Some days I can barely refrain from telling you what I had for breakfast which is why Twitter could be dangerous... and other Kitchen Sink Drama

I was recently lucky to get some essential tips on blogging from Pernille, the talent behind Louder than Swahili a couple of days ago. As she took us on a whirlwind tour of the powers of social media I couldn't help but focus on questions of style and substance. While there are many tricks, widgets and thingamabobs out there that can help a blog along and increase readership, it is ultimately the blog's content that will sell it. At least, that's what I chose to take from the lesson.

Naturally this made me think about the performance of Tanzanian fem bloggers, voice and representation. While my blog roll is shamefully empty of sistren, there are several out there. However, a quick blitz through the internet will show that most people blogging in Tanzania are menfolk. And as a rule we Tanzanian bloggers tend either towards political reportage/commentary, or social noticeboards masquerading as blogs. Original Content is a little harder to come by although some online political commentators certainly write reams of the stuff.

I am beginning to think about how blogging is subject to gender, how this affects the selection of content and overall style. This blog is inspired by a particular movement in food blogging that blends introspection with the love of a particular subject, the best of which has writers who should really be published. There was decidedly more passion than commercial sense in this introspective style, which is still dominated by women. If you have the right project at the right time you can make money off this sort of thing, and some have hit the big time, but ultimately this kind of blog is offering kitchen sink drama, which is some of the best kind.

So, my covenant with readers is that everything you find here is Original Content- the words, the pictures, the mistakes, the TMI, the snark, the aesthetic, the opinions and politics. As some bloggers know, in this market that could mean crazy phonecalls from rabid jingoists, or theft of intellectual property. But that's part of the fun, and an indicator of success besides, right? Right? Right.

...and Sanctioned too.

I have been ordered by my (grumpy, crotchety, curmudgeonly)* colleague to disclose the fact that this blog was reviewed by an employee of the company yours truly works for. So here: this blog was reviewed by a fellow worker. Fuller disclosure: he told me he was going to review it. Fullest disclosure: I practically avoided the guy for two weeks after telling him not to doctor anything in case i gave in and begged for a great review. Satisfied now?

*He prefers to term his mood 'self-righteous indignation.' And he's still griping at me. Some people...

Outed!

The Mikocheni Report got reviewed in the Weekender supplement of The Citizen* newspaper today! There is the usual admonition to actually post regularly (ahem) and some suggestions on how to make the blog easier to find and interactive so that people actually read the damn thing, but it was a friendly assessment. My favorite section: "...compact opinionated posts and for once a blog with an artistic profile aiding the understanding of the post mirrored through the personality of the Blogger." Hell yeah. Have a celebratory weekend.

*click on the link to the digital edition to access the Weekender section.

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.

Youssou N'dour and Angelique Kidjo

Dar es Salaam is becoming a bit of a venue for international artists- the past five or so years has seen the likes of Jay-Z, Sean Paul, Akon, Brick 'n Lace, and other pop tarts- I mean stars- come through. More interestingly, Bongo has also been able to attract heavyweight live musicians from the continent like Oliver Mtukudzi, The Soweto String Quartet and McCoy Mrubata- all of whom I have been delighted to watch from just a couple of meters away. There is nothing quite like standing within yelling distance of these stars and being able to request favorites! Last night, that involved singing Malaika along with Angelique Kidjo and 7 Seconds with Youssou N'Dour:

Which reminds me: Sauti Za Busara 2010 is around the corner.

How you vote is how you eat.

I already wrote about one aspect of the intersection between class and food- arguing of course in favor of the elitist view that quality matters. But food security is undeniably a tricky thing. I remember reading a fairly recent article where a government employee made a statement along the lines of "Cassava should be the staple food of Tanzania." Excuse the lack of attribution- but clearly this is a wishful statement rather than an actual government policy. However, it does point out to the problems of treating food in a utilitarian manner. Common sense suggests, for example, that for our modern mass society to really prosper we should all be mostly vegetarian with a lot less animal protein in our diets. But this is not culturally feasible at all for many of us, your truly included. Since I tilt to the left, the best I can do is compromise the way that any good liberal will by trying to 'eat smart'- whatever that might mean. And according to this interesting experiment in social surveys, there is a relationship between a person's food and their politics.

