True Patriot Love

With a fall election apparently on the way, we West Coasters decided it was time to gain some Canadian credentials with a cross country tour. Starting in Halifax, we stayed with our good friends Rob (studying law at Dalhousie) and Sherri (who is, like Tamara, studying for an accounting designation). They brought us to such iconic Canadian postcard sites as Peggy's Cove and the Citadel, and they arranged for a good maritime hurricane (Bill) to arrive during our visit. We also had the pleasure of seeing Scott (also studying law) and Dana (a nurse).



It was sad to leave our Haligonian compatriots, but with our destination being beautiful Montreal, it made it easier to bid farewell. In Montreal we rode the newish bixi bicycle rentals around the streets, and went for fantastic Indian food with Tamara's supervisor from Tanzania, Claude.

From Montreal we carried on to Ottawa, where we were hosted by our friends, the also newly arrived Andrew (yet another law student, at U of O) and Shannon (recently graduated). Among the highlights of our time in Ottawa was playing doubles tennis with our hosts, bicycling the Rideau Canal, and revisiting the Laurentian Leadership Centre, where Tamara spent a semester taking courses and interning with World Vision Canada. Dinner at B-sides (beside, and affiliated with, Benitz's restaurant) was a delight.




And now, we've arrived in sunny Kingston, which promises to be a great place to live. Our next update will have more about this.

A new chapter begins...

For anyone worried about the lack of posts here, we did make it home from Tanzania (and had lovely visits in Cape Town and Swaziland on the way), and we have been living, working, and studying in BC since we got home in February.

But, as we get a little antsy staying on one place for more than six months, we are moving on yet again, this time to Kingston, Ontario.


In August we will be en route to Queen's University via Dalhousie University in Halifax and the University of Ottawa, where we get to catch up with some friends of ours. And starting in September, Carl will be in a two year Master of Urban and Regional Planning program at Queen's, and Tamara will be working in a local accounting firm and completing her CGA accounting designation.

Now that all the pieces are in place (flights, apartment, movers, etc), we just feel pretty excited and ready to be going, although we will miss our family and friends. Our place in Kingston is downtown, and we have some great neighbours, like a local artisan collective and book shop (see picture below).


The apartment is in downtown Kingston, which has a lot of architectural character and history; even the Shoppers Drug Mart beside us looks pretty imposing:


So, for the next two years at least, we will be posting from the other side (ok, the middle I guess) of Canada!

Mzungus in Africa

Well we've almost completed our first overseas assignment and we have learned a lot; especially in terms of acclimatizing to Swahili culture. I, for example, have had a traditional Swahili outfit made and Carl has taken advantage of every shisha lounge we come across (shisha technically derives from Indian culture, by way of Arabic culture, which has a strong influence on Tanzania's coast). Our landlord has taught us how to fight in Tanzania; basically, you must wear a big smile, observe all formal pleasantries, and lie to the other person's face in order to win the argument. Fighting with our landlord has been a particularly time-consuming activity and we're glad that she's finally moved out of our compound. As most cross-cultural experiences go, we have a love-hate relationship with Swahili culture and Tanzania and this time overseas has taught us a lot about enjoying the aspects we love and adapting to the aspects that haven't been so great. Consequently, wrapping up our lives here will be bitter-sweet. However, you can be sure we'll find ourselves comfortable during our unoffical debriefing which takes the form of a Cape Town getaway.

False preconceptions of Tanzania:

1. City life, as compared to village life, includes dependable services for electricity, water and internet.
2. The heat won't get to us; we will have the coastal breeze. [We do, it's just woefully inadequate].
3. After five months here, we'll fit in more. [We only get blonder in the sun, and the neighbourhood kids NEVER get tired of calling us "mzzzuuungu.. mzzzuunnngu..."].

True preconceptions of Tanzania:

1. Job descriptions change daily.
2. Football is as ubiquitous as the sun.
3. Swahili culture is welcoming and friendly. Very relationship-oriented.

