Playing the crazy card in Zanzibar.....

When I lived in Zanzibar, I took to singing in the streets. Empty streets, crowded streets. Sometimes I even sang on the bus. No, this was not an expression of elation at finally finding a culture free of the alienation and rugged individualism of western society, nor was it an adherence to some sort of local culture of musicality. And I'm pretty sure it wasn't a side-effect of the famously psychedelic malarial prophylactic, Larium, which I was taking. I sang in the streets of Zanzibar because I could.

I called it the Mzungu Crazy Card (mzungu is the Swahili term used to identify, varyingly, white people, foreign people, Europeans and magicians). As one of a handful of expatriates living on the Tanzanian archipelago, Zanzibar, everything I did incited laughter. Everything I did was "crazy," and treated as such. I haggled for a mango in the market. I asked for tea without sugar at work. Crazy! I asked for tea with sugar at work. Still crazy.

When your life is accompanied by a soundtrack of constant twitters it can be a little wearing, but it's also incredibly freeing. For example, I've certainly never been accused of being a fashionista, but in Zanzibar, my distance from the world of trends grew to fill the chasm between the hijab worn by the local women and the bikinis donned by the tourists. Stripes and plaid, pink and red: I was free to wear whatever I felt like.

My understanding of the Mzungu Crazy Card first came to me one night sitting on the side of a road in Pemba, the northern and much more rural half of the Zanzibar archipelago. After a day at work, I returned to my hotel room, showered and changed into pyjamas. When the hunger pangs of dinner hit, instead of returning to tropical expat wear (think white, light and long), I threw a shawl over my pajamas and hit the streets. I bought roasted cassava and chilies for 30 cents and sat down on the curb to enjoy my meal. Looking up into the stars, I saw it clearly: outside the norm, there is a lot of space.

Most of the time, the Mzungu Crazy Card served as a bit of fun. Occasionally, however, it was just what was needed to keep my foreign-ness from sliding from odd to offensive. Jogging was one of the more bizarre practices I kept up in Zanzibar. Very few people run, and almost none of them are women. Though I squeezed my runs to the edge of the island and covered them with the baggiest clothes I could find, my exercise regime never failed to attract a bemused audience.

I ran on the beach and one day the rocks were particularly slippery. I fell, tearing my pants from sensible to scandalous. I stood on the beach, paralysed with horror. A tear of this kind would be mildly embarrassing in a culture of biker shorts and tank tops; here, it was unfathomable. I looked around, helpless, willing a fabric vendor to appear on the horizon. And then I saw it -- a dirty piece of cardboard wedged in the rock.

"Could I?" I wondered. Well, yes, of course I could.

I walked the 10 minutes home clutching the cardboard as a makeshift skirt. I waited for something. Anything. And then ... nothing. No more looks or smiles than any other day. Suddenly my worries seemed much sillier than my couture. The Mzungu Crazy Card: my no-fail trump.

I knew coming back to Canada wouldn't be easy -- a stranger in my own home, some practices were sure to slip back on like a favourite pair of jeans while others would be as uncomfortable as jeans from junior high.

This struck me today as I walked the streets of Ottawa. It was the middle of the day, so the streets were quiet, the realm of the restless, the retired and the repatriated -- me. The rain had let up, leaving the streets well-lit, perfect for spotting fellow sidewalkers from blocks away. I spotted one such traveller as she rounded the corner and began heading towards me. I estimated we had a minute before path-crossing. I'm sure she made a similar calculation in her head. Without skipping a beat, we braced ourselves and the game began, a game I had forgotten and fell into with an awed and ironic ease.

At the beginning, it's easy. I look ahead. She looks ahead. I may look at her, she may look at me. It doesn't matter; pupils aren't in the picture yet. As we get closer, the stakes rise. Because we want to avoid looking like we're avoiding looking at each other, it's important to ration the looks in other directions. Yes, that's a very interesting tree, but save the inspection of the leaves for 10 paces from contact. Look at the squirrel, sure, look at the squirrel. But don't gawk at the squirrel -- are you a dog?

A few paces away, the dance becomes one of intricate subtlety, moves perfected through years of aversion: a survey of your surroundings at seven paces; a glance in the vague direction of the other at five paces -- just to be, you know, polite. Next, a glance downward or slightly to the right at three paces, maintained until you are at one pace, too far along to risk direct eye contact. At this time, you may allow a small smile, a hint of an acknowledgment of the Western Waltz you have just performed. Finally you cross paths. And you are done.

And I am befuddled. I picked up the moves with the stored knowledge of someone who grew up in a ballroom, but it felt uncomfortable. I had become accustomed to not just making eye contact, but actually staring at people in Zanzibar. My stares at people grew with my time as an expat. Everyone was looking at me, so I looked at everyone. I smiled at curiosity, scowled at leers and made faces at children. Children alternately giggled or cried (I was assured that their fear had nothing to do with how I looked or behaved; I chose to believe this). But they all looked. We all looked. You saw someone. So you looked.

