things are busy with visiting different orphanages and daycare centers everyday. the added difficulty of communication barriers and transportation issues makes the past week and a half frustrating at best. today i visited a law firm to get help with understanding tanzanian law and discovered why i have been having so much difficulty: there are no tanzanian laws specifically regarding children. none. there is a law regarding marriage that says girls can be married at 15 and men at 19, and this has been used to determine at what age people are adults or children. there is apparently a law on education and labor rights which hint at the definition of a child, but only sort of. it's amazing. so, in my report, i will just have to reference the various united nations conventions that tanzania is technically (use your imagination) a signee of and pretend that they actually matter in analyzing how the government has followed its own rules in treating children. there is an act in parliament right now (it might have already been approved and be awaiting the president's signature) regarding the rights of a child, and it's such a big deal because it's the first law regarding children. this is where i am. i'm not sure if i'm doing an adequate job demonstrating my amazement at this government, this government that lets its own people die from starvation so that foreign companies can entertain rich customers and friends; this government that pretends to require primary education, but does not fund it; this government that does not have a single law protecting its children, whose populations far outnumber its adults; the government whose budget is funded largely by developed countries, which absolutely includes the united states. it is hard right now not to revert to my cynical ways and rhetorically ask you, the reader, why governments exist in the first place. because, if i had not for the past 14 years of my life been fed the concept that a government originates from and exists for its people, i would think, based on three months of observation, that it exists as a means of manipulating reality. because there is just no way that what i'm seeing can be real. maybe the people responsible for this sleep easy at night, but i don't understand how this world of thievery and deception can sustain itself in the larger universe of supposed democracy and goodwill. people say that the tanzanian government is poor, but all i see here is dirt roads and 20 year-old failing water infrastructure and hungry children and "public" schools that charge fees for attendance, food, supplies, and uniforms, so i want to know where the hundreds of millions of dollars are going. and then i see the president and his friends and family with their ten cars and personal security and fashion sunglasses and mansions built on people's farmland. and i know that the united states know this, and that the united nations knows, as well. and the local people know, too, but you have to listen for it carefully, because they are too cautious to speak out against their government. because accidents have a funny way of happening.
www.thomsonsafaris.wordpress.com
i'm providing the link above in case you want to see the way that politics are handled around here. when an investigative journalist publishes a story revealing abuse of villagers, the people responsible get away with it by just making up complete lies in rebuttal. they quote a man who supposedly wrote the letter at the top of their webpage claiming to be a maasai man who is offended by the original article. after spending time with maasai people, especially those near loliondo, i can actually tell that this man, based on his photo, is not maasai, and even if he's ethnically maasai, there's no way he is pastoralist or truly cares about his people. the man in the picture is FAT, has a mustache, his ears aren't stretched out, he's holding some weird touristy wood carving, and he's being photographed in someone's modern house. it's the most ridiculous thing. thomson's safari uses this webpage to argue against any journalism pieces against them by completely making up facts. i just about had a heart attack reading through their stuff. if you're willing, take a look yourself by going to the above link and see what you think. i'd like to think that if i hadn't spent time with people affected by this disaster, i still could've sensed BS, but maybe i wouldn't have.
sorry for turning this blogpost into such a negative rant, but the whole thing is almost too much to handle. i hope the rest of you are doing well, and i look forward to coming back home in about two weeks.
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[UPDATE] Thomson Safaris stalked this blog for a long time while I was in Tanzania. Based on my blog tracker, I'd say they were able to trace back to my blog when people clicked the above link to their site. They have now taken down the "letter of support" by their fake Maasai man and have replaced it with an entire website devoted to challenging those who speak out against them. I could go on about this forever, but will leave you with three thoughts: 1. Maasai pastoralist elders don't speak English, so how do they make legally binding agreements with Thomsons? 2. When your cattle are dying and your children are starving, it takes a very small bribe to get you to say whatever Thomsons wants. These "testaments" that Thomsons provides are bought, not earned. 3. It's true. Thomson paid for the land in every Western sense of the concept. What Thomsons doesn't mention is that the brewery company they bought the land from had stolen that land from the Maasai a long time ago and had since then allowed Maasai to graze cattle on it. When Thomsons bought that land, they kicked all the Maasai off, because in their mind they had paid for that land. Thomson's website and testimonials reek of the destructive sense of entitlement necessary to take away native people's lands without the blink of an eye.
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