Canada-Tanzania Relations

What are the chances that the Prime Minister of Canada would come to Tanzania for the first time in nearly 30 years while I am living here? It happened this week...

Controversy over mining overshadows health initiative

PM announces $105-million contribution, but Barrick is top concern of Tanzanians

ALAN FREEMAN

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
November 27, 2007 at 4:44 AM EST

DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA — The goal was to leave the image of a benevolent Canada investing in the health of poor Africans, but in the end it was another Canada, that of its globe-hopping mining companies, that stole the day.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper spent eight hours yesterday in this commercial centre on the Indian Ocean, visiting a school, lunching with Tanzania's President and announcing a $105-million contribution to a new health-care initiative in Africa and Asia.

Yet it was a 45-minute meeting with officials from a dozen Canadian investors, led by mining giant Barrick Gold Corp., that dominated Mr. Harper's news conference with President Jakaya Kikwete.

Thanks in large part to Barrick's three gold mines, Canada has emerged as Tanzania's largest foreign investor, prompting a resource boom that helped Tanzania record a 6.2-per-cent growth rate last year.

Yet the mining success has prompted allegations that royalties are too low and that Tanzania's people, still among the world's poorest, are not sharing adequately in the bonanza.

Adding to this is a nasty labour dispute at Barrick's Bulyanhulu gold mine, where 1,000 of the 1,900 workers have been on what the company calls an illegal strike for the past month.

A court hearing scheduled for yesterday, at which the union hoped to obtain an injunction to stop Barrick from hiring replacement workers, was postponed to today for reasons that were unclear.

Mr. Harper would not comment on the strike other than to say that he expects Canadian companies to "act responsibly within the laws of the land" when they are abroad. He praised Tanzania for creating a stable political and business environment that encourages Canadian companies to invest.

Mr. Kikwete was also diplomatic when the subject turned to Canada's investment in the mining industry and in particular the work of a committee created to advise the Tanzanian government on whether to change the royalty regime.

"We are not blaming the mining companies," the President said, noting that the companies are living within Tanzanian law.

He added that the goal of the review is to achieve a "win-win situation" for the companies and the government.

"We'd like to see more and more Canadian investment," Mr. Kikwete said.

It was the second time in recent months that Mr. Harper had met Barrick officials during an international trip. In July, he stopped off at Barrick's offices in Santiago, Chile, where the company is developing the massive Pascua Lama mining project in the Andes, despite protests from environmentalists.

Joan Kuyek, the national co-ordinator of MiningWatch, a group that critiques what it sees as irresponsible mining practices around the world, says Barrick's Tanzanian operation displaced thousands of small-scale miners and gives little back to Tanzania.

"If Mr. Harper met only with people chosen to have him meet with and didn't meet with the small-scale miners, didn't meet with the people who have to deal with the social and economic and environmental price that these mines are racking up in Tanzania, and didn't meet with their representatives, well I think that's pretty shocking," Ms. Kuyek said.

But Vince Borg, vice-president of communications for Barrick, said the displacement occurred before Barrick took over the Tanzania operation and that the ombudsman for the World Bank has found that the numbers of displaced people have been exaggerated. And, Mr. Borg said, the company has been "generating substantial economic and social benefits for thousands of Tanzanians."

The scheduled highlight of Mr. Harper's visit, which came after the Prime Minister's participation in the Commonwealth leaders summit in neighbouring Uganda, was his announcement of a $105-million Canadian contribution to a health-promotion program in Africa and Asia.

The goal of the Canadian-led program is to raise as much as $500-million to support basic health services, including training for 40,000 health workers; measles and MMR inoculations; insecticide-treated bed nets to protect children and pregnant women from malaria; antibiotics to fight pneumonia and a range of other health projects.

Mr. Harper said Canada remains on track to double its international aid to Africa to $2.1-billion in 2008-09 from a base of $1.05-billion in 2003-04.

