May Day

So, tommorow is May Day. Public holiday for us, and a big one too because We Appreciate Our Workers like any good Socialist Country does. The Trade Unions Confederation of Tanzania (TUCTA) is revving up their loudspeakers. They just changed the theme last minute to something about redistributing the wealth. "We want a bigger slice of the pie" or some such. Fisadis: Message! Prior to that, the motto was going to be: "A Tanzania Without Poverty: It is Possible" (loose translation), which is one of the Party's many lines. Doesn't sound to me like TUCTA and the Party are quite as tight as they were in the glorious past. Heh.

Mr. President was planning to be there with his people at the nation-wide celebration until his Office announced early in the week that he wouldn't be able to make it, so sorry, next time. Might be jet-lag, who knows, but at last year's event the outspoken TUCTA head honcho Nestory Ngulla read out a speech about minimum wages that overshadowed the President's weak remarks quite badly. This year, the fractious teacher's union has called off a planned strike over wages which is good, though the new TUCTA theme does not bode well for the government. Who knows what Mr. Ngulla is going to have to say this time around? Prudent indeed to watch from afar. Workers of the World, Unite!

Bojo, that's so funny...whatever.

Alright people, I admit it: 99% of the time our arrogant, pompous, show-offing, name-dropping, luxury-seeking, Anglophilic asses richly deserve the ribbing that we get. Waitu. Apparently, the accent is hee-fricking-larious.

Everybody's got jokes about akina Koku and R/Lwegoshora now: jingles, skits about bwana Arfred Tibaigana, Ze Comedians, you name it. Actuarry, ze guy in Ze Comedy who does business news is pretty good, come to think of it: "Tonge ra ugari tikiti maji."

Lakini, Wahaya mbona tumekuwa na watani wengi kupita kiasi? Vipi, mnaona Wakurya wameshindwa kazi, muwasaidie? Hm. Angarau tupatieni royalties za vijisenti tukaendereze ka mkoa ketu ka Kagera...

Things Africans Don't Do: Keep Pets.

Next door's mangy mongrel came over to say hello as I was standing outside the office gates this morning. His regrettable lack of hygiene meant that I was a little reluctant to introduce myself and ruffle his crusty ears, but I thought that it was nice to see a dog that hadn't been tortured into a mortal fear and distrust of humans... until the poor puppy got called home and limped off with his tail between his legs, evidently unsure about his treatment there.

Very many dogs and a number of cats, not to mention vervet monkeys, police horses, zebras and other oddities about town get rough treatment at our hands. I was once told by someone that dogs in particular are detested because during colonial times they were used as part of the European machinery of oppression. Even we local bourgeois, eager adopters of a number of 'Western' conveniences (cable, nightclubs, jogging), often get a little squirrelly about creatures. Still, times have changed and the acts of casual cruelty that people commit towards strays and pets is very creepy. I just don't buy the notion that there is anything intrinsically 'African' about treating animals with contempt, no matter how many Afrochauvinists argue in that direction.

I have been sub-letting a friends' pets (one post-traumatic dog and an ill-tempered tomcat) but the time has come to get my own clawed allergen carriers. A natural place to go would be the animal rescue shelters, and I think that when the time comes that's where we find ourselves but for the meantime I am resisting. As a soft-touch, I don't want to go pet-hunting during a moment of weakness and get seduced by rows of sad eyes to take a whole pack of animals home. Besides, I am intrigued by the thought holding out for a Basenji, aka Congo Dog, Zande Dog, Ango Angari. Originally from the Congo-DRC, Basenjis don't bark but they do sing and ululate, clean themselves like cats, are aloof and independent and mischievous, and have an affinity for musical careers.

Coming soon to a health clinic near you: a subsidized sex-life

I found this in my inbox this morning courtesy of Cynthia. I am not entirely sure what to make of this article, except to say that the saying 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions' was coined for these kinds of incidents. Ms Medlin's line, in particular, is priceless. Do we assume that people who are living in poverty aren't rational enough to consider long-term consequences of their behavior unless someone provides a $45 incentive? Why does this make me feel mildly nauseous?

By Andrew Jack in London

Published: April 25 2008 22:25

Thousands of people in Africa will be paid to avoid unsafe sex, under a groundbreaking World Bank-backed experiment aimed at halting the spread of Aids.

The $1.8m trial – to be launched this year – will counsel 3,000 men and women aged 15-30 in southern rural Tanzania over three years, paying them on condition that periodic laboratory test results prove they have not contracted sexually transmitted infections.

The proposed payments of $45 equate to a quarter of annual income for some participants.

The programme, jointly funded by the World Bank, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Population Reference Bureau and the Spanish Impact Evaluation Fund, marks an important step in the fight to tackle Aids, which claims 2m lives a year.

In spite of billions of dollars spent annually on treatment and prevention worldwide, there were about 2.5m new HIV infections in 2007, predominantly in Africa.

