Liberty, really.

I've been getting a variety of verbal reactions to some of my written musings on Jay Kay, challenging me to 'declare my politics'. The terminally suspicious jingoists are certain that I must be a puppet speaking on behalf of The Kenyan Invasion to undermine This Great Nation Of Ours. The professional malcontents accuse me of, how to put this, applying my reverently puckered lips to the collective backsides of the President and the Establishment. Truth is, I am doing this for reasons far more selfish than anti-patriotism or sycophancy.

Power interests me. This is part of an ongoing project to learn through experience and reading and conversations what our relationship is to formal authority and how that affects how we govern ourselves and who we choose to lead our public institutions. Natch, these 'governance' or 'political' issues affect how I live my day-to-day life: whom I am "allowed" to love, how much I pay for electricity, who has the right to disconnect my water, what I can wear in public, whether or not I can stand for public office, what I can afford to eat, how long I have to wait in line for a passport, so on so forth.

Since I do all that living in Tanzania, evidently I must study Tanzanian power structures. And since, generally speaking, Tanzania suffers from fantastically crap institutions, all roads lead to the President*. And since we choose to defer so much power to the President, it is in my interest to know what kinda guy or gal the incumbent is.

It suits me just fine, for example, that Jay Kay's technophilia and evident love of all things young, shiny and new makes him more of a friend to eMedia than an enemy (for the most part). As a liberal-slash-blogger-slash-aspiring-writer-slash-feminist-etc, I need a Head of State who is friendly towards freedom of expression and I prefer one who is not paternalistic in his approach to power. Jay Kay kinda-sorta fulfills these requirements (hey, everyone is a work-in-progress).

Just because I like him- and you do too, you know that smile is irresistible- doesn't mean that I agree with everything he does, or think that he is The Second Coming with a slice of foie gras on top. Charm can only get you so far. I suspect he's messing up very badly in certain ways, but I can't exactly walk into his office and have this chat over a cup of coffee. That is just not how the system works. However, I am at liberty to communicate in other ways. A liberty I evidently exploit and am ready to defend along with every other form of liberty I currently enjoy and any future liberties I might acquire.

The non-selfish part? No woman is an island, and these things must be negotiated with the rest of the folks out there. As long as people are willing to defend liberty, we all benefit. Kinda like a social JKT. So, I hope that helps clear up any questions you might have had, dear Tanzanian reader-who-is-likely-to-ambush-me-at-a-bar-or-workshop, about why I write about Jay Kay the way I do. It's imperfect- like him I'm learning on the job and I have certainly committed my share of mistakes. But at heart we both love this country and serve it to the best of our abilities. Thanks for asking. Let's talk. Please use the comments section- its there for you!

*Yeah, I know there's other "important" branches of government. But, like, not really. That's the problem.

Tanzania...without aid?

There's a very interesting debate that went down on As I Please, the blog formerly known as African Bambataa. What's interesting about it is the competition between rhetoric and reality, that gap between what we want and what we can get. I must admit to a strong bias towards historically grounded political-economic perspectives of the 'development problem' rather than purely economic (or purely political for that matter) perspectives. And, of course, hard-nosed pragmatism. The comments section offers some revealing ruminations.

Anyways, for those who are interested in what development aid is like in practice- the flip side of theory and political rhetoric- this makes an excellent companion piece.

TEDxDAR: Semi-final reflections

Never make a promise on your blog. Your colleagues are likely to gang up on you and demand that you actually fulfill it whilst enumerating the various lapses in logic that you suffered during the TED event. Don't they know accountability is for public officials, not ye Average Josephine? Here, then, are a few final thoughts on TEDxDAR.*

Undeniably a fantastic event, and one that has initiated the kind of conversational exchange I am sure we would all like to see more of. I understand that the Organizing Team is looking to do this on a regular basis so I suspect that frequency is not going to be the problem. The obvious question becomes how do we expand the dialogue to become more inclusive? There is the matter of increasing access: physically through good marketing and choosing amenable venues which can accommodate larger numbers, and intellectually by offering the event in Kiswahili as well as English.

On the flip side, is this an elitist event? Without a doubt, and in the best sense of the word. Yet registration to attend TEDxDAR was FREE. FREE talks, FREE food, FREE goodies. It doesn't get better than that, does it? Sure enough the event was oversubscribed, yet people DID NOT SHOW UP thereby blocking attendance on the part of people who wanted to come (or claimed they wanted to come, since even they didn't show up after tickets were freed up). I am not sure what this says about us. Sometimes I wonder where our collective head is at.

That's it from me. I'll be updating as I get my hands on TEDxDAR info or goodies from time to time. Cheers, and thanks to everyone who attended TEDxDAR, supported it, organized it and in any way shape or form continues to work for a smarter, better vision of our future. Let's keep thinking, talking, doing.

*I hope you guys are happy. Now will you delurk and shift the discussion to the blogosphere?

Baptism.

It took us about two minutes to walk the wending inner streets of Mikocheni and arrive at the primary school. The room was nicely signposted, the government officials as warm and polite as one is likely to get. I got my picture taken after the nice lady told me to sit up straight and then adjusted my bra strap so it wouldn't show. Decorum. I asked the nice registration man if he was okay with me taking pictures too. He was nervous but he consented. People are kind to you when you tell them that it's your first time.