But non-governmental groups have expressed concern that Africa is no longer a foreign-policy priority for Mr. Harper, who has emphasized Canada's commitment to Afghanistan and a renewed interest in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Mr. Harper was greeted earlier in the day at the airport by Mr. Kikwete, Tanzania's top general, a military band, a phalanx of traditional dancers, a unicyclist and a man on stilts. He was immediately whisked off to a nearby primary school where hundreds of enthusiastic pupils, dressed in white and blue uniforms, greeted him waving Canadian and Tanzanian flags and singing at the top of their lungs in Swahili, "Tanzania, We Love You, Tanzania."

Fighting off the 37-degree heat and his discomfort with crowds, a smiling Mr. Harper was ushered into a preschool class where children were being quizzed in Swahili and English on their knowledge of animal names.

Mr. Harper bantered with Mr. Kikwete but engaged only briefly with the children. Toward the end of the brief encounter, the President asked a child: "What's his name?"

"Har-per," responded the child, to which a grinning Prime Minister responded with a personal round of applause.

Mr. Harper is the first Canadian Prime Minister to visit Tanzania since Pierre Trudeau came here in 1978.
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Multinational companies coming into countries where they exploit both the national workers and resources, while giving as little back to the economy, is a huge problem in the developing world. While I like and respect Harper, he must know that coming into a country such as Tanzania on a diplomatic mission, and then using the time to meet with Canadian investors who are already under scrutiny for their policies here, would lead to a negative outcome in the media. I do feel for him though, as the left-wing journalists pay him no favours in their description of his activities, "Fighting off the 37-degree heat and his discomfort with crowds, a smiling Mr. Harper was ushered into a preschool class where children were being quizzed in Swahili and English on their knowledge of animal names." This passage is clearly meant to make it sound as though Harper was somehow uncomfortable in his duties here, even though there is no actual evidence to support that claim. Personally I am glad to see that the Conservatives are making an effort to draw attention to the issues facing Tanzania and the rest of Africa. It is commendable that Canada has doubled its aid to Africa in the past couple of years, but we are still far below the promised 0.7% of our GDP that is meant to go to international development programs.

To find out more about the problems that Canadian mining companies are causing in the global south, go here: http://www.devp.org/devpme/eng/education/educationcampaign-eng.html

Walking ATM

I haven’t mentioned yet that living in Africa as a mzungu, everyone automatically assumes that you have loads of money, and furthermore that you will be willing to essentially throw it at them as long as they ask for it. Actually it is the people who know you the least that are the most likely to ask for money. Of course there are the people that you would expect - homeless people, street kids, etc. - the same people that are begging in every country across the world. But also there is also the mentality that people from any demographic can ask a white person for money. I can’t count how many times in the last couple of months that I have walked past kids in their expensive school uniforms and one of them musters up the one English phrase they know “give me money”. You would think that because the parents of these kids can afford to send them to fancy private school they would also teach them not to beg. It’s not just school kids, however - a couple of weeks ago I had a guy wearing a perfectly pressed Italian suit, who was walking to a shiny new white Toyota, ask me to help him out with some money in passing. This is an extreme example, but it illustrates my point. Sometimes when I am riding the daladala people yell for money from the white face in the window as we pass… like really, am I going to just start throwing bills out the window on command? I realize that most white people here are the richest people around, but it is relative, because the economies of our countries are so different. I can get by with spending 10$ on groceries a week here, but those of you in Canada (and other western countries) know that 200$ a week is cutting it close now for an average sized family. It is really dehumanizing when people regard you as a walking ATM, because it feels like you’re not a person but just a money machine. Not that I wouldn’t love to help everyone – that ideal is why I am here – but giving money does nothing to solve the problems that are rampant in this country, poverty, disease, lack of education and resources. I know that I am “richer” then the people here not because I have more money then them now, but because I have a ticket home and the potential to earn more in one year than some will in their lives. I can deal with the question of giving because I know I am giving my time and energy to these people everyday, and that is better then money. Someone once said that real poverty is the lack of choice; when people are so poor that they cannot choose what to do with their lives because they have to struggle each day to meet their own basic needs. What this world needs is not only for the rich people of the West to wake up and start giving some of their massive surplus to those in need, but also for the leaders of the developing countries to motivate their people to use aid in a positive sustainable way, and forge their own future based on innovation and hard work. Only then will we discourage the inferiority and dependency paradigms that are the legacy of colonialism in so many countries.

