Change, change, change

[red_cowboyboots]

Lately, I 've been sitting around thinking about about change. A lot of the things I see in Tanzania as issues that people grapple with have to do with change---a forced, unnatural, better hurry up form of change. In all of my classes we talk so much about how colonialism changed everything, how it forced a new culture on Africa and tried to kill

Comments

[stainedbysilver]

It is hard not to idealize the past. We are conditioned to forget the unpleasant, so when we remember just the good things, we idealize time periods. It's even easier to do this if we weren't there (ie, pre-colonial times).

[cincinnatus]

I think the idea is that "what the Tanzanians have been given" sucks pretty damn bad, even it sucks considerably less than, say, "what the Congolese have been given" or "what Burma's been given". Moreover, they had almost zero say over what they've been given (both of this differentiates the Tanzania case from the Marlboro one).

In so far as there's a "solution" to a situation like this, it's to follow the Fanon idea of tearing everything down and rebuilding everything back again, but that's hard and probably wouldn't work anyway. So people fall back on these old ideas, figuring maybe they can hit the reset button and get back to the time before the world screwed them over.

[red_cowboyboots]

I agree that "what the Tanzanians have been given" really, really, really, really sucks. However, I sometimes feel that it is used as a crutch. This country is really lacking in self-esteem. When I lived in Germany I felt the same way (about the self-esteem that is). However, the Germans had this feeling of shame about what they had done and Tanzanians seem to have this sense of shame simply of who they are. It's as if they are constantly trying to prove themselves to the whole world, but instead of doing anything they are just blaming. I swear this whole university is built on anger. We'll have to talk more on this face to face.