Dar and Z-bar overview/ Land Right's Rant

I'm all about clarity and structural frameworks, so here is a brief summary. In mid september, my IHP group of 26 students and a handful of faculty spent one week at a retreat in Virginia and two weeks in Dupont Circle, Washington DC. Then in early October (shout out to Lucia and Aria's b-days), we airplaned it around the world to Eastern Africa. We spent a week getting oriented in the Tanzania's capital of Dar Es Saalam, meeting out new country coordinator, FA, a cornerstone of the woman's movement here, and our awesome antho/swahili professor, FT, both Zanzibarians. Ch, a young guy who is a social and policital columnist and activist from Dar, lived with us in the hostel and was an amazing resource. We had classes and site visits to the university where we worked with a theater prof to learn about theater for social development (workshop kinda lamer than the concept; Friere and Boal may have been a tad disappointed), TAMWA (a major woman's organization), a "food and fuel crisis" public formum at Dar, and visit to that awesome SOMA cafe.

We had an environmental policy class on how all NGO-ized conservation today takes place within a neoliberal framework. In Econ, we talked about the historical intimacy between capitalism and colonialism and what it means to commodify land, labor, and capital. (By privatizing land and displacing localized, land-based communities you get the land and the laborers! Two for the price of one!) We went over the global paradigm shift from the 60's and 70's general belief that poverty was caused structurally by exploiting large groups of people and therefore was a collective experience, to the 80's onward belief that poverty is a natural state of "lacking" (skills, resources, jobs, access) and individuals can uplift themselves with hard work and education. Basically this is a program that presents a framework I am very familiar with and tend to believe in. This general framework I have learned before, so part of me feels very much at home and comfortable here, but part of me also hopes to be challenged more (which is the whole point to being exposed to the completixity of these individual places.) It has been fascinating complementing my U.S. based education with this more globalized framework. The eras of social movments and economic paragdigms match up often. If stead of learning about Malcolm X and Ella Baker, we learn about Nyerere and Nkurmah. I feel like I'm expanding and contextualizing my undersdanding of issues of justice that really are global. (Shout out to my Romano's Afam class for contextualing black rights/power/justice movements into an international black liberation framework - "How far the promised land.")

The next two weeks have been in Zanzibar (Just got back to Dar today - only for a night - we drive north early tomorrow morning, beginning phase two of Tanzania: stereotypical wild africa toursim - safaris - and living with the massai ). We stayed paired up in homestays the whole time in Stonetown. I loved my family and roommate. We did two overnights at small villages (Pete and Uroa) and also did a day trip to ecotourism central (to both experience it and deconstruct it) at Chumbe Island. We spend the rest of our nights in Stonetown and had class either at UWZ (a center for disabled people's rights) or The People's Place (a museum/a building taken over by the revolution in the sixties.) We had classes on NGO's (how they extinguish and institutionalize social movments - shout out to dean spade - but how some are actually good), the ecosystems of Zanzibar (mangroves rock my world!), market vs. local non-market economic activities, the historical identity of swahili culture and zanzibarian hisory. We had guest speakers on marine biology, human rights, women's identity and gender issues in Zbar, and the chamber of commerce's view of Z-bar's political economy. I don't mean to overwhelm or impress; many of the guest lectures were hard to engage with. Other's though, really made me feel like I was learning.

The most powerful lecture was from a land rights lawyer who told us (only in the question and answer session after his hour long lecture) that the only solution, in Tanzania at least, was to smash the state. This lecture basically allowed me to add a second truism to my life. My first, of course, is that everything is Imperialism (NGO's, development, tourism...). The second is now, the State is Imperialism. The borders of Tanzania were drawn at the Berlin Confernece in 1884 (86?), 130 years ago. It took eighty years for TZ to become independent (only fifty years ago) yet they inherited the same freakin' laws, state, boundaries, systems and psyches of governement as their colonizers. The land is still owned by the state. Resources are still appropriated by the state. 75% of the people that make their livelihood from the land live a world away from Dar, where every burocracy exists, yet their land is being privatized - often for national parks or mineral mines - that make profits for western corporations.

On the other hand, this is something I have to come to terms with. Maybe I like being disconnected from the source of my resouces, maybe I like my life the way it exists within in the American system. How can I criticize it if it works for me?

Well, here's the thing. Our "system" is largely based on bloody, externalized violence - violence on which a lot of energy is spent to keep hidden from our eyes.

I'm really feelin' Arundhahti Roy right now. If you can, read her essays online or in "An Ordinary Person's Guide To Empire." (Shout out to O-bis for being the one to expose me to it.)

Those who believe everyone or every country can develop just like the U.S. can say that. They just also have to admit that they're simultaneously advocating for the murder and displacement of millions of people. To say otherwise would be dishonest.