Water Hyena

The word for otter in Swahili is “fisi maji”, which literally translates to “water hyena”. I don’t know about you but the last time I saw an otter it didn’t seem nearly as ferocious as hyena; apparently when kids are acting up their parents sometimes call them a fisi maji… I suppose when there is only a limited frame of reference these things happen. Case in point, a zebra is called a “punda milia”, which means “striped donkey”. That is one name I can get my head around.

Fanya Kazi

Since November is now over halfway over and my last post was all about my leisure time, I figured I should do a quick update on my work here and how things are going. Two weeks ago I moved from the big house in Gangilonga out to my placement at Amani. I have a nice little self-contained house that used to be a school house for the expats children that lived at the center. It is a lot different living on my own with all Tanzanians (the students and staff at Amani) but I am adjusting well. I have been playing soccer (football for the rest of the world aside from North America) with the students at the center every Wednesday and Friday, and it has proven to be a good way to build relationships. Sports are amazing for how quickly they can erase the communication difficulties of a language barrier. I am about average in skill among the guys, some of them are very athletic and others not so much. I just about scored a goal by heading the ball towards the net last day, and they were all saying "Hongera!" (Congratulations!) to me even though it didn't go in. I guess they were surprised a mzungu could do such a thing.

Anyways, somehow I got sidetracked back into leisure time there... regarding work, I have just completed the Primary Health Assessment Survey in English which will be administered to all of the students at the center so that we can gauge their level of understanding of health issues and also the state of their home environment as they are all from different villages in the surrounding area. From this information I will be designing a relevant health curriculum to teach in the center over the next 7 months. Here are a few examples of the questions from the survey (which ended up begin 10 pages!):

Home Environment:

From which source does your family collect their drinking water in your home village/town?

• tap
• well
• spring
• stream/pond
• hole dug in ground
• other _______________________________

Which of the following best describes the latrine situation for your household?

• single latrine for your home
• latrine shared with other households
• no latrine in immediate area
• other _______________________________

Does your latrine have: (You can choose more then one)

___ walls

___ door

___ roof

___ pit cover made of wood and mud

___ pit cover made of concrete

___ pipe for ventilation

___ raised platforms for feet

___ ceramic basin in the ground

General Knowledge:

Our bodies are made of:

• soil
• blood
• air
• cells

The stomach is used for:

• digesting food and water
• breathing air
• circulating blood to other parts of our bodies
• playing sports

Blood is primarily used to:

• keep our bodies stiff and upright
• let us know when we are hurt
• transport oxygen and nutrients throughout the body
• humans do not have blood

Washing hands with soap is good for our health because:

• the soap goes into our bodies and cleanses us
• the soap washes away dirt and germs
• the soap has a soothing effect on our hands
• washing with soap is not good for our health

Malaria is caused by:

• a curse
• the bite of a mosquito infected with the malarial parasite
• the bite of a ant infected with the malarial parasite
• the bite of any mosquito at night time

The best way to treat dehydration caused by diarrhea is:

• getting lots of rest
• not drinking or eating anything
• drinking lots of clean water and using an oral rehydration solution
• using antibiotics from the pharmacy

HIV/AIDS is transmitted by:

• touching and sharing drinks/food with an infected person
• unprotected sexual activity with an infected person
• being bitten by an infected mosquito
• AIDS is caused by poverty and malnutrition only

You get the idea... the difficulty of this exercise is that all of the students have varying levels of academic experience, so we have to make a wide difficulty range to determine what direction the syllabus will take. I know that most of these questions seem very straight forward but you would be surprised at the misconceptions that exist about health and other basic sanitary practices - they have just never been taught much of the knowledge that we take for granted. Anyways, I am hoping to get the survey results and begin working on a curriculum in the next couple of weeks, but I might be going to a remote village to live and shadow the doctor and nurses there for the last week in November so we will see if that works out. That's it for now...

