By Erick Kabendera
At Butimba Maximum Security Prison, inmate Eugene Maganga’s routine for the two years he had been to wake up late on weekends. For some reason however, on that Saturday morning October 22, 1995, he had woken up early and when he switched on his small radio he was just in time to catch a brief news item saying that President Ali Hassan Mwinyi had granted him and several others clemency for their crime.
This is a moment that the group of eight had been waiting for, for the ten years that they been behind bars serving a life sentence for treason. They had never lost hope.
“Prisoners in different cells who also heard the news started cheering,” narrates Maganga, 50. “Surprisingly I did not cheer because I had waited for a long time for this day to come. It was always terrifying to imagine I could spend my entire life in prison.”
Maganga and the other seven – Suleiman Kamando, Zakaria Aspopo, Vitalis Mapunda, Mbogolo, Kajaji Badru, Hatty MacGhee and Christopher Kadego – were convicted in 1985 for a botched plan two years earlier to overthrow the government of the country’s first President, Julius Nyerere. The ninth person, Mohamed Tamimu had been killed in an exchange with the police at the time of their arrest.
On Monday October 24, 1995, two days after the news had come on radio, Maganga was declared a free man. He clearly remembers that day when he crossed the prison gates to freedom. The time was one p.m.
“My joyous relatives and those of my fellow prisoner Hatty MacGhee welcomed us outside the prison. Emotions ran high and the feeling then is very hard to explain even now,” says Maganga.
Six of the other treason convicts were released two days later from Ukonga Prison in Dar es Salaam.
By the time of their release, Maganga had been shuffled through several prisons including Ukonga in Dar es Salaam and his last post at Butimba in Mwanza.
Despite the hardships they endured in prison, Maganga says none of them has ever regretted for attempting to overthrow the government. “We only regret failing the coup mission but we don’t regret planning the coup.”
Before they came up with the idea of overthrowing the government, Maganga and Kadego worked in the army with the Tank Battalion. Maganga was a Lieutenant while Kadego was a captain. Maganga was 26 years old and had just returned from London where he spent four months brushing up his military skills before he was summoned to go and fight in the war with Uganda in 1978.
As one of the soldiers on the frontline, Maganga believes Tanzania won the war because Uganda had a weak army. But he is unforgiving of the general premise on which the war was built. “President Nyerere misused the country’s resources to fight for the interests of his closest friend Milton Obote so he could return him to power.”
If the misunderstandings that led to the war were genuine, Maganga says diplomacy would have helped solve the problem amicably. Instead they had favoured a military campaign.
Soon after this war, in May 1980, Maganga joined the University of Dar es Salaam to study International Relations and Public Administration. He was never happy with the kind of life that Tanzanians were living – he says they were poor and were being forced into Ujamaa villages.
The group contended that the war between the two countries was unnecessary and had only resulted in the misuse of public funds. “The war wasn’t between the two countries rather it was between Nyerere and Idi Amin.”
Maganga further says they also took issue with the conditions in the army which had particularly deteriorated after Major General Mrisho Sarakikya, the first Chief of Defence Forces (1964-1974) and his team had stepped down. The coup plotters also felt that the president lacked trust in the people from the north because they been educated outside the country and he feared that they would attempt to overthrow him. “People who were less educated took over the positions and that is where things went wrong,” says Maganga. Soldiers were not commissioned on merit as the president was keener on creating an army consisting of men who couldn’t pose any challenge against him. He says some officers were promoted twice in a single week. “We wanted to bring changes but the type of people we wanted to work with were not ready to sacrifice. Nevertheless, we didn’t give up on our intention to bring about change.”
As Maganga and his colleagues were still discussing the ways to go about their plans, they met with the late Pius Rugangira (Uncle Tom) who was an established Tanzanian businessman in Kenya. Rugangira’s father was not on good terms with President Nyerere, according to Maganga, and he had gone to live and work in Uganda. And because of having his father in Uganda, Rugangira was accused of being a Ugandan spy – accusations that led to his fallout with the government. Generally, he too felt that Tanzanians were unnecessarily paying the price of an ill-conceived war and that is why he gave audience to the coup plotters.
With Rugangira volunteering to finance their mission, Maganga and other army officers who had already agreed to work together were now optimistic. “We were all young and we did not trust any high ranking officer in the army because they were satisfied with the way things were.”
Though quite forthcoming with just about everything on their coup plans, Maganga is hesitant to reveal exactly how they had had planned to carry it out. He will only say it is still their “top secret” though they expected to exploit the general negligence in the army to achieve their goals.
Another plotter who was in Maganga’s company at the time of the interview but preferred not to be named, says most people believe the group was given a lot of money to carry out the coup but in fact the little money that they received from Rugangira was only meant to take care of small emergencies. He insists it was not compensation for carrying out the coup. “If we were paid money, none of us would have been poor today,” he says.
The former soldier adds that they wanted to build a multiparty democracy in which people could freely express their opinions and choose their own president. “We had proposed that Rugangira would become the Prime Minister but on condition that he would not contest as a presidential candidate in the election that would be held five years later.”
Three days before the planned coup was to take place, Rugangira reportedly asked them the positions they wanted to be given in the new government but they had replied they wanted nothing.
When all arrangements were in place, they waited for the president who was on a state visit abroad to return. According to Maganga, the president came back in January 1982 after spending two months away and went to his home village in Butiama.
“The reason we wanted to overthrow the government while he was in the country is that we intended to assassinate him,” Maganga says. It was Rugangira who opposed the assassination plan in favour of arresting the president.
Nyerere unexpectedly spent more time in Butiama and had still not returned to Dar es Salaam two days before the day when the coup was to take place on Monday January 9, 1982.
The Friday before that – on January 6 – they had planned to meet for the last time before the coup was carried out but some of their colleagues did not turn up for the meeting.
Mohamed Tamimu was among those who didn’t come. “We were worried and we decided to send one of us to Kinondoni Mkwajuni to enquire but we were shocked to find that the police had raided his house and killed him,” says Maganga.
At that point, they all knew their identities and plans were secret no more. Tamimu, according to his colleagues, had a culture of keeping records of the meetings and the names of collaborators. It was only a matter of time before they were arrested.
They had guessed right.
The police were all over looking for the group. Kadego and Maganga decided to escape through Tanga and Mombasa to Nairobi where they stayed for ten months as political refugees. “We don’t know what happened to the others whom we left in Dar es Salaam but we had not given up when we arrived in Nairobi. We wanted to re-organise ourselves and come back to overthrow the government,” says Maganga.
They never blamed each other for failing to carry out the coup successfully though Maganga believes their luck ran out because MacGhee was a civilian and didn’t know how to keep secrets. He suspects MacGhee had leaked the information to almost all of the people he knew before even the mission was a halfway. Maganga also suspects that Tamimu knew that MacGhee was not a former American soldier as he had claimed but did not tell them. “We realised later that his real name was Hatibu Hassan Gandhi and he was a Tanzanian pilot. ”
In Nairobi, they had no jobs and they were surviving under the support of United Nations Commission for Refugees. Maganga says they had some contacts with the America embassy in Nairobi whom they requested for sponsorship to start a base in Nairobi from where they would reorganise and plan for another coup.
“They said they had so many similar activities to support and could not afford sponsoring ours,” he says.
A few days later as Maganga and Kadego loitered in the streets of Nairobi, they suddenly ran into their co-plotters Uncle Tom and MacGhee whom they had left in Dar es Salaam. The two had escaped from Keko Prison in Dar es Salaam where they had been taken upon their arrest.
Though they were comfortable with their life in Nairobi Rugangira decided to travel to London to look at ways to move them to Malawi. He was worried that the government in Nairobi would conspire with Dar es Salaam and arrest them. All eight of them had somehow managed to escape to Nairobi.
Indeed, before Rugangira returned from London, the group was arrested by the authorities in Nairobi and exchanged with Senior Lance Corporal Ochuka and Sergeant Pancras Oteyo who had also made attempts to overthrow the government of then President Daniel arap Moi in 1982 and fled to Tanzania.
“We were heavily handcuffed and blindfolded and taken to Isaka Maximum Security Prison in Dodoma where we stayed from November 1983 to October 1984,” says Maganga.
On arrival there, they found the walls of the prison cells they were assigned were smeared with faeces. They were chained to the ground, and spent three days without taking a shower. The head of the prison had directed the prison warders not to talk to the captives or even get near them fearing that the captives would try to influence the law enforcers to join hands with them.
Maganga says however that the people who were guarding them were not all that bad and at one time they helped the prisoners smuggle a letter out to the American Embassy. They had wanted the world to know that they were in jail because nobody was aware of this at the time.
The letter they had written, Maganga says, prompted a UN Commissioner for Refugees to visit Tanzania and pressured government to forward the case to court.
The trial started in January 1985 and in December of that year they were sentenced to life imprisonment.
They insist that in principle they have no regrets about plotting the coup, but Maganga says his only disappointments are in the way their lives turned out.
After being set free, they found that some friends and relatives had turned hostile towards them and did not want to be seen near or with them.
Both Kadego and Maganga have never married and Maganga says the hardest part was probably not the ten years they spent in jail but starting all over again when they owned nothing. “The government made sure that we don’t get employed anywhere and some of us have remained unemployed to this day,” he says.
Some of them whose families were better off managed to make a breakthrough in businesses. “Kadego and I live hand to mouth. In fact Kadego is a machinga,” Maganga says.
MacGhee died a week after their release while a couple of them tried to join the opposition parties but decided to quit. They felt the parties were disorganised and the people who led them seemed self-seeking.
“In the last year’s elections, I contested for a parliamentary seat in Tabora constituency but I lost. I don’t want to involve myself in politics again,” Maganga says.
Maganga has two children from different mothers and he says nobody bothered to send them to good schools while he was in jail. He still hopes to provide them with a good education but with no income, his plans are beginning to seem like wishful thinking.
He had himself enrolled at the Open University of Tanzania to study Law in 1999 but dropped out in his second year due to lack of fees. “Not all my friends care about my problems. Some try to reach me when they have something to give me,” he says.
With the way things are going for him right now, he is just about ready to do any job that is offered to him.
Still, his personal life doesn’t bother him quite as much as what he calls ‘the mindset of Tanzanians’. “They complain of almost everything but none of them has ever taken any action. They blame us for trying to overthrow the government while most of them would not even dare,” he says.
He told me he was going to bed that night without any food but that didn’t bother him; it would not be the first time. It is when he says, “This country… Nyerere corrupted the mindset of the people. Very few people can think and take action,” that he wears the mask of disappointment.
A dog’s life
The time in prison had been very harrowing even for political prisoners like themselves. They were not allowed some of the privileges they were entitled to, and they got to witness several vices that thrived under the very noses of prison authorities.
Maganga recalls witnessing juvenile prisoners being sodomised. There were same sex couples, drug peddlers and some notorious inmates even organised ‘beauty pageants’ where men strutted their stuff.
“Prisoners who supervised others slept with those who won the beauty contests and gave them little favours in return, for instance, excusing them from hard work and allowing them the luxury of bathing with soap. It was a nasty and disgusting experience that still lingers in my mind,” says Maganga.
Before he was sent into prison, Maganga says he thought that jailhouses were managed by welfare officers but to his surprise there weren’t any in the prisons in which he served his sentence.
Moreover, prisons officers facilitated drug trafficking in jails and even participated in selling juvenile prisoners to other prisoners. These wardens also looked on as weaker prisoners were raped without trying to intervene in any way.
Maganga is however happy for the small changes him and his colleagues were able to bring in all the prisons they served in. With James Christopher Kadego his closest ally, they had been instrumental in strengthening sporting activities and defending the rights of other prisoners in Ukonga. “We never tolerated anyone who tried to violate the rights of others.”
Because of their efforts to defend them, some of their fellow prisoners did not celebrate their release, for they would now be left to fend for themselves.
Friday, December 22, 2006
Tanga and their fleet of Bicycles!
By Erick Kabendera
TANGA – On Taifa road on a Friday at seven p.m. people lazily rode their bicycles back home after a busy day at work. The cars moved slowly, their engines purring patiently against the constant ting-a-ling sound from the bicycle bells. Taifa road, one of the main roads here, boasts heavy bicycle traffic at peak hour in the mornings and evenings.
The motorists seemed to be taking extra care to avoid knocking down cyclists who were out in swarms on the road. As both motorists and cyclists edged forward, they exchanged sometimes-harsh, sometimes-friendly barbs over who had the right of way on the main road.
Somewhere further along stood two traffic cops flagging down cyclists whom they would then check for compliance over accessories like reflectors, lights and bells. Some riders stopped while others ignored and rode past the traffic policemen.
