the stuff we don't hear about in the US, first of a series

I may have mentioned early on that as I was leaving CF I saw an article about Iowa State withdrawing from a land deal put together by Bruce Rastetter of the Board of Regents and his agribusiness. Since I’ve arrived here I have become increasingly aware of the poverty and the beauty.

My office is downtown, almost city center Dar. It rained awhile today, forcefully. There is no sewer system that I can tell; there are occasional holes in the concrete sidewalks that seem to be for something, metal plates from the curb across a few inches of street. There are areas with no sidewalks, just dirt areas where people park cars perpendicular to the street making it interesting to watch people try to pull in and out of spots while other cars are driving on two way streets. I walked into the sidewalk, red mud everywhere, with lots of the dirt areas pooling water into mud and pools, not puddles, in the road. Cars did not slow down when driving past pedestrians, just threw waves up onto whoever was nearby.  Now, this is not the rainy season--that starts in March. How could there not be flooding, dangerous flooding even along the streets that have large dirt ditches, I wonder where the rivers of rain flow to? And how toxic they must be, carrying all sorts of sewage. Does it make the water even more polluted? 

Chickens are skinny, fed with grains mixed with small sardines.  There are a good number of people living in put-together homes made from concrete blocks, corrugated tin, no windows, no plumbing, on and on. A lot of kids are on the streets rather than school, malaria, polio, AIDS, and more are still a problem.

But the people are extremely friendly, a smile, a hello, many are selling things-shoes, shirts, books, cigarettes (though I realized today that I have not yet seen a smoker!), and fruit--amazing amounts of fruits-pineapples, bananas, watermelon, oranges, papaya, mango, cashews, squash etc. It’s the fruit that brings me back to Mr. Rastetter and agribusiness. And post-colonial colonization, the return of the company town.

The fruits and veggies here are essentially organic. Yes, one still has to wash carefully-I now use baby bottle sterilizing wash, they are not perfectly consistent in roundness, color, but the taste is wonderful. Pineapple and mangoes that ooze the juices as they are eaten, there are completely different tastes across fruits. Pineapple that tastes like….pineapple! Not some tough stringy fruit that won’t spill it’s juices on the counter.

And now, in the last 5-10 years, the wonderful folks from agribusiness are coming in to “help” the farmers so they can feed all of Tanzania and everyone will be healthy and happy. They will bring in new seeds! teach farmers how to get more crops from their small farms!  Teach them how to store food! Give them access to new farming technology and equipment!.  Translation: “lease” or “buy” land from the government, move the people off of it, set up big farms, give farmers a hectare (the company owns millions), build food storage, bring in Monsanto and John Deere and introduce farmers to the wonderful world of agribusiness. Nowhere does it say the farmers will be given this, just that they will have access to it. They claim they will help with infrastructure—roads, clinics, plumbing, etc. But not when this will happen and other companies that have done the same thing tend to leave infrastructure for last, or maybe not get around to it at all.

There is no mention of how the farmers will be taught, in what language, who will teach (I guess this was where IA State was to come in) them. There are claims that it’s the government and UN that decided to move @160,000 Burundi refugees who have lived off this land for more than 40 yrs, it was not the company and besides the people are going to be re-patriated to Burundi or will become citizens of Tanzania. This is happening all over Africa.  No acknowledgement of culture-no one has deeds or mortgages on the land, they farm it for thousands of years that’s all.

The cradle of civilization.   I’ll be writing more about this, it is extraordinary the things we do not learn in the US, and fascinating that some of the plunder is right from Iowa. It is amazing how interrelated these powerful extraordinarily wealthy people are.  Did you know that the Christensen farm, which was just in the press for abusing hogs and is the biggest Walmart supplier is the company that Rastetter sold his hog operations to? Part of the millions he made.