So my Sunday is I work a bit in the office (one of our two days a week with reliable electricity supply) then am walking up the road when a fellow strikes up conversation. As answering his questions a guy who hustles on the streets who's become a friend in a way, Ganga, walks by. I like Ganga and am a bit aimless so I catch up to him accross the busy streat as he is heading up the hill into the village. Next we are sitting in a local canteen, he who has nothing has insisted on buying me a simple lunch. I eat his greens and he eats my meat. I like the way we manage to talk with his little English and my little Swahili, he's got some unusual skill at communicating even with such limited language; v. smart. And tells me how he grew up 35 km outside of Dodoma the original capital city (more a small town) in central TZ. And so for 3 yrs. his father got him to walk to school through woods though it was dangerous with lions, etc. his farmer parents had no money so while the other kids had uniforms he tied a kanga around himself. the 4th yr the teacher told him that's it, no more school without a uniform. That's why no english he said. I don't know why it struck me so but i felt like crying. Such a good guy, now in his 30's selling trinkets, so smart and so many like him here. If they don't have money for uniforms as many don't, they don't get education. Comes on the heels of Megan and I failing to accompany a street boy late at night with a bloody leg asking for a bandaid, to the hospital. we pointed him the direction only, then repented, tried to find and accompany him, only to find him gone. No money, no help from the hospital - not for an alone kid with a gash in his leg at 10.00 pm, not for anyone.
In the Arusha Times they polled locals opinions of TZ joining an East African Federation w/ Kenya and Uganda: "Queen Alex, a resident of Njiro told the AT that what she hated to hear most is the talk about East African Federation. She said that TZ is a peaceful country and should not be contaminated. 'we do not want wars, conflicts and the other awful things that happen in neighboring countries.' She claims that in the event of a political federation, TZ will also be drawn into bloody conflicts. 'let's remain with our poverty but live in peace. Federation? No.'"
counter that commonly held opinion with this exert from Ben Terrall reporting in Counter Punch magazine on Haiti:
Rene Civil, a grass roots activist recently re-arrested speaks to an international delegation: "'we're here to end all forms of discrimination, we're here to end all forms of violence. The violence of not being able to afford to buy a meal to eat, the violence of not being able to have a house to live in, the violence of not being able to go to school... 'you always hear that it is the people in Cite Soleil, it's the people in Bel Air who have all the weapons, but what's actually happening is the poeple with the most weapons are the people who live up in the hills who have a house where they can store the weapons, who have cars to transport the weapons. And yet it's these very people who carry the weapons who continue to demonize the poor in Cite Soleil and Bel Air.'
Civil asked the delegation 'for your support in making sure that his demonization of the poor does not continue because the real problems that they have are not weapons, they are the social problems that they face. It's that they cannot eat, it's that they cannot have a roof over their heads. And I ask you to get this message out to the media, that this is a demonization of poor people, and actually what's happening is that they're suffering because of the economic and social problems in this country."