June 2015 - World Chump

· President Kikwete officially asked India for aid a few weeks ago. The project? A metro in Dar es Salaam. Not a bad idea. Just why do most people think this will never happen? Faith, people. Let’s keep the faith here.

· Liebi was pulled over by the police a few days ago, supposedly for running a red light, although she was merely following a line of vehicles that had been waved through by the cop. They tried to shake her down for 70,000 Tzs. When she demanded to be given a ticket, they whittled that request down to 30,000 Tzs. Again Liebi’s demand for a ticket. She was finally waved through. This mzungu was clearly not worth messing with.

· In the most common poaching areas in both Tanzania and Mozambique, you almost have to be wondering who is assisting with these egregious crimes. I get it, these places are vast areas that seem impossible to monitor, but I can’t help but think that somebody on the inside must be on the take. Even the recently donated trained dogs meant to sniff out poachers won’t make a difference.

· Snakes, snakes, and more snakes. A three foot black mamba was whacked by our gardener a month ago, and another couple I know reported a couple of green mambas underneath their car. Are these snakes really that fearless? No, they are just running out of food sources. If that takes them into people territory, so be it. It’s a ridiculous Catch 22 for these snakes. Stay out and starve or risk decapitation by a machete every day and find inferior sources of food. Being a snake must suck in this country.

· Tanzanian TOP 40: let’s meet presidential candidate number 40, Helen Elinawinga, who is the latest hopeful to join the Kikwete succession battle. That is also the sixth female candidate, just in case any of us were losing track.

· The Tanzanian shilling continues to drop. The dollar now equals about 2,500 shillings. Wow. It was about 1,600 when we first arrived here. That’s depreciation for you.

· You have to love it when politicians here talk about the possibility of candidates being tainted by corruption. That’s like saying there is a chance that there’s a possibility that a lion will eat meat in the Serengeti.

· Sorry, sis: crimes against albinos continue here unabated. A woman now was convicted of selling her sister’s albino baby. Ten years in the slammer for her. Not quite the same thing as borrowing some sugar or milk.

· Great. Now scientists believe that a major earthquake could hit Tanzania at some time, simply because these clowns discovered one that happened 25,000 years ago. After Nepal and Bolivia, I finally thought I was safe. I guess not.

· I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Ramadan can stretch your body to the limits in ways you can’t begin to imagine. The combination of fasting and extreme heat, however, is tough. 1,000 dead people later, Pakistan is learning this lesson the hard way.

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As a Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco in 2000 -arguably the genesis of my career as a worldchump- there were two things I quickly learned about animals. Over there, people just didn't have pets. This was as foreign a concept to them as Fez hats still are to us. What, you have a cat in your house? And you actually FEED it? Ugh, it sure smells in your house.

Dogs didn't have a chance in Morocco. These were strays that were treated worse than orphans. I don't know what it is with Moroccans and dogs, but they never mixed. Cats were only slightly better off. At least they had been discovered killing a lot of the vermin that plagued them. Okay, so they were useful. But not useful enough to warrant an invitation into your house. Or uselful enough to have any of them fixed.

Every day, I would walk to the Youth Center I worked at and find a new kitten that had been left for dead. Mommy Kitty never had enough milk for an entire litter, not without a steady diet of wet food, dry food, or any food at all. If the mama had five kittens, she would take one along with her and leave the other four to fend for themselves. Cruel, yes, but these are the laws of Mother Nature, a mommy far more powerful than the maternal cat I just mentioned.

So, I am thinking. Here's a little CUTE kitten, it's clearly been left to its own wits. What to do? Okay. here, kitty. Have a seat in my pocket here, why don't you? We'll worry about food, drink, and bed once you get home. Unfortunately, this scene repeated itself as often as Groundhog Day, which meant that I soon had more kitties in my apartment than Hemingway. Luckily I had a patio, so they didn't have to stay indoors all the time. In time, I would feed them, raise them, and eventually give them up for adoption. The first such cat I had adopted died only last year. You can't begin to describe just how lucky the other cats were. From the streets of Beni Mellal to a haven for pets and the U.S. Jackpot, if there ever was one.

Here in Bongo, I now have two cats. We recently moved, and I found that our property had a cat who was VERY MUCH ATTACHED to the place. Although this kitty was tiny, it was feisty and quickly sent my two scurrying back inside. None of my kitties wanted a piece of her. Fair enough, I'm thinking. The territorial male cat. So the territorial male cat hung around. And the territorial male cat gave birth to five kittens a week later. Good God.

I first heard the kittens from our balcony and thought, Oops, I hear kittens. Probably outside of the gate. Wrong. There were five kittens crawling around in the mud outside, each of them heading in a different direction, not to mention a certain death by either the elements or any potential predators. I sighed and dropped my head. Five more kittens. At my age. And I get to provide shelter and food for them. Lucky me. These little bastards better make me patron saint of all cats if they are as divine as they think they are.