Safari Njema

This past weekend I had the opportunity to go on a Safari in Ruaha National Park, which is located about a 3 hour drive from Iringa. Ruaha is the second largest park in Tanzania, and it boasts the country’s largest population of elephants, yet it is one of the least visited parks because of its remote location. This was good for us, as we had the place pretty much to ourselves. We rented an 8-person minibus with a pop top roof, and it proved to be an ideal vehicle, despite its close resemblance to a daladala.

The park entrance sign.

Our crew consisted of the 3 EI interns, Jen, Sacha and I, along with a new EI UK volunteer named Ellie who has just arrived to teach Math and Science in a secondary school that EI sponsors. On top of the EI people there was Paul, an American potter volunteering at Neema crafts, Tom, a British guy on his “gap year” who is volunteering around the world, Andres, a Spanish computer scientist teaching at Tumaini University here in Iringa, and finally Liza, a German girl who works at the Lutheran Diocese headquarters. So there was quite a variety of cultures in our little group, even though we are all Westerners. The tour company also sent a driver, Kunra, and a guide, Upendo (Love), to accompany us.

We left early Saturday morning, and arrived at our campsite just in time for mid-morning tea. The place was not busy, as we were the only customers staying there and the employees were just setting up our tents when we arrived. Satisfied at the site (we didn’t know what to expect for 5 dollars a night), we moved on to our destination. Upon arrival at the park we all had to get out and pay the park fee, which is about one dollar...if you’re a Tanzanian citizen that is. Any other nationality gets the privilege of paying a mere 2000% increase on that, but I can’t complain, I would have happily paid more then 20$ to enter a world most people only see on television.

Immediately as you enter the gate there is a river teeming with crocodiles and hippos (what is the plural for hippopotamus? Hippopotamuses? Hippopotami? Apparently my spell check doesn’t know either). The crocodiles pretty much just sat there in the sun, its amazing that they are so quick and strong seeing as they appear extremely lethargic to me. The hippos would usually be under water, raising their massive heads for air every once in awhile. A couple of them came up out of the water to enjoy the sun, but they are also quite docile, as they primarily do their foraging at night. I should also mention that there are over 450 species of birds in the park. I am not much of a bird person, but Paul is, so you can imagine throughout the course of the safari someone frantically pointing out each East African yellow breasted stork-legged king fish hawk eagle thingy that comes within the radius of the moon of our vehicle. I don’t remember what any of them were called, but I did see Zazu, the bird from “The Lion King”. There is a reason why I didn’t take Ornithology in Uni.

Moving on, Paul, Tom and I quickly discovered that we could comfortably sit on the roof of the van in a much better vantage point for spotting animals, and that is where I spent the remainder of the trip; most of the others took turns because the sun was extremely hot up there (I thought the wind nicely counteracted the heat, personally). The first big land mammal we saw was a giraffe, and it was pretty incredible to be within feet of such a remarkable animal in the wild. As we drove on we found a few giraffes together, and soon a herd of zebra were crossing right in front of us. I was surprised to see the two species living together so closely, but Upendo told me that the zebra often stick with the giraffes because of their ability to spot predators coming from a distance. While it was awesome to see these two species, I am embarrassed to admit we began to see them so much that we stopped paying much attention to them after awhile.

Me with a zebra in thebackground.

Conveniently we got a flat tire right at lunch time so we had our lunch while it was being repaired. During lunch, Paul came up with the idea of stripping thorn bushes that are so common in this part of Africa and selling the thorns as toothpicks. I have to admit, I have used them as toothpicks on a few occasions and they work extremely well, albeit they are a bit sharp (we proposed putting a warning on the label, but then came to a consensus that we could never sell them in the USA because of the American penchant for lawsuits).