Me in the Kitange and Carl playing soccer with the neighbourhood boys.

Our old house - located in a "posh" enclave in Dar.


Our new house (obviously under construction) located a ferry away from Dar. Even though our house is just as nice (on the inside) as our last house our neighbours are far more 'local' in this new area and we are really enjoying it.

Flexibility: Beyond the Yoga Studio

A view of the city harbour looking towards the Indian Ocean

We have now been in Dar es Salaam for two months and we are learning about what it takes to work internationally. When we first started researching positions overseas we noticed that every possible employer was searching for a candidate that could be flexible and now we’ve experienced what being adaptable requires. Lively dynamics between cultures, NGOs, and personalities have transformed our job descriptions from a neat, bulleted list into an ad-hoc assortment of projects, capacity building sessions, and program evaluations. Tamara has gone from having a mandate involving one Savings and Credit Cooperative Society (SACCOS) for the duration of her stay to having worked in three already with two more on the upcoming agenda. Carl’s work quickly shifted from assisting the City Council with their document filing-and-retrieval system to working with Sustainable Cities’ tourism development team, documenting the multi-stakeholder process they are utilizing, as well as documenting other demonstration projects that Sustainable Cities has in the city. He has also been working on a few side-projects including heritage building conservation and promotion, and a transit map for tourists and locals. Flexibility has not been confined to the workplace, in our personal lives we’ve had to adjust because working with international NGOs means that the majority of your co-workers, who are frequently your housemates, are on contract and so housing becomes available and unavailable as they come and go. And so we have been actively looking for new accommodation because our landlord will be leaving the country in two weeks. Also, day-to-day we are responding and adapting to power outages, poor or no internet connections, and occasional flooding; in Canada, we have taken the reliability of these simple services for granted and are generally irate when they infrequently cut out. And so, in order to live here, in Dar es Salaam, and push our projects forward we are exercising flexibility, perseverance and creativity. However, more than the dependability and ease of life in Canada we miss our friends and family (especially ones that we have not met yet, aka our newborn nephew, Quinn).

Here we are, alive and well

The Dar es Salaam City Council building where Carl's office is, in the Urban Planning department.

A retired boat adrift over the shore at high tide.

Step Into our Shoes

We thought it was time to update you about what a complete day is like in our lives, lest you think it is all beaches and island hopping. We are both volunteering full time hours and often bringing our work home for our respective jobs; Carl at the Dar es Salaam City Council Planning Department and Tamara at DID-Dunduliza. So, we’ve prepared a summary of our typical day for your enjoyment.

Tamara:

5:30am- my alarm wakes me up and I get ready for my day. Work attire in Dar es Salaam is shockingly formal and in order to fit in with your Tanzanian co-workers all clothing items must perfectly clean and pressed (this is no problem at our household has a daily maid).

6:45am- The DID country director for Tanzania picks myself and Claude, our landlord and my boss, up from our doorstep. The reason we start our workday so early is to avoid the terrible morning traffic.

7:15am- I arrive at my desk at the DID-Dunduliza head office and do any reading that will help me prep for my day in the banking world. This is anything from my “Microfinance Handbook” by Joanna Ledgerwood to articles on loan products in Eastern Africa. Before I started training I was given the project of conducting market research on microloan products in order to rework Dunduliza’s existing loan products and I have just finished creating a powerpoint presentation for Claude to present to the executives.

8:30am- I am driven to the edge of a burgeoning vegetable market where Vibindo Savings and Credit Cooperative Society (SACCOS) operates.

Inside the SACCOS, I am being trained on all operations; for training I shadow either the teller, credit officer, or the manager.

They are so patient with me and step me through the processes and manual recording of every banking transaction (And you thought manual general ledgers were a thing of the past!).

