The Weekly Sneak: Resolutions

Hello! The blog is still alive in case you have checked in and wondered about the scarcity of posts. It occurred to me sometime during a very busy last quarter that in fact blogging is a vacation-free committment. So I took some down time and have consistently deleted every blogpost drafted within the past week and a half. But it's time to get back in the saddle. It's been a while since I offered a peak of what's going to appear in The East African, so here goes:

... every time someone is interviewed on television or on radio for their opinion, they should be fined if they cite the government as being both the root cause of and the potential solution to any problem without providing alternatives. Double fines should apply if the person being interviewed is a civil servant. Immediate dismissal, egging and a public shaving of the head should apply to all elected politicians who blame the government for anything at all. However, perhaps prizes should be awarded for the greatest leaps of blind faith, such as believing that the Government of Tanzania has the capacity to predict let alone control the weather for the benefit of its people.

New Year's Resolutions are one of my favorite things, mostly for the entertainment factor that comes with knowing they are almost impossible to keep. Good luck with yours.

Wow, is it January already?

Happy New Year! It always amazes me how fast the holiday season goes. I was cruising along nicely in October and then suddenly I was decorating Christmas trees and people were throwing bubbly my way and when I woke up again it was an entirely different year. As the blog and blogger have both made it this far, thought I would celebrate with a look back at the Ohs, or the Noughtys if you like. And then, to make up for a 2 month hiatus I'm going to take on Sheikh Yahya and do a little predicting of what's going to happen in 2010. Here goes:

The Noughties were interesting because:

1. Oysterbay Beach was called Oysterbay Beach before it was re-branded Coco, and there were no plastic chairs if you didn't bring your own.
2. Ashok trees were the vegetation rage of the decade. As I write this, I am looking outside at a forest of them in the neighbor's backyard. I have no idea why we think they make good shade trees/fencing because they are the tree version of an exclamation mark.
3. Mobile phone company wars result in 'a Nokia in every household' or close enough. Love you guys. Keep fighting.
4. Hotel Kilimanjaro morphs into Kilimanjaro Kempinski. Its like, the story of Dar and foreign investment, redux.
5. No longer a fly-over zone, we got to see the likes of Jay-Z and Mo Ibrahim hang out in Dar. Its like the glamorous nineteen sixties all over again.
6. A soda cost about 100 shillings as recently as the mid-Noughtys, and one thousand shillings was real money.
7. The rise and rise of Bongo Flava. And youth. And youthful art.
8. Michael Jackson turned out to be mortal. Damn.

Rock Solid Predictions for 2010 (valid as currency):
1. Jakaya Kikwete will be voted President in 2010. Again. But not with 80% of the vote...this time we might pretend to be sane and give him only a 75% landslide victory.
2. 20-30% of incumbent CCM Parliamentarians are going to lose their seats, some to the opposition and some in their party primaries. Opposition is going to expand its share of Parliament by five to ten new seats.
3. Jacob Zuma will marry another wife, to celebrate the successful conclusion of the World Cup in August.
4. Big Brother Africa 4 (or is it 5 now? I lose track...): Tanzania's candidate will be a 25-29-year old person of slim androgynous beauty with the forceful character of a limp dishrag and the quiet cunning of a starving ferret. S/he will not be dark in skin tone, nor Asian Tanzanian. S/He will be voted out in week six and forever be more popular outside of Tanzania that within.
5. Tanzania will come second in the Zain Unversity Challenge. Maybe Sokoine University, or...um..well, not UDSM anyways, though they do try.
6. The government will come up with a sincere and comprehensive thematic development initiative for the 2010/2011 budget: Vijana Nguvu Kazi! This will allow them to 'hire' the young unemployed to 'help out during the elections' ...
7. Sheikh Yahya will predict President Kikwete's exact margin of victory at the polls with stunning accuracy, as well as the winner of World Cup 2010. After the fact.
8. The World Economic Forum: take vacation time. The traffic is going to be completely impossible.

Have an excellent year.