Adam Hooper (the blog)

Beaches being beaches and white people being rich, some Maasai warriors earn a living making crafts and selling them to tourists. I have a Maasai friend who used to do this.

Saturday afternoon, Alex, Caitlin and I found ourselves relaxing on a beach at Cholo's, an incredibly chill beach-side bar. Cholo's, as Caitlin's Blog explains, is run by what we refer to as impostafarians (Rastafarians minus their religious beliefs). It may be the most relaxed place in all of Africa.

On this particular afternoon, we were disturbed from our relaxing by a raised voice. looking up, I saw a Maasai warrior attempting to sell his crafts to the tourists fifteen feet away. The voice we heard was that of one of the Rasta owners of Cholo's.

It was clear the Rasta was drunk: he began to shout, toka! over and over again. (Toka! is an extremely rude and emphatic, get out!) He had somehow acquired a Maasai stick (a half-stick, half-club just over a foot long). He used the stick to try and rally nearby dogs to his cause: the peaceful dogs were comically unhelpful rounding up the Maasai. We had to turn away and laugh.

The Maasai stood his ground, clearly displaying that he was unafraid. The Rasta stormed off, repeating toka! with every step. The Maasai seemed to be waiting for the Rasta to calm down so that he could comply while keeping his self-respect.

But the Rasta drunkenly decided to turn back and argue his point once more. A couple of other Maasai who were strolling by came to investigate; a couple of Rastas also appeared to see what their co-worker was up to.

All parties (minus the drunk) seemed to understand each other. The drunk looked quite happy to have company: he used his friends to hold him back while he lunged at the Maasai. His friends gladly played along, restraining and disarming him.

The Maasai all watched.

I should interject: Maasai warriors are almost invariably armed and skilled. If one Maasai warrior were to square off against all three Rastas, I have no doubt the Maasai could send them running. Or kill them. With three Maasai, the prospect of a fight is a joke. All six parties (yes, even the one with addled senses) knew this.

It looked like everybody was satisfied. But one of the Maasai must have muttered a taunt, because all of a sudden the Rastas leapt into action. One ran and fetched empty beer bottles and hurled one at a Maasai. The throw was hilariously inaccurate: it sailed harmlessly into the sea. Had the throw been more accurate, the bottle might have hit us (ten feet away from its target).

Another Rasta with a makeshift weapon received a threatening lunge from a Maasai who had unsheathed his blade. This, too, was ten feet away from us.

The Maasai proudly walked off together. The inept bottle-thrower tried his luck again, receiving a threatening, unflinching glare in return.

We left.

I can draw many morals from this story. One moral is that there is some element of tribalism in Tanzania (though I still blindly contest the tensions do not run as deep in Tanzania as in Uganda or Kenya). Another moral is that even after six months here, I can still experience something completely unexpected.

The real lesson, to me, is more internal: I was siding with the Maasai.

Why? I can rationalize all I want that the Maasai were acting less childish or more diplomatic; I can argue the Rastas had no right to behave the way they did; I can even claim that the Maasai would win if the situation erupted into violence.

All of these reasons, though valid, are dishonest. I sided with the Maasai for the reason I wrote in the first paragraph: I have a Maasai friend. I picked sides before there even was a situation.

Whose side did you pick?

Challenge: I never wrote all I could and this is my last Challenge-inspired entry. Include five sentences I dreamed up which I had anticipated publishing (because I thought they sounded powerful and exciting) but which I never turned into blog entries.

I can buy a camera lens with as wide an angle as physically possible, but it will still be too narrow to capture reality.

I could argue that a wider camera lens would actually project less information. A mountain framed by a banana tree; a misplaced Habs jersey; a lopsided dala-dala; a motorcycle hanging from a tree: pictures merely project ideas, not reality. More information would obscure the ideas.

Similarly, my blog can only project narrow ideas: it cannot reflect reality. These Challenges I have been using on my blog have been helpful in reminding me of that.

What is reality? I will never know.

What is my reality?

My reality is a veritable rat's nest of hare-brained ideas. I prod at random thoughts until I arrive at conclusions. Then I hack away at my conclusions until I get new, even more random thoughts. It strikes me that if there is such a thing as sanity, I want nothing to do with it.