At the end of the day the manager shows how she records a summary of the days transactions into an general ledger, in the form of an excel document, for the head office’s use. Working with microcredit is worlds different from working with credit in Canada. For example, the most significant factor when evaluating a potential loan is considering the character of the applicant rather than their assets. Two days ago, I was able to witness how little collateral can be pledged for one of their larger business loans when I visited a borrowers home to verify that he actually did own his collateral, a bar fridge.

2:45pm (ish, my driver is generally late) – I am picked up and driven back to the DID-Dunduliza head office in order to catch my ride back home with the country director. I am really enjoying learning about banking operations in a developing economy. And I am learning a great deal about banking in general as all SACCOS in the Dunduliza network are held to a high professional standard of record keeping and banking services and my internship with DID-Dunduliza is proving to be excellent experience for my future in development.

Carl:

5:30am- I hit the snooze button on the alarm, and eventually cajole Tamara to start getting ready for work. Some days I will get up to make her lunch, but not always.

7:00am- Having gained a few more minutes rest, it is now time to get up. Either I will go swim a few laps in the pool, or I do some work from home; after that, I shower and make breakfast.

8:15am- I hop onto the local transit (usually a dilapidated Toyota shuttle van; 30 cents a ride), and head into the city centre.

8:40am- At this point there are several options. I’ve been walking around a fair bit, getting my bearings and making a mental inventory of the heritage buildings, but also in the mornings I will occasionally frequent the luxury hotel on the waterfront for their free wireless internet, and, if I am feeling self-indulgent, one of their delicious cappuccinos. I’ve also stopped in a few times at the national government’s Surveys and Mapping Office to get some of their mapping resources.

9:30am- I will arrive at the City Council office about this time, give or take a half hour, depending on the day’s requirements. Some days we have meetings with city officials or other tourism stakeholders, so that will fasten my schedule a bit more tightly. The current focus of our team (2 other ICSC interns, our local Project Officer, and the City Council Tourism Officer) is on increasing tourism in Dar es Salaam. As you might imagine, there are many ways to address this issue, and we are busy working on varying aspects of the challenge (e.g. revitalizing the urban environment to make it friendlier to tourists, making better information/maps available for tourists, and building the capacity of people in the tourism industry).

A project that I am particularly fond of is protecting and promoting heritage buildings in Dar es Salaam; the project is still in its infancy but it has been very fascinating collecting the laws governing antiquities in Tanzania and imagining how we might promote heritage buildings for tourism purposes (e.g. walking tours, a photo brochure/book).

Another interest of mine is creating a transit map; there are thousands of mini-buses in the city covering dozens (likely hundreds) of routes, but there is no map currently that shows tourists how to use the system.

Finally, for this workday section I should add that we have a second office at The Slipway, a waterfront shopping/dining/hotel complex with a European ambience on the peninsula, which happens to be quite close to where Tamara and I live. If we are needing a peaceful environment to work in, we will often head to the office at The Slipway.

4:00pm- If I am at the City Council office, or writing emails at the luxury hotel, I will try to catch a mini-bus to ‘beat’ the traffic on the way home. Really, if I wanted to beat the traffic I ought to have left at 1:00pm, but even still there is a large difference between a 35 minute mini-bus ride and a 50 minute ride, especially if you are in a standing room only bus and it is over 30 degrees outside.

The above picture doesn't really fit into the "daily routine" theme of this post; it is of a work trip that we took to assess the tourism product on the just off-shore islands of Bongoyo and Mbudya. Most of the people are from the planning deparment at City Council, and some are from the Marine Park Reserve.

Home Sweet Home:

Tamara usually wins the race home, so by the time Carl gets there, she has been cooled off by the A/C, while Carl is still soaked in sweat from the mini-bus. For both of us, it is an ideal time to go for a little bike ride around the peninsula. At the end of our ride we might stop off at a fruit stand or the local grocery for tonight's dinner or tomorrow's lunch. A little dip in the pool after the bike ride is a favourite treat. Sometimes (last night was Greek night) we will host the other interns for dinner or drinks; most of them used to be our housemates at the Kinondoni house. If we aren't hosting or being hosted, we still like to cook for each other, and after dinner we might enjoy a coffee on the wide porch upstairs. Our house also has a plethora of good movies, so we also often take advantage of that opportunity. Tamara also has done a lot of reading, which is sort of a role reversal compared to our life in Canada.

