Our friend Eli had just invested everything he had in a fruit farm – 3 years to come to maturity. No worries, he thought – he has stable work as a bajaji (like a tuktuk) driver. That will provide for his family and when the farm matures they’ll be on […]
This week I had the great delight of getting up to date with a podcast series by a TAFES Associate, Luphurise Mawere. She was the leader of a recent Bible study I wrote about too. The podcast is the recording from her weekly program on the radio and the series […]
I didn’t see my maandazi ladies friends for a week or so, until two of them turned up on my doorstep. They explained that the government had declared that no one was to do business near primary schools anymore. This effectively puts them out of business – the corner they […]
A friend of ours once likened South Sudan to Tanzania. He had visited South Sudan for a construction project, and looming large in his experience was the constant presence of armed men. As he spoke, he seemed to be describing a potential failed state, a hive of barely contained conflict, […]
Arthur and I have been working on a new project, launching soon, called Tanzania Snapshots. It’s a video library of us talking about some hot topics to do with Tanzania. It’s kind of scary for us because it feels like setting ourselves up as experts about Tanzania when we are […]
Do you remember the lady at the gate? We’ve seen her a few more times since then, always saying she’s poor and needs food, but always with a different story. Sometimes multiple stories in the one day or the one conversation. She’s very skinny; she doesn’t look healthy; she’s shabbily […]
“Tanzania is more urbanised than it perceives itself to be. Urban Tanzanians feel emotionally rooted in their villages of origin, rather than in the cities and towns where they live.” This is one of the reasons we are undertaking to understand more of village life in Tanzania. However, like Australians […]
Meet Jesus at uni 