[photos] Mwaka Kogwa in Makunduchi (July 20, 2010)

Makunduchi is a small fisihing village at the southern tip of Zanzibar island.

There is nothing significant about the village most of the time of a year except one day in late July when loads of people flock to this tiny village, to see the villagers beating each other with stems of banana trees.

Sounds odd? This event is actually a part of a festival called Mwaka Kogwa which is unique to Makunduchi.

I'm not familiar with its history, but from what I know, the stick beating started as a mean to vent grievances between the villagers once a year. Violence or displaying anger towards someone else is considered immoral in Tanzania. Although I've seen a few exceptions in the past, people here are generally reserved about expressing their anger. Confrontations go as far as lightly heated arguements and nothing more, and even during these instances they would slip in jokes and exchange laughter.

That doesn't mean that people don't have feuds or grievances against a particular individual. So sometime in the past, people in Makunduchi came up with an idea that once a year everyone would gather up in a field, divide themselves into two teams (Villagers on the north side and south side) and beat each other up with banana stems and vent their anger towards each other.

I missed this event last year because of my work, but how could I leave this place without watching something that interesting? So this year I took a day off and headed to Makunduchi!

This is the "battle" field. Very calm at this moment, but the anticipation of visitors and tourists there was already high.

The villagers (mostly men at this point) entered the field and jogged around it for a while.

Then the fights broke out!

Sometimes in pairs...

and sometimes in groups.

By the look of it, while there were exceptions, the general rules seemed to be;

1. Fights are only in one on one (even they are in groups).

2. A fight ends when one of the fighters no longer has rigid banana stem.

3. No surprise attacks. Both fighters need to agree to fight before they start.

Fighting continued for about 1 hour and then they started building a small hut on the field which is shown at the center of this photo behind the crowd.

A man went into the hut and came running out immediately after the hut was set on fire. I do not know the significance of it but that marked the end of this event.

Well, I'm glad I saw it this time!

[photos] May 13, 2010 The Election pt.3

6. Counting the Votes

The committee members gather up here to count the votes.

While the votes are counted, all students wait outside to hear the final result.

Some of them decided to vandalize the posters. I guess they weren't getting into any trouble for doing it this time...

8. The Result

Two candidates sit nervously side by side in front of the entire school as the result is announced.


The winner!!! The Form 3 candidate won the majority of votes!

It turned out that he won because there were a lot more Form 3 students in the school than Form5s. After all that performance, posters and paper flags, what mattered after all, was the numbers.

Of course, it ends with a hug.

[photos] May 13, 2010 The Election pt.2

4. The Poling Stations

We had several polling stations around the school which were marked with the election committee posters. Here, the guys are anxiously waiting to vote in front of the doors.


When you go into the station, you are greeted with the committee members like him.

5. How to Vote

Once you go in, a committee member gives you a ballot.

You choose your candidate on the ballot and cast it into the box as shown in these pictures.



The process ends as another committee member smears purple ink onto your finger indicating that you've voted.

[photos] May 13, 2010 The Election

Like any other schools in any other countries, my school has a student government.

What I've noticed though over the years is that the student government at my school isn't perceived as a representative body for the students, but more likely as an institution that maintains student discipline. It's the student government who make sure that students on duty would clean the school every morning (and if they skip the cleaning duty, stick beating awaits them...) or the students would line up on straight lines before start of a morning assembly.

Nevertheless, we have annual student government elections, and the students turn it into one of the rare festivities at our school. I forgot to bring my camera on the election day last year, but this year, I walked around with my camera all day.

It reads; Hamamni Secondary School, "Election Committee" 2010.

1. Two candidates.

We started our morning off with speeches given by this year's candidates. One on the left is a Form 3 (Grade 9) student and one on the right is a Form 5 (Grade 11) student who is dressed up for this occasion and brought some wingmen with him.

I didn't see much of a drama during this year's speeches except occasional cheers from the listeners, but last year, all the candidates were repeatedly exclaiming "Change!" and "Hope!" Yes, I guess they caught up on the trend after watching the world news...

2. The Campaign

The Form 5 candidate brought in paper flags and posters. Yes, it's all about the performances.

Last year, one of the candidates came to school, being dressed up in suit and tie followed by his equally well-dressed wingmen with sunglasses acting as members of the secret service. (and his campaign slogan was "Time is ready for change!") Damn, I wish I had brought my camera last year...

3. The Election Committee

The whole event was organized by a student-ran election committee. Here, after the candidate speeches, head of the committee is giving instructions on the voting process.

Now it's time for them to vote!

