The Crumbs That Fall

 

 

I’ll start off this blog post with some good old Oscar Wilde:

“We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious. They are quite right to be so. Charity they feel to be a ridiculously inadequate mode of partial restitution, or a sentimental dole, usually accompanied by some impertinent attempt on the part of the sentimentalist to tyrannise over their private lives. Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table?” (The Soul of a Man Under Socialism, Wilde 1891)

It’s probably still too early in the West for Marxist jargon, so I’ll try and simplify.

I want to talk about the idea of charity being built upon the notion that the goodwill of the bourgeoisie, alone, is enough to subdue the working class. It falls short of the point: that to reconcile exploitation of the poor, the institutional realities that allow poverty to subsist must first be addressed. It is both ludicrous and counter-intuitive, a downright vicious cycle of feeding money into places where the very social systems that create poverty are protected, while the problems charity is initiated to alleviate persist.

I witness this cycle every day here on an individual level. Children walk by me asking for money because I am a Westerner, but almost resentfully, dutifully. There is a dependency, yes, but there is also bitterness that seems to be provoked by my very presence.

I know that my being here is supposed to be a learning experience, that my time here will serve as a testament to how hard it is To Live in Africa, and share my grand total of three month’s worth of knowledge with my western counterparts. But at what cost? I despise the thought of myself as a voyeur, observing oppression as some sort of spectator sport, and coming home at the end of the day to write about how “inspiring” and “thought-provoking” it is. These sentiments, my sentiments, do nothing for the opposition. They are reminiscent of conversations I have had with people trying to play devil’s advocate. I sit here writing blog posts as if women aren’t dying of HIV/AIDS as a result of intimate partner violence (IPV), as if families aren’t perishing in the time it takes for me to type out my thought. As if marginalized groups only exist for the sole purpose of inciting intellectual conversation.

I do not think, by being here, observing and learning, I am addressing the institutional realities of the working class. If you help someone off the ground after pushing them down, it does not reconcile the initial injury. Is my being here, my experience and my self discovery worth the disobedience and rebellion of the impoverished? Am I expecting praise for being here? And is it not ultimately a capitalist effort to turn the bitterness and resentment of the poor into gratitude and respect for the rich?

Bedridden Updates

June 5th

It happened. I’m Sick, with a capital “S.” Typhoid has invaded my body. I guess it was only a matter of time before one of us got ill. I just never imagined that I’d be the first one or that the illness would be one I got vaccinated for (seriously, what?!). The last few days I had been experiencing cold-like symptoms, but two nights ago I woke up feeling nauseous and clammy (I’ll spare the details), and knew that this had to be something else. So I went to the hospital, gave some blood, and, ta-da!, Typhoid. They said I only have a mild case of it, but nonetheless still felt too weak to stand up on my own. So, fast forward to two days later and I’m still in bed, except I can now look at a screen without my vision going blurry. Hooray!

The last week at Kivulini and MikonoYetu were extremely productive. Maimuna, who had been away the week before, came in to the office and spoke to Rhiannon and I about her project goals. We talked about the tour guide manual and potential sites for the museum. We also talked about why this museum is so important to Maimuna. The social construction of women has made them synonymous with weakness or incapability, most often the victims of abuse or oppression. While this may have some truth, it is important that this is not the only lens through which we can see women. We can be weak, yes, but we can also be dominant, powerful, ruthless even. In East African history, prior to the 1700’s, women were feared greatly. It is this museum which will serve as a reminder to the local women of Mwanza how powerful they can be. Rhiannon and I will be interviewing local historians on such women, and my little feminist heart could not be more excited.

We also finally met the Kivulini team this week! Yassin, the executive director, is a wonderful leader and gave us a quick introduction of the goals and objectives of the Kivulini Organization. We discussed issues surrounding capacity building and legal aid for women, as well as the different kinds of violence Kivulini focuses on combatting (economic, sexual, physical, and psychological). Kivulini, the word, means “in the shade.” I love this. Kivulini provides women with refuge. It’s a form of security for women who are not offered support. It’s safety.

The day after we attended an employee training session on SASA!, a Kivulini objective focused on comprehensive community mobilization and awareness raising of domestic violence. The presentations were great, and while Rhiannon and I got to participate in the discussion bits, the majority of the conversation was spoken in Swahili. Yassin was kind enough to give us english versions of all of the SASA! documents which I will be happily reading while I am bedridden.

Rhiannon and I will be going back to Kivulini starting Monday morning.

Thanks for reading!

Sima

On Being a 'Bad Volunteer'

 

 

I’ve been trying to find the words to write this blog post for a couple of days now, and hopefully recounting my week will help me find the correct ones. 

 

This week was the first one spent in the MikonoYetu office, where my fellow interns and I have been familiarizing ourselves with our projects. Only, there have been quite a few barriers. The main one is, of course, language. While the staff members at MikonoYetu have been doing a fabulous job of accommodating us while the director, Maimuna Kanyamala, is away, our Swahili is not nearly as good as their English, and I have been feeling more helpless than helpful. 

