska who would have been a great choice. Everything I know of her, including many interactions with her in person, have convinced me that she's smart, principled, and sincere. (Obligatory disclaimer: she's been great to my former employer.) She's Lisa Murkowski, Alaska's junior Senator. But McCain didn't go that way, so we're going to see how Sarah does.