A middle-aged man who had stopped found himself being berated by the policemen who held his bicycle. It had neither reflectors nor a bell. After an exchange that lasted a few minutes, they let him go – without his bicycle.
He later told me that the bicycle that had been impounded belonged to his father. The old man had merely requested him to help take it home for him. He said he had tried telling the cops so but they were buying none of it. They had instead ordered him to go to the traffic offices the following morning with the accessories before he could get his bicycle back.
But Stiba Mohamed, 28, who rents out bicycles, said it takes more than presenting the cops with the missing accessories to get back your impounded bicycle. As a renter he has had a lot of his bicycles taken from his customers by the police. He has to go to the police himself to recover his property.
“You have to go with the missing accessories to the police and then pay a fine of Sh5,000 before you’re given back your bicycle,” he said.
Most cyclists here are unhappy with the police practice of impounding bicycles. They argue that they do not willingly flaunt the laws by riding bicycles lacking in important accessories. Mohamed says sometimes it is very difficult to replace the broken parts because of a scarcity of that particular type.
Half of his fleet of 25 bicycles is of the ‘Sewa’ make for which it is difficult to attach things that they were not designed or made with. Sewa bicycles, for example, do not come with have a place to fix a light. “The traffic policemen can’t understand this,” says Mohamed.
He adds that traffic policemen claim people who ride bicycles at night are likely to cause accidents but he argues it can’t be because historically Tanga’s bicycle population exceeds that of cars by far. The tendency in his business is for people to hire his bicycles and bring them back the following morning.
A few weeks ago, he suffered a major financial setback when the traffic police impounded 10 of his bicycles without the required accessories. He had to report to the station with the accessories and then pay Sh5000 for each bicycle to have it back. He says he only showed the cops the accessories just so they could give him back his machines but in reality it was impossible to fix them onto the bicycles. He is keeping the accessories at home until the next swoop.
“Can you imagine I paid Sh50,000 to get back my bicycles?” he said. “This was too much for me because I only earn Sh12000 from each bicycle for a day and I also have to offset the loan at the shop where I bought them.”
He argues that the police should just be content with the owners presenting them with the required part and not demand a fine from them.
In fact, the high population of bicycles in Tanga has also meant a high rate of bicycle-related accidents being recorded especially at night when some people go out without lights, bells or reflectors.
The regional police commander, Isaya Mngulu, said that in a one-week safety exercise conducted at the beginning of May, about 97 bicycles were impounded for whom their owners turned up with the required accessories. They were fined before being given back their bicycles. From that swoop five bicycles, whose owners have still not showed up, are still in police custody. But there are more bicycles chained outside the regional traffic police offices. Some of them seemed to have stayed there for a long time with their tire rims covered in rust. There were also a number of cars and motorcycles but the bicycles were more.
Regardless, according to traffic police statistics, this year has recorded a slight increase in bicycle accidents than last year. Twelve accidents were recorded between January and April 2006 in which 10 people died while 13 were injured. Within the same period (January to April) last year, 11 accidents occurred leaving four people dead and 18 injured.
Basing on this, argued the RPC, the police cannot sit down and watch as people die yet it is their duty to protect lives. “We need to intervene and rescue people in such circumstances,” Mngulu said.
He says the safety operation is also taking place in Tabora, which has as many bicycles as Tanga. Mngulu worked in Tabora last year before he came to Tanga where he started the operation.
But the police here are doing more than just impounding bicycles to keep the accident rates in check. They have also used events like the National Road Safety week to create awareness among cyclists on the safety precautions they should take while on the road.
The RPC said when the owner of an impounded bicycle returns with the required parts and he is told to pay a fine, he is always issued with a receipt.
Idrissa Ngazija, 48, is a Ngamiani ward resident who applauds the exercise. He said the traffic situation is often chaotic during the festive seasons. During the time too, the cops become tougher, impounding more bicycles than at any other time of the year.
Ngazija said people typically complain that the traffic policemen at the time are on the lookout for a quick buck but he finds their work commendable.
“I think there’s more credit to the exercise than what the ordinary people. I think they are helping us because more accidents occur at that time ,” said Ngazija who owns three bicycles.
While the likes of Mohamed are unhappy with the tough cops prowling the roads, parts sellers are not complaining at all. Celestine Kiria, 25, runs a bicycle accessories shop – one among countless others situated along Ngamiani Street. He says though the swoops on cyclists caught in the wrong have been on and off for more than three years now, it became more serious with the arrival of RPC Mngulu at the beginning of this year. There’s a steady stream of customers to the Ngamiani street shops from dawn to dusk and Kiria is constantly attending to people as we speak. He said the accessories prices depend on the country where they are made with the more expensive ones being those from China. The bells from China for instance go for Sh3,000 while those from India cost about Sh2,500.
In Tanga in general, you’re likely to see fewer cars and commuters buses and motorcycles than in other towns its size. Students, pupils, teachers, banking clerks, men and women all ride bicycles. And a typical household could have at least five of them around – for mum, dad, son, daughter and house help.
Though there are no official statistics to confirm this, a visitor to this area for the first time will indeed wonder why the bicycle is the favoured mode of transport here. One obvious reason is that Tanga is mostly flat land. And the RPC says most people find the bicycles to be more affordable than cars for instance. Also, since discovering the bike, residents have come to appreciate that it gets you there faster as it can easily get around places where cars would have a hard time.
But not all people who ride bicycles here own them. Mohamed, the renter, says all his 25 bicycles are always out on hire by different people. Some use them to carry out different activities within town during the day but the main customers are those who come to work in town from the city outskirts.
“They come here in the evening after work and hire them to go home for Sh500 and return them in the morning,” Mohamed said.
Doesn’t he worry about having his property in the hands of strangers?
Mohamed says since he started this business he has not experienced any theft to date. Neither has he heard his peers complaining about a customer disappearing with a bicycle.
I had the opportunity to attending the Motor Rally Championship awards ceremony at Popatlal Secondary School. At least half of the people gathered at the school’s football pitch to witness the award-giving had bicycles. Some of them didn’t even seek for chairs to sit on as they witnessed the ceremony; they sat comfortably on their bicycles.
Ali Shedangiro, 45, a resident of Mikanjuni in Mabawa ward owns two bicycles with one of them used by his wife. He knows some neighbours who have a bicycle for each member of the family.
Shendangiro has three children who study at Mikanjuni primary and secondary school respectively but he says he didn’t think it was important for him to buy bicycles for them because the schools are near home. He felt his wife and him needed the bicycles more.
“Almost everyone at Mikanjuni primary and secondary schools, from the teachers to students, rides a bicycle to and from school,” said Shedangiro.
Some people in Tanga believe that the region has many bicycles for historical reasons. Some say the region had no commuter buses until three years ago when they were allowed to operate. Getting around for those who didn’t own cars was very difficult so many found comfort in the bicycle. They could afford it too.
“Geographically, Tanga region in not mountainous and it is easy to ride a bicycle from one district to another,” Shedangiro said. “They are also affordable for most people.”
The prices of bicycle range between Sh40,000 (secondhand) and Sh75,000 depending on the type. It is safe, however, to budget for Sh80,000 for a brand new machine.
But the bicycle is also of cultural significance among the six tribes of this region. They have a saying in Kiswahili here that goes: “Ukitaka kuoa mwanamke wa Tanga sharti huwe na Baiskeli na Redio.” (Meaning; if you want to get married in Tanga, you should own a bicycle and a radio.) Tanga women too are wont to joke amongst themselves about how they men who don’t own both are not worthy of any attention.
The tribes of the coastal area especially Digo, Bondei, Zigua and Segeju who depend on the charcoal and local brew trade as well as fishing, make plenty of returns on their investment using just the bicycle for transportation.
But not everyone itching for a bicycle can just jump and straddle theirs. Among the Digo it is believed that if a girl nearing puberty rides a bicycle she risks losing her virginity. Consequently many people who are keen on marrying off their daughter some day steadfastly forbid their pubescent girls from riding.
TANGA – On Taifa road on a Friday at seven p.m. people lazily rode their bicycles back home after a busy day at work. The cars moved slowly, their engines purring patiently against the constant ting-a-ling sound from the bicycle bells. Taifa road, one of the main roads here, boasts heavy bicycle traffic at peak hour in the mornings and evenings.
The motorists seemed to be taking extra care to avoid knocking down cyclists who were out in swarms on the road. As both motorists and cyclists edged forward, they exchanged sometimes-harsh, sometimes-friendly barbs over who had the right of way on the main road.
Somewhere further along stood two traffic cops flagging down cyclists whom they would then check for compliance over accessories like reflectors, lights and bells. Some riders stopped while others ignored and rode past the traffic policemen.
A middle-aged man who had stopped found himself being berated by the policemen who held his bicycle. It had neither reflectors nor a bell. After an exchange that lasted a few minutes, they let him go – without his bicycle.
He later told me that the bicycle that had been impounded belonged to his father. The old man had merely requested him to help take it home for him. He said he had tried telling the cops so but they were buying none of it. They had instead ordered him to go to the traffic offices the following morning with the accessories before he could get his bicycle back.
But Stiba Mohamed, 28, who rents out bicycles, said it takes more than presenting the cops with the missing accessories to get back your impounded bicycle. As a renter he has had a lot of his bicycles taken from his customers by the police. He has to go to the police himself to recover his property.
“You have to go with the missing accessories to the police and then pay a fine of Sh5,000 before you’re given back your bicycle,” he said.
Most cyclists here are unhappy with the police practice of impounding bicycles. They argue that they do not willingly flaunt the laws by riding bicycles lacking in important accessories. Mohamed says sometimes it is very difficult to replace the broken parts because of a scarcity of that particular type.
Half of his fleet of 25 bicycles is of the ‘Sewa’ make for which it is difficult to attach things that they were not designed or made with. Sewa bicycles, for example, do not come with have a place to fix a light. “The traffic policemen can’t understand this,” says Mohamed.
He adds that traffic policemen claim people who ride bicycles at night are likely to cause accidents but he argues it can’t be because historically Tanga’s bicycle population exceeds that of cars by far. The tendency in his business is for people to hire his bicycles and bring them back the following morning.
A few weeks ago, he suffered a major financial setback when the traffic police impounded 10 of his bicycles without the required accessories. He had to report to the station with the accessories and then pay Sh5000 for each bicycle to have it back. He says he only showed the cops the accessories just so they could give him back his machines but in reality it was impossible to fix them onto the bicycles. He is keeping the accessories at home until the next swoop.
“Can you imagine I paid Sh50,000 to get back my bicycles?” he said. “This was too much for me because I only earn Sh12000 from each bicycle for a day and I also have to offset the loan at the shop where I bought them.”
He argues that the police should just be content with the owners presenting them with the required part and not demand a fine from them.
In fact, the high population of bicycles in Tanga has also meant a high rate of bicycle-related accidents being recorded especially at night when some people go out without lights, bells or reflectors.
The regional police commander, Isaya Mngulu, said that in a one-week safety exercise conducted at the beginning of May, about 97 bicycles were impounded for whom their owners turned up with the required accessories. They were fined before being given back their bicycles. From that swoop five bicycles, whose owners have still not showed up, are still in police custody. But there are more bicycles chained outside the regional traffic police offices. Some of them seemed to have stayed there for a long time with their tire rims covered in rust. There were also a number of cars and motorcycles but the bicycles were more.
Regardless, according to traffic police statistics, this year has recorded a slight increase in bicycle accidents than last year. Twelve accidents were recorded between January and April 2006 in which 10 people died while 13 were injured. Within the same period (January to April) last year, 11 accidents occurred leaving four people dead and 18 injured.
Basing on this, argued the RPC, the police cannot sit down and watch as people die yet it is their duty to protect lives. “We need to intervene and rescue people in such circumstances,” Mngulu said.
He says the safety operation is also taking place in Tabora, which has as many bicycles as Tanga. Mngulu worked in Tabora last year before he came to Tanga where he started the operation.
But the police here are doing more than just impounding bicycles to keep the accident rates in check. They have also used events like the National Road Safety week to create awareness among cyclists on the safety precautions they should take while on the road.
The RPC said when the owner of an impounded bicycle returns with the required parts and he is told to pay a fine, he is always issued with a receipt.
Idrissa Ngazija, 48, is a Ngamiani ward resident who applauds the exercise. He said the traffic situation is often chaotic during the festive seasons. During the time too, the cops become tougher, impounding more bicycles than at any other time of the year.
Ngazija said people typically complain that the traffic policemen at the time are on the lookout for a quick buck but he finds their work commendable.
“I think there’s more credit to the exercise than what the ordinary people. I think they are helping us because more accidents occur at that time ,” said Ngazija who owns three bicycles.