Settling in in Dar es Salaam

We have been in Dar es Salaam for two weeks now and are still in the process of settling in. We have both worked a full two weeks at each one of our jobs: Carl with the city planning department of Dar es Salaam City Council and Tamara with the NGO DID-Dundiliza. Carl's internship has taken legs and run in multiple directions as he documents the many projects that Sustainable Cities is involved in here. Some examples of projects that he will be working with are: public-private cooperation for developing tourism in Dar, a micro-credit project targeting entrepreneurs with disabilities, and documenting ICSCs small "seed" projects in the region. Sustainable Cities has a wide range of contacts in the public and private sector here in Dar and Carl will be working with many dynamic people. My official training with DID-Dundiliza, starting tomorrow, will prepare me to work in all operations in a savings and credit union (SACCOS) here in Dar. The operations that are a particular focus for the SACCOS I will be working in is financial record keeping, market expansion, and increasing the loan recovery rate. I am really looking forward to working with a SACCOS to improve their operations. So, all-in-all, Carl and I are really enjoying our internships thus far and anticipate the next four months to be a valuable learning experience.


We have also kept ourselves busy on the weekends. The first weekend we took an intensive two day Swahili course (which has greatly helped us here in Dar) and then celebrated Carl's birthday by taking a ferry to Kipepeo beach and we read our books at the beach. One of our housemates, who happens to be a seasoned chef, surprised us with a superb birthday dinner back at the house we're staying in for the first three weeks.


This last weekend was a four day holiday because of Eid and our whole house, 6 of us, headed to Stone Town in Zanzibar for the weekend. We learned a lot about the Muslim holiday Eid, spent time strolling in the streets, and again relaxed on the beach.

Durban Conference Highlights

(This post was written last week and only posted now due to internet connection difficulties)

The PLUS (Partners for Long-Term Urban Sustainability) Network 2008 Conference has now wrapped up in Durban, and we are settling in to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where our internships will begin shortly.

There are too many highlights from the conference to mention them all, but we wanted to provide a sample of what we were privileged to enjoy. The host city, Durban, is going through a community engagement process called imagineDurban, where citizens are interacting with city planning staff to create a long-term vision for the city. One of the emphases in this process is increasing the involvement of the creative class (e.g. artists, musicians, dancers) in the city's strategies. Each conference venue we visited showcased the talents of local artisans and dancers as a way to highlight the vibrant arts culture in Durban. Another imagineDurban focus is on youth engagement; along with a spirited presentation from high-schoolers that have worked on the imagineDurban process, many children were involved in visually displaying their vision of the city through art-projects, such as the rock-art in the picture below.


A memorable moment of the conference was when the students who presented imagineDurban drew inspiration from the sustainable energy presentation of a conference delegate and gained the support from their principal and several attendees to install solar panels on the roof of their school.

There was a variety of city presentations regarding their sustainable practices. The following is a small sample of cities and topics: Curitiba, Brazil on their extensive public transit system; Adelaide, Australia on the reducing dependence on carbon based fuels, featuring the world's first fully solar bus; Metro Vancouver, Canada on their framework of sustainability for the entire Metro Vancouver area (which excludes Abbotsford); and lastly, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on their economic plans for micro-credit, informal traders and industrial production. Dar es Salaam's presentation, by Mayor Adam Kimbisa, was particularly useful for myself (Tamara) as I will be working in micro-credit and will possibly be meeting with him to further discuss ICSC's involvement in his city.


This last week allowed us to witness firsthand how ICSC facilitates the cross-pollination of sustainability practices for cities around the world. We both learned a lot from the conference content and interacting with delegates from the various cities; it was the perfect introduction to our ICSC internships in Dar es Salaam.