[photos and note] April 4, 2010

Two weeks ago, we had a ceremony (including a student play) for the graduating class of Form 6 (equivalent of Grade 13). Their final national exam results hadn’t come out so they hadn't found out if they’d actually passed the exams to receive their diploma, but in my opinion, they deserved to celebrate the end of their school years. In this country, making your way to secondary school, let alone graduating as a Form 6 student by itself is an accomplishment, even though “going to school” in this place often means hanging out in a classroom all day without lessons. After finishing up 7 years of elementary school, the kids need to score well in their first national exam to secure their places in secondary schools. Once they are in, they need to take national exams once every two years (at Form 2 although some schools in Zanzibar now don’t do it any more, Form 4 and Form 6) to move on to the upper grades. (and keep in mind that they need to write the exams in English which most of the students aren’t proficient enough to write exams in.) I don’t have hard evidence, but from what I’ve heard, retention rate of the students is about 25%. So you can imagine how hard it is for the kids to make it to Form 6, especially in the ordinary Tanzanian learning environment where teachers don’t teach and teaching materials are scarce.

The outlook for the graduates however is grim. Jobs are scarce, only a handful of them would score marks on their exams high enough to have their college or university education paid by the government, and most of them can’t afford to go do their post secondary schools without some kind of financial assistance.

The chances are slim and situation, daunting. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t any success stories.

This Easter weekend, I had some volunteer friends visiting from the mainland. One of them came with her co-worker who was going to see his family back in Zanzibar. He’s a Tanzanian national currently working on an HIV/AIDS prevention program as a United Nations Volunteer (http://www.unv.org/) at a district office in the mainland. He told me the story of how he got to where he is now, and it’s quite remarkable.

He was born in a small fishing village in Zanzibar and spent his childhood like any of his friends: running around, going out to the sea and not going to school much. The school wasn’t and to some extent still isn’t today vital to their survival. Plenty of fish in the sea, fruit is abundant, opportunity of higher education is close to none, and what can learning at school do for you in that kind of environment?
So he quit going to school at the age of 13 after finishing his Standard 6 (Grade 6) came to town and took up some odd jobs. Then the moment came abruptly. One day he was chatting up some girls. One of them showed him her English textbook and asked him to read it. He had no idea what was written of course and girls laughed at him so badly that he was so embarrassed and decided to go back to school. As random as it might have been, this was when he became determined to learn and do something.
Then his life took off. He finished his elementary school, did well in the national exam and secured his place at a secondary school. He finished Form 6 with good marks and later, received a scholarship to study in Italy. After completing some training programs in community development in Europe, he applied to his current position as the UNV.

The fact that he went against the odds and accomplished so much in the daunting environment is just incredible. Not only he’s steadily building his career in developing his own country or others if he chooses to go international, he’s also well-paid by his home institution so his life is secured. I guess this is all thanks to that one embarrassing incident back when he was 13.

I’ve noticed that among many other obstacles, one thing that’s impeding the kids from stepping up, making effort to do what they want is lack of role models. Like everyone else around the world, they want to have happy and successful life which, to the kids in this country, often means having well-paid jobs such as doctor, or frankly speaking, getting out of this country. To do these things, they already know that they have to do well in school. But I feel that lack of role models and the slim chances are making them be ever more reluctant to believe that there is a correlation between their effort and success. A person like him however is an excellent role model whom the kids can look up to. It was really nice meeting him, knowing that where ever you are there are remarkable individuals who can overcome seemingly formidable obstacles in their lives. I truly hope there will be more people like him in the future.

[note] Mar. 28. 2010

It's been quite a while since the last update.

Things had been quite difficult and exhausting as the blackout continued, but after a long absence. I'm happy to come back to this blog with a great news.

The power came back!!!

It actually came back on the night of March 8th, about two weeks after the official announcement date which was Feb. 20th. It took them nearly three months to fix it up.

January went by quite slowly as I survived day to day without power.

Basically I couldn't do anything at home after 7 o'clock in the evening but to stay quiet and keep my movement to minimum to avoid being soaked with sweat. So I went out more than ever to get some breeze, have coffee and chat with the neighbors at the coffee vendor.

Water kept coming out once every two days. I had two 20L buckets to store water, but bought another one to make sure I got enough water to get through the days.

This was also the time when people started making wild speculations about the power recovery. It was evident that the people were very skeptical about the government announcement. Although I still had more faith than most of the people that it'd be back sometime in the end of Feb, it was still quite daunting to hear people say the power wasn't going to come back till 2013 when the USAID was planning to replace the entire weathered cable between the island and the mainland. Some people were a little more optimistic, saying that the power would be back by June when the 2010 World Cup would be taking place in South Africa, so that they could watch the games on TV.

Then came February.

Lucky for me, the school had a regular exam break between Feb. 5th and Mar. 1st. So I decided go over to the mainland to escape the heat and inconvenience for a while. I also had another reason to go over there, that is our semi-annual teaching skills workshop. This time we had our workshop at a secondary school in Dodoma, the legislative capital of the country. (Many people think Dar es Salaam is the capital, but it's actually this relatively small, arid town at the center of the country. I guess it's not really convincing when almost all the politicians including the president and the bureaucrats live in Dar and come to Dodoma only when the parliament is in session.) So I stayed in Dodoma for about 10 days to help out the organizers and give a demonstration lesson.

