Happy New Year!
I am sorry my writing took a bit of a break there. I didn’t
realize that my access to internet would be so limited, and as most of you have
probably realized writing a long blog entry on your phone is more than
frustrating, so although I did attempt it, I never quite finished.
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| Ruaha National Park, Tanzania - a magical place |
I have had an amazing Christmas and New Years. I spent
Christmas Eve and day in Ruaha in Tanzania, going on game drives and eating
amazing food. I had done the safari thing before, but always on a very very
limited budget, so my safari mostly consisted on staying in local villages next
to the national parks for 3 dollars a night, followed by some walking safaris
around the area and also a very amusing night drive through QEP in a taxi
blasting Dolly Parton with hyenas and lions pacing around the car. Also important to note this only happened after everyone in the car had signed a piece of paper signing our lives away as none of the park rangers would guarantee for our safety.The next day was spent hitching a ride with a truck full of sand to go search for some chimps who
never materialized, but did slip down a mud slope with hippos all around,
followed by an 8 hour bus ride with the replay of The Terminator over and over.
Experiences I would not be without, but I have to admit it was nice to see the
safari life that people travel to Africa to see (although thankfully did not
have to pay the price for it as my budget is still on the 3 dollar mark).
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| Some epic safari days with Foxes |
The Safaris that cost thousands of dollars and guarantee you
not just animals but amazingly comfy beds, security guards and a three course
meal every day. To my surprise the majority of the people staying at the lodge
for Christmas were all Scandinavians, so I also got to speak Norwegian for
Christmas, which was a nice treat, it did feel a bit closer to home. Christmas
day was spent driving around Ruaha National Park looking for animals,
unfortunately the first 3 hours were mostly dedicated to bird watching, which
for the life of me I do not understand, maybe in 40 years I will have the
patience to sit in a car staring at a bird miles away, for now I prefer the
giraffes and lions up close. So I was more than happy when suddenly an elephant
decided to walk out right in front of the car, did almost jump into the lap of
our guide when the elephant looked like it was going to charge though, wasn’t
quite prepared for that. Alex our friendly driver repeatedly had to tell me to ‘shhh’
as evidently asking over and over again ‘is this safe?!’ is not the thing to do
when you have an angry elephant next to you.
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| Angry elephant - about the time I freaked out... |
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| Elephant munching as I learned to keep quiet |
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| Zebra chilling - bizarre but beauriful |
Between Christmas and New Year’s I travelled back and forth
between Dodoma and Dar Es Salaam a couple of times and spent a lot of time
reading, well up in the air reading, as my days were mostly spent tagging along
on flights. I can happily say I now know the route Dar – Dodoma – Ruaha –
Mahale – Katavi – Ruaha – Selous – Mafia – Dar…For someone who had never been
on a small plane I think I did pretty good..well except for the time I fell
asleep and woke up thinking the plane was crashing and came close to just
making it crash myself as I was so freaked out..but no mostly days were lazy
and seeing Tanzania from the air was great.. Dodoma by the way has the most
amazing Pizza I have ever had in Africa, the Lione Pizzeria by the airport is
almost worth a trip to Dodoma in itself.
For New Year’s we had a BBQ and lots of drinks, followed by
a day relaxing at the Golden Tulip hotel in Dar. It was so nice to just relax
by a pool and spend some time swimming around. It gave me a bit of a flashback
to Hawaii. There were actual waves on the beach right there, and good waves
too! I miss the ocean so much, and surfing. I keep thinking back to Hawaii and
my time there and being a bit scared that I will never be as happy as I was. I
fell in love with the ocean, and the waves and the people there, and I’ll
always carry that with me. Hopefully someday soon I will be able to go back.
Enough about the reminiscing, I am beyond happy to be in
Africa right now. And even more excited that I am headed back to Moroto
tomorrow. I know I didn’t spend that long there before Christmas, but I do
really miss it. I miss the people and the KDF boys, and I am excited for the
work we will be doing this new year.
