Energy levels

What we always worry about in a workshop is to keep up the energy levels of the participants.

Obviously, it is food that gives us the fuel to keep going. Now, after one year I still marvel at the Tanzanian taste for food, so I just have to give you our daily menu.

Breakfast - milk tea, boiled eggs, chapati (similar to tortilla, but fried), maandazi (a local doughnut), toast bread, sausages, banana
Tea break - chapati with goat/beef stew
Lunch - ugali (polenta) & rice & pommes frites & cooked green bananas & tomato sauce & fried chicken & one tablespoon of stewed greenery & one slice of pineapple
Tea break - milk tea, fried potatoes, liver in a sauce

From  left to right - maandazi, vitumbua and chapati, all delicious and still dripping with oil

Anyone sees, like me, a slight lack of vitamins in the menu? Yes, Tanzanians have a high regard for fried carbohydrates and meat, and this in the 35 degrees heat! I guess you will understand why I gain three kilos after each week of a workshop...

Now, the other important thing at a workshop, to keep people from falling asleep after eating all this fried food, are the energizers. Our participants preferred energizers in the form of clapping hands. Let us clap once and twice and done! They also liked breathing - let us breathe in deeply and breathe out deeply and done! They also liked standing up, standing on the tops of their fingers for some seconds, and sitting down again. It really worked nicely for them, but it failed to energize me...

M & M & M & M

Dear all, I just returned from Mwanza, Tanzania's second largest city, in its most extreme West, on the shores of Lake Victoria, from doing my third cycle of action research.

The lovely Mwanza, a transport and business hub of west Tanzania, 450,000 people

Mwanza is also called the Rock City, because of weird rock formations in the lake Victoria. This one is named the Bismark Rock.

Up to know I have been to four small Tanzanian cities - Mbeya & Moshi & Morogoro & Mwanza, and I just can't help but wonder...

When I walk the streets of these cities, people don't mind me. Some greet respectfully, most just continue on their way. It almost makes me feel like just another normal person again.  In Dar, on the other side, I get called after non-stop, with all kinds of nonsense, such as 'Hey, Chinese girl!', 'Hey, pretty baby', 'Come to me, sweetie', 'I love you so much, white girl', 'Why are you not talking to me whitie', 'I need your money, rich girl' etc.

In M & M & M & M I walk to the fruit sellers and am told the correct price for my fruit immediately. In Dar, I get overcharged by 200% on a daily basis, even by the sellers with whome I buy regularly.

In Ms I can have a pleasant and interesting chat with friendly taxi drivers and they will even show me around the town for free. In Dar, taxi drivers are constantly in a sullen mood, will bargain with you until you drop dead or until you begin to wonder whether they want to do business at all and once on the road, they refuse to listen to you and bark back at you if you ask them to close the window or try not to hit people on the road.

In Ms the buses will drive a leisurely 40 km/h and will actually stop for you if you want to board or exit the bus. In Dar, buses speed around the corners, throwing you back and forth, and some will actually expect you to hop on or off while moving.

So what the hell is wrong with Dar?!

Snapshots

The dala dala stations in Dar all have their own specific, weird and peculiar names. On my way home I pass Mugabe, Legho, Madukani, Makaburini and so on. It took me a long time to figure out that these bus stops are named after prominent buildings on the street - Mugabe pharmacy, Legho hotel, Madukani shop and Makaburini - by the cementery. It also took me a long time to figure out why on Earth is the bus stop in front of my office called Panther - Chui. This small sign in the middle of a huge sign forest tells it - our offices are guarded by the Chui Security Firm.

Mobile fruit sellers give Dar es Salaam people a chance of a healthy street snack - they carefully peel a juicy orange for you, cut it in half and then you stroll on sucking on it. It also helps against fainting because of the heat!

People are regularly hit by the cars on the Dar roads, but goats never. People say goats are clever in ducking the cars - does this mean the drivers are stupid?!

The banana market on my way to work is always busy and full of life - early in the morning truckloads of ndizi are being loaded on and off and on and off...

At the market entrance the road is so crammed with cars, trucks, bicycles, motorcycles and people that passing through becomes a work of art. That is the Dar es Salaam way of doing the SLALOM...

Bankomat na dveh nogah

Ko sva bila s Stefanom v Ugandi, naju nesteti klici 'Mzungu, mzungu, give me my money' (Belec, belec, daj mi denar) niso tako zelo motili. Navsezadnje so ljudje na vasi resnicno revni, tudi v primerjavi z najrevnejsim prebivalcem Evrope, in navsezadnje beraciti ni greh. V Dar es Salaamu, temu velikemu mestu, pa nisva pricakovala toliko prosenj za denar... In res jih je manj, le da se razlikuje ne le kvantiteta, ampak tudi kvaliteta teh prosenj.

Na vasi so roke iztegovali ljudje v na pol raztrganih cunjah, prasni in sloki od nenehnega dela. V Dar es Salaamu pa beracenje poteka bolj sofisticirano... Zgodilo se mi je ze, da me je ustavil negovan, lepo oblecen mlad moski z vrecko iz pekarne v rokah, se vljudno predstavil in dodal, da je lacen, da nima denarja in ali mu lahko dam nekaj svojega bogastva? Meni ponavadi pride na pamet samo nasvet, naj proda svojo drago jakno ali pa morda poje pecivo iz vrecke, ki jo drzi v roki? Resnicno, kot belec se vcasih pocutim kot bankomat na dveh nogah!