While the likes of Mohamed are unhappy with the tough cops prowling the roads, parts sellers are not complaining at all. Celestine Kiria, 25, runs a bicycle accessories shop – one among countless others situated along Ngamiani Street. He says though the swoops on cyclists caught in the wrong have been on and off for more than three years now, it became more serious with the arrival of RPC Mngulu at the beginning of this year. There’s a steady stream of customers to the Ngamiani street shops from dawn to dusk and Kiria is constantly attending to people as we speak. He said the accessories prices depend on the country where they are made with the more expensive ones being those from China. The bells from China for instance go for Sh3,000 while those from India cost about Sh2,500.
In Tanga in general, you’re likely to see fewer cars and commuters buses and motorcycles than in other towns its size. Students, pupils, teachers, banking clerks, men and women all ride bicycles. And a typical household could have at least five of them around – for mum, dad, son, daughter and house help.
Though there are no official statistics to confirm this, a visitor to this area for the first time will indeed wonder why the bicycle is the favoured mode of transport here. One obvious reason is that Tanga is mostly flat land. And the RPC says most people find the bicycles to be more affordable than cars for instance. Also, since discovering the bike, residents have come to appreciate that it gets you there faster as it can easily get around places where cars would have a hard time.
But not all people who ride bicycles here own them. Mohamed, the renter, says all his 25 bicycles are always out on hire by different people. Some use them to carry out different activities within town during the day but the main customers are those who come to work in town from the city outskirts.
“They come here in the evening after work and hire them to go home for Sh500 and return them in the morning,” Mohamed said.
Doesn’t he worry about having his property in the hands of strangers?
Mohamed says since he started this business he has not experienced any theft to date. Neither has he heard his peers complaining about a customer disappearing with a bicycle.
I had the opportunity to attending the Motor Rally Championship awards ceremony at Popatlal Secondary School. At least half of the people gathered at the school’s football pitch to witness the award-giving had bicycles. Some of them didn’t even seek for chairs to sit on as they witnessed the ceremony; they sat comfortably on their bicycles.
Ali Shedangiro, 45, a resident of Mikanjuni in Mabawa ward owns two bicycles with one of them used by his wife. He knows some neighbours who have a bicycle for each member of the family.
Shendangiro has three children who study at Mikanjuni primary and secondary school respectively but he says he didn’t think it was important for him to buy bicycles for them because the schools are near home. He felt his wife and him needed the bicycles more.
“Almost everyone at Mikanjuni primary and secondary schools, from the teachers to students, rides a bicycle to and from school,” said Shedangiro.
Some people in Tanga believe that the region has many bicycles for historical reasons. Some say the region had no commuter buses until three years ago when they were allowed to operate. Getting around for those who didn’t own cars was very difficult so many found comfort in the bicycle. They could afford it too.
“Geographically, Tanga region in not mountainous and it is easy to ride a bicycle from one district to another,” Shedangiro said. “They are also affordable for most people.”
The prices of bicycle range between Sh40,000 (secondhand) and Sh75,000 depending on the type. It is safe, however, to budget for Sh80,000 for a brand new machine.
But the bicycle is also of cultural significance among the six tribes of this region. They have a saying in Kiswahili here that goes: “Ukitaka kuoa mwanamke wa Tanga sharti huwe na Baiskeli na Redio.” (Meaning; if you want to get married in Tanga, you should own a bicycle and a radio.) Tanga women too are wont to joke amongst themselves about how they men who don’t own both are not worthy of any attention.
The tribes of the coastal area especially Digo, Bondei, Zigua and Segeju who depend on the charcoal and local brew trade as well as fishing, make plenty of returns on their investment using just the bicycle for transportation.
But not everyone itching for a bicycle can just jump and straddle theirs. Among the Digo it is believed that if a girl nearing puberty rides a bicycle she risks losing her virginity. Consequently many people who are keen on marrying off their daughter some day steadfastly forbid their pubescent girls from riding.
Genies "MAJINI" made in Tanga
By Erick Kabendera
On a roadside cafe, in downtown Ngamiani, sits a group of men, they sip bitter coffee from tiny tin cups and nibble on kashatas, enjoying the salty taste of the peanuts stuck in burnt sugar as it mixes with the scalding hot liquid in the mouth. The talk is mostly on politics. Then Faki Haji Faki passes and a sudden hush falls over the group.
“Do you know where he stays?” an elderly man in a white kanzu, whom they call Sheikh, asks the rest as they watch Faki disappear into the early gloom of the evening.
No one responds. No one knows where Faki Haji Faki lives these days…not since he started writing about genies and went to learn about them from the late Said Hassan. Since then he has become a mystery that no one wants to solve.
Soon the creepy silence that fell over the group begins to dissipate and tongues begin to wiggle once again. “I heard he once fought a genie,” someone contributes.
“Yes, the genie attacked his cousin,” Sheikh nods in agreement, “That was in Micheweni.” He tries to remember the exact date, fails and just adds vaguely, “That was some time ago.”
More stories about Faki’s exploits flow each one more incredible than the other. Generally everybody agrees that Faki has helped a lot of people with his genies. Then the stories extend beyond Faki and become about the supernatural in general, for which Tanga, a coastal city, is well known
There are the Pangani and Chumbageni coconut shells with their amazing vocal abilities and which can curse you if you ever step on them or kick them. Then there is the story of the man, Soud, who meets a genie one night as he walks home after watching a film at the Majestic Cinema Hall.
“He is walking along Mkwakwani Road,” narrates the old man, Sheikh, as the others listen attentively although they may have heard the story a hundred times already. “It is night and no one else is outside…”
It is deathly quiet and there is no one else with him that night. Then a woman suddenly appears in front of him, seemingly out of nowhere. He wants to greet her but his words turn into a terrified scream when he looks down and sees…hooves where her feet should have been. He runs away.
The hellish night does not end there for Soud. Fleeing from the apparition he miraculously runs into his sister, wearing a long white gown, in the middle of yet another dark and deserted street. In his state of panic he never wonders how she came to be there but instead words tumble out of his mouth as he conveys to her what he saw. As he gets to the hooves part his sister lifts up her gown and reveals her own hideous pair of hooves, “you mean hooves like these?” she asks him with a smile. That is too much for Soud, who falls down and dies…
Sheikh finishes his narration.
It is 10 pm now and a chilly wind is blowing raising bits of trash and dust on the road. The stories about genies are beginning to make some of the people outside the café nervous. Shifty gazes sweep this way and that perhaps looking out for strange women wearing long flowing gowns. But the old man Sheikh is not done. He quickly embarks on yet another story that involves his cousin Mohamed in the late 90s.
“I guess most of you know my Cousin Abeid,” he begins. Some heads nod in agreement, some don’t. “Eh eh! You people, you are letting me down. Don’t you know Abeid who got married to Mzee Haruna’s daughter of Pangani?” Everyone nods now and Sheikh continues telling them about a fateful night at Darajani area as the ill fated Abeid is riding home on his… er… bicycle
He is pedaling along the empty street at night when suddenly a creature crosses the road in front of him. It appears to be a man in a kanzu but he is the tallest man that Abeid has ever seen. The man’s torso seems to be going up endlessly and Abeid can only get the sensation that somewhere high above him there is a head looking down. The shock is tremendous and he loses consciousness and tumbles off his bicycle. People find him the next morning wondering around babbling incoherently…
It is now midnight and the group begins to disperse. Huddling close together the men leave in twos and threes with hurried steps wishing to reach the safety of their houses fast.
.
The next morning I try to find Faki Haji Faki. It turns out he is still in touch with current technology despite spending most of his time cooped up inside his house with ghoulish creatures from another world. I give his cell a ring. As I wait I wonder briefly if maybe a genie can answer the call. Then a cheerful voice, that sounds perfectly human responds on the other end and says it belongs to Faki Haji Faki. He is happy to hear from me and agrees to meet me the next morning.
Faki is as slender as he appeared to me the other night. Hygiene, though, does not appear to rank very high in his priority list. His kanzu is old and tattered, tainted although at certain spots it still maintains its former white. Cleanliness aside, Faki comes across as a goodhearted person.
He agrees that he keeps genies at his house. “I first learnt about the skills in 1980 when I was writing a book called Jini Mwanaharamu.” The book he hasn’t been able to publish to date because of lack of funds. “I knew there was no way I could write about genies while I knew nothing about them. My intention was to write a book with fictitious characters but with reality in it,” says Faki.
As it turned out things became too real for Faki as he was drawn deeper and deeper into a strange world of alien creatures and bizarre rituals. To learn about his other worldly subjects Faki had to seek the help of one Said Hassan, now deceased, who kept genies at his house and knew the secret rituals.
“It took six months to convince him to teach me his skills,” says Faki. Later the old man agreed and Faki moved into the house where about 20 genies were kept. “The old man used to lock himself in a separate room that nobody was allowed to enter, except his oldest son.” Faki says. “During all that time I was yet to be shown anything.” The training lasted a year. Faki remembers the night he saw his first genie…
…It is an exceptionally dark night with hardly a star in sight. Faki goes out to relieve himself after yet another fruitless day with the old man Hassan. The toilet is located about three meters from the house. As he walks he sees something that forces him to freeze in his tracks.
“It was really dark yet I could clearly see it,” recalls Faki
It is a man, but a very old one, with a stooped back and long strands of white hair that obscure the face and fall all the way to the waist. His ancient nails are long and curved at the end. The skin is abnormally white and seems to be defying the inky blackness of the night.
“I could clearly see him,” repeats Faki, “he was so pale.”
Faki does not relieve himself that night and instead runs back to the house, horrified.
The next day passes without any more ghouls making appearances but at night Faki is invited to the ‘room’, the one where only the oldest son is allowed to enter.
With his heart drumming Faki closes his sweaty palm on the doorknob and slowly pushes the door open. The creaks from the rusty hinges only serve to heighten his anxiety. Inside it is dark, Hassan is sitting on a mat with some people Faki describes as ‘strange’.
He recognizes one of them; it is the ancient genie from the previous night with the pale skin and the long hair. It speaks and its voice has an eerie hollow quality to it. The genie tells Faki that it is in fact German and aged 250 years. It lives on top of Mount Kilimanjaro. “It told me that it takes it about four seconds to fly from the mountain to Tanga,” says Faki.
More genies warm up to the new comer and begin to present themselves. One says it is 190 years old and that it is Nyamwezi by tribe. Then they begin to eat. The food consists of raw nuts and roast chicken and rice mixed with milk. After the meal a bizarre ritual follows where the spectral diners and their human host clean their hands by wiping them on the floor then digging a hole on the ground and pouring water into it before drinking.
Said Hassan is now dead and his oldest son has taken over from him the task of keeping the genies. Faki says he has learnt a lot from the old man but not enough to keep ‘genuine’ genies. “I keep manufactured genies,” he says and confesses his fear of the type he calls genuine which cannot be destroyed by humans and therefore extremely dangerous.
There is thriving business in genies going on mostly in Tanga and Pemba where a single manufactured ghoul fetches around sh25,000. “It is people from Tanga who buy the genies from Pemba,” says Faki. He himself keeps several manufactured genies but insists that they are for helping others only. The genuine ones are the most expensive and can go for as high as sh100,000.
“The genies which are made are called SIHR,” says Faki. Genies can live up to five generations and within that time may produce more than six children. Six spectral fledglings and their parents can be quite a handful.
“To keep genies you have to abide by their rules. For instance, you have to dig a big deep well where they can swim at night,” says Faki. Another condition is to allocate a separate, and very dark room, for them to live in and where no one is allowed to enter except the keeper. “you must also slaughter a he-goat for them every year and prepare a special meal for them called ‘chano’,” adds Faki. Failure to adhere to the conditions can lead to fatal consequences for the owners of the genies and their entire families
Faki suddenly interrupts his flow and stands up to stare at the setting sun through the window of his house. He suddenly looks weary as if the weight of the of the entire world rests on his shoulders, “they don’t want me to interact with people,” he says referring to the genies, “that has affected me a lot. I sometimes I feel like my heart is no longer human.” He says.
But suddenly his mood changes as melancholy gives way to a bright playfulness in his eyes. “let make you one genie, just to prove what I have been telling you,’ he says with a smile then takes a white A4 paper places it inside his trouser pocket before taking it out again and placing it on top of the table between us
The white piece of paper rests on the table and I stare at it dreading the horrors that can leap out of its white depth at any moment. No growling creature suddenly emerges from the paper instead Faki asks me to rub my hand on the floor and then stamp it on the paper. I put my hand on the dirty floor and then place it on top of the blank piece of paper just like he said.