Days in February went by quickly as I was anxiously counting down the days till we get the power back. The announced date, Feb. 20th, came with a disappointment, however. I was in Dar es Salaam, getting ready to go back to Zanzibar and one of my friends told me that the government pushed the date up to the 28th.

Fair enough. The 28th came and of course, the power was still off.

This was around the time when, according to one of my friends, different government officials went on the radio or had press conferences to announce some random recovery date without any hard evidence. Despite of all this, most of the locals seemed nonchalant about what we'd call a major crisis if occurred back home. I was really impressed with the way the ordinary people handled the situation: no panic, riots or increased violence or crimes at night as far as I knew.

After all, Mar. 9th seemed to be the next hopeful date.

The government announced that they'd conduct a bunch of test-runs in the afternoon of the 8th and if everything worked out, the power would be back by the evening of that day.

Well, I was at home around 7 o'clock when it was just getting completely dark out. Just like I'd done for the past few months, I was getting ready to go out to the coffee vendor. When I opened the door, a light struck my eyes and I heard my neighbors screaming and cheering up!

Finally, the power came back! As I was walking to the coffee place, everyone else was on the street, walking to places where they could watch TV, driving a pick-up loaded with guys singing and shouting, or simply walking around and celebrating the recovery. The life came back to the way it was.

Well, not quite. Since the power came back, we've been having some temporary blackouts daily, and every time we do, I get chills. 6 months of service left and going through another 3 months of darkness isn't appealing.

Looking back, this was durable but certainly not something I've enjoyed. Then again, we have volunteers working in places where they don't get the power at all. Much respect for them.

Again, what I thought impressive was the way the locals handled the situation. I realized this was actually a big deal when I was listening to the BBC world service and on the hourly news update on Mar. 9th, they reported about the Zanzibar blackout sandwiched by reports about a massacre in Nigeria and US vice president Joe Biden's visit to Isreal. Although the life was hard, I didn't think what I'd just gone through was worthy of the world's attention.

All this is attributed by the relaxed and peaceful atmosphere maintained by the Zanzibarites.

And now they are fully back to life.

[note] Jan.15.2010

Happy Belated New Year!

Well, although I’m alive and well to begin the New Year, things in Zanzibar haven’t been easy recently.

Zanzibar has been out of electricity since December 10, last year and it’s not likely to come back until the end of next month. There had been frequent brief blackouts since November and in the night of December 10th, the power was cut off due to a break down in the power facility supplying electricity to the entire island.

Although basic life lines in Zanzibar such as water and electricity appears to be stable thanks to the tourist development, for ordinary citizens living outside of the tourist hotel and restaurant areas, the life lines are very fragile, especially the electricity. Instead of building its own power plant on the island, Zanzibar draws electricity from the mainland, using an undersea cable which was installed 27 or 28 years ago. Apparently the cable was aging and could not withstand the load of electricity it had been carrying. So it eventually broke down, first in May 2008. A team of engineers came in and did an emergency patch work on the receiving facility on the island just to get the electricity back, but they estimated that the system would collapse again in one year or so if the load was not reduced. As you can imagine, the load hadn't been reduced at all, so one year and six months after the last blackout, another one has occurred just as they estimated. I’d been fearing since I came here that another long term blackout might happen again while I was here. Well, the worry has come true, and apparently, this one is a record breaker.

Now the team was called up again and apparently this time they are overhauling the entire place. The official government announcement this week said that the power should be back by February 20th, though most of the locals are skeptical about it. According to a friend of mine (who’s on a hotel’s generator. I’m currently at his place writing this.), we won’t have the power back daily even after the overhaul because the government will rotate areas on the island to supply the power in order to reduce the load carried by the cable. Still, I’ll be happy to have my lights on once in a few days.

The blackout has been a pain for me, but not something I can’t tolerate. Generator is turned on once in two or three days around my compound just to turn on the water pump and water comes out from a hydrant in the parking lot, so I get a fairly stable water supply, school’s been going as usual since it doesn’t rely on electricity, most of the internet cafes are on generators at least for few hours a day and just as I mentioned, most of the hotels and restaurants are on generators if I need to charge my cell phone or use computers. Only inconveniences I have are that I have to stay in my dark apartment lit only with candle lights at night (my fantasy of prepping lesson plans under the candle lights has been realized though…) and can’t turn on a ceiling fan while I’m sleeping when it is the hottest time of the year. Fortunately the weather has been mild compared to last year, so I’ve been able to get a good sleep most of the nights so far.
This isn’t the case however in the town. Most of the water pumps are electric so no power means no water pumped up. When I’m walking to school in the morning, I see people with their buckets gathering around one of a few communal water pipes with generators on to get water for the day.

While people seem to somehow manage surviving without electricity, if the situation persists after the announced returning date of February 20th, some people I’ve talked to speculates that the situation could go worse. Because economy and life in Zanzibar town highly dependent on electricity, the oil prices will go up from continuous use of generators and this might damage the tourist economy as it enters low season in March. This in turn might lead to drastic rise in crime rate.

Hopefully this will just be a pessimistic prediction and the electricity will be back just as it’s been announced.