Ampak ne samo bankomat, na splosno smo belci priloznost za boljse zivljenje na dveh nogah. Na zacetku mi je bilo vsec, da je v Tanzaniji povsem normalno nagovoriti mimoidocega na cesti in se z njim zaplesti v pogovor. Sedaj pa so me izkusnje naucile, da gredo vsi pogovori v isto smer... Zacne se z 'kako ti je ime', 'od kod prihajas', 'kje delas' in dodatkom, da bi govorca zelo veselilo izmenjati par idej s tabo. Te ideje se potem izkazejo za 'ali ima tvoja organizacija delo zame', 'kako lahko/tezko se pride v tvojo drzavo', 'mi lahko napises pismo, da bom lahko potoval v tvojo drzavo', 'mi lahko pomagas dobiti sluzbo v tvoji drzavi', 'tudi jaz imam svojo organizacijo in iscem financnega sponsorja'. Konca se seveda vse skupaj z velikim, dolgim in vztrajnim 'ZAKAJ NE?' in splosnim nerazumevanjem govorca nad rahlo slabo voljo, ki se zacne kazati pri meni in mojim pospesenim korakom. Ce ima bankomat dve nogi, jih lahko vsaj uporabi, a ne?

The NGO business

Working for an NGO in a big city is quite different than working in the countryside.

In the countryside you have one, maybe two or three NGO's in one village, doing practical programmes with the people, whom you talk to daily. Maybe you have workshops with kids in the schools or you visit farmers and work on improving farming methods with them.

In Dar es Salaam there are thousands of NGO's, all doing the same undefinable, abstract thing - fighting for human rights. The programmes consist of awareness raising, capacity building and similar big sounding words and you may be here for a year and have never seen a disabled person, although working for a disabled people's organisation. Your work consists of writing plans and budgets and conducting workshops.

In the countryside people are very happy if they are invited to a workshop. They hope for new knowledge, some good company and a glimpse into the city life. They will travel incredible distances just to be there. They listen carefully and usually do decide to try out one or two heard things when they get back home.

In the city people are very stressed if they are invited to a workshop because they get several invitations weekly. They decide which one to visit based on where they will get more money (usually they are paid travelling and subsistence allowances, plus provided with free food and stationery). Sometimes they even hop from one workshop to another. Needless to say they can't really pay attention to what is being said and anyway, with all this workshop visiting to do, they never have time to implement any of the lessons learnt. The rule is that these people, who always come incredibly late and never hear what the workshop is really about, argue the loudest for their, usually irrelevant, arguments, and disturb anyone else in the room. Another rule is that the people who arrive half an hour before lunch complain the loudest that the lunch provided is not good.

So, it may be that NGO's in the countryside really do implement programmes that benefit people and improve their well-being and life situation. NGO's in the cities, however, seem merely to plan and educate themselves to be able to (sometimes in the very far future) implement some kind of activities. Many young, aspiring students decide to found an NGO after finishing school. This is usually not so much because they would be passionate about a cause, but because unemployment in Tanzania is over 70% and with even one small activity being supported by a donor they can maybe get themselves a salary for a year. When they do manage to get a job in say, two or three years, the NGO dies. So on average, I would say, from around 4000 NGO's in Dar, 1000 are functioning and 3000 are only names on paper.

Finding this blog not really objective and fair? It will not surprise you to learn that I just held a workshop yesterday, where five people out of fifteen showed up. Three came about two hours late and the other two just before lunch. Out of these five all were assistants or assistants' assistants of the people we invited, who, incidentally, all fifteen, confirmed their participation five days ago when we called them on the phone. Yes, the NGO business is tough.

Heimweh

Heimweh aeussert sich manchmal in ganz besonderer Art und Weise. Jetzt, wo Dar es Salaam wirklich zu heiss zum Leben wird, bin ich betroffen.

Wir haben ja diesen tollen Kalender von den Wagners' bekommen, wo auf dem Jaennerfoto Niklas und Fabian in einer Schihuette eine Kaesekrainerwurst essen. So traeume ich seit dem 1. Jaenner ueber Krainerwurst... Ich kann hier Krebs in Kokonusssauce essen, oder sauren Mangosalat, oder Fisch so viel ich will, aber ich hab genug von bloeden Kokosnuessen, ich will halt eine Krainerwurst!

Hier kann man Wuerste selten finden im Geschaeft, und gemacht sind sie auf Swahili Art - mit Zimt, Nelken und Kardamom. Juck, bla, nichts da!

Stefan, auf der anderen Seite, kann zurzeit aufs Essen nicht mal denken. Er kann nicht schlafen, er kann nicht schlucken, und essen kann er schon gar nicht. Das ist auch Afrika - bei 35 Grad kriegt man mit Klima und kaltem Trinkwasser ratz fatz eine Halsentzuendung, mit Bakterien, die sein Koerper anscheinend noch nie gesehen hat! Ueber Nacht 40 Grad Fieber, zittert ganze Tage lang, schwitzt all die Waesche voll und geht rum wie ein Zombie - ja, zuhause waere es jetzt schoener.