I gasp with shock when I see what my hand has left on the paper. Instead of the outline of my palm there is a caricature image of what may have been a human being but with huge round eyes and jutting spikes for hair. The figure is bulging out of the paper too as if straining to free itself from whatever sphere of existence it inhabits. I find this out as I trace the outline of the drawing.
“it is alright, don’t worry,” Faki says reassuringly when he sees fear spreads itself across my face. He reaches for a plastic bag and from it picks out a black bottle. “if I put this paper in this bottle,” he dangles the bottle, “then you will be able to fully see the genie.” He looks at me questioningly.
I am not sure that I want to see it. Right now it looks contained within the paper and unable to do anything beyond staring out into our world. Transferring it into the bottle, I feel, will be similar to freeing it somehow from its paper prison. I don’t want that responsibility knowing that it did come from my palm. I don’t want to dig wells and have separate dark rooms and he-goats to slaughter each year. I shake my head, no.
Faki smiles, “young man you should get used to such things. I thought you wanted to see?”
No thanks, I mouth. He cancels the exercise.
No thanks…
On a roadside cafe, in downtown Ngamiani, sits a group of men, they sip bitter coffee from tiny tin cups and nibble on kashatas, enjoying the salty taste of the peanuts stuck in burnt sugar as it mixes with the scalding hot liquid in the mouth. The talk is mostly on politics. Then Faki Haji Faki passes and a sudden hush falls over the group.
“Do you know where he stays?” an elderly man in a white kanzu, whom they call Sheikh, asks the rest as they watch Faki disappear into the early gloom of the evening.
No one responds. No one knows where Faki Haji Faki lives these days…not since he started writing about genies and went to learn about them from the late Said Hassan. Since then he has become a mystery that no one wants to solve.
Soon the creepy silence that fell over the group begins to dissipate and tongues begin to wiggle once again. “I heard he once fought a genie,” someone contributes.
“Yes, the genie attacked his cousin,” Sheikh nods in agreement, “That was in Micheweni.” He tries to remember the exact date, fails and just adds vaguely, “That was some time ago.”
More stories about Faki’s exploits flow each one more incredible than the other. Generally everybody agrees that Faki has helped a lot of people with his genies. Then the stories extend beyond Faki and become about the supernatural in general, for which Tanga, a coastal city, is well known
There are the Pangani and Chumbageni coconut shells with their amazing vocal abilities and which can curse you if you ever step on them or kick them. Then there is the story of the man, Soud, who meets a genie one night as he walks home after watching a film at the Majestic Cinema Hall.
“He is walking along Mkwakwani Road,” narrates the old man, Sheikh, as the others listen attentively although they may have heard the story a hundred times already. “It is night and no one else is outside…”
It is deathly quiet and there is no one else with him that night. Then a woman suddenly appears in front of him, seemingly out of nowhere. He wants to greet her but his words turn into a terrified scream when he looks down and sees…hooves where her feet should have been. He runs away.
The hellish night does not end there for Soud. Fleeing from the apparition he miraculously runs into his sister, wearing a long white gown, in the middle of yet another dark and deserted street. In his state of panic he never wonders how she came to be there but instead words tumble out of his mouth as he conveys to her what he saw. As he gets to the hooves part his sister lifts up her gown and reveals her own hideous pair of hooves, “you mean hooves like these?” she asks him with a smile. That is too much for Soud, who falls down and dies…
Sheikh finishes his narration.
It is 10 pm now and a chilly wind is blowing raising bits of trash and dust on the road. The stories about genies are beginning to make some of the people outside the café nervous. Shifty gazes sweep this way and that perhaps looking out for strange women wearing long flowing gowns. But the old man Sheikh is not done. He quickly embarks on yet another story that involves his cousin Mohamed in the late 90s.
“I guess most of you know my Cousin Abeid,” he begins. Some heads nod in agreement, some don’t. “Eh eh! You people, you are letting me down. Don’t you know Abeid who got married to Mzee Haruna’s daughter of Pangani?” Everyone nods now and Sheikh continues telling them about a fateful night at Darajani area as the ill fated Abeid is riding home on his… er… bicycle
He is pedaling along the empty street at night when suddenly a creature crosses the road in front of him. It appears to be a man in a kanzu but he is the tallest man that Abeid has ever seen. The man’s torso seems to be going up endlessly and Abeid can only get the sensation that somewhere high above him there is a head looking down. The shock is tremendous and he loses consciousness and tumbles off his bicycle. People find him the next morning wondering around babbling incoherently…
It is now midnight and the group begins to disperse. Huddling close together the men leave in twos and threes with hurried steps wishing to reach the safety of their houses fast.
.
The next morning I try to find Faki Haji Faki. It turns out he is still in touch with current technology despite spending most of his time cooped up inside his house with ghoulish creatures from another world. I give his cell a ring. As I wait I wonder briefly if maybe a genie can answer the call. Then a cheerful voice, that sounds perfectly human responds on the other end and says it belongs to Faki Haji Faki. He is happy to hear from me and agrees to meet me the next morning.
Faki is as slender as he appeared to me the other night. Hygiene, though, does not appear to rank very high in his priority list. His kanzu is old and tattered, tainted although at certain spots it still maintains its former white. Cleanliness aside, Faki comes across as a goodhearted person.
He agrees that he keeps genies at his house. “I first learnt about the skills in 1980 when I was writing a book called Jini Mwanaharamu.” The book he hasn’t been able to publish to date because of lack of funds. “I knew there was no way I could write about genies while I knew nothing about them. My intention was to write a book with fictitious characters but with reality in it,” says Faki.
As it turned out things became too real for Faki as he was drawn deeper and deeper into a strange world of alien creatures and bizarre rituals. To learn about his other worldly subjects Faki had to seek the help of one Said Hassan, now deceased, who kept genies at his house and knew the secret rituals.
“It took six months to convince him to teach me his skills,” says Faki. Later the old man agreed and Faki moved into the house where about 20 genies were kept. “The old man used to lock himself in a separate room that nobody was allowed to enter, except his oldest son.” Faki says. “During all that time I was yet to be shown anything.” The training lasted a year. Faki remembers the night he saw his first genie…
…It is an exceptionally dark night with hardly a star in sight. Faki goes out to relieve himself after yet another fruitless day with the old man Hassan. The toilet is located about three meters from the house. As he walks he sees something that forces him to freeze in his tracks.
“It was really dark yet I could clearly see it,” recalls Faki
It is a man, but a very old one, with a stooped back and long strands of white hair that obscure the face and fall all the way to the waist. His ancient nails are long and curved at the end. The skin is abnormally white and seems to be defying the inky blackness of the night.
“I could clearly see him,” repeats Faki, “he was so pale.”
Faki does not relieve himself that night and instead runs back to the house, horrified.
The next day passes without any more ghouls making appearances but at night Faki is invited to the ‘room’, the one where only the oldest son is allowed to enter.
With his heart drumming Faki closes his sweaty palm on the doorknob and slowly pushes the door open. The creaks from the rusty hinges only serve to heighten his anxiety. Inside it is dark, Hassan is sitting on a mat with some people Faki describes as ‘strange’.
He recognizes one of them; it is the ancient genie from the previous night with the pale skin and the long hair. It speaks and its voice has an eerie hollow quality to it. The genie tells Faki that it is in fact German and aged 250 years. It lives on top of Mount Kilimanjaro. “It told me that it takes it about four seconds to fly from the mountain to Tanga,” says Faki.
More genies warm up to the new comer and begin to present themselves. One says it is 190 years old and that it is Nyamwezi by tribe. Then they begin to eat. The food consists of raw nuts and roast chicken and rice mixed with milk. After the meal a bizarre ritual follows where the spectral diners and their human host clean their hands by wiping them on the floor then digging a hole on the ground and pouring water into it before drinking.
Said Hassan is now dead and his oldest son has taken over from him the task of keeping the genies. Faki says he has learnt a lot from the old man but not enough to keep ‘genuine’ genies. “I keep manufactured genies,” he says and confesses his fear of the type he calls genuine which cannot be destroyed by humans and therefore extremely dangerous.
There is thriving business in genies going on mostly in Tanga and Pemba where a single manufactured ghoul fetches around sh25,000. “It is people from Tanga who buy the genies from Pemba,” says Faki. He himself keeps several manufactured genies but insists that they are for helping others only. The genuine ones are the most expensive and can go for as high as sh100,000.
“The genies which are made are called SIHR,” says Faki. Genies can live up to five generations and within that time may produce more than six children. Six spectral fledglings and their parents can be quite a handful.
“To keep genies you have to abide by their rules. For instance, you have to dig a big deep well where they can swim at night,” says Faki. Another condition is to allocate a separate, and very dark room, for them to live in and where no one is allowed to enter except the keeper. “you must also slaughter a he-goat for them every year and prepare a special meal for them called ‘chano’,” adds Faki. Failure to adhere to the conditions can lead to fatal consequences for the owners of the genies and their entire families
Faki suddenly interrupts his flow and stands up to stare at the setting sun through the window of his house. He suddenly looks weary as if the weight of the of the entire world rests on his shoulders, “they don’t want me to interact with people,” he says referring to the genies, “that has affected me a lot. I sometimes I feel like my heart is no longer human.” He says.
But suddenly his mood changes as melancholy gives way to a bright playfulness in his eyes. “let make you one genie, just to prove what I have been telling you,’ he says with a smile then takes a white A4 paper places it inside his trouser pocket before taking it out again and placing it on top of the table between us
The white piece of paper rests on the table and I stare at it dreading the horrors that can leap out of its white depth at any moment. No growling creature suddenly emerges from the paper instead Faki asks me to rub my hand on the floor and then stamp it on the paper. I put my hand on the dirty floor and then place it on top of the blank piece of paper just like he said.
I gasp with shock when I see what my hand has left on the paper. Instead of the outline of my palm there is a caricature image of what may have been a human being but with huge round eyes and jutting spikes for hair. The figure is bulging out of the paper too as if straining to free itself from whatever sphere of existence it inhabits. I find this out as I trace the outline of the drawing.
“it is alright, don’t worry,” Faki says reassuringly when he sees fear spreads itself across my face. He reaches for a plastic bag and from it picks out a black bottle. “if I put this paper in this bottle,” he dangles the bottle, “then you will be able to fully see the genie.” He looks at me questioningly.
I am not sure that I want to see it. Right now it looks contained within the paper and unable to do anything beyond staring out into our world. Transferring it into the bottle, I feel, will be similar to freeing it somehow from its paper prison. I don’t want that responsibility knowing that it did come from my palm. I don’t want to dig wells and have separate dark rooms and he-goats to slaughter each year. I shake my head, no.
Faki smiles, “young man you should get used to such things. I thought you wanted to see?”
No thanks, I mouth. He cancels the exercise.
No thanks…
Andrew, HIV+, is at peace at last
By Erick Kabendera
A blind couple, Flora Dea and Noah Ngurungu stood tearlessly in front of their deceased son’s coffin at Chang’ombe cemetery in Dar es Salaam last week.
Their son, Andrew Ngurungu, 16, who was featured in The Citizen on Saturday July 9 this year in a story on children living with HIV, passed away on September 15.
Flora, speaking as if she could see the burial scene said her son had suffered for a long time and thanked God for at last laying him to rest.
Andrew had always been sick but in August this year, his condition became very serious and he was admitted to Oysterbay hospital. His health worsened in late August and he was referred to the Agha Khan hospital where he passed away.
Flora said on the day Andrew died, his uncle had slept at the hospital, taking care of him. “He told me that Andrew died smoothly. He politely asked his uncle where I had gone, but before he could answer, Andrew turned towards the wall from the bed he was sleeping in and died.” Flora said that they have been crying for 14 years, ever since Andrew started suffering, and that there were no more tears to cry.
The baffling circumstances surrounding Andrew’s health were that he was HIV-positive despite the fact that his parents are HIV-negative. Previously, when The Citizen interviewed his parents, they were understandably confused about where Ngurungu got infected with the virus because he had never had sex or a blood transfusion. His mother says Andrew started becoming sick in 1989 but it was only revealed that he was HIV-positive when he was in class seven in 2003 after the family was advised to take him to the hospital for diagnosis.
The news that he was positive was shocking and the decision to cross check the results in other hospitals was made. But unfortunately the results were the same.
Flora assumed that her son was either infected during or after birth. Andrew was only brought to her after five days and she didn’t know who had been breast-feeding him or where he came from. Given these circumstances, says Dea, she was not sure if Andrew was misplaced or exchanged with the child of someone who probably wanted a baby girl that Flora believes she had given birth to.
Such assumptions had led to the decision to take Andrew for DNA testing to confirm he really was theirs, an exercise which was not yet complete when he died.
Andrew will be remembered for his spirit, even when severely hampered by his health. He liked chatting to people, but found it difficult because of the stigma associated with his condition that he often faced.