 

As I have mentioned, my project involves creating a business plan for a women’s museum that will act as a site for tourist attraction. This is a great project and I am fully supportive of it. I am not, however, fully trusting of my ability to do it justice. I do not have a business background, something which seems like a prerequisite for this project, and without that, I feel like a fish out of water. I’m a little overwhelmed at the prospect of having to accomplish a task I have had virtually no training for. 

 

Before I came to Mwanza, I educated myself extensively on the dangers of voluntourism, and how often students will sign themselves up for projects that they have no expertise in. I did not want to be one of those people. I won’t be. I think another one of the barriers I’ve been facing is my tendency to retreat when I feel out of my depth. I need to remind myself that I have multiple resources at my disposal; my fellow interns, staff, and the trustee Internet just to name a few. Asking for help is okay. Not knowing everything is okay. I am okay. 

 

I think what I’m trying to say is that I’m not sure how to reconcile my imperfections with all the good I have the potential to do. Voluntourism is flawed, yes, but it is flawed because it is carried out by people, and people are inherently flawed. I do not have to be everything or do everything for my work here to be valid. This is why I think it’s okay to define myself as a Bad Volunteer. I am not trying to be right. I am not trying to instigate global change. I am just trying. I am not as well versed in colonialist texts as I would like to be. I have interests and personality traits that sway from that of perfect volunteerism. But I still am a volunteer. And it is extremely freeing to accept that about myself. 

May 19th: A Tanzanian Initiation

 

 

Introductions 

 

It seems fitting that I would be writing my first blog post in Tanzania in a dark, sweltering hot room lit only by flashlights and a laptop screen. It’s my first power outage. Not ever, but surely one where I’ve been alone in a house eleven thousand kilometres away from home. 

 

My name is Sima Rehemtulla and I’m one of the Western Heads East (WHE) Interns this summer. Both my parents actually grew up here in Tanzania; my father in Mwanza and my mum in a village near Arusha. My grandparents never left, and still live right on a road called Market Street, where hundreds of vendors set up shop every morning just outside the house. I’m going to be staying with them for the duration of my internship. I arrived here on the 16th, and the last two days have been all about introducing me to the family I had never met before, getting myself oriented to my new home, and lots and lots of food. 

 

What I’ll be doing in Tanzania 

 

WHE is a collaborative program, with students from Western working with organizations all over Tanzania and Kenya. I will be working as a student volunteer in the Mwanza community in Tanzania working alongside three other interns from Western, as well as students from my host school (Saint Augustine University of Tanzania), and administrative members of local NGO’s on the MikonoYetu business plan. The business plan involves opening up a new channel for tourism, something that is very scarce in Mwanza. Maimuna Kanyamala, who is the founder of the Kivulini Women’s Rights Organization, has come up with an idea of an interactive women’s museum, where the roles of women will be showcased and celebrated for all to see. This museum will be one of the sites of many that will be on the tour guide I will be creating. This will be beneficial to Mwanza in two ways: first, with the appropriate training materials, there will be a need for human resources to guide the tours. Second, with the right amount of promotion, there will be an increase in tourism in Mwanza. This development has the potential to be extremely self sufficient, combatting both youth unemployment and economic difficulty. I’m very excited to work on this project.

 

The Nitty-Gritty

 

I have accepted (albeit begrudgingly, I like to think my liberalism is impeccable) that, on this blog, I will regularly make mistakes and ignorant comments, and will always do my best to rectify them. I am not wholly unproblematic. No one is. So while I am learning, I will forgive myself for the mistakes I make so long as I learn from them. I hope you will too. 

 

I haven’t done much travelling. In fact, this is my first time out of North America. So when I signed up to be a WHE Intern, I saw it more as a necessary education on privilege. I was wary, having heard about the dangers of voluntourism. There is an alarming imbalance in the relationship between the East and the West, and I did not want to feel as though I was imposing any oppressive stereotypes on a developing country. But the Director of this program, Bob Gough, reassured me that WHE is an initiative that stems from a place of social justice, rather than charity. Our pre-departure training was heavily laden with the importance of hyper-reflexivity and critical thinking, and us interns were all advised to practice constant vigilance around language. For example, saying “helping” instead of “collaborating” may seem like trivial language policing, but might lead to unintended consequences or opinions of readers or future interns. 

 

Before I end this post, I just wanted to mention something I noticed when I stayed in Dar es Salaam on my first night in Tanzania. I realized, on my way back from the airport, that I really had no idea what poverty really was or the difference between absolute and relative poverty. At every intersection, men and women, often with young children, would approach the car with arms stretched out, hoping for money or food. But beyond the sprawling slums and trash-piled streets, there lay a pristine turquoise beach, the oceanfront aligned with multi million dollar homes and gleaming landscapes. It was hard to grasp the contrast of such inescapable poverty alongside almost repulsive luxury. It was even more uncomfortable to know I identified with the more affluent of the two. 

 

 

 

Asante sana for reading! Until next time.

 

-Sima

 

 

 

P.S. the power turned back on just as I finished writing that last sentence.