To my horror I have began narrating the interesting things that I see in my head as if I was writing in my blog. On the dalla dalla to CHAVITA for example I would think to myself, while crammed between a 70 year old woman and three school children, "riding a dalla dalla ride is a lot like visiting Disneyland on Christmas...there are lots of people crammed in together hoping to get somewhere that is undoubtedly going to take longer than they had originally planned, but there is an unfortunate lack of life-sized Goofy's about and definitely no over-priced cotton candy". It has even happened during the protests; one minute I am scurrying in to my room and locking the door (quite unnecessary in retrospect) and the next I am drifting off into my own real life movie, in third-person of course: "as the sound of the vuvuzelas and the hundreds of marching, angry and determined students marched closer Jennifer hurriedly closed the windows and doors, turned of the lights and waited.....alone. Would they come in to the dorms she wondered? Surely they wouldn't sweep her out into the protest, she was just an uninvolved mzungu. Escape strategies from Black Hawk Down and Shawshank Redemption, though completely unnecessary and impractical respectively, raced through her head as she hoped her roommate Asma was safe. The marching got closer and closer until the protesters were in the courtyard. Silence. The next word, yelled by the leader of the group chilled her to the core: 'REVOLUTION!!'". As you can see I am melodramatic but I can't quite help the over-active imagination. If you have heard anything in the newspapers or have recieved a frantic call from my mom or dad you know that a lot has been going on at the University of Dar es Salaam, for better or for worse we shall see, since last Thursday. While I haven't posted anything but pictures in the last week and a half or so, I assure you my personal narrations have more than made up for my need to express myself. But now that things have settled down (I think?) I think I owe my friends and family an explanation for my absence and whereabouts for the last week.
Last Wednesday night was a calm but special night in that all of the girls decided to make their way to an Italian (REAL Italian) restaurant on the Peninsula. Dinner was lovely, though as academics we could not help but feel a twinge of guilt for dinning out at an obviously up-scale restaurant with only two Tanzanians out of a crowd of nearly fifty. I had no radical thoughts on my mind except that I thought, by gosh, I was going to order the strudel! We all hopped into a taxi back to campus and went to sleep with no idea what was going on. Our obliviousness continued until about 2 o'clock the next day when we all returned from our internships to find an unusual amount of noise and commotion on campus. Granted most of us just dismissed it, semi-numb from the crammed 1 1/2 hour dalla dalla ride home, and hopped in the shower or took a quick nap. The past couple of days there had been groups of about thirty people congregating outside of the cafeteria talking amongst each other but whether it be a natural aversion to large crowds, the necessity of getting to where ever we were going, or our lack of expertise in Kiswahili, we never stopped to ask what everyone was getting on about. The University of Dar es Salaam is a public university and students receive financial aid much in a similar manner as US students do. However, while students in the State's receive what they think barely covers the cost of living, students at UDSM recieve 5000TSH daily, or roughly $3.50, to feed themselves three square meals, wash their clothes, buy supplies, and spend on other necessities. Back in 2007 they only recieved 3000TSH and in later in 2007 they 'encouraged' the Tanzanian government to give them a whopping 3500TSH. In 2008 their financial aid was raised to the 5000TSH it is today and has remained as such, without accounting for inflation or student's demands, for around four years. Coming back to the present...While the Tanzanian (Tz) government is democratically progressive and relatively stable, especially in comparison to other African nations, some high ranking officials were involved in an electric company scam that cost the country billions. Recognizing the corruption and their inability to feed themselves the students began to think that if the government had the money to pay back the billions of dollars they now owed from the scandal, they could surely meet the student's demands of an increase to 10,000TSH (about $7.00/day). Finally fed up with their situation the UDSM students began to protest, peacefully Thursday morning.
Being at our internships we missed the beginning of the protests that day but it was enough to have us evacuated from campus at around midnight the evening of the 3rd. To my knowledge the protests were intended to be peaceful but the students had organized to march off campus (a big no no) Friday morning at 6 down to a local transit station called Ubungo and then downtown to the government buildings and Thursday they had been pulling people out of classrooms to join the march. I was alarmed to hear that another American student (not with our program) had been dragged out of the classroom with other Tanzanian students, smacked over the back with tree branches, and shuffled into the march. While she was OK, hearing that made me realize that this wasn't just a 'please come and join our noble effort' protest but a 'this is a shared student problem and you WILL fight for our rights, classes be damned' protest. Thursday night was filled with relative chaos, confusion and a rushed packing up of every item I brought with me (so not fun to do again) so that we could leave at a minute's notice. Our Resident Director finally made the call and everyone, hyped up on adrenaline and lack of sleep, jumped in to a hired dalla dalla and got off campus before the protests kicked up more steam. White guilt or not, I am happy we went to a hotel that night because as we were driving away (about 12:30- one in the morning) there were already groups of thirty people gathered in different locations getting riled up for the march the next day. And as horrible and self-centered as it may sound, I will always put my safety first and if that means rushing off in the middle of a night to a hotel while the UDSM students are bravely preparing for their fight that will obviously be met with resistance from the riot police, then so be it. I would have gladly stayed in a shack as long as my group members and I were safe. I am here to integrate my self with and learn as much from the culture as possible, but even my young irrational self does not want to be tear gassed.