Carol Medlin from the University of California, San Francisco, one of the researchers, said: "We hope this 'reverse prostitution' will make people think hard about the long-term consequences of their short-term behaviour."

The Tanzanian experiment is a big advance in efforts to test public health ideas more rigorously, with some participants placed in a control arm not offered payment in order to track the effects of the programme precisely.

"Conditional cash transfers" have already been used in Latin America to motivate poor parents to attend health clinics, and have their children vaccinated and schooled. Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, last year unveiled a project to boost school attendance.

The designers of the Tanzanian programme believe that payments of $45 when combined with careful counselling could play an important role in reducing HIV infection, especially for vulnerable young women.

The study will be conducted by the Ifakara Health Research and Development Centre in Tanzania, in conjunction with researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, the University of California, San Francisco and the World Bank.

The Tanzanian trial programme, which is still subject to fine-tuning and ethical approval, will not specifically test for HIV, which is costly and already widely conducted in the country. It will use proxies including gonorrhoea, and guarantees any participant found to be infected receives state treatment.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

The JK Factor

The Old Guard of the political elite is going through some tough times right now. Four ministerial resignations have done nothing but whet the appetite of the opposition, the media and much of the public for more bloodshed. Names are being thrown around with joyful abandon. It would seem that everyone and their grandma is a fisadi.*

It may be that we are having our first real generational power struggle. Our current president is just young enough to straddle the divide between the Nyerere generation and the post-ujamaa generation. He played this card heavily during the 2005 campaign to lure the youth vote, promising change in the form of a government that would be in touch with the needs of the current workforce and not in thrall to the gerontocracy.

As the fourth phase government does battle with the corruption Hydra, an interesting debate has emerged in various fora online and in the papers: is the clean-up sanctioned by Kikwete, or is it happening in spite of his wishes? Is JK an extremely canny strategist who is treading the dangerous path of getting rid of many of the people who helped him get into power, or is JK a helpless captive of revolutionary elements within and without the party? Weigh in folks.

*Fisadi: crook, seducer, corrupt person, vandal, villain, etc.

Red on the ground

The Flame Trees were shedding in the height of summer,

Littering city driveways with confetti.

In the rainy season new greens struggle to come up

through the clinging earth, freshly-turned.

Electric Lullabye

Mondays are challenging. Much more so when Tanesco decides to treat us to an unannouced, unscheduled power-cut, as it has today. Kwa Michael Cheney where I work and live, these interruptions have become endemic in the past few months. Our neighbor has an automatic generator so whenever the power goes our you can tell by the jumbo-jet rumble that emanates from their garden. I guess they need it to drive the electric fencing at the top of their wall, but it does IMHO point them out to potential thieves. Many a night I have been lured to sleep by the endless electric lullabye, drowning out the drone of mosquitoes in the hot still air.

The Tanesco customer service people can be hard to get hold of, but when you do get them they tend to assure you that the problem has been identified, and is being dealt with as you speak: "Power will be back in another half-hour Madam. Yes, we understand that you called an hour ago but I assure you that the transformer is being fixed right this minute. Power will be back right now. Thanks for calling."

Word on the Street: Apparently, Kwa Micheal Cheney is a prime spot for people who steal transformer oil. Athumani, my regular taxi guy, says that a litre of pure transformer oil can be sold for 20 million shillings or more. The oil us used as an industrial lubricant. At that price, there is little incentive for Tanesco workers themselves not to facilitate the 'accidental' loss of a few litres every day.

Something blue in the city...

The Alliance Francaise often brings in artists from different parts of the world (mostly the French-speaking world, bien sur) for free exhibitions and concerts. This Friday, to stave off another case of the Weekend Wail (There's Nothing to Dooooo.....) I went off to watch a group called Trio Ivoire play some Jazz.


They were fantastic. Not all of their songs were particularly to my taste, but the musicians were very proficient and I always get a goosebumps when I hear a particularly good piece of music live (I've experimented with the canned stuff, rarely raises even a shiver). The fusion of Sahelian sound with Jazz worked really well in some pieces, less well in pieces where there was too little structure and notes were clanging all over the place. The group treated us to a mind-blowing moment when the pianist and the Balophon (Marimba) players engaged in a playful call-and-response for about five minutes while the drummer took a break before he jumped back into the music with a mischievous build-up of beats...Whew. So of course I ended up parting with Tshs 18,000 for their CD in appreciation.

I also got to bump into some friends, a lovely couple the male half of whom plays the bass guitar in a brand new blues band. They performed at the Irish pub a few weeks ago (good crowd, suspect venue) and they were a revelation. Especially the lead guitarist whose solos have to be heard to be believed, and whose voice was a pleasant surprise- not too smooth, not too derivative, just himself and just right for the blues. The band, which has no name, will be playing again on May 10th. Stay tuned for an update.