Fast forward by four weeks. The kittens are still all alive. They live in the little patio outside our kitchen window where we keep the garden tools. Mama Cat -by now, she goes by the name Joan of Arc- is a proud mother and takes good care of her five kittens. The kittens themselves are distrustful and hiss at me like snakes would, but they are alive. I suppose they can afford that kind of behavior with their mama nearby.

One evening Liebi wakes me up. The kittens are distressed, I hear meowing from all over the place. Just what are they carrying on about, Liebi is wondering. It turns out Liebi is looking everywhere but on the roof, twenty feet above the ground. Turns out yours truly was responsible for them being up there. I had left a latter against the wall after climbing up the wall the day before, and a couple of kitties used the opportunity to explore a little. Of course, once they reached the top of the house they understood they were in trouble. Any tree out there couldn't have done a better job.

So I climb up the ladder and approach the kittens who are hiding in the rain gutter. So will the kitties accept my help? Heck, no. One of them escapes down one floor and leaps the remaining ten feet to safety and her mama. The other one, a gray tabby, decides she will stand and fight. Eventually she hides in the gutter...the vertical part of it, unfortunately, and falls twenty feet through it until I hear a light meow at the end of it. The gutter doesn't open at floor level, so now I have to play fireman besides provider and foster parent. I push a hose through the hole, pull it back up, and here comes Kitty, clinging to it like Tarzan to a vine.

Will she be taken now? Nope. Her next step is the one over the edge, where she falls twenty feet to the hard tiles below. Dead? Nope? Limping? Nada. Did this kitten just use up two of her lives? For sure, at the tender age of four weeks.

The next day, the five kittens play and nurse with their mama as if they had merely visited a yarn factory the day before. I still love cats and adore kittens. If only they would hurry up and grow up now.

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Mwanza is a 59 year old entrepreneur from the Kilimanjaro area now living and working in Dar. He has a hangdog expression about him, almost like Samuel L. Jackson. His words are slow and measured, a crass opposite to his loud, wild cackle whenever he finds something funny.

By trade an electrician, Mwanza expanded his business once he saw what people were wasting. From electric appliances, he moved to furniture, vehicles, and generators, among other things. ‘You would think people in Bongo would have more sense when they throw away things’, he says with a sneer. ‘Yet that’s exactly what happens. It’s almost like they treat things like, what’s the word? Yes, disposables. Once they break down, they don’t have the know-how or the means to fix it. But that’s good. Good for me’.

His office is situated next to an all-purpose venue that includes a dance floor/stage area that could offer entertainment for hundreds of people, should the demand be there. He had purchased the place for his auctions, but quickly discovered that he could make money from it on days when there wasn’t an auction. Of course, it also helps that he owns the restaurant next to the stage.

At the restaurant, his assistant pours me a cup of tea. I gaze over at the bar area, which has vertical bars above the counter like a jail cell. So what’s with the bars over there, I ask him.

‘You can never be too careful once people drink alcohol’, he says. I will want my bartender and property at least protected’. Smart thinking. This is not a city where you call 911, the police arrives a few minutes later, and the perp is thrown into jail. The police might have other things to do, Mwanza explains. ‘Most places have their own security. I do too, at least on weekends’.

After tea, I get to see Mwanza in action at the auction. In Tanzania, an auction is not the formal, stiff affair it is in the west. There are very few suits, people are close to both the items and the auctioneer, and there is endless banter they all feed off of.

On this day, Mwanza is selling seven cars from a huge international corporation, among other items. Before he invites bids, he has his assistant bring a key to start the engine, which in turn should jumpstart the bidding on the stage. The humming sound from beneath the hood is music to the bidders’ ears, and the sound of money to Mwanza. Vroom, vroom. Cha-ching.

‘Turn off the vehicle!’ he barks at Patrick, his assistant, in Swahili. ‘You’re wasting the mzungu’s fuel!’ Laughter all around. He eventually sells the car, a Toyota Landcruiser, for 29 million Tanzanian Schillings, or nearly fifteen thousand dollars.

From the stern warnings he will give to certain bidders who seem to take too many liberties with the property up for sale, you can tell he is nobody’s fool. He has street smarts below the shirt, tie, and wired rimmed glasses he’s wearing. It quickly becomes clear they don’t argue with Mwanza too long, a man who at six feet tall is gigantic compared to most people in this country. Again, there’s that Samuel L. Jackson scowl that you might not want to challenge. And there’s also that heartwarming laugh that will disarm even the toughest hustlers out there.

‘Work? What work?’ he says at the end of the day. His take is ten percent of the gross, which means he’s had a good payday after the sale of office furniture and vehicles. ‘Work is what you do during the week. That’s what you get paid for. The auction we get to do for fun’.

At about five p.m., I leave the Sinza neighborhood, hoping to avoid traffic on the new Bagamoyo Road. A fun, fun day, the best kind in the life of a worldchump.

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World Chump - Wanderlust

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