Like most boys, he liked football and used to watch it at his nearby football ground, but his weak physical health meant he could not play.
Andrew’s ambition was to become a teacher like both his parents. Perhaps indicative of this desire to teach was that one of his main goals was to travel around the country educating people about Aids and telling them that the disease is indiscriminate and just like him, any one can contract it. We hope that at least, his death has that effect on those ignorant and abusive towards the HIV positive.
Rest in peace Andrew.
A blind couple, Flora Dea and Noah Ngurungu stood tearlessly in front of their deceased son’s coffin at Chang’ombe cemetery in Dar es Salaam last week.
Their son, Andrew Ngurungu, 16, who was featured in The Citizen on Saturday July 9 this year in a story on children living with HIV, passed away on September 15.
Flora, speaking as if she could see the burial scene said her son had suffered for a long time and thanked God for at last laying him to rest.
Andrew had always been sick but in August this year, his condition became very serious and he was admitted to Oysterbay hospital. His health worsened in late August and he was referred to the Agha Khan hospital where he passed away.
Flora said on the day Andrew died, his uncle had slept at the hospital, taking care of him. “He told me that Andrew died smoothly. He politely asked his uncle where I had gone, but before he could answer, Andrew turned towards the wall from the bed he was sleeping in and died.” Flora said that they have been crying for 14 years, ever since Andrew started suffering, and that there were no more tears to cry.
The baffling circumstances surrounding Andrew’s health were that he was HIV-positive despite the fact that his parents are HIV-negative. Previously, when The Citizen interviewed his parents, they were understandably confused about where Ngurungu got infected with the virus because he had never had sex or a blood transfusion. His mother says Andrew started becoming sick in 1989 but it was only revealed that he was HIV-positive when he was in class seven in 2003 after the family was advised to take him to the hospital for diagnosis.
The news that he was positive was shocking and the decision to cross check the results in other hospitals was made. But unfortunately the results were the same.
Flora assumed that her son was either infected during or after birth. Andrew was only brought to her after five days and she didn’t know who had been breast-feeding him or where he came from. Given these circumstances, says Dea, she was not sure if Andrew was misplaced or exchanged with the child of someone who probably wanted a baby girl that Flora believes she had given birth to.
Such assumptions had led to the decision to take Andrew for DNA testing to confirm he really was theirs, an exercise which was not yet complete when he died.
Andrew will be remembered for his spirit, even when severely hampered by his health. He liked chatting to people, but found it difficult because of the stigma associated with his condition that he often faced.
Like most boys, he liked football and used to watch it at his nearby football ground, but his weak physical health meant he could not play.
Andrew’s ambition was to become a teacher like both his parents. Perhaps indicative of this desire to teach was that one of his main goals was to travel around the country educating people about Aids and telling them that the disease is indiscriminate and just like him, any one can contract it. We hope that at least, his death has that effect on those ignorant and abusive towards the HIV positive.
Rest in peace Andrew.
What happened to the students’ loans?
By Erick Kabendera
It was hoped that the introduction of the Higher Education Students Loans Board last year would finally mean a lasting solution to the financial problems faced by tertiary-level students in the country.
However, given the frustrations they have encountered in the loan application process, some of the ‘beneficiaries’ are beginning to think it has also introduced a world of bother for them.
Emmanuel James is in his fifth year, studying Architecture at the University College of Architectural Studies (Uclas). He says he has ended up handing the loan application forms in late because there ‘was no clear coordination between the board and the higher learning institutions.’
“We didn’t know anything about how the process would work. Some of us come from upcountry regions so we had to come to Dar es Salaam and pick up the forms and take them back to upcountry to be filled in by our parents and local government leaders,” he says.
The actual process of applying for the loans does seem complicated, but you would expect that.
James’s complaint is that given this, it might have been better if when the University students broke for their vacation and others for the practical training, they were informed on how the process would go. He says the loans application forms were released well after they had broken off for their holidays.
Student’s complain of being either uninformed or confused.
Not surprisingly, last week, the newly established loans’ board released a statement saying close to 20,000 returning students on government sponsorship at various higher learning institutions across the country had not applied for the loans, assuming they would continue to be on government sponsorship.
As of that time, less than 7,000 out of 33,000 students countrywide had successfully applied for the loans, for this academic year, but it was difficult even for these.
Although the 10-page loan application forms are relatively easy to get hold of – from the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education website and at the various higher learning institutions – filling them in is a challenge.
Another student, Peter Mushi is in his final year at Uclas. He says he has spent a lot of money traveling while working on the issue of securing loans and he wonders whether the loans board would account for that kind of thing.
“They pretend to know that most of us come from poor families and we depend on the loans. But then, they complicate the whole process. Where shall we get money for it?” Mushi asks.
Mwikwabe Mwita, the Dar es Salaam University Students’ Organisation (Daruso-Main campus) President is equally unimpressed with the loans board.
“It’s a lie to say that the board was prepared to handle 33,000 students. If 7,000 students struggled to get the loans, what would have happened if all 33,000 had turned in their forms?” says Mwita.
The higher education cost sharing policy that eventually led to the creation of the loans board started in 1992, with the aim of increasing student enrollment for higher education in Tanzania. Speaking last year, during the University of Dar es Salaam’s orientation for newly enrolled students, the Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education Ruth Mollel said that despite the changes, the government will continue with its dedication to educating the nation.
She spoke favourably of the cost-sharing programme:
“To date, records show that more than 25,000 students benefited from the government loans.”
The implementation of the first phase began in 1992 and involved students taking over responsibility for their transport costs, allowances, students’ organisation fees and ‘caution’ money, a deposit that, upon joining a learning institution, every student pays. In other words, whatever the government advanced for these costs was considered a loan and students were required to later pay these monies back.
In the second phase, which was implemented between 1994 and 1995, students became responsible for their accommodation and food costs, on top of those they took over in the first phase.
Subsequently, an evaluation of the two phases was held in Morogoro in 2001 and the country’s stakeholders in education decided then that the third phase should begin.
Following this meeting, the Higher Education Students’ Loans Board was created by the Act of Parliament No. 9 and Section 2, Subsection 1(iv) of 2004. The Act declared students would take over responsibility for all their study costs. That meant the government’s total pull out from paying for tuition and related costs (previously they did so for students under the government sponsorship scheme) at tertiary level and the transferring programme which allowed a move from private to government sponsorship came to an end.
Government stated that it will only continue paying school fees, stationers and for the practical training of students of medicine or in other words, students taking medicine would not be affected by the third phase.
Before becoming a law, the bill to this effect was handed out to various stakeholders including all higher learning institutions for comment through the Parliamentary Committee on Social Services.
The President of the Tanzania Higher Learning Institutions Students Organisation (Tahliso) Manyonyi Bwire thinks the higher learning institutions were not given enough time to consider the bill’s implications if it did pass but adds that before it did, some pressure from the students led to a few modifications.
One demand was for the removal of the article in the bill, which said any employer, would be ‘fined Sh1.5 million if he/she employs any students who had borrowed from the board’ without notifying it but this was not met.
What they managed was to put two representatives on the loans board but even that has not helped to avert their current disillusioned situation.
Some of the interviewed students at the University of Dar es Salaam said they were aware of many amongst them who had not yet picked up or filled in the loans forms. Bwire thinks that most of students who haven’t applied for the loans had not done so because of the section of the loans law that details a daunting list of conditions for collateral from any loans seekers.
“Students should know that the same collateral can be used to guarantee more than one student from the same family and that they can choose one form from what is mentioned,” Bwire says.
Dar es Salaam based Advocate Mutabahazi Lugaziya who has assisted some students to complete and sign the forms does not think the complaint about their complexity should be such a big deal, saying every contract should be in legal language.
“Students have the responsibility of making sure they understand them before they sign them,” Lugaziya says.
He does however say he is worried that today’s students might in future become high-risk for any employer but feels that the forms as they stand were properly designed for their purpose.
“The conditions of any contract should be tough, ” says the advocate.
But, everything suggests that the students don’t know some of this – and in their confusion, they may not know whom to ask. If away from their parents or unable to get hold of someone like Lugaziya, who can they turn to?
Professor Issa Mcholo Omari is in the Department of Adult Education at the University of Dar es Salaam. He says he has more questions than answers about the on-going students’ loans scheme.
The statement issued last week by the loans board blamed the higher learning institutions for slowing the process down, criticizing in particular the practice of not issuing each student with an acceptance letter and preferring to publish their names in a press release.
The University of Dar es Salaam’s Chief Public Relations officer, Julius Saule however says the loans business is between the board and the students. Saule says their role is only to indicate on the students’ forms that they have been admitted to their University and not otherwise. “That is the only role that as the university we are supposed to play,” Saule says.
However, Professor Omari thinks there should have been a better partnership between all three parties involved.
For the loans scheme to be successful, he says, there should be close cooperation between students, the board and higher learning institutions.
“If that was done, there wouldn’t be such problems because now, classes won’t start on time as most of the students will not have secured the loans by then,” he says.
As for the conditions under which the loans are available, the professor is critical of the collateral requirement, saying that the board’s terms are hard to fulfill because about eighty percent of Tanzanians own nothing that can be regarded as such.
He also challenges the required involvement of parents, saying almost all the applicants are above the age of 18 and so can enter any contract on their own. “Why should their parents be signatories of the contract?” says Professor Omari.
In his speech at the University of Dar es Salaam’s farewell in honour of the retiring Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education, Dr Pius N’gwandu, directed the loans board to allow students join their respective institutions by letting them submit just their basic personal data and for all other conditions to be met by December this year.
Still some think this does not offer a solution and want action that is more decisive.
Ends
It was hoped that the introduction of the Higher Education Students Loans Board last year would finally mean a lasting solution to the financial problems faced by tertiary-level students in the country.
However, given the frustrations they have encountered in the loan application process, some of the ‘beneficiaries’ are beginning to think it has also introduced a world of bother for them.
Emmanuel James is in his fifth year, studying Architecture at the University College of Architectural Studies (Uclas). He says he has ended up handing the loan application forms in late because there ‘was no clear coordination between the board and the higher learning institutions.’
“We didn’t know anything about how the process would work. Some of us come from upcountry regions so we had to come to Dar es Salaam and pick up the forms and take them back to upcountry to be filled in by our parents and local government leaders,” he says.
The actual process of applying for the loans does seem complicated, but you would expect that.
James’s complaint is that given this, it might have been better if when the University students broke for their vacation and others for the practical training, they were informed on how the process would go. He says the loans application forms were released well after they had broken off for their holidays.
Student’s complain of being either uninformed or confused.
Not surprisingly, last week, the newly established loans’ board released a statement saying close to 20,000 returning students on government sponsorship at various higher learning institutions across the country had not applied for the loans, assuming they would continue to be on government sponsorship.
As of that time, less than 7,000 out of 33,000 students countrywide had successfully applied for the loans, for this academic year, but it was difficult even for these.
Although the 10-page loan application forms are relatively easy to get hold of – from the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education website and at the various higher learning institutions – filling them in is a challenge.
Another student, Peter Mushi is in his final year at Uclas. He says he has spent a lot of money traveling while working on the issue of securing loans and he wonders whether the loans board would account for that kind of thing.
“They pretend to know that most of us come from poor families and we depend on the loans. But then, they complicate the whole process. Where shall we get money for it?” Mushi asks.
Mwikwabe Mwita, the Dar es Salaam University Students’ Organisation (Daruso-Main campus) President is equally unimpressed with the loans board.
“It’s a lie to say that the board was prepared to handle 33,000 students. If 7,000 students struggled to get the loans, what would have happened if all 33,000 had turned in their forms?” says Mwita.
The higher education cost sharing policy that eventually led to the creation of the loans board started in 1992, with the aim of increasing student enrollment for higher education in Tanzania. Speaking last year, during the University of Dar es Salaam’s orientation for newly enrolled students, the Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education Ruth Mollel said that despite the changes, the government will continue with its dedication to educating the nation.
She spoke favourably of the cost-sharing programme:
“To date, records show that more than 25,000 students benefited from the government loans.”
The implementation of the first phase began in 1992 and involved students taking over responsibility for their transport costs, allowances, students’ organisation fees and ‘caution’ money, a deposit that, upon joining a learning institution, every student pays. In other words, whatever the government advanced for these costs was considered a loan and students were required to later pay these monies back.
In the second phase, which was implemented between 1994 and 1995, students became responsible for their accommodation and food costs, on top of those they took over in the first phase.
Subsequently, an evaluation of the two phases was held in Morogoro in 2001 and the country’s stakeholders in education decided then that the third phase should begin.
