Independent consultant and blogger in Dar es Salaam
After the Kenyan vote, I decided to take some time off from East Africa and the news for a while. The world is capable of burning without my having to keep abreast of the latest conflagrations, so off I went for a winter break into the internet and social media.
As a result of that decision, I made a stranger thousands of miles away from Dar cry. I am still not sure what to do about it.
I was vacationing on a social media platform that provides opportunities for conversation around a topic, preferably moderated, amongst people who may or may not be members of the rooms they are in. There I found a room about practicing one’s English in a safe environment.
Having had enough of Tanzania’s endless debate about Kiswahili — we can be such a pompous bunch of intolerant pedants when we choose — I was ready to see what others were doing with regard to the world’s current Lingua Franca.
It was lovely. Well moderated and operating 24/7, the room provides exactly five minutes to each participant who wishes to do so a chance to talk, in English, about anything they want except politics and religion. That is all.
Many accents
I listened to people mostly from the Middle East and Asia, a few Africans, one or two Europeans, all talking. Just, talking. Encouraging each other, laughing sometimes, clashing very occasionally, communicating. So many accents. South America didn’t show up, on account of the time difference I imagine.
I joined in and lined up to have small chats with internet strangers. Evidently, I was not there to practice English but I got to indulge my other passions: learning about people, and perhaps being an ambassador for my country, a little bit. Not in a weird Royal Tour way, but in a “hey, we have great beaches and food and wonderful people, come vibe” way. It went great.
I learned about people’s favourite vacation spots in their countries, several dishes that I hope to try, I even met another writer with whom to share some musings on the craft.
Flooded with feel-good hormones from these positive social interactions I asked a lovely lady, cheerful so far, what her favourite dish was that her grandmother cooked for her. Because everyone has a favourite grandmother memory or dish, right?
Wrong
She had never met her grandmother. She has no family. She was alone and did not even know… she never finished her sentence. With the best of intentions, in a wonderful space, I had opened the wounds of a lifetime for an internet stranger and heard grief as I have never heard before in one unfinished utterance. I had escaped East Africa and big news for a taste of humanity: I got it.
Cynicism irks me. It is a valid position, but the fatalism that too often accompanies it makes endeavour sound futile —and I really, really don’t like futility.
All my –isms stem from the idea that armed with knowledge and a big fistful of Utu we can, at the individual, community and ultimately global level create the compassionate, abundant, exciting and ultimately space-faring humanity that some of us believe we can be. Yes: utopia can be built.
I am steeped in the literature, after all, bathed in hymns about loving mankind from the womb.
Voluntary integration
Here I was participating in a virtual space where people could communicate as equals, creating the potential for even further voluntary integration as a global society of peers who mean well and thus coordinate action towards a great vision of our immediate future that not only embraces but thrives on diversity.
The coordinated action is simple on the surface — practice English with internet strangers — but what it was doing was laying a foundation for that peaceful vision.
And I was doing this sitting at home, using a hand-held device that can instantly connect me to anyone, anywhere.
From Karl Marx to Isaac Asimov to Gene Roddenberry. Politics, technology, imagination. In that room, for those few interactions, I was living the dream: utopia can be built after all. And all those social media haters? Ha! This platform was proving them as wrong as I have always known they are.
Guess who forgot the one and only real element of the whole endeavour?
I logged off the grid after causing trauma, vacation thoroughly over, coming back to the place that had made me weary online and offline in the first place.
Under the sun
Augustine Lyatonga Mrema has passed away, conservative Tanzanians insist on conflating feminism with every conspiracy theory under the sun, Joe Biden stood in front of a White House lit like the lair of a Hollywood totalitarian villain, Kenya is fashionably late to its own final election results party having taken a little detour through the judiciary, my government is taxing basic needs out of reach of the populace, we have re-introduced single-use plastic bags. And for those who are wondering: the pompous pedants are now arguing about the influence of Arabic on Kiswahili.
Politics, technology, imagination: Humanity. Cynicism irks me, and I truly despise futility. I am still not sure what to do in the aftermath of asking a woman about her grandmother’s cooking, but I cannot stop thinking about it. I hope it will haunt me for a long, long time — especially when I write.
Elsie Eyakuze is a consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report: E-mail: [email protected]
