EAC and Erik, Wednesday, January 22, 2014

This morning, John and Megan took the students into town for a visit to the East African Community's offices.  John had arranged for a tour and presentation for our group.  The EAC offices have been moved since we were here in 2012 and are now housed in a beautiful modern building built, paid for, and largely budgeted by the Germans.  That alone tells one how precarious this union of five countries ( Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi) may actually be although the countries involved are now cooperating on the movement of labor, tariffs, and common market, and they are working toward a monetary union, and finally--I'd say maybe or never--a political federation. The students said the presentation was excellent, and it was apparent that they recognized that they had gotten a glimpse of a part of East African development they had been totally unaware of before.

I stayed at Kundayo during the morning, but took a taxi downtown to the Naz Hotel at about 11:30, so I could join the group for the Naz's lunch buffet.  The Naz cuisine is Indian, so there were entrees for both meat eaters and vegetarians, as well as salads and platters of fresh fruit.  The Naz is one of John's favorite places to eat in Arusha, and the students gave it a thumbs up as well.  Most of the students were thoroughly distracted by the various choice of Fanta, with the favorite flavors being pineapple and passion fruit.  I myself am very, very fond of passion fruit Fanta but stuck to water for our meal. John usually chooses to drink Stoney Tangawisi, a ginger beverage not available in the States.

While in almost all ways this is an excellent group of young adults--19 to 21 years old--they still seem unaware of how it must look to Tanzanians when they leave large amounts of uneaten food on their plates.  I was especially taken aback by this yesterday because they were at a buffet where they
had complete control over what they chose and the amounts they took.  Apparently, in our first world lives wasting food isn't something to which we pay much attention, but in a developing country such as Tanzania such waste must be incomprehensible.  And, without meaning to, our students must project an air of arrogance and privilege when they do this.  Obviously, John and Megan need to speak with the students about this again.  It's not that these students are uncaring; they are simply unaware.

Once lunch was over, the students went across the street to check out the ice cream shop there, and John and I walked about three blocks to the Lutheran Bookstore, which I think is the best in Arusha.  I love to look at all the books there and usually find amazing publications.  One of the best yesterday was entitled something like "50 Things a Gentleman Should Know."  The very first page I saw inside proclaimed as a Don't: It is not polite to pass gas when you are at the table with others even if you say "Excuse me." The  Do was:  Wait until you can step outside to pass gas.  I didn't get to read more as the store has extremely narrow aisle around the tables of books and people kept needing to get past me.  I decided that my Don't was:  Do not clog the aisle while reading in a bookstore, especially if the text makes you snort with laughter.  The Do then was buying a  Lutheran hymnal which has the liturgy in Swahili, a notebook made in China which proclaims in English "My life is feel so nice," and a couple of touristy postcards.

Then while John took the students for an afternoon visit to Habari Node, the largest internet provider in Arusha, I held court on the front veranda of the New Safari Hotel, my favorite people-watching post in Arusha.  One of the founders and partners of Habari Node is Erik Lowberg, who is originally from the Spokane Valley and has been here for maybe 30 years, even before the end of Ujama.  First, he had a brick making business, which is still ongoing, but at the end of Ujama, when businesses were no longer nationalized, Erik and a partner began working with computer networks, and now Habari Node employees 70 Tanzanians who operate all levels of the business.  Erik is the only non-African in the company, and his ultimate goal is to transfer all the shares to the Tanzanian management. John's goal in taking students to visit such an enterprise is that the students will see that Africa is not all about orphanages and starving children.*  Those do exist, just as we have the poor and homeless in the States, but Africa--and Tanzania in particular--is quickly developing and has enormous opportunities for investment. [http://www.habari.co.tz/]

*In fact this program does not take the students to a single orphanage.

After the students left Habari Node, John and Erik walked to meet me at the New Safari Hotel, and we had a nice time chatting about common connections and experiences in Spokane and people we all knew.  Erik surprised me by saying he had once dated Carol Cook(e), who was a chaplain's assistant at Whitworth back in the early 1980s.   I have a vivid memory of Carol being harassed by the Chuck E Cheese mascot rat at a birthday party being held in my honor.  However, I have now lost contact with her, so if any reader knows where she is, I would appreciate being told.  Erik has since married a Tanzanian woman who works for World Vision.

The evening was routine, except that instead of a peanut butter and jam sandwich, I had sardines on toast.  I love sardines, so even though they are quite expensive here, I treated myself to a little tin of them in tomato sauce.  It's odd how one's idea of a special treat changes with place and circumstances.