Guess Who's Back

So I arrived back in Iringa this past Sunday after a 24 hour journey from Ko Samui, Thailand to Dar es Salaam, via Bangkok and Dubai. I stayed with my Canadian friends Quintin and Sara in Dar for the first night and then Andrew met me on Saturday and we stayed at a guesthouse. On Sunday morning we picked up his parents from the airport and headed to the bus station. We were not sure if we would be able to get around Dar as President Bush was arriving in Dar on Saturday, a fact not as widely publicized in the West as it has been here of course. It is a huge event for Tanzania, as he is the first sitting U.S. president to visit the country, ever. It was quite strange to drive the chaotic and rundown streets of Dar which are now decorated with American flags, giant billboards of Bushs’ face in front of Kilimanjaro, and hand painted cloth signs with slogans such as “We Cherish Democracy,” “We Cherish Human Rights,” and “Tanzania is a Peaceful Country.” Definitely didn’t expect all that when I got back. The even more interesting thing is that over the past 5 months, whenever I talked to people about Bush, they had nothing but bad things to say about him. For example my American friend Paul was constantly harassed by people who called him “mtoto wa Georgi Bushi” (Child of George Bush), and “Georgi Bushi ni kali sana” (George Bush is very aggressive/mean). I heard another time of an American getting stopped at a police checkpoint, and the police officer said to him (in what was probably the only English he knew) “George Bush is an evil creature.” Aside from this I have heard many people talking negatively about the war in Iraq, the hanging of Saddam, and the hunt for Bin Laden. Amazing then, that Bush announces he’s giving the country 668 million dollars for infrastructure improvement and coming to visit, all of a sudden everyone I talk to loves him! Now people are saying how he is very generous and a good president etc. Even the newspapers are jumping on the bandwagon. Before now all I read in the Tanzanian papers were negative stories and editorials about Bush and the American Empire, and now all of the articles are glowing reviews of what he is doing for the country, usually with a one sentence blurb at the end saying something like “Many people are critical of Bushs’ foreign and domestic policy record, but that is always up for debate.” I have been here long enough to know that this is the Tanzanian way in some sense; people desire to avoid confrontation at all costs. Therefore, if something is bothering you about a situation or a person, you would never tell them, you would just act as though everything is all fine and good when the subject comes up. I am going to guess once all the hoopla dies down, people will retain their original views on him, but maybe not. If this really has changed the perceptions of an entire nation, maybe these diplomatic tours are really doing their intended job. I am not going to get too far into my personal views on the subject, as I am not prepared to write a book at this point.

Anyhow, I should say that it is great to be back in Africa, I have realized that the people here must be some of the friendliest, most welcoming, and most hospitable people in the world. I love that conversations constantly strike up between strangers, and people really have a “we’re all in this together” mentality. It is a stark contrast to the Western individualism that we experience in Canada and other countries, where people avoid contact with strangers at great length. We have a lot to learn from this worldview, as I think that Westerners may be much better off if we willingly tried to adopt more of a collective mentality. One statistic that I find irrefutably illustrates the backwardness of our culture is the fact that studies show that nearly one third of the population of North America is on antidepressants. That is over 100 million people on our continent alone. The numbers are less for Europe but they are climbing steadily. Now is it just me or is it crazy that the most privileged, enlightened, richest group of people with the highest quality of life ever experienced on this planet is depressed, presumably about their life situation? Doesn’t this indicate that there is something wrong with the current world order? I meet people everyday that are paid less money per year then we spend on one meal in a nice restaurant. Logic says that these are the people who should be jaded, cynical, and worn-out concerning the problems of life, but to the contrary, these people are by far some of the happiest people I have ever known. They revel in the simple things, a hard days work, dinner with the family, being in good health for one more day; in the West, people are so indoctrinated with ideas that material wealth brings happiness, but it is consistently shown in studies that wealth and happiness do not correlate, in fact, in some cases they have been shown to be inversely proportional (that is, the richer one is, the less likely that person is to report themselves as “happy”). My theory is that, in the history of humans, we have always been living day to day, that is, struggling to meet our basic needs of food, water, and shelter. Now, only really in the past 100 years, we in industrialized countries have found ourselves with all of our needs met, and plenty of spare time to fill up. Sometimes that time is used productively, but often it is not, and when that happens, people start to really question life. Why am I even here? What is my purpose? Who really needs me? These questions can sometimes lead to great things, but often people begin to feel useless and get into a downwards spiral, filling their lives with negative influences which only serve to exuberate the problem until they declare that they “need help” and thus turn to antidepressants or other means. So, what can we do about this? I am not going to pretend to have all the answers, but I think just realizing how lucky we are, not just to have all of our basic needs met, but also for the opportunities we have to find fulfillment in life though higher means. Some examples of what I am talking about include: spending quality time with family and friends, spiritual development, health and fitness, intellectual development, connecting with nature, charity/volunteering, various hobbies, etc. It is easy to say all of this and much more difficult to do, I know. Many of you may have heard of the new bestselling book “the Secret,” and I want to point out that there is a reason why this book is so popular – all that it says in a nutshell is “positive thinking is good”. It may seem humorous that such a simple notion can be created into a multimillion dollar book and movement, but that it has been so successful illustrates the state of our society. People feel that they need to be told what is right before they can act on it themselves. I know that the book has positively changed many people’s lives, and that is great, but do we really need someone to tell us that if you set goals and work towards them they will be fulfilled? Isn’t this inherent in human nature? It is by this maxim that our species has accomplished so much, and will continue to do so into the future. Well now reaching the end of this I assure you that I wasn’t planning this entry to turn this way but hey, sometimes spontaneous ideas are the best ones.