| Tanzania: The Utopian years of my life | Send to a friend |
| Saturday, 04 February 2012 10:06 |
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FRIENDLY FIRE FROM YESTERYEARS (II) This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it AS I was saying in these columns last Saturday, only about 20 out of my three-score-and-ten Summers this side of Heaven are worth narrating to my captive readership.The rest, a half-century of ‘living,’ isn’t worth writing home about. What transpired then was almost invariably diametrically opposed to my wishes, plans, hopes and expectations! [The fifty worst years of my life (so far) are closely associated with systemic failures that bring to mind one of Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophical surmises. In one of his not infrequent moments of brilliance, Ghandiji (1869-1948) pontificated that ‘freedom’ was not worth two-bits if it didn’t enshrine the freedom to make mistakes! But, that’s a tale fit to be told another day...] My 20 Utopian years began roughly a decade before ‘Independence’ — and ended a decade after ‘Independence!’ My schooldays were perhaps the best of that memorable two decades. They were crowned by phenomenal success not only for me, but for all the 211 students who passed the 1962 Higher School Certificate exams out of the 213 candidates from ten schools in what was then Tanganyika, an ‘Independent’ country within the (British) Commonwealth. [Tanganyika Standard: Feb. 21, 1963. Price: 30 Tsh cents!] Two of the 213 candidates nationwide failed — neither of them from my alma mater (Old) Moshi Secondary! I’m further happy to say none of my classmates ever took up politics. They all went into professions of higher esteem... Like Hubert Kariuki of the Kariuki Memorial Hospital fame; Justice Eustace William Katiti; doctors (human and veterinary)... That same year, I was swept up by the EA Common Services Organisation, precursor to the First Edition of the EA Community (1967-77). This gave me the opportunity to work in, and travel around, Kenya, Uganda, Holland (1968) and Richard Nixon’s US of A (1973). It also taught me interpersonal relations, having perforce to interelate with different tribes: Hindis, Goans, Sikhs, Americans, Dutchmen (and women), Irish and Scots... To say nothing of hosts of Bantus, Nilotics, Swahilis. [That’s partly how my skills in Her Britannic Majesty’s language got prostituted into what they’re today: a mishmash of Hindi-Urdu, Americanism, Swahinglish... Oh, I nearly forgot... In Feb. 1967, I’d the relatively rare privilege of climbing Mt Kilimanjaro — not as a rubbernecked tourist, but as a ‘student’ of the Loitokitok Outward Bound Mountain School, under D. Pritchard as Warden. Boy, it was a marvellous experience... There was I, perched atop the Roof of Africa for a couple of hours before descending to a hearty welcome-back and career promotion from my employer! Before returning to the US in 1990 for another professional stint, I got hitched to the best woman I was to know ever and anon in Jan. 1968. In hindsight, that’s the crowning glory in my beleaguered-to-be life. I’ll explain... A year earlier — Feb. 5, 1967, to be exact — the founder of Tanzanian nationalism and the country’s iconic leader, Mwalimu Julius ‘The K’ Nyerere, proclaimed the Arusha Declaration, his blueprint for socio-economic miracle via ‘Socialism & Self-reliance.’ I’ll not say outright that this was when the roof caved in. But... Sorry, till next time. I’ve run out of editorial space here. Cheers! Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           |
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