Looking was more than a way to satisfy curiosity. It was also -- brace yourself -- a way to acknowledge fellow human beings. In Zanzibar, if you pass someone on the street, the least you do is greet them. Depending, this greeting can range from a simple hello to an inquiry into the extended family of their extended family. In my experience, the rest of East Africa was not quite so thorough in its greetings, but even the bustling business centre of Nairobi was filled with quick nods or eye contact assuring each other that we do indeed all exist.

Back in Canada, I am now looking for a new card, some new qualification for craziness. Reverse culture shock might work, or I may need to go even further. Vague mentions of cults or philosophical movements with posts- and -isms jutting out, unhinging conversation. I could also fall back on the perceived residual effects of my various tropical medications; anything, really, to be excused from the dance of anonymity that floods our Canadian neighbourhoods. Sure, I'm exaggerating, plenty of people say hi, but is that enough? Give me a nod, I'll want a smile. A smile, I'll want a hello. A hello may turn into questions about your day or your family. I may want to know about your brother's uncle. But excuse my intrusion. I've been away, and I'm not quite over it yet.


Rebecca Hall.

Victorious Isles Hold Post-Election Rallies

Zanzibar — JUBILANT CUF fans turned-up in big numbers at public rallies on the Isles, organized to thank the electorate for participating peacefully in the October 31 elections.

Addressing both rallies, First Vice President Mr Seif Shariff Hamad who is also CUF Secretary General underlined unity and hard work, saying cooperation at top leadership was strong.

He also asked CUF members to start preparing for the next elections (2015).

"President Ali Mohamed Shein, Second VP Ambassador Seif Ali Iddi and I, have forged a strong bond, definitely because we conducted decent election campaigns.

We are committed to working together for the interest of Zanzibar," Mr Hamad said.

There would be no room for saboteurs and ministers and legislators should show commitment to serve Zanzibaris, he said, citing intervention to halt dumping of substandard foods (such as Mapembe rice) into Zanzibar market.

The public rallies are the first to be held after the general election. Earlier, the Minister of State- First President's office Ms Fatma Abdulhabib Fereji, introduced her colleagues (ministers) from CUF.

At a rally held at Tibirinzi ground in Chake-chake Pemba, the South Pemba Regional Commissioner Mr Kasim Tindwa said ministers should work hard for development.

A minister from CCM, Mr Hajo Omar Kheri (state minister- civil service and good governance) also attended the rally.

Mr Abubakari Khamis Bakari (Constitution and Legal Affairs), Mr Nassor Mazrui (Trade and Marketing) and Mr Hamad Masoud ( Infrastructure and Communication) attended the rally held at Kibanda Maiti.

"We thank you and pray that team work remains stronger for the development of Zanzibar," said Mr Khalifa Abdallah, CUF national youth secretary.

"CUF members and fans support the GNU. Since elections are over, we need now to start preparing ourselves for the 2015 general elections," he said.

A rally held in Pemba carried a similar message delivered by Mr Saleh Nassor Juma, the Island's CUF youth leader.

Meanwhile local government elections in nine wards of Unguja and Pemba were held peacefully on Sunday as confirmed by voters and Zanzibar Electoral Commission (ZEC) staff at the polling stations.

Cleaning Up Zanzibar

Sierra Brashear has a passion for trash.

She’s vitally interested in the amount and content of the crap we as a species manage to generate. (In case you're wondering, the EPA reports that the USA alone produces enough garbage annually to bury the state of Texas twice). She's been fighting for the environment since grade school.

Growing up in Conifer, Colorado, she was so appalled by plans to develop Elk Meadow that she took it upon herself to write a letter to the editor of the local paper expressing her concern. 'The developer,' she says, 'wrote back saying ‘If you’re so worried about it, buy it yourself.’ She was eight years old at the time.

Later, working on a degree in International Environmental Policy and Development at Colorado University, she volunteered at the student run CU Environmental Center, sorting and recycling campus waste. 'I was fascinated by the content and amount of the waste we generated on campus,' she says. 'We’d fill up a thirty-foot roll off twice a week.'

As part of her course work, Brashear went to Zanzibar to do a study on costal ecology in 2006. Zanzibar, an island off the coast of Tanzania, has in recent years become a destination for sun-seeking Europeans. It’s an island of stunning natural beauty, ringed with white sand beaches, crystal clear waters, and trash as far as the eye can see. 'Plastic bags, bottles, cans, batteries, chip bags,' she says. 'The landscape was covered with it.'

In her conversations with local teachers, government officials, hotel owners and ordinary citizens, Brashear came to a devastating realization. In pitching their trash out on the beach, the people of Zanzibar were not engaged in some form of aberrant behavior, nor were they being callous or indifferent to the environment. They were practicing an ancient form of recycling that up until now had worked just fine for them. In traditional Zanzibari culture, a shopping bag, for example, might be woven of grass, an organic material that could be discarded with the certain expectation that the earth would soon reclaim it. Not so with modern materials like plastic bags, which take forever to decompose.

Having brought capitalism to the island, and with it modern materials like plastics, we have, Brashear insists, 'a responsibility to help the people of Zanzibar figure out how to dispose of it.'

Back in Boulder, she spent a year thinking about the problem. Then one day her mother offered a simple suggestion, 'The solution,' she said, 'lies in education.' Mother, Brashear realized, was onto something.