We were back on the road after a short break and soon saw a herd of elephants and some gazelle in a dried up riverbed. They were quite far away but we were able to sneak up quite close on a large male elephant who was busy head butting a tree. We watched him for some time and then moved on. By this time I was very happy with what we had seen but I really wanted to see lions. Our guide said that we would be lucky if we got to see lions as often they can be hard to find.

As I started calling the lions with a “hereeeeee simba, simba, simba” reminiscent of Ernie calling the fish into the boat on Sesame Street, we turned a corner to spot 3 lionesses under a tree in the shade. The call had obviously worked, and we watched them for a quarter of an hour until someone spotted a zebra “lying down” under a tree in the distance – with another lion. We excitedly drove over to the spot, and gazed upon an extremely rare scene, a lioness guarding a freshly killed zebra. Here we could get very close to the kill, within about 20 feet. It felt like the lioness could have jumped up on the roof and grabbed one of us effortlessly if she pleased. Fortunately, she was content with her zebra.

A lioness enjoying her meal.

After a while one of the other lions came over and switched spots with the current guard; the new arrival began to feed on the carcass. We were close enough to hear the ripping of flesh and see the blood dripping down her chin. After watching the spectacle for at least half an hour we left and saw some more giraffes, zebras and gazelles. On the way back we went by the kill again and this time there were three lions there, two of them were relaxing under the tree and the other was feeding on the intestines of the zebra. I also noticed a crowd of vultures at what must have been the kill site, as you could see drag marks over to the tree. We watched the three of them go about their business for some time and started heading back as dusk approached. On the way home Tom was desperately searching the treetops for leopards, but to no avail. The guide said that it was extremely difficult to see a leopard, and she had only ever glimpsed two of them in all her years doing this.

The night was great fun, we had a bonfire and played games until 11, and said goodbye to Tom as he had to catch a bus at 4 am to Malawi. We rose at 5:30 am, as we only had a few more hours until our 24 hour permits ran out and we wanted to get the most of our trip. We entered the park sleepily and were cruising along at a good pace when Ellie suddenly called for us to stop. I looked over and there it was, one of the rarest animal sights one will see, a leopard. He was sneakily stalking along in the way that leopards do, his elaborate spots acting as brilliant camouflage against the tall, dry grass. We reversed to follow his stride and he ducked down in the grass, I kept my eye on the spot and after a while he rose again. We kept following him and apparently he didn’t like this because he ducked again and this time must have crawled off as he did not reappear in the same spot.

We kept watching but eventually had to move on; the driver wanted to check once more and reversed farther in the way the cat had been traveling. Sure enough, there he was, further away but definitely visible. We then noticed that he was moving towards something, a lone impala munching grass nonchalantly. Unfortunately we spooked the impala and he was looking right at us with ears fully perked. We watched the leopard stalk around behind the impala but it wasn’t moving very quickly and the impala moved away over time. We then lost sight of the leopard but I am convinced if we hadn’t cramped his style he would have caught that impala. Nonetheless, it was an amazingly beautiful scene to witness, and we felt bad for Tom having to miss his favorite animal. We quickly sent him a text about our spot to make him jealous.

Time was running low and we were on our way out of the park when we made one last spot, one that you couldn’t miss. On our left there was a herd of nearly 300 cape buffalo crossing a riverbed. There size and numbers were awe-inspiring; we could hear the combined sound of their hooves pounding the hard ground and their snouts snorting through the dust. We watched them have a couple of mini-stampedes and then moved on. Overall we saw giraffes, zebras, elephants, lions, buffalo, gazelles, impalas, hippos, crocs, warthogs, kudu, dik-diks, monkeys, hares, bushbucks, many birds, and a leopard. This accounts for four of the “big five”, the fifth being rhino, which is not found in Ruaha, so we did pretty well. Overall it was a priceless experience, and I have a new appreciation for national parks and protected areas all across the world where animals can live naturally, away from humans and our enviornmentally devastating activities.

More pictures can be found by clicking the "Safari Njema" link under "Pictures" in the top right hand corner.