| Tanzania: the utopian years of my life | Send to a friend |
| Saturday, 28 January 2012 10:47 |
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FRIENDLY FIRE FROM YESTERYEARS This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it IN my 70-plus years of existence this side of Heaven, I’ve experienced less than twenty years of what one could reasonably describe as worth living. Life then mayn’t have been Utopian: ideal in terms of law, Govt. and social conditions… They certainly weren’t dystopian: depressingly wretched and fearful! I’ve in mind here the decade to Independence on Dec. 9, 1961, and the decade after Independence, to 1971. Those were the best years of my otherwise wretched, miserable life, I tell U! This Friendly Fire’s been prompted by a nostalgic urge triggered by the celebration (?) to mark fifty years of ‘Independence’ of my country of birth, precarious upbringing, trials and tribulations: ‘Tanganyika.’ The nostalgia was also fuelled by the rapidly rising cost of living that can’t be even remotely associated with a correspondingly high standard of living. Just imagine: a kilo of sugar — when you can lay your peasantly hands on it in parts of Tanzania — costs up to Sh6,000; petrol: Shh8,000 a litre! Electricity tariffs up by 40.29 per cent one year after they’d been hiked by 18 per centin Jan. 2011… [It borders on the asinine to say power tariff hikes are unavoidable. These are necessitated by serious, criminal shortcomings on the part of the state power company down the years. For a recent example, see ‘Mzalendo’ of Jan. 22, 2012, on massive thefts of the company’s fuel under the very noses of the relevant authorities! But, that’s another story...]. Regarding the 20 Utopian years of my life... Although I personally had nothing to do with it — honest! — I was born into this harsh world 20 years before ‘Independence.’ I then spent my first fifteen years or so running around half-naked, goat-herding, primary-schooling and helping out with hand-hoe farming on family crop patches everynow and then. It was a hostile world in which to toddle and grow... Something which the UN System frowns upon as child labour today — in theory, at least. But, I didn’t seem to notice it, or mind at all; it was The Done Thing in those days! Then a semblance of relief dawned upon me. This was when I joined a boarding secondary School, Old Moshi, in 1955. For the next eight years, I lived like a Prince among more than 400 other ‘Prince-Students,’ surrounded by dedicated teachers, a well-stocked library and fully equipped laboratories. I played association football (Mwalimu GFK Wittekind) and rugby (Mwalimu Alex Gardner). I also tried baseball when schools in Tanzania fell under the spell of American Peace Corps teachers... This life in Dreamland was occasionally interrupted by Exams: Standards-8 and 10 Territorials, as well as Standards-12 and 14 Cambridge Univesrity Syndicated humdingers! This last Exam was held in Nov-Dec 1962, one year after ‘Uhuru.’ In the event, not many students paid much attention to the first year of Uhuru; we were all Hell-bent-for-leather to ensure we excelled at the Exams. And, that’s exactly what happened in my first decade of pure bliss. You see... Sorry. I’ve run out of editorial space here... Till next week, cheerio! Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           |