The classroom was peaceful and quiet, a civic cathedral where we all sat on the same narrow wooden pews that children would fidget on tomorrow. Someone had left a lesson on the greenboard in beautiful cursive. Kwa. Kwe. Kwi. Kwo. Kwu. It only took me ten minutes and a few questions to get inducted into the Tanzanian diocese of the Church of Electoral Democracy.

I was born in Mwanza City, Bugando Hospital, same as my four siblings. I will vote in Mikocheni, Kawe, Kinondoni- same parliamentary constituency as my three siblings and two parents*. I was handed yet another photo ID encased in hard plastic. Like so many of the best moments in life, it was wonderfully mundane.

Walking back home, the colors seemed brighter and the crows less annoying. This afternoon, I shall cook and dine with my favorite political operative and my oh-god-i-have-to-deal-with-government-hand-holder-in-chief to celebrate. While buying some brew, I asked my Duka Guy if he'd registered. He laughed and said he'd done that long ago. Everyone around me seems to have voted before, and I feel a bit silly being so terribly excited about this.

I can't wait. Have a blessed Sunday.

*That is where the similarities end. We have far too much fun twitting each other over political choices to sing from the same hymn sheet.

TEDxDAR: And to conclude...

We are done now. The pictures are being taken on stage, the tone is mellow, the DJ has put on bass-heavy music and guests are trickling out of the tent. At the blogging table, aspirin or alcohol would probably be welcome depending on the recipient. Certainly I must thank Mr. Whatsisname from my WK days who insisted that learning touch-typing would be helpful. I hope you are still bullying high-school kids into doing their Mavis exercises :)

I am walking away from the group photo (strobe lights are brighter than they appear in the movies) and guided home through the dark by the warm glow of my Apple. It's time to shake some booty at the after party*. Tomorrow, or whenever, is time enough to do a proper post-mortem. So I'll just say this for now: mad love to the TEDxDAR team. You done good. Own it.

*Triniti, 7:00 pm onwards. I'll be the one having twitching to the break beats of James Brown.

TEDxDAR: Young Kimaro

And last, but not least, Young Kimaro. As an aspiring columnist, I have always admired the lucidity, pragmatism and humor of her writing in the Daily News. Also: she's cool peeps. She remembered to Big Up Kate Bomz (the hidden factor) for pushing like a demon to make sure she was here to support, organize and respond to Speakers for the event. Tech moment: Kate Bomz was actually online and managed to respond live.

Technology. Education. Development. x. Dar es Salaam. That's what's up.

Young Kimaro is hypnotically soft-spoken and I am tired, so forgive me if I don't do justice to her presentation. She started with illustrations from the tourism sector. We are understandably proud of our rich natural resources, but until she started breaking it down for me I did not think too deeply about how our relatively poor services are compromizing our tourism trade and making us uncompetitive in a world chock-a-block full of gorgeous places to visit. And that's just one sector.

"What if we all did what we do...better. every day, every week, every month, every year."

What if?

Young took us from the ideal to the applicable through the tool of Client Focus. And she broke. it. down. For the first time, the comparison with Asian Tigers- which never fails to annoy me because of the implicit historical insensitivity- made sense to me. She was so much better at giving me a credible explanation of the hidden factors that propelled them forward than anyone I have come across to date.

Told you she was pragmatic. Watch out for the soft-spoken ones.

TEDxDAR: Abdu Simba

Abdu Simba is a bit of a polymath, but for TEDxDAR he's here wearing what I like to think of as his 'visual arts' hat. Abdu was one of the founding members of the Flame Tree Media Trust, supporting photography in Tanzania. His talk is about a rather difficult subject to collapse: iconic images, identity and self-esteem. A subject whose complexity any African who consumes film and television is familiar with as we react viscerally to a range of emotions- from the humiliation of old reels with blackfaced minstrels to the triumphant appeal of Barack Obama's aquiline profile gazing thoughtfully into a beautiful American future.

Abdu took us through a slide show of iconic images, from the West and by contrast from Africa to help us think about the tropes, and expose the stereotypes. His ultimate destination was the iconography of Julius Kambarage Nyerere and how he has come to embody Tanzania's soul because he represents our greatest hour. I'll see about getting the slide show for you, it pretty much speaks for itself.

He did say this about the arts: in Tanzania, just as anywhere else, they are cruel masters. We may talk about 'incentivising' art all we like but at the end of the day artists are the ones who have to serve their craft or else they will die. If you are doing something else because art hailipi, you weren't an artist to begin with.

Sometimes it really is that simple. (Please don't use this as an excuse Not to Pay Artists for their Work!)

TEDxDAR: Modesta Mahiga

It is with great personal pleasure that I am blogging today about Modesta Mahiga, CEO of Professional Approach. She couldn't be here, so instead of dropping out without udhuru she recorded a video and sent it in. Committment haina feki, people.

Modesta is passionate about human resources, about developing people and that relationship to our fate as a nation. She's all about unleashing the power of the individual in order to win- in life, in business, as a collective made up of powerful actors. Her vision of our future is of a Tanzania led by confident, professional, patriotic, altruistic entrepreneurs. Of course, since TED is all about exposing such-like individuals in different fields I concur with her that this is not just rhetorical dreaming. This is already happening.

No link yet, but as soon as I get my hot little hands on the video I'll post it. It is good.