In Tanzania, my business (publishing magazines about HIV, gender, and sexuality) is everybody else's business. My engineering mind was not trained for this kind of interactions. Can I say I am networking with interesting people if they will never be able to contact me? Should I call a child with HIV a client? Everybody is connected more strongly than anybody knows. Maybe we are all part of the same company: I am in the learning department while many other people are in the suffering department. And if the world is the biggest company ever, what does that tell me about upper management?

What is your reality?

Your reality is probably quite similar to mine: you eternally struggle to find your place in a world which seems to be treating you like one six-billionth of itself.

What is their reality?

I wager it is almost the same.

But if you have never left the comfort of the West, you are missing an important mindset. Poverty and disease are rampant in sub-Saharan Africa. Get-rich-quick schemes are often glorified get-other-people-poor schemes. Even the most timid mzungu learns that pushing and shoving is the only way to board a dala-dala here in Dar es Salaam.

Personally, I do not blame Tanzanians for behaviour I can never understand. I see a potential for learning more about myself and my reality.

So far, I have never heard somebody's life story and thought, I would certainly never act that way if I were that person. Every time I hear somebody claim otherwise because of insignificant misunderstandings, I wince.

What is common to everybody's reality?

Different though different people's realities are, everybody's reality is composed of the same three universal truths: love, fear, and Bob Marley.

I see potential. Let's get together and be all right.

Challenge: I do not really think like this all the time, and I am certainly not thinking like this now, but there is an element of truth in here. Write only thoughts which occurred to me before I decided to make a blog entry out of them.

From time to time, I go to a fancy restaurant. I spend the average Tanzanian's monthly salary in a single night, savouring a beer and food that reminds me of Montreal. It is refreshing, but it makes me feel guilty. For instance: in Uganda I once ate two meals' worth of steak dinner in two hours; this was the evening after working at a school where the children get one meal a day of beans and ugali (like rice, minus the texture and flavour and cutlery). Even Dickens would be unable to emphasize the poignancy of my social superiority.

I cherish my meal, all the while thinking disparaging thoughts about my dinner companions, every other white customer in the restaurant, every other black or Indian customer in the restaurant, the restaurant's owner, the restaurant itself, and even the concept of restaurants.

No wonder this country is underdeveloped, I ruminate. All the people around me are not developing it! The wealth changes hands between the rich, and the poor get nothing. Even the people in the poverty-reduction business take part in the farce. I should know: I am one.

The next day, I double my efforts at work, as payback to the people whom I will never meet and whom I am supposedly helping. But then, what about the day after that? If I do not keep up my double-effort, that means I could be working faster. Any time I spend on break is time I spend not helping people—people who cannot afford my laziness. I skip breaks and shorten my lunches. I doubt I will ever know if these efforts are fruitful; but can I really risk taking my time?

Once upon a time I did not know or care about any of this. Now I do care and I still do not know. I roam the streets to get time to myself to piece together my thoughts; but I am always interrupted by friendly neighbours and passers-by. Can they not see that the minutes I spend talking to them would be better spent thinking? I am only here for six months: every second is precious!

Of course, this is simply culture shock. At this point my thought process is already abstracted far away from any sick and dying and vulnerable people. I simply must come to terms with the fact that saving lives is a nine-to-five desk job.

And once the stress has built up high enough, I might treat myself to dinner at a fancy restaurant.

Challenge: whet the appetite with mention of money in every paragraph.

In Tanzania, much of the business culture revolves around what is called a per diem: a payment for putting somebody out of his way.

For instance, one week I attended some training. I was paid a per diem food allowance for every day I spent away from my home. The concept makes sense: after all, were I not paid, I would have had to finance myself, which I cannot afford to do. If the coordinators had not offered me per diems, I would not have offered my time.

I was also a bit careful. In my week away from home, I managed to horde away the equivalent of $10 Canadian. I did so by ensuring everything I bought was as cheap as possible. My per diems were small, but my expenditures were smaller. I need that $10, and I do not feel that my actions were particularly dishonest—even though, in the end, this $10 which used to be somebody else's is now mine.

But hold on. Am I not rich? I am a mzungu; my potential wealth has no limit. If I, the mzungu, am strapped enough for cash that I will only go to a training if there is a per diem attached, imagine what Tanzanians will do.

Thus is born the per diem culture: for any formal business meeting and for any training, per diems are expected. Pay-offs vary wildly, and attendance depends on the pay-offs.

