What to say about our neighbors, Kenya? The historical reason for the violence is the same as why most of the rest of Africa is drowning: colonialism and slavery. Country lines were drawn without regard to African interests, and ethnic groups were often forced by colonialists to occupy different spheres in the economy and society, thereby exacerbating inter-tribe rivalries. These truths are fresh in my mind after finishing "How Europe Underdevloped Africa" by Walter Rodney (thanks JQ).
Some editoralists in the local papers have said that Tanzanians (semi-jokingly) view the violence as proof that Kenyans are somehow inferior to Tanzanians, but if anyone entertained such thoughts in the first days after the election, my sense is that now everyone here is deeply concerned and empathetic. What has happened is horrific, but it is important to realize that it is not unthinkable. Yes, many are shocked that Kenya, bastion of African stability, is now devouring itself, but we should never think that such things are beyond the realm of possibility. Even Rwanda, where ordinary people carried out much of the killing, was not unthinkable. There are concrete causes - many of them rooted in Western oppression and indifference - to these periodic African, Latin American and Asian hemmorhages, and it is our responsibility as global citizens to work to reverse the conditions that produce such violence.
Many believe all it will to take to incite another Rwanda is for a group of young men with machetes to descend upon one of the camps where the quarter million Kikuyus are now living. Seeing as how the photo-op meeting with Annan hasn't helped matters in the slightest, and two ODM politicians have been murdered in the past two days, this is not an unrealistic scenario.
Our Tanzanian friends have mixed feelings about whether such violence could happen here - some say the country will implode in 5 to 10 years due to growing socioeconomic injustice, others say that because no ethnic group is more than 13% of the population, and everyone identifies through Swahili as Tanzanian, it won't happen. But Kenya is now the 4th of the 5 East African countries to be consumed by violence in the past twenty years - is TZ really so different?
I'm not sure what immediate action we can take to prevent the deterioration of the situation in Kenya, but I believe it involves a commitment to working together that most politicians the world over are sorely lacking. Why, then, must we wait around reading headlines about murder while our leaders refuse to act? In the Western world, I believe we're all too comfortable - until the violence reaches our doorstep, we prefer to sit on the couch (myself included - why didn't I do everything in my power to stop Bush from taking power in 2000?). Why, instead of going to war with Iraq, didn't the US government drop everything and send our resources to Darfur, or even New Orleans for that matter? Is it so hard to organize people on a mass level to produce positive change?
As our Peace Studies teacher Colman McCarthy would say, it's up to our generation to change things, and I am still hopeful that we can. ICOs (Impoverished Cesspools of Oppression - don't ever let yourself use the euphemism 'developing country') all over the world will continue to suffer spasms of post-colonial violence, but as our generation and our students' come into power, let's work together to ensure that the positive forces of globalization prevail, i.e., decreased racism, increased care for our brothers, sisters and our Mother Earth, and more social entrepreneurialism of the kind that can give an African family the start-up money it needs with the click of a mouse in Berkeley or Berlin. On that note, check out this website:
friendsofruaha.org
Anette just starting working there and I'm helping out on weekends, trying to bring solar disinfected water, SODIS, and solar panel technology to the villages around Ruaha National Park. Gotta start somewhere, and in my experience, that means small, personal and meaningful.