Skeletons in Cyberspace

It is summer, and therefore there must be intermittent power cuts carefully timed to hit during the hottest part of the day. Like today. While waiting for the power to come back I read through the remains of a blog that looked mighty interesting in its time. Kifimbocheza left an elegant, intriguing and somewhat poignant last post to serve as a marker for his blog’s grave.

I was reading him because he turned up as I searched for blogs to put under the (new!) Tanzania blogger links section which I will populate over time. His post brought up something interesting that we rarely talk about directly in Tanzania: racial politics. Whooo-eee are they complicated! In our cyberspace, no issue is thornier than the concept of authenticity- who is Tanzanian and how representative they are and what this allows them to say about the country with any authority.

Well, identity is complex. The criteria for selection for Tanzanian blogs is pretty simple here: blogs whose content is mostly about Tanzania. The nationality of the blogger is secondary since it that is generally an accident of birth and immigration laws. Blogging intelligently and deeply about a place that is well-known and beloved by the blogger should be open to anyone across boundaries of residence permits and melanin levels, even language barriers.

Another point of interest in the identity debate is the use of anonymity. Kifimbocheza would not reveal his on his blog, and a number of Tanzanian bloggers- yours truly included- use this to free them from censorship from various sources (themselves, the state, society). Although I understand the need for this, it has left the Tanzanian blogging scene a bit denuded of flesh and blood characters with whom to engage. It is something that I grapple with every time I write a post here, under my name, worrying about its reception and consequences. Blogging is fun, but blogging while ‘out’ can be daunting.

A slight lapse in sincerity

In a fit of pre-election inspiration, the government decided to brand this fiscal year with a catchy-yet-considerate theme: Kilimo Kwanza. Agriculture First is an excellent program to promote considering the statistics that are often bandied about- 42 million Tanzanians and 80% of those living in the rural areas with most of them farming for subsistence. By caring about agriculture, the government is purporting to care about the poor majority. However, those numbers also hint at the fundamental problem that arises from the Kilimo Kwanza program, that of a lack of commitment on the part of the government to make deep and lasting changes in the lives of the majority of Tanzanians.

Just a couple of years ago, the education sector was unfortunate enough to become the subject of a massive government initiative. Eschewing true investment in improving the quality of education, the establishment went for the easy kill- increasing access to education by throwing money at things that can be seen and counted. So innumerable primary school buildings have been built, and every ward was very strongly encouraged to build a secondary school so that every single student who successfully completed their primary education would be guaranteed a place. Where were the teachers going to come from, the teaching aids, et cetera? These were mere details that were not allowed to interfere with the government's top-down approach.

Fast forward to today, when the government has moved on from Education to its new mistress Agriculture. Ward Secondary schools are not doing very well. The students have realized that they are being shafted with crappy new recruit teachers who don't know the language of instruction let alone the subjects in any depth. Take a moment to imagine thousands of young Tanzanians simmering with the realization that their government has shafted them, and that they are not going to get the education they thought they would...and let that thought marinate for a couple of years. I hope Kikwete's successor has a plan for the youth vote because s/he's going to need it.

That education sector story is just a recent example of the many well-intentioned but hopelessly hollow initiatives out there. So I was a little skeptical about the Kilimo Kwanza gig when it appeared- there was that excess of official exuberance that is the hallmark of a dubious proposition. I have been lying in wait for months for the cracks to show. Patience does get rewarded in some small measure, as this story shows. It could be argued that in a developing country like this one, there are innumerable demands on public officials-how, oh how do they pick which sitting allowance to receive each day? But perhaps this is reason enough for the government to stop promising sweeping changes the likes of which it cannot effect. And perhaps this will be one more piece of evidence in the case for a strong, expert and indigenous civil society to bridge the development gap that the government cannot.