Now, flip the coin over and picture this from an organizer's perspective. A meeting is hard enough to organize: to find a time and venue which works for all attendees, to prepare the topics of conversation, and so on. Throw these per diems into the mix: an organizer in Tanzania must determine how much each attendee will need. Are you training teachers? Are you discussing policy with government officials? Are you inviting journalists to a press conference? These cost money. If you bid too high, you waste money. If you bid too low, you could be shunned. You may advertise the fare before the event occurs, but actual attendance will only be revealed at the beginning of the meeting. (Or, because the culture encourages tardiness as well, an hour after the meeting begins.)

In the West, we attend meetings and trainings with the aim of accomplishing things. In Tanzania, a seemingly thoughtful concept (helping to cover expenditures) has been inflamed to the point of insanity.

Challenge: look at the same thing from two perspectives, alternating on each paragraph.

In my house, on a shelf, there is a row of small, glass bottles containing an herbal liquid. I was told this is a cure for HIV. I was then asked, Adam, do you believe this medicine cures HIV?

In truth, I believe these bottles do not contain the cure to HIV. I believe there are likely many Tanzanians who put their trust in this cure, using it as an excuse to engage in risky sexual behaviour: in this way, this cure to HIV actually helps spread it. I lament the hypocrisy of a household reading an HIV-awareness magazine at the same time as advertising anti-HIV snake oil.

I found out later that it is not hypocrisy. Look from the opposite perspective: why would somebody who owns the cure to HIV read a magazine which claims it does not exist? Simple: the magazine is free and colourful, and a guest is clearly enthusiastic about it. Just as we might discuss various differences between Muslim and Christian beliefs, Canadian and Tanzanian weather, or Western and African television, so might we discuss the various belief systems about medicinal solutions to HIV.

At the heart of Science is experimentation and verification. We try something, see if it works, and draw our conclusions. This ought to fit in to any belief system: that is, if we give HIV medication to a hundred patients who have tested HIV-positive and more than usual are tested as HIV-negative after a week, then we clearly have something valuable in our hands. As far as Science is concerned, voodoo and spirits are fully plausible explanations: we just observe what happens. Science accepts everything that is real and denies everything that is not.

So does Islam. So does Christianity. So do the many local legends. If a certain legend says, applying the scientific method to determine the validity of this HIV medication will render the HIV medication ineffective, well, science cannot prove that claim incorrect. It all comes down to a matter of belief.

Do I believe this medicine cures HIV? I believe in Science. I want to see proof. In the meantime, I am highly sceptical.

I cannot prove why having proof is right: I simply take it on faith.

Challenge: write at least one negative and one positive in every paragraph.

The dreams have begun again. I am back home with my family and friends. Everything is normal, yet it all feels wrong. Somebody mentions Tanzania. I wake up, relieved.

I cannot wait to see everybody back home. Yet as the dreams suggest, I am reticent to do so. The reason is culture shock.

It is termed reverse culture shock when returning home. Reverse culture shock is, to me at least, far more difficult to handle than the forwards variety. Regular culture shock is realizing, in Tanzania, this child really could be funded through school for the cost of a cup of coffee a day. Reverse culture shock is realizing, in Montreal, this cup of coffee could be funding that child through school. Every object is seen through the eyes of somebody who does not need it; every statement is heard from people who suddenly do not understand.

Before hitting home, I will be using my opportunity to travel. All I need are my beloved backpack, my deteriorating clothes, and my passport. I look forward to meeting with new places and friends and foods and musics. I will doubtless run into uncomfortable situations, and I stand no chance of learning the fine details of any other cultures: these certainties are but refrains in the song of life.

Ten days remain until the end of my contract.

Challenge: write 1 word for each 1000 Tanzanian shillings I earn in a month. (CAN$1 is approximately 1200 Tsh.)

While talking with a local in Sipi, Uganda, I realized that he is wealthier than I am.

My student loan was at its zenith. The money I brought to Uganda was dwindling. I remember hoping to be thrifty enough to arrive home with $0. I succeeded.

Instead of paying off my debts and securing my future, I decided to keep on with my downward financial trend. I now have far less than $0.

Tanzanians do not believe this. White people have money, right?

I am solidly in debt. I have no co-signers. I have nearly no worldly possessions (by Western standards). My bank accounts are empty. I have no long-term employment. My expenditures exceed my income. Yet with my credit line, credit cards, loans, and contacts, I can easily gather $20,000 cash within minutes.

How did I achieve that $20,000 potential? I was born into a club: a worldwide network of mathematics which statistically rewards trustworthiness and punishes misbehaviour.