Following this meeting, the Higher Education Students’ Loans Board was created by the Act of Parliament No. 9 and Section 2, Subsection 1(iv) of 2004. The Act declared students would take over responsibility for all their study costs. That meant the government’s total pull out from paying for tuition and related costs (previously they did so for students under the government sponsorship scheme) at tertiary level and the transferring programme which allowed a move from private to government sponsorship came to an end.
Government stated that it will only continue paying school fees, stationers and for the practical training of students of medicine or in other words, students taking medicine would not be affected by the third phase.
Before becoming a law, the bill to this effect was handed out to various stakeholders including all higher learning institutions for comment through the Parliamentary Committee on Social Services.
The President of the Tanzania Higher Learning Institutions Students Organisation (Tahliso) Manyonyi Bwire thinks the higher learning institutions were not given enough time to consider the bill’s implications if it did pass but adds that before it did, some pressure from the students led to a few modifications.
One demand was for the removal of the article in the bill, which said any employer, would be ‘fined Sh1.5 million if he/she employs any students who had borrowed from the board’ without notifying it but this was not met.
What they managed was to put two representatives on the loans board but even that has not helped to avert their current disillusioned situation.
Some of the interviewed students at the University of Dar es Salaam said they were aware of many amongst them who had not yet picked up or filled in the loans forms. Bwire thinks that most of students who haven’t applied for the loans had not done so because of the section of the loans law that details a daunting list of conditions for collateral from any loans seekers.
“Students should know that the same collateral can be used to guarantee more than one student from the same family and that they can choose one form from what is mentioned,” Bwire says.
Dar es Salaam based Advocate Mutabahazi Lugaziya who has assisted some students to complete and sign the forms does not think the complaint about their complexity should be such a big deal, saying every contract should be in legal language.
“Students have the responsibility of making sure they understand them before they sign them,” Lugaziya says.
He does however say he is worried that today’s students might in future become high-risk for any employer but feels that the forms as they stand were properly designed for their purpose.
“The conditions of any contract should be tough, ” says the advocate.
But, everything suggests that the students don’t know some of this – and in their confusion, they may not know whom to ask. If away from their parents or unable to get hold of someone like Lugaziya, who can they turn to?
Professor Issa Mcholo Omari is in the Department of Adult Education at the University of Dar es Salaam. He says he has more questions than answers about the on-going students’ loans scheme.
The statement issued last week by the loans board blamed the higher learning institutions for slowing the process down, criticizing in particular the practice of not issuing each student with an acceptance letter and preferring to publish their names in a press release.
The University of Dar es Salaam’s Chief Public Relations officer, Julius Saule however says the loans business is between the board and the students. Saule says their role is only to indicate on the students’ forms that they have been admitted to their University and not otherwise. “That is the only role that as the university we are supposed to play,” Saule says.
However, Professor Omari thinks there should have been a better partnership between all three parties involved.
For the loans scheme to be successful, he says, there should be close cooperation between students, the board and higher learning institutions.
“If that was done, there wouldn’t be such problems because now, classes won’t start on time as most of the students will not have secured the loans by then,” he says.
As for the conditions under which the loans are available, the professor is critical of the collateral requirement, saying that the board’s terms are hard to fulfill because about eighty percent of Tanzanians own nothing that can be regarded as such.
He also challenges the required involvement of parents, saying almost all the applicants are above the age of 18 and so can enter any contract on their own. “Why should their parents be signatories of the contract?” says Professor Omari.
In his speech at the University of Dar es Salaam’s farewell in honour of the retiring Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education, Dr Pius N’gwandu, directed the loans board to allow students join their respective institutions by letting them submit just their basic personal data and for all other conditions to be met by December this year.
Still some think this does not offer a solution and want action that is more decisive.
Ends
Pregnant At 14
By Erick Kabendera
Joyce Chipati’s dream was to one day be a teacher. Now 14, and heavily pregnant, the ex-standard seven pupil can only sit and watch helplessly as her dream disappears like smoke in the air. “I knew that having sex without using a condom could result into pregnancy,” says the young girl. Her boy friend, Marcus Magongo, never heeded her repeated warnings and insisted that they had nothing to fear.
Then last year her school, Makanga Primary, took all female pupils from standard four to standard seven for pregnancy tests at Mahenge district hospital.
A day after they had come back from the hospital, she was called to the head master’s office where she found her grandfather, Geremia Kazibure waiting with a panel of teachers. Chipati has been living with her grandfather ever since her last surviving parent passed away in 2000; the year after which she began her sexual relationship with Magongo.
In a long and very grave meeting the teachers informed the family that the girl was pregnant and therefore cannot continue with her education. In that moment immediately after that sentence was passed over her Chipati says that she felt the world crushing down around her.
“I cried a lot because I knew my dreams of becoming a teacher were no more,” says Chipati. She says that she had already suspected the pregnancy after having missed her periods for three months in a row.
In what appears to be a case of treating symptoms rather than the disease itself, the school administration says it started the exercise two years ago as a means of ‘curbing’ early pregnancies. Taking the deterrent approach, the program expels any pupil found to be pregnant and assumes that the rest will think twice before becoming pregnant.
“Most pupils travel to distant places during vacation to visit their relatives and it is there that the female pupils face the greatest risk of becoming pregnant,” says Lukwaro Senkoro, the school head teacher.
There are no formal sex education classes at Makanga primary school and the matron, Fortunata Likulu, says that the school only meets thrice per year with the pupils, boys and girls from standard three to seven, and talk to them about reproductive health issues.
The decision to introduce sex education in primary schools was prompted by a 2005 Ministry of Education study, which showed that an alarming 30 percent of primary school pupils had already experienced sex, and a significant proportion of girls who dropped out of school because of pregnancy were HIV positive.
Likulu says she understands that there is a syllabus for sex education but is herself totally unaware of the reasons why the classes are not taught at her particular school. “Even if the subject were taught, there would still be a problem of materials and trained teachers.” She reasons.
“It’s a great loss to the school because she was among the top pupils in class and the school counted on her to be among the best performers,” says the head teacher on Chipati’s expulsion.
Chipati’s aunt. Lydia Kazibure is 20 years old and she finished her primary education at the same school that her niece was attending. “I knew she would become pregnant,” she says. She is currently raising one child of her own. She says she is proud of completing her primary education. “If my parents could afford it, I would have gone to a secondary school,” she says. Lydia does not understand how Chipati could play with her life, “we gave her all that we could, she wasn’t satisfied,” says the aunt.
According to Senkoro, the head teacher, one of the main reasons why many of the girls get early pregnancies is the absentee parents. “Many of the farmers travel to distant fields to cultivate and leave their children unsupervised for extended periods of time,” he says. Such girls then become easy preys for the likes of Magongo who can easily lure them to unsafe sex. Senkoro says some parents can stay away for up to ten months with the children visiting them occasionally for food and some cash.
There are also the movie shows every Sunday where the entrance is Sh500. “ older boys who do odd jobs in the village get some money and use that opportunity to seduce the girls,” says Senkoro. The movies are shown at Mahenge town, about 5 kilometres from Makanga village. “They pay the entrance fee and also buy the girl a soda and on top of that they give her Sh500. that is a lot of money for someone who does not eat at school and whose parents are always absent,” says the head master.
But Chipati does not agree that it is a matter of money; at least not in her own case. “I just fell in love,” she says.
Senkoro says that the appalling state of the school buildings is also a major factor in causing the girl pupils to become pregnant. “We have six proper classrooms,” says the head master. The rest of the rooms consist of a roof supported by logs. “When it rains the water gets in through the roof and also from the sides where there are no walls,” Senkoro says. During rainy season there are no classes and the pupils stay at home where the parents are sometimes absent.
Five other pupils were found to be pregnant along with Chipati. The Mahenge District Education officer, Clarence Mgowawo, says it’s unusual for a single school to register such a number. He however confirms that last year the district registered 123 cases of school pregnancy, which is almost half the number of reported cases countrywide. According to the Basic Education Statistics in Tanzania 2005 about 265 primary school students had dropped out of school because of pregnancy last year. “This year we have 26 cases so far but we expect the number to rise.” He says.
The numbers become uglier as one moves up. According to the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training between 2000 and 2005 an estimated 15,000 primary school pupils had dropped out of school because of pregnancy countrywide.
And the boys are rarely caught. All that Chipati knows about her former lover is that he is somewhere in Morogoro urban evading the supposedly long arm of the law that is groping around for him.
According to the Education circular no 6 of 2004, anyone found guilty of impregnating a schoolgirl is liable for a sentence not less than three years and not more than six years in jail. But having a law is one thing and actually enforcing it is quite another. While the Police are searching for the men responsible for impregnating the five primary school girls, who have disappeared without a trace, Chipati is dismayed at her grand father’s lack of interest in her plight. “My grandfather hasn’t said anything since I was suspended. I don’t know what he is thinking about,” she says.
Meanwhile she is trying to come to grips with a bleak life that she knows awaits her, without much success. “I don’t know what I will do with my child once she is born. But I don’t even know what to do with this pregnancy,” she says and stares at her enormously swollen belly. “Neither grandfather nor my aunt are employed, they only own small farms where they get food to eat.”
The clinic isn’t much help either. The nurses, who perhaps have seen it all before, treat her with chilly indifference. She went to a maternity clinic for regular checkups the previous week. “The nurse wrote in English in my card and I did not understand what she said because I cant read English,” her requests for explanations were met with gruff instructions to go home and come again the next week.
Chipati is determined to go back to school after having her child. It will be a hard battle indeed for this 14-year old with everything against her; a rapidly ageing grandfather with no job, former friends who now mock her, cold nurses, a baby to raise and the biggest hurdle of them all id the system itself which has already declared her unfit for education…
Ends.
Joyce Chipati’s dream was to one day be a teacher. Now 14, and heavily pregnant, the ex-standard seven pupil can only sit and watch helplessly as her dream disappears like smoke in the air. “I knew that having sex without using a condom could result into pregnancy,” says the young girl. Her boy friend, Marcus Magongo, never heeded her repeated warnings and insisted that they had nothing to fear.
Then last year her school, Makanga Primary, took all female pupils from standard four to standard seven for pregnancy tests at Mahenge district hospital.
A day after they had come back from the hospital, she was called to the head master’s office where she found her grandfather, Geremia Kazibure waiting with a panel of teachers. Chipati has been living with her grandfather ever since her last surviving parent passed away in 2000; the year after which she began her sexual relationship with Magongo.
In a long and very grave meeting the teachers informed the family that the girl was pregnant and therefore cannot continue with her education. In that moment immediately after that sentence was passed over her Chipati says that she felt the world crushing down around her.
“I cried a lot because I knew my dreams of becoming a teacher were no more,” says Chipati. She says that she had already suspected the pregnancy after having missed her periods for three months in a row.
In what appears to be a case of treating symptoms rather than the disease itself, the school administration says it started the exercise two years ago as a means of ‘curbing’ early pregnancies. Taking the deterrent approach, the program expels any pupil found to be pregnant and assumes that the rest will think twice before becoming pregnant.
“Most pupils travel to distant places during vacation to visit their relatives and it is there that the female pupils face the greatest risk of becoming pregnant,” says Lukwaro Senkoro, the school head teacher.
There are no formal sex education classes at Makanga primary school and the matron, Fortunata Likulu, says that the school only meets thrice per year with the pupils, boys and girls from standard three to seven, and talk to them about reproductive health issues.
The decision to introduce sex education in primary schools was prompted by a 2005 Ministry of Education study, which showed that an alarming 30 percent of primary school pupils had already experienced sex, and a significant proportion of girls who dropped out of school because of pregnancy were HIV positive.
Likulu says she understands that there is a syllabus for sex education but is herself totally unaware of the reasons why the classes are not taught at her particular school. “Even if the subject were taught, there would still be a problem of materials and trained teachers.” She reasons.
“It’s a great loss to the school because she was among the top pupils in class and the school counted on her to be among the best performers,” says the head teacher on Chipati’s expulsion.
Chipati’s aunt. Lydia Kazibure is 20 years old and she finished her primary education at the same school that her niece was attending. “I knew she would become pregnant,” she says. She is currently raising one child of her own. She says she is proud of completing her primary education. “If my parents could afford it, I would have gone to a secondary school,” she says. Lydia does not understand how Chipati could play with her life, “we gave her all that we could, she wasn’t satisfied,” says the aunt.
According to Senkoro, the head teacher, one of the main reasons why many of the girls get early pregnancies is the absentee parents. “Many of the farmers travel to distant fields to cultivate and leave their children unsupervised for extended periods of time,” he says. Such girls then become easy preys for the likes of Magongo who can easily lure them to unsafe sex. Senkoro says some parents can stay away for up to ten months with the children visiting them occasionally for food and some cash.