Anyway, Friday and most of Saturday were spent away from campus with sporadic reports on the status of the protests. The students, as planned, did march off campus and were, as planned, met with resistance from the riot police that warned if the students did not return to campus they would exercise force. But there wasn't any stopping them now. Early in the morning the students had gone to the off campus housing area called Mabebo Hostel, raided the rooms, and threatened the private shuttle drivers (that transport students from Mabebo to UDSM) that if they tried to take students to school they would set their buses on fire. A couple bus' windshields were shattered to make the point. They marched downtown, bravely protesting for their right to eat every day and the riot police came in (the students HAD refused their warning after all...) and ended up arresting 42 people and firing multiple rounds of tear gas into the crowd. A few hours later, re grouped and on campus again, the students began protesting and demanding that not only did they want their demands to the government to be met (the increase to 10,000TSH, remember?) but they wanted the immediate release of the 42 arrested students. The demands had at this point been given to "relevant government officials" for review, but students were still up in arms about their peer's arrests so no UDSM dorms that night. Saturday was mainly protests demanding the release of students of which were on campus so we ended up returning to our dorms around 5pm Saturday evening. Caught up in the thrill and adrenaline of the past day's events we all had simultaneous realizations that "oh crap! we have homework...". Saturday was hardly exciting after that.
Sunday morning we were whisked off campus again but this time not because of protests, but for an oh-so-necessary 18km mountain bike tour around the back streets of Dar! It was super fun and we all got the best work outs we have had in at least a month. Unfortunately I took my malaria pill that morning without food (not smart, I know I know) and had to walk, mortified, with a guide for about 20 minutes until I could ride again. Earlier that morning I even fell off my bike! But given all of my stumbling about I had some of the best chapatti and chai (tea) in my stay here, and some mouthwatering kacheta and coffee (it was as much of a bike tour as eating tour). Overall it was a success, but a very embarrassing and uncoordinated success.
Sunday evening I was laying around in my room when I started to hear a lot of voice coming towards our dorm, and coming fast. It turns out the duka or store about 100m from our dorm room had picked a bad time to raise their prices exponentially. While an increase from 150TSH to 500TSH may not seem like too much for chapatti (about 10 cents to 30 cents) students were not happy to say the least. The protest turned violent and students began throwing rocks at the duka with the shop owners still in side. Luckily they all got away but many of the vending machines (that I am sure cost a FORTUNE for them to start up) were damaged and a significant amount of merchandise was looted.
Our feeble attempt at going to classes on Monday was stopped before we even really went out the door. Classes had been cancelled, buy the university this time nor the students, because the Minister of Education was coming to campus to discuss the student's demands. I was shocked to hear (because we aren't allowed to actually join any of these events) that he just stood up there and talked in circles for 30 minutes without answering any questions directly! Students began throwing rocks at his car as he ran away, and the police began firing tear gas into the crowds. Unfortunately, and I don't know HOW they could have let this happen, two people were shot and injured, and four people were injured. One person was shot in the shoulder from the back, and another in the kneecap, both with real bullets. Maybe it was my naivety but I believed them when they said only rubber bullets were used on campus. Luckily both people are OK, but unfortunately for the government that only enraged the students further. Have they not seen the news with Tunisia and Egypt? While I hardly know anything about Tz politics, I would highly suggest that the government try and solve the problem with diplomacy next time, not tear gas and guns.
Monday night there was another riot as students raided the cafeteria under what I understand to be a belief that they were entitled to free food. We ate bread and peanut butter in the dorms for dinner.
On a separate front the College of Engineering have been having their own protests over an expelled students they believe to be wrongly accused. From what I understand the student was caught cheating on an exam and was expelled, but the students are challenging the Vice Chancellor saying that the student was coerced into writing a key piece of evidence against him. While the larger protests over the financial aid increases stopped just in time before the whole school shut down (that's how they roll here...three days of protests and the university is shut down for 4 months, everyone 'expelled' and then readmitted later) the students at the College of Engineering disregarded the warnings of the Vice Chancellor and have been given a day to pack up and leave. For those of you that remember my roommate Asma is an engineering major and so I don't know what is going to happen. She has to leave (she has a place in Dar to stay for four months) but I don't think they will replace her as there are only three weeks left in their semester. She will be sorely missed, and I will miss the energetic Bollywood music she plays all the time.. Hopefully I will get another roommate or Asma will get to come back.
Well it seems that the student's demands have been met (kind of) and the protesting has stopped for now. Next semester is another deal though. Classes have resumed and people are going about as if nothing has happened. The 42 students were released on Sunday and everything seems well. Only the occasional splatter of blood on the ground or the broken soda machine clues you in to the craziness that went on here. Hopefully everyone got it out of their system and no more people are hurt. But I commend the students of UDSM during their peaceful protests for standing up for what they believe in and sticking out their tongues to the government until they got what they wanted. I admit that I was scared at times but the courage and communalism that exists here gives me hope that this generation of Tanzanians will fight for what is fair. I just hope they do it safely.
Well I am off to Kiswahili lessons and then back to that Italian restaurant for a CIEE member's birthday. It seems we have come full circle, one week later, but so much has changed. We all have a new perspective on student life and the culture of Tz, and this is not something I will not soon forget. Thank you for your well wishes and I promise to continue staying safe and studying diligently. Badaaye.
