Queen's University Tanzania Schools Project

The alternate practicum for teaching students from Queen's University in Ontario Canada is in its fourth year. The Canadian teachers spend three weeks teaching at Butiama Secondary School. This year's group, in the photo below, included (L-R, standing) Dayna Hobbs, Elizabeth Johnston, Erica Frischkorn, Erin Kristalyn, Kelly McGann, Lauren Newton, Rebecca Dunbar, and Rosemary Nolan. I am the odd person out seated in the middle.

After this year's group presented me with a garden table and four chairs, I asked that we record that important occasion with a photograph.

As with the past groups from Queen's University this year's group donated various items including teaching materials, textbooks, laboratory equipment, sports gear, and uniforms to students of Butiama Secondary School and two primary schools. These items were made possible through cash raised by this group as well as donations received from Canada totaling more than 13,000 Canadian dollars, worth more than 17 million shillings.

More than 7 million shillings of this year's donations has been used to pay for secondary students' school fees.

Visitors to Butiama: Three nuns and a brother from Kerala

At Butiama we receive visitors from as far afield as Kerala in India. Well, indirectly, by way of Musoma and Ujiji in Tanzania.

Sr. Jyothi Thomas and Sr. Mary Sudhera (standing left and centre) work at a dispensary at Ujiji in Kigoma region and visited Musoma where Sr. Elize (standing, right) taught at Mwembeni Secondary School with Brother Shaju Joseph (standing behind).

My best friends

I have developed a strong friendship with a group of children, most of whom are my nieces and nephews. The reason for the bond is evident: I frequently share with them sweets, bananas, but mostly biscuits, having in recent years developed a keen taste for biscuits after having almost entirely weaned myself from a variety of Tanzanian lagers.

Think of a highly popular leader, such as Nelson Mandela, as the principal candidate in a "dream ticket" comprising political figures from each continent, all working together on one campaign ticket and with me on the opposing side with hands tied, mouth gagged and under house arrest throughout the campaign period and I still would win the elections if these children were the only voters in that election.

My nieces, nephews, and some neighbours

Not long ago, two of the children showed up and asked me for some of the usual treats. I said I had none, but recalled having an unopened packet of biscuits and went to my bedroom to fetch it. It was a brand that the supermarket attendant had recommend after I found they had run out of my favorite biscuits. I decided beforehand I would taste one of the biscuits before handing over the entire contents to the children. It was a decision that has altered our hitherto good relations.

The biscuits were labeled "shortbread" but the exceptional taste I experienced had nothing "short" about it and undoubtedly contradicted the label. Contrary to my earlier decision to hand over the entire box, I ended up reversing my earlier decision: I gave them two biscuits each and retained the rest.

I keep telling myself that it was only biscuits, that I was the only one with the compromising information, and no one was adversely affected, but I wondered whether relations, particularly between leaders and those who are led, may produce conflicting choices to particular individuals where the stakes are much higher than a two thousand shilling box of biscuits, less four.

The contradictions are not limited to politics and the range can extend to all types of relations, including parenting where the subjects end up licking the crumbs while the leader gets the cake and the cream.

The Irish wit, poet, and dramatist Oscar Wilde wrote: "The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it." Those who yield to various temptations will most likely support such a stance, but such support accepts a weakness rather than confronts it.

Mwalimu Nyerere's defense lawyer

Three years prior to Tanganyika's (later Tanzania) independence in 1961, Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere, the leader of TANU, the political party that won independence from the British, was charged with committing libel against two District Commissioners of Her Majesty's government.

In an article he wrote and which was published in TANU's publication, "Sauti ya TANU" (the Voice of TANU), issue No.29 of 7th May 1958, Mwalimu Nyerere wrote:

These folks are instigating people to make false depositions in court to implicate TANU....We are not afraid of the law, if the police do not involve themselves in politics and do not adjudicate between law-abiding citizens and jungle governors who pretend that they are above the law....The motive for these madmen in provoking people to cause trouble is that we will not fail if we follow the law....

- my translation from "Kesi ya Julius Kambarage Nyerere 1958" by Simon Ngh'waya
 

In his defense, TANU paid for the services of a famous British barrister, D.N. Pritt, who had earlier defended the Mau Mau fighters in Kenya. Pritt was assisted by two Tanzanian lawyers, Mahamoud Rattansey, and K.L. Jhaveri.

I met Mzee Jhaveri (pictured in the photo above), who now lives in India with his wife Urmila, a few years ago in Dar es Salaam. He gave me two items: the robe he wore in court in that famous 1958 case, and a painting of a young Mwalimu Nyerere that he bought from an artist in Dar es Salaam in the early sixties.

Mwalimu Nyerere lost the case and paid a fine of three thousand shillings.

The Zanaki and meat

There is a tradition among the Zanaki ethnic group that continues to be observed in which a family is required to donate a cow to the wider clan to which it belongs when the head of the family's household dies.


After Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere died in October 1999 and soon after he was buried, members of the clan showed up to demand their customary cow. It took a long time before that cow was given but it was eventually handed over, 8 years after his death.

I handed over the cow to the elders who insisted I accompany them to hand over the cow, in person, to members of the clan.

On the agreed date, four representatives of the clan showed up to collect the cow. Before we set off and in following custom, they cut down a branch from a tree and carved a narrow stick of about a metre long and handed it to me. They told me I had been elevated to a higher age class and was required to walk with the stick in my hand from that day onwards.

We set off with my family's cow and three other cows that were collected from other families and walked a distance of about 3 kilometres to a remote location that was enclosed by short a fence-like bush that concealed a large gathering of clan members from passers-by.


The meeting revolved around the slaughter of the cow and the distribution of its meat among all those who had assembled; it was also a gathering that was mandated by the clan to receive complaints against undisciplined members of the clan and could also apply fines or sanctions to any clan member who had breached social rules.

I asked whether I could take photos of the proceedings but was told it was forbidden. However, I carried home about three kilos of meat neatly wrapped in leaves that were picked from the surrounding trees. I also updated my list of known relatives, and was invited to attend the meat distribution meetings that are convened regularly.