There are also the movie shows every Sunday where the entrance is Sh500. “ older boys who do odd jobs in the village get some money and use that opportunity to seduce the girls,” says Senkoro. The movies are shown at Mahenge town, about 5 kilometres from Makanga village. “They pay the entrance fee and also buy the girl a soda and on top of that they give her Sh500. that is a lot of money for someone who does not eat at school and whose parents are always absent,” says the head master.
But Chipati does not agree that it is a matter of money; at least not in her own case. “I just fell in love,” she says.
Senkoro says that the appalling state of the school buildings is also a major factor in causing the girl pupils to become pregnant. “We have six proper classrooms,” says the head master. The rest of the rooms consist of a roof supported by logs. “When it rains the water gets in through the roof and also from the sides where there are no walls,” Senkoro says. During rainy season there are no classes and the pupils stay at home where the parents are sometimes absent.
Five other pupils were found to be pregnant along with Chipati. The Mahenge District Education officer, Clarence Mgowawo, says it’s unusual for a single school to register such a number. He however confirms that last year the district registered 123 cases of school pregnancy, which is almost half the number of reported cases countrywide. According to the Basic Education Statistics in Tanzania 2005 about 265 primary school students had dropped out of school because of pregnancy last year. “This year we have 26 cases so far but we expect the number to rise.” He says.
The numbers become uglier as one moves up. According to the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training between 2000 and 2005 an estimated 15,000 primary school pupils had dropped out of school because of pregnancy countrywide.
And the boys are rarely caught. All that Chipati knows about her former lover is that he is somewhere in Morogoro urban evading the supposedly long arm of the law that is groping around for him.
According to the Education circular no 6 of 2004, anyone found guilty of impregnating a schoolgirl is liable for a sentence not less than three years and not more than six years in jail. But having a law is one thing and actually enforcing it is quite another. While the Police are searching for the men responsible for impregnating the five primary school girls, who have disappeared without a trace, Chipati is dismayed at her grand father’s lack of interest in her plight. “My grandfather hasn’t said anything since I was suspended. I don’t know what he is thinking about,” she says.
Meanwhile she is trying to come to grips with a bleak life that she knows awaits her, without much success. “I don’t know what I will do with my child once she is born. But I don’t even know what to do with this pregnancy,” she says and stares at her enormously swollen belly. “Neither grandfather nor my aunt are employed, they only own small farms where they get food to eat.”
The clinic isn’t much help either. The nurses, who perhaps have seen it all before, treat her with chilly indifference. She went to a maternity clinic for regular checkups the previous week. “The nurse wrote in English in my card and I did not understand what she said because I cant read English,” her requests for explanations were met with gruff instructions to go home and come again the next week.
Chipati is determined to go back to school after having her child. It will be a hard battle indeed for this 14-year old with everything against her; a rapidly ageing grandfather with no job, former friends who now mock her, cold nurses, a baby to raise and the biggest hurdle of them all id the system itself which has already declared her unfit for education…
Ends.
Going, going… gongoTanzania’s taboo tipple
By Erick Kabendera
Raphael John,* 30, holds a Diploma in Teaching and teaches mathematics at Mwalimu Nyerere Primary School. It’s a good job and a respected position in society, but what is unusual about a graduate like John and some other people in top positions in various organisations across the country, is that he got there on booze money.
John’s mother, Jessica Joseph, 65, was able to afford his school fees, from class one to form six, through selling the illicit brew gongo.
John was brought up in the Kigoma region. When his father died in 1983, his mother had no alternative means of raising money to take care of the family, other than vending gongo. John and his mother bought gongo at midnight from wholesalers who produced it in the forest, and took it to the village where his mother, had a pub.
“The police were a problem. We knew gongo was prohibited by law, but we depended on it to survive and later for me to study, ” he says adding that the police operations to curb the gongo industry threatened his family’s survival because every coin they ever spent came from the gongo business.
John says to avoid police harassment, they developed clever techniques to circumnavigate the threat like burying jerry cans filled with gongo in the ground in front of the sitting area of their house and spreading straw mats on the top.
In some areas around Tanzania, gongo is described as a traditional drink offered to the elderly guests to symbolise respect. This may be true, but its popularity is unrivalled and as in John’s case, families that engage in the business can earn enough money to support.
Gongo processing techniques tend to vary from region to region. In the Karagwe district of the Kagera region, gongo producers usually spend sleepless nights along the riverside with locally made processing equipment, brewing gongo.
They use a simple chemical distillation process, which involves taking sour rubisi alcohol - another traditional brews made out of bananas, and pouring it all into a big or medium-size iron drum. The drum is put on the fire to boil while its top section is tightly covered with a banana tree base to ensure the steam doesn’t evaporate. A hole is then made across the drum and a bamboo log inserted and directed to the river into a kettle. The kettle is put into a basin in the water for cooling. The steam produced from the boiling drum, through the log to the kettle is the final product, gongo.
Much like varieties of wine, vodka or schnapps, depending on the crops grown locally and the conditions, each region will have its own style of gongo.
However, as with anything where humans and alcohol are involved, there’s a negative side to gongo consumption. Illegal brews by their very nature are informally created and standards or checks are non-applicable. It is for this reason that the police try to be strict about gongo. Only recently in Machakos, Kenya, 60 people died in June after consuming a drink laced with methanol
In Dar es Salaam, the war against gongo distributors and distillers is tough and despite their zealous approach, the police also have been accused of working hand in hand with both distillers and distributors. Some distillers say they paid the police to protect them while running their businesses. An example of police involvement would be Police Inspector Wambura, who was caught distributing gongo in Manzese Midizini between 1998 and1999.
Between 1990/91, a drum of gongo under distillation at Mabibo army barracks exploded and killed one child injuring another. The distiller later died from his injuries while the case was still pending in court.
James Mutayoba says that ten years ago his late father; Emanuel Mutayoba lost his high ranking job and tragically his life, because of a gongo drinking habit. He would even drink gongo in the office and as a result, would cause chaos and fail to work. His mother, Gertrude Mutayoba says she became a gongo retailer to support her family after she split from her husband because of his abusive behaviour, especially when he was drunk.
“We couldn’t sleep when he came home drunk at night. He would beat me up like a snake and harass everyone. In the end I had no alternative but to end the marriage,” Mutayoba says.
Mutayoba adds that she was surprised at how gongo twisted her husband’s life around, turning him from an executive to a drunkard. In the past, she says, her husband was a moderate gongo drinker, but she never expected his drinking habits to accelerate and cause the family to fall apart.
As nobody could tolerate her husband’s behaviour and with his income drying up, perhaps ironically, in order to make ends meet Gertrude took to selling the very thing that was killing her husband. She moved into a muddy rental house from the family home and started selling gongo. Mutayoba senior continued drinking seriously until he died in September 2000.
“It was raining heavily that night. He came to greet us for a bit and then left. The next morning, someone came to my house and broke the news that my husband had been found dead in a water tunnel,” Mutayoba says sadly.
It was assumed that he had drunk a lot of gongo, fallen in the tunnel and failed to pull himself out of the water. “The medical report clearly showed that his death was caused by excessive drinking,” she says.
The incident did not deter Mutayoba from selling gongo. She says she had no alternative because she had a responsibility to pay her children’s school fees.
“ I used all the money I got from selling gongo to send my three children to school,” she says.
Mutayoba disapproves of police officers conducting raids and inspecting villages house by house in search of gongo retailers. She says the alcohol is a tradition and people have used it for years. “In our tradition, we give some gongo or rubisi and dried chewing coffee to visitors,” she says.
Mutayoba adds that in most of the areas in Kagera region, gongo is produced from rubisi brew, which is legal.
“So, why should gongo be prohibited?” she questions.
Mutayoba junior says he quit drinking after his father died. But, at some traditional events, he finds it hard to resist drinking gongo because each of the family members, especially men, is expected to drink gongo as a sign of manhood.
“Some of my brothers’ drinking habits near my father’s,” he says.
Mutabazi Lugaziya is a High Court of Tanzania advocate who has been a magistrate for ten years. He says the Moshi (Moshi Manufacturing and Distillation) Act No. 62 of 1966 is the law that controls gongo in Tanzania. According to Lugaziya, section 2 of the Act says the chief chemist is legally entitled to declare a certain substance, as being gongo and to qualify it should contain at least one percent of alcohol volume.
Under the law, Lugaziya says, if someone is caught with anything believed to be gongo, the chief chemist should prove its alcoholic content. But in the case that involved Kanzaga Shillungu v/s the republic in 1982, Tanzania Law Report (TLR) 138, the court ruled that gongo could also be identified by its smell and its effects on drinkers.
“Section 19 of the law stipulates the circumstances of which possession of gongo could be regarded as legal,” Lugaziya says adding that the law identifies some people who are licensed to possess gongo for the purpose of taking it to the collection centres to be processed. “This means some people are entitled to carry gongo, but not for the purpose of drinking it. The license is for ferrying to where the law directs,” he says.
In 1981 the law was amended (Written Laws Miscellaneous Amendment Act No 22) extended the translation of gongo. According to Lugaziya, if someone is accused of unlawful possession of gongo in Karagwe and is charged in Dar es Salaam, it isn’t important the gongo be brought to Dar es Salaam to complement the evidence.
“In the case of Tabu Fikwa v/s the Republic of 1988 in TLR 48, Judge Barnabas Samatha gave a foundation on the people caught with gongo. Samatha said before declaring that gongo is illegal, that the court should look into the surrounding social issues before judging the culprit,” he says.
As a retired magistrate Lugaziya, says such an area is very challenging in the legal affairs. He says he understands Judge Samatha’s sentiments because many people survive by selling gongo.
“In keeping with their incomes, most people can’t afford modernised brew,” Lugaziya says. He suggests gongo collection centres for local manufacturers be established for refining the alcohol correctly as the law directs.
Lugaziya admits knowing some of the most reputable “land brothers” whose education was financed by the gongo business. He says people selling gongo with good intentions like paying for their children’s school fees should be given lenient sentences like community service.
The big question is should gongo be illegal in the first place? Is it not just a national traditional drink? The French have their wine and champagne, the Portuguese Port, half of Eastern Europe claim vodka as their national tipple, while the Alpine countries enjoy schnapps? Liquor producers in Tanzania need to come into play and produce gongo of high quality that achieves certain specified levels of alcohol content, hygiene and method.
According to information on the East African Breweries Ltd. website, Uganda Waragi, a Ugandan brew, was upgraded from Enguli, local gin. Before the Enguli Act of 1965 was passed in Uganda, the Enguli was crude and lethal alcohol. The law approved the distillation of Enguli under the licence. The licensed dealers sold the Enguli to the new distillery, The East African Distillers. The local Enguli was collected from local suppliers and distilled to make Uganda Waragi. Surely such a system can be implemented in Tanzania?
Johannes Mutanyatta is a professor at the University of Dar es Salaam. He says the first class gongo produced in Kagera; Mbandule once won an award against Uganda Warage at the alcohol exhibition in Uganda. “ I heard about the project coordinated by Tanzania Breweries Ltd. to upgrade the gongo in Tanzania, but I don’t know where it ended,” Mtanyatta says.
He says gongo can be produced from any crop in Tanzania but he says in his home village, Kayanga in Karagwe, gongo is produced from bananas. Mutanyatta and other lecturers from the faculty of commerce and chemical engineering at the University of Dar es Salaam are proposing the idea of upgrading gongo. As part of the project, they want to manufacture simple gongo processing machines, within the economic reach of local people.
“In Karagwe, people use their feet to crash bananas to produce Rubisi, which later goes into producing gongo. We want to get rid of that old processing method by producing portable and affordable simple machines to produce gongo, ” Mtanyatta says.
If the project succeeds, Mtanyatta says it would play a crucial role in fighting poverty.
Mtanyatta, whose mother was an expert at testing the quality of gongo during the process, says they are now conducting research into setting up a gongo formula.
He points out that even the police, who arrest people with gongo, drink or sell it, only eventually surrender the empty drums to their seniors. “We can’t successfully attain a poverty eradication policy without coming up with plans for developing indigenous businesses,” says Mtanyatta.
Joshua Katabwa works with the Tanzania Bureau of Standard (TBS) as the Chief Quality Assurance Officer. He says once gongo from Kagera region was taken to TBS and the portable spirit specification, Tzs 468:1992 was made. The findings revealed that there was nothing wrong with it. “It was a regular Gongo brew and they had no problem at all. I think the problem here is the colonial mentality because gongo was prohibited during the colonial era. Colonial rulers wanted to sell their own spirits,” he says.
