oops, pole sana

Last week we went to Mazumbai National Forest and I wrote a whole blog entry out by hand. But I lost it.

I said something about the drive there, when one of the cars got stuck in the mud and wedged into the mountain side. I probably mentioned how pretty it all was. And how I kept noticing when the road was or wasn't paved, and thinking about why that was and who had paid for it and what sort of enclaves of development the paved roads might be linking.

Here's a picture of the car getting stuck on a road that certainly was not paved


And then I probably said something about how we arrived at a swiss chalet on top of the mountain and I thought I might have hit my head on a bumpy part of the ride (not unlikely) because it looked like we were in Europe. Really, it looked like Europe. I was sure I was dreaming or seeing things. But actually the house was built for the forest's previous owner, who was Swiss and owned a chai and quinine plantation.


Europe, Tanzania

I think I remember saying that I was gonna do my independent study on the political party in power here in Tanzania. The party wins every election by like 90+% and yet there are some crazy corruption scandals and discontent and neighboring countries who have active political divisions both within and without of the ruling party (im thinking kenya, zimbabwe and south africa). I was planning on focusing my project on the death of a member of parliament who was 26 years old and very outspoken on the drug trade in Tanzania. The rumors have been flying about whether she was killed or died in a car accident, whether she was having an affair with the president, whether her husband is in fact in the center of the drug trade, etc. Following her death a Tanzanian hip hop artist wrote a provocative song called "Mr. Politician" that asked Tanzanians to remember Amina (the mp) when they next go to vote. I thought it would be a cool way to look at the issue and bring it together with the hip-hop culture. BUT no worries if you missed all that, because I changed my topic.

Without a doubt I mentioned how cool I felt with a Yale School of Forestry sweatshirt on in the forest, hanging out with foresters, pretending I was a forester myself.

If I was feeling committed I might have told you more about Mazumbai, which is a national forest reserve in the West Usambara mountains. It is one of the best remaining examples of an African tropical forest with incredible and undiscovered species diversity.

I am pretty sure I mentioned our trip to the neighboring village of Mayo, where we had a chance to interview people on their perspectives on the forest and their needs for things like firewood and other forest resources. I was really happy to have a chance to look at the people side of the project, but we unfortunately had a translator who came with his own agenda. It was particularly frustrating because I understood both the Swahili and English (woohoo) and so I knew he was changing around our questions, lecturing our interviewees, and generally inserting his own perspective everywhere. The scene itself was pretty hilarious though, because no interview in a village will ever be one on one. We had about twenty kids crowding around, chickens walking through, the ugly duckling waddling around, elders shouting their input and of course the translation issue. It was a big scene.

I might have talked about some of the things that have been weighing on my mind. Like the pipe dream of Western education here, and how it is almost impossible to get a job even for the very very small percentage of people who make it out of primary school, on to secondary school and college. On that note I remember wondering if the influx of volunteers to Tanzania has any effect on the job market or if volunteers really do work that no one else would be doing. I also spent a lot of time thinking about my own relationship with activism and human rights- which is something I've been growing less and less comfortable with over time. I'm scared that the more I learn and think, the more immobilized I will be. That I will always find reasons to question any action. But I hope that eventually I will be comfortable enough somewhere to take action for things I believe in-- it just seems far away and unknown at this point-- which is a very different perspective than I used to have. In many ways I'm just learning that there will always be two sides to every story, but I'm also becoming more and more skeptical of good intentions-- a scary feeling because I still find peace of mind in good intentions. (Read Ivan Illich's "To Hell with
Good Intentions" if you feel like someone else's view).

I'm sure I said a whole lot more stuff and said it all more eloquently, but its all just words anyways. So as the end of Mazumbai rolled around we all prepared to depart to our independent study sites for a week of reconnaissance. I was going to make my way towards Dar with four others who would then disperse to Morogoro, Bagamoyo and Odzungwa. And then we left Europe and found ourselves squished into an African bus, with kids on our laps, chickens at our feet, people selling things out the window and several crying babies. A lively way to travel.