I have been reading a couple of books that have got me
thinking a lot about Karamoja. The first one was a book called ‘The Worst Date
Ever’ – by Jane Bussman. I know the title doesn’t really elude to any great
insights into the difficulties of development there, but I was surprised by how
insightful it was. So the storyline is basically a journalist who follows a man
to Uganda for love and ends up in Gulu in Northern Uganda while the LRA is
still on the loose in the country and she starts to realize things about the
war against the LRA that just don’t make sense. Through her investigations she
finds that the government and many of the former LRA are actually benefitting
from the continuous war on the LRA, and that the war could have been over a
long time ago. It highlighted a point that I have always found confusing,
especially in studying peace studies. We always take it for granted that people
want peace. I think if the whole world, including those very rich and powerful
individuals who control the majority of our markets and daily lives, wanted
peace then there would be peace. Peace though is not profitable, war is. The
arms market is huge, and many nations do gain from the fact that people go to
war, so how will there ever be peace in the world if there is always that
incentive to keep fighting?
Well from another book I have been reading called ‘Aid and
other Dirty Business – Giles Bolton’ it seems the aid industry is also quite a
successful business of sorts. Bolton although he is critical I think still
believes there is an underlying goodness in the aid industry, I am not so sure
anymore. I think there are good people who want to do the right thing, but I
think the aid industry has grown too big and too powerful in itself. Take the
example of food aid. I support the need for food aid in disaster situations,
but what I witnessed at food distribution points in Karamoja, that is not a
disaster situation. People have been made dependent on aid, and this dependency
is holding them back from reaching their potential, and it is essentially holding
back development. I understand it’s not a black and white picture, you could
say people are starving so obviously we will feed them. Yet the people of
Karamoja have been given food aid from the WFP among others for over 30 years.
If people are starving for 30 years perhaps a different approach should be
considered? (Would hope that if you were doing something completely wrong for
30 years you would have enough common sense to change it up a bit, although I
know it is not that simple as the security situation in Karamoja has been
difficult at best in the last decades, but just a thought)
I know the food at
the moment is not simply dropped off, it is part of a work for food program or
other initiatives, yet I am still struggling to see the sustainability of that.
So these people work, why not pay them? Why pay them with food? Shouldn’t there
be a higher incentive for these people to create their own functioning society,
rather than simply distributing food? I know my opinions on this might be a bit
far fetch, but the more time I spend in developing countries, the more I
question the things that we back home would never regard as a potential
problem.
There is good in the aid industry, but I still believe there
is an issue with emergency relief aid and development aid, the overlapping of
the two seem to make the lines slightly blurred. The main lesson I have learned
from KDF and Karamoja so far is the need for further involvement of the local
people. Imagine if someone came to your home and told you what you needed to do
to be more successful in your life, without ever considering what you think of
as successful or if you even wanted change in the first place? I think we are
so convinced in the West that the way we live our life is better than any other
alternatives, that we become a bit blind to this. The Karamojong know how to
live in Karamoja, they know the environment, the ecosystem, better than anyone.
They know that pastoralism is the best suited way of life in a region that has
unreliable rainfall and as such mobility is key. From the outside pastoralism
is viewed as unnecessary because we now have technology to ensure that there is
water in one place throughout the year and as such crops can be yielded from that.
Yet do we really want to encourage people to give up the way of life that they
have practiced successfully for centuries? Just because we now have the
technology and knowledge to change their way of life, it doesn’t seem fair, and
not just that what if our technology fails us? Then we have made people
dependent on a non-sustainable lifestyle, does that not make us responsible for
their future? I like to think people should be in charge of their own future,
or at least be a part of shaping that future, unfortunately that’s not a
reality in many cases in the developing world. Just because it is the ‘developing
world’ doesn’t mean that we as ‘developed nations’ hold the key to their
future.
So a few thoughts from my readings the last few weeks. I
know I am still learning, and maybe my perception of Karamoja will change, and
I will realize the usefulness of many of the programs I criticize. I am
completely aware and open to that happening, I am just here to learn, but to me
a part of learning is putting the ideas that I form in my head out there and
maybe someone else will read it and make sense of it.
Now it is time for me to finish up my packing. My day was
spent at the airtel office in Kampala trying to register my phone, as evidently
I should have done that a month ago..oops…but all good, phone back on and I got
to go shopping for some essentials to bring to Moroto and had a few lazy hours
by the pool reading a book. So definitely not the worst day
J Now tomorrow a 5 am wake up to hopefully be
in Mbale before midday and then catch a ride with the UN to Moroto. Again
escaping the joys of the Gateway bus! Thankful for all the generous people here
who have made my travelling a million times easier lately!
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| Giraffe beauty all over in Ruaha |
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| Lion Chill time |
Some Tanzania beauties to finish it off :)
Thank you for sharing. Glad you are having such a good time. I love the pictures.
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