Katabwa says it’s not the duty of TBS to advise the government to declare gongo legal. Stakeholders should convince the government to get rid of those laws and then the government would tell TBS to do its job.
“The government is worried that gongo contains a higher alcoholic content, but in fact other spirits tend to have higher alcoholic contents than gongo,” he says.
Katabwa says TBS has its doors open for any person who wants to bring in gongo brew for analysis as long as customers abide by their regulations.
When Staphord Kalokola was a university of Dar es Salaam student, he was the chairman for Karagwe University Students Association (Kausa). The association wrote a proposal to Karagwe District Municipal Council selling the idea of upgrading gongo. “We had organised for chemistry students to work with us, but we failed because of our reliance on parliamentarians to assist us, which they never did,” he says.
Kalokola says in their district, coffee, which was a commercial product, is no longer marketable. “If the government does away with the old laws, then bananas will become marketable and increase people’s income,” Kalokola says.
A few months ago, councillors of Karagwe district council complained that the district was loosing a lot of revenues from the ban on gongo. They said gongo was smuggled into a neighbouring country, processed and sold back to Tanzania as a legal commodity.
The counsellors’ meeting soon formed a commission to explore the possibility of legalising gongo.
If it is true that declaring gongo legal can bring about positive economic development for the benefit of the people, then the authorities have no reason to maintain gongo’s current restrictive laws. Small business, students, professors and your average citizen are all clamouring for gongo to be legalised. If stringent controls are placed on the manufacture of Tanzania’ favourite home-grown tipple to ensure drinkers’ safety, then there is no reason why it should not be legalised. Who knows perhaps there will be an export market?
Raphael John,* 30, holds a Diploma in Teaching and teaches mathematics at Mwalimu Nyerere Primary School. It’s a good job and a respected position in society, but what is unusual about a graduate like John and some other people in top positions in various organisations across the country, is that he got there on booze money.
John’s mother, Jessica Joseph, 65, was able to afford his school fees, from class one to form six, through selling the illicit brew gongo.
John was brought up in the Kigoma region. When his father died in 1983, his mother had no alternative means of raising money to take care of the family, other than vending gongo. John and his mother bought gongo at midnight from wholesalers who produced it in the forest, and took it to the village where his mother, had a pub.
“The police were a problem. We knew gongo was prohibited by law, but we depended on it to survive and later for me to study, ” he says adding that the police operations to curb the gongo industry threatened his family’s survival because every coin they ever spent came from the gongo business.
John says to avoid police harassment, they developed clever techniques to circumnavigate the threat like burying jerry cans filled with gongo in the ground in front of the sitting area of their house and spreading straw mats on the top.
In some areas around Tanzania, gongo is described as a traditional drink offered to the elderly guests to symbolise respect. This may be true, but its popularity is unrivalled and as in John’s case, families that engage in the business can earn enough money to support.
Gongo processing techniques tend to vary from region to region. In the Karagwe district of the Kagera region, gongo producers usually spend sleepless nights along the riverside with locally made processing equipment, brewing gongo.
They use a simple chemical distillation process, which involves taking sour rubisi alcohol - another traditional brews made out of bananas, and pouring it all into a big or medium-size iron drum. The drum is put on the fire to boil while its top section is tightly covered with a banana tree base to ensure the steam doesn’t evaporate. A hole is then made across the drum and a bamboo log inserted and directed to the river into a kettle. The kettle is put into a basin in the water for cooling. The steam produced from the boiling drum, through the log to the kettle is the final product, gongo.
Much like varieties of wine, vodka or schnapps, depending on the crops grown locally and the conditions, each region will have its own style of gongo.
However, as with anything where humans and alcohol are involved, there’s a negative side to gongo consumption. Illegal brews by their very nature are informally created and standards or checks are non-applicable. It is for this reason that the police try to be strict about gongo. Only recently in Machakos, Kenya, 60 people died in June after consuming a drink laced with methanol
In Dar es Salaam, the war against gongo distributors and distillers is tough and despite their zealous approach, the police also have been accused of working hand in hand with both distillers and distributors. Some distillers say they paid the police to protect them while running their businesses. An example of police involvement would be Police Inspector Wambura, who was caught distributing gongo in Manzese Midizini between 1998 and1999.
Between 1990/91, a drum of gongo under distillation at Mabibo army barracks exploded and killed one child injuring another. The distiller later died from his injuries while the case was still pending in court.
James Mutayoba says that ten years ago his late father; Emanuel Mutayoba lost his high ranking job and tragically his life, because of a gongo drinking habit. He would even drink gongo in the office and as a result, would cause chaos and fail to work. His mother, Gertrude Mutayoba says she became a gongo retailer to support her family after she split from her husband because of his abusive behaviour, especially when he was drunk.
“We couldn’t sleep when he came home drunk at night. He would beat me up like a snake and harass everyone. In the end I had no alternative but to end the marriage,” Mutayoba says.
Mutayoba adds that she was surprised at how gongo twisted her husband’s life around, turning him from an executive to a drunkard. In the past, she says, her husband was a moderate gongo drinker, but she never expected his drinking habits to accelerate and cause the family to fall apart.
As nobody could tolerate her husband’s behaviour and with his income drying up, perhaps ironically, in order to make ends meet Gertrude took to selling the very thing that was killing her husband. She moved into a muddy rental house from the family home and started selling gongo. Mutayoba senior continued drinking seriously until he died in September 2000.
“It was raining heavily that night. He came to greet us for a bit and then left. The next morning, someone came to my house and broke the news that my husband had been found dead in a water tunnel,” Mutayoba says sadly.
It was assumed that he had drunk a lot of gongo, fallen in the tunnel and failed to pull himself out of the water. “The medical report clearly showed that his death was caused by excessive drinking,” she says.
The incident did not deter Mutayoba from selling gongo. She says she had no alternative because she had a responsibility to pay her children’s school fees.
“ I used all the money I got from selling gongo to send my three children to school,” she says.
Mutayoba disapproves of police officers conducting raids and inspecting villages house by house in search of gongo retailers. She says the alcohol is a tradition and people have used it for years. “In our tradition, we give some gongo or rubisi and dried chewing coffee to visitors,” she says.
Mutayoba adds that in most of the areas in Kagera region, gongo is produced from rubisi brew, which is legal.
“So, why should gongo be prohibited?” she questions.
Mutayoba junior says he quit drinking after his father died. But, at some traditional events, he finds it hard to resist drinking gongo because each of the family members, especially men, is expected to drink gongo as a sign of manhood.
“Some of my brothers’ drinking habits near my father’s,” he says.
Mutabazi Lugaziya is a High Court of Tanzania advocate who has been a magistrate for ten years. He says the Moshi (Moshi Manufacturing and Distillation) Act No. 62 of 1966 is the law that controls gongo in Tanzania. According to Lugaziya, section 2 of the Act says the chief chemist is legally entitled to declare a certain substance, as being gongo and to qualify it should contain at least one percent of alcohol volume.
Under the law, Lugaziya says, if someone is caught with anything believed to be gongo, the chief chemist should prove its alcoholic content. But in the case that involved Kanzaga Shillungu v/s the republic in 1982, Tanzania Law Report (TLR) 138, the court ruled that gongo could also be identified by its smell and its effects on drinkers.
“Section 19 of the law stipulates the circumstances of which possession of gongo could be regarded as legal,” Lugaziya says adding that the law identifies some people who are licensed to possess gongo for the purpose of taking it to the collection centres to be processed. “This means some people are entitled to carry gongo, but not for the purpose of drinking it. The license is for ferrying to where the law directs,” he says.
In 1981 the law was amended (Written Laws Miscellaneous Amendment Act No 22) extended the translation of gongo. According to Lugaziya, if someone is accused of unlawful possession of gongo in Karagwe and is charged in Dar es Salaam, it isn’t important the gongo be brought to Dar es Salaam to complement the evidence.
“In the case of Tabu Fikwa v/s the Republic of 1988 in TLR 48, Judge Barnabas Samatha gave a foundation on the people caught with gongo. Samatha said before declaring that gongo is illegal, that the court should look into the surrounding social issues before judging the culprit,” he says.
As a retired magistrate Lugaziya, says such an area is very challenging in the legal affairs. He says he understands Judge Samatha’s sentiments because many people survive by selling gongo.
“In keeping with their incomes, most people can’t afford modernised brew,” Lugaziya says. He suggests gongo collection centres for local manufacturers be established for refining the alcohol correctly as the law directs.
Lugaziya admits knowing some of the most reputable “land brothers” whose education was financed by the gongo business. He says people selling gongo with good intentions like paying for their children’s school fees should be given lenient sentences like community service.
The big question is should gongo be illegal in the first place? Is it not just a national traditional drink? The French have their wine and champagne, the Portuguese Port, half of Eastern Europe claim vodka as their national tipple, while the Alpine countries enjoy schnapps? Liquor producers in Tanzania need to come into play and produce gongo of high quality that achieves certain specified levels of alcohol content, hygiene and method.
According to information on the East African Breweries Ltd. website, Uganda Waragi, a Ugandan brew, was upgraded from Enguli, local gin. Before the Enguli Act of 1965 was passed in Uganda, the Enguli was crude and lethal alcohol. The law approved the distillation of Enguli under the licence. The licensed dealers sold the Enguli to the new distillery, The East African Distillers. The local Enguli was collected from local suppliers and distilled to make Uganda Waragi. Surely such a system can be implemented in Tanzania?
Johannes Mutanyatta is a professor at the University of Dar es Salaam. He says the first class gongo produced in Kagera; Mbandule once won an award against Uganda Warage at the alcohol exhibition in Uganda. “ I heard about the project coordinated by Tanzania Breweries Ltd. to upgrade the gongo in Tanzania, but I don’t know where it ended,” Mtanyatta says.
He says gongo can be produced from any crop in Tanzania but he says in his home village, Kayanga in Karagwe, gongo is produced from bananas. Mutanyatta and other lecturers from the faculty of commerce and chemical engineering at the University of Dar es Salaam are proposing the idea of upgrading gongo. As part of the project, they want to manufacture simple gongo processing machines, within the economic reach of local people.
“In Karagwe, people use their feet to crash bananas to produce Rubisi, which later goes into producing gongo. We want to get rid of that old processing method by producing portable and affordable simple machines to produce gongo, ” Mtanyatta says.
If the project succeeds, Mtanyatta says it would play a crucial role in fighting poverty.
Mtanyatta, whose mother was an expert at testing the quality of gongo during the process, says they are now conducting research into setting up a gongo formula.
He points out that even the police, who arrest people with gongo, drink or sell it, only eventually surrender the empty drums to their seniors. “We can’t successfully attain a poverty eradication policy without coming up with plans for developing indigenous businesses,” says Mtanyatta.
Joshua Katabwa works with the Tanzania Bureau of Standard (TBS) as the Chief Quality Assurance Officer. He says once gongo from Kagera region was taken to TBS and the portable spirit specification, Tzs 468:1992 was made. The findings revealed that there was nothing wrong with it. “It was a regular Gongo brew and they had no problem at all. I think the problem here is the colonial mentality because gongo was prohibited during the colonial era. Colonial rulers wanted to sell their own spirits,” he says.
Katabwa says it’s not the duty of TBS to advise the government to declare gongo legal. Stakeholders should convince the government to get rid of those laws and then the government would tell TBS to do its job.
“The government is worried that gongo contains a higher alcoholic content, but in fact other spirits tend to have higher alcoholic contents than gongo,” he says.
Katabwa says TBS has its doors open for any person who wants to bring in gongo brew for analysis as long as customers abide by their regulations.
When Staphord Kalokola was a university of Dar es Salaam student, he was the chairman for Karagwe University Students Association (Kausa). The association wrote a proposal to Karagwe District Municipal Council selling the idea of upgrading gongo. “We had organised for chemistry students to work with us, but we failed because of our reliance on parliamentarians to assist us, which they never did,” he says.
Kalokola says in their district, coffee, which was a commercial product, is no longer marketable. “If the government does away with the old laws, then bananas will become marketable and increase people’s income,” Kalokola says.
A few months ago, councillors of Karagwe district council complained that the district was loosing a lot of revenues from the ban on gongo. They said gongo was smuggled into a neighbouring country, processed and sold back to Tanzania as a legal commodity.
The counsellors’ meeting soon formed a commission to explore the possibility of legalising gongo.
If it is true that declaring gongo legal can bring about positive economic development for the benefit of the people, then the authorities have no reason to maintain gongo’s current restrictive laws. Small business, students, professors and your average citizen are all clamouring for gongo to be legalised. If stringent controls are placed on the manufacture of Tanzania’ favourite home-grown tipple to ensure drinkers’ safety, then there is no reason why it should not be legalised. Who knows perhaps there will be an export market?
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