Bank machines exist in Tanzania. They give me money I do not have while serving luckier Tanzanians money they worked hard to earn. Credit cards exist here, too; but Tanzanians cannot get them. And my credit card has a lower interest rate than Tanzanian bank loans.

If I spent that $20,000 and declared bankruptcy, I would not be poor.

Challenge: give each paragraph a multiple of seven words.

Once upon a time, rock stars were selfish. Then they decided to sing for causes. Now rock stars are noble. Through Live8 and similar events, rock stars have eked out a promise from our powerful governments: 0.7% of our income must fight poverty. This is war, evidenced by bombardments of drums and firings of powerful lyrics.

Once upon a time, our governments were selfish. Then they gave up and listened to the rock stars. To them, 0.7% is more of a guideline than a goal. The best weapon against activity is bureaucracy: promise the 0.7%; show that wheels are in motion; spin everything your own way. The 37 years since the 0.7% promise was made prove that bureaucracy works. Rock stars have no weapon against subtlety.

Once upon a time, nobody knew how to fight poverty. Then the industry discovered itself. Brand recognition is a weapon against terrorism; foreign investment is a local employment strategy; innovation drives competition. What next, patents?

Once upon a time, nobody knew anything about Africa except that it is full of poor people. Then we invented the Internet. Now, nobody knows anything about Africa except that it is full of poor people. Ample information lies ten seconds away.

The information is: the truth is dirty. It takes less than half of that 0.7% to steer African countries down whichever course rich countries' leaders desire. Iraq reconstruction and Israeli guns count as foreign aid, contributing to the G8's 0.7% (which, as the rock stars will point out, currently stands around 0.3%). The USA, hardly alone in this practice, plans to subsidize American farmers with a budget over three times larger than its foreign aid budget—the same foreign aid budget which forces recipient countries to remove barriers to trade.

I knew all this before I arrived. Apparently I can still be shocked, though. In a village, I made a friend who is roughly my age, studying in the equivalent of grade 8. He was laughing as he scrounged up enough money for his lunch ($0.85), stating that most Western cows get paid more than most African people. I knew this particular fact already; but I was so shocked by its accuracy I had to bite back the words: how did you know that?

Most Tanzanians do not know that. Common wisdom here is that rich countries are bad and selfish; but to every individual, that manifests itself in different ways. Tanzanians with electricity, for instance, notice this year's 21% price hikes and enormous installation costs; the intricacies of IMF and World Bank are mysteries best left to rich-country economists. Kenyan farmers notice that they are being undersold by American food; they likely miss the irony that it was both subsidized and bought by the American government.

Canada is not exempt from this flavour of selfishness. Our most recent AIDS funding in Tanzania was possibly related to human rights abuses by a Canadian gold mining company which independent observers have been unable to investigate.

Everywhere in Tanzania, I see poor people and money. There is no bridge between them. The 0.7% idea hearkens from a well-intentioned vision of utopia. In the real world, that 0.7% does not work.

Maybe cause-hungry rock stars should switch tactics: instead of begging governments to invest 0.7% of their money, why not convince fans to invest 0.7% of their time? Spend 61 hours this year doing something about poverty. Spend it however you like. Heck, just spend 61 hours looking up information with Google. I am trying to inspire you by writing bold claims and no references; check my facts. Figure out the links between donor countries and their donations' recipients. Ask questions. Find answers. Challenge people. All it takes is your 0.7%.

Challenge: write a fragment of a story, with no beginning and no end.

At the northernmost tip of Pemba, past the lush forest and sandy landscape, at the top of a rocky hill, a lighthouse stands guard. There is no more road: clearly, we missed the turn to the beach.

We have no choice but to ask for directions, and we must certainly backtrack. We can no longer escape the train of local children following us and laughing at us. A man resting at the top of the hill walks up to us and acts as a spokesperson for this strange group. He tells us to backtrack and turn left at the rubber plantation.

Brakes straining, we descend the rocky hill and drive slowly through the deep sand. Wiser now about the average quality of our instructions, we decide to ask for directions at every available opportunity. After one kilometre, we ask two staring children:

Pwani iko wapi? (Where is the beach? possibly subject to a grammatical error)

The children's arms swing eastward, through the vegetation.

Barabara iko wapi? (Where is the road?

The arms swing south, curling to the left.