She applied for and received a grant from the CU Undergraduate Research Opportunity Fund to design a curriculum to educate Zanzibaris on how to deal with their trash. While it emphasized reduction of consumption, Brashear’s program also contained some novel suggestions for recycling. Plastic bags, for example, could be cut into strips and crocheted into reusable purses and market bags.

An Italian environmental group active in Zanzibar, the Association of Rural Cooperation in Africa and Latin America (ACRA), was so impressed with her ideas, that they have funded a program to teach them to local school kids. They’re also pushing to have her suggestions included in the national school curriculum.

'To be honest,' she says, 'I still feel disheartened by the amount of trash we generate. I look at people’s grocery carts and see how much packaging it takes to produce just one meal…all that plastic and cardboard. There’s definitely a link to food production. So much of the trash in Zanzibar was food related… juice containers instead of juice from locally grown fruits, for example.'

Brashear is now working with an organization called Grow House in North Denver’s Swansea neighborhood, setting up greenhouses and encouraging area residents to grow their own organic produce. 'I believe,' she says, 'that the solution to the world’s trash problem lies in the localization of food production, and in the individual empowerment of people to control their own food sources.'

STATEMENT BY THE SECRETARY GENERAL OF THE EAST AFRICAN COMMUNITY, AMB. JUMA V. MWAPACHU

Hotel Diamonds La Gemma de l'Est
Zanzibar, Tanzania

Your Excellency Dr. Jean Ping;
Chairperson of the AU Commission,

Your Excellency Abdoulie Janneh,
UN Deputy Secretary General and
Executive Secretary of the ECA,

Your Excellency Dr. Donald Kaberuka
President of the African Development Bank,

My Colleagues, the CEOs of RECs
and Regional Mechanisms,

Distinguished AUC Commissioners,


Hon. Beatrice Kiraso,
Deputy Secretary General, East African Community,

Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen.


On behalf of the East African Community, I warmly welcome you to the United Republic of Tanzania and specifically to Zanzibar, the world famous Spice Islands and home to the World Heritage Site of Stone Town. I truly hope that you will not miss the chance to explore the beauty, serenity and splendour of these Islands that are rich in Arabic and Islamic civilization. A special warm welcome to you, Dr. Jean Ping. Your presence at meetings of the AU-RECs Coordination Committee is of great significance. As RECs we feel honoured and respected when you allow us the opportunity to interact with you at close quarters.

We meet in Zanzibar at a most historic moment in the political life of these islands and, indeed, of the Tanzanian Union itself. The Tanzania Presidential and House of Representatives elections which took place exactly eight days ago have opened a new page of democracy, peace and stability for Zanzibar and for the United Republic of Tanzania.

Following the recent constitutional change in Zanzibar to allow the formation of a Government of National Unity as a fundamental political governance principle, Zanzibar has this past week gone through the most peaceful, free and fair elections in history. The political rancour that used to embroil past elections has given way to a political modus vivendi whose driving ethos is the realization of peace, stability and progress for all Zanzibaris.

This new political and constitutional dispensation in Zanzibar augurs well for the consolidation of the Tanzania Union which represents Africa's model of political integration.

Your Excellency and Colleagues,

I believe that all of us have also closely followed the trends in the just ended Tanzania Union general elections. Close observers of the Tanzanian political scene would tell you that the elections this year have reflected a radical departure from those experienced since 1992 when Tanzania re-adopted a multi-party political system government. There has been a marked change in the electoral performance of the political parties, notably of those that oppose the ruling party, CCM.


For true democrats, this change is an important one in the African democratic political process. It shows that democracy and pluralism are taking root and that the electorate is becoming ever more aware of its political rights and choices. Africa needs to share these experiences especially where they reflect powerful trends towards political change but in environments that also manifest strong culture of peace and tranquility.


Your Excellency and Colleagues,

As we meet here today we cannot fail to be seized of the enormity of the mandate of the RECs as the building blocks of the African Union. We cannot also fail to be seized of the complexities of the issues and the serious capacity constraints the RECs face in discharging their mandate. The fact that we have structured this platform is clear recognition of the seriousness we place on our collective quest to share insights and experiences to better deliver on our lofty mandates.
The challenges we face hinge on a number of goals: good governance, peace and security; and social and economic development.

Similarly, there are challenges of a global dimension, such as climate change and unfavorable terms of trade, both of which require joint efforts and effective responses of essentially national but also of regional nature and scope. I am pleased to note that some of these challenges constitute the agenda of our deliberations at this meeting. But I am equally happy that our meeting will focus on how AU's building blocs are working together within the spirit of realizing broader African integration. The COMESA-EAC-SADC Tripartite is a unique model that should be hailed and replicated in other parts of Africa. The view that resides in certain quarters of integration opinion that this tripartite model seeks to undermine the larger continental quest is simply bizarre and impolitic.

Let me end my welcoming remarks by once again thanking the African Union Commission for accepting EAC's wish to host this meeting in Zanzibar. I trust you will find the environment here highly supportive of serious work. As we say in Kiswahili, KARIBUNI SANA.