We ask again a hundred metres later, with the same response. We drive over a pile of garbage on the road and ask some other children. This time, our broken Swahili seems inadequate. We were expecting people to point; but instead they empty the entire village, surround our bike, and joke about us. Amused mothers stand behind the children, who hover just out of reach, chattering endlessly. A detachment scampers off and fetches the only grown man in sight. He begins to give us detailed instructions. Sensing our confusion, he draws a map in the sand. There are two left turns and then our right turn is after that.

Sputtering through the sand, we finally see another motorcycle parked on the beach. Our destination! We park and unpack our lunch. The white sand stretches for miles in either direction. The beach is nearly deserted: a few locals go about their business in the distance. To the north, a few boats lie on the sand. Even the guidebooks have overlooked this corner of the world. We sit on a fallen tree and eat.

Children find us. They seem to have boundless energy. They climb some trees to show off. I climb onto a twisted tree myself as a sign of welcome. They seem keen to be around us, but they make little effort to interact with us. I play catch with them a bit with their coconut ball. After, I watch as they invent games, fight playfully, and have fun.

Time seeps away and we hear one of the children say something about saa kumi (4:00 pm). Wanting to get home before dark, we leave the beach and the children. We take a picture of them as we leave.

The road home is overrun with people because of Eid al Hajj. A girl takes a lollipop out of her mouth and offers it to us as we zip by. We navigate the deep, sandy road; we continue on the trail through the forest; and we finally arrive at the paved road.

Challenge: as is culturally appropriate, focus on the positive and avoid talking about politics.

I will recount more of my holiday travels later, but for now I will mention my brief trip to Lushoto, inland Tanzania.

Tanzania is a huge country, making short-duration travels difficult. I only had three days in which to travel; so Lushoto, a mountain town northwest of Dar es Salaam, was by far the most appealing option.

Lushoto has plenty of guest houses. The tourist contingency is unusual. Lushoto is within driving distance of Arusha, and so rich white people experiencing the standard Northern Circuit (Serengeti, Ngorongoro, Lake Manyara) can extend their vacations by visiting. Also, since Lushoto is so beautiful and marginally off the beaten track, it is a popular backpackers' destination. The rich/poor tourists can avoid each other quite easily and happily.

I walked around the nearby villages with a guide. I saw a spectacular viewpoint. I met many fascinating people. I watched a choir practice in a small church. I ran into somebody I had seen before (twice) in Pemba. A year ago, any one of these experiences would have stunned me; but by now, I am used to this sort of thing. While backpacking in Africa, expect the unexpected.

My topic of rumination during my stay was language. The local language is Kisambaa, a Bantu language (related to Swahili). Almost everybody in the area speaks Kisambaa. And I have been told by two locals (my rudimentary form of fact-checking) that everybody speaks Kisambaa within the home.

More people in the area understand Kisambaa than Swahili, probably. Children, for instance, speak Kisambaa only until they reach schooling age. Some elders only have a rudimentary grasp of Swahili. But Swahili is the national language, and so everybody speaks it by default.

So it seems magical to me that on all the streets, in the markets, even in the villages, people greeted each other using Swahili!

This may not be shocking to my readers, but it was shocking to me. In my travels in Uganda, a journey of a hundred kilometres is more than enough to stumble across five local languages. In every town, a different language discourages visitors from becoming members. I am told that Kenya is similar.

In Lushoto, I found Swahili to be a welcoming way to talk. Two people of the same tribe will greet each other in such a way that anybody passing by, even from another tribe, can understand. How could this have come to be? I am reminded of my French Immersion classes in high school. In grade 9, my teachers would roam through the class of native English speakers, saying, I want to hear you speaking French, people! And so we did. Tanzanians universally credit Nyerere for spreading Swahili throughout Tanzania.

The beauty is obvious. I met people from Arusha and Moshi who live in Lushoto permanently and who are accepted enthusiastically by the locals. More impressive still: aside from comments about Indians, I have not heard a single derogatory comment about another ethnic group in my entire time here. Imagine living in Montreal for five months and making the same claim!

I met one Kenyan and had several more were pointed out to me by locals. We all watched EATV (the East Africa Television station) together in a bar and witnessed scenes from Kenya.

Tanzanians seem to be quite united in their opinions of Kenya. Everybody I have talked to in both Lushoto and Dar es Salaam has echoed the same sentiments.

Tanzania may be poor, but its people are proud. Popular opinion seems to be: life is very difficult here on the mainland, but we should still count ourselves lucky. Life could be much worse.