OPINION

Jeffrey Marcus: What can you tell us with your two-week experience of Tanzania!?

‘Many of my points were written 'tongue in cheek'.

What a debate! I don't think the Features and Mailbag pages of the Arusha Times has ever had so many lively contributions before my correspondence regarding the recent Tourism Forum. I think I should be added to the Arusha Times' payroll! Of course, many of my points were written 'tongue in cheek', an expression used in English to mean having a joke (or another - 'pulling someone's leg'!). It seems that many have put pen-to-paper in an effort to put me right about Tanzania, and one letter was written during the writer's second week of a one-month holiday! Superb, that's what I call experience!

The same correspondent went on to say that, 'in Britain we are bombarded with pictures of starving people in Africa', and then goes on to mention 'the huge assistance we rightly give these people'. Later he says he plans to write to the British newspapers to remind the 'politicians that they should be ashamed for not giving more help to Tanzania, who may not ask but so richly deserve it'.

He appears to be very proud of the Commonwealth when in fact, I feel it should be called Common poverty. Britain is no longer a world power (contrary to Mr Blair's opinion), a world influence maybe, but the financial drain of aid to some Commonwealth countries is one we can ill-afford. The amount of aid given is ridiculous. In the UK there are Old People's homes and hospital wards closing due to lack of funds and our military capability is shameful. I have a note (from 1997) that world overseas aid to Tanzania amounts to $814million US dollars, (£550m Sterling). Figures for 2002 from the UK alone, recently published in the UK Guardian, not the Tanzanian one), is quoted as £70m, 'of which £45 will go directly into the government's budget to reduce poverty'.

That £70m represents more than £2 for every man, woman and child in Tanzania, but will it be squandered? Many African countries have had their independence every bit as long as they were colonies and protectorates. We took Tanganyika (in the 1920s) from the Germans after WWI and held it until the early 1960s. So, from then until now what real progress has been made?

He also should have said that the British papers reported that Zambia, where millions are starving, their government had rejected thousands of tonnes of food aid because it might be GM modified! Daily we read of other African countries' political wrong-doings and problems, in Malawi, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda, DRC, Angola and South Africa - the ravages of the AIDS epidemic being just one.

We also read of British Aerospace supplying a military air traffic control system (£28m) when even the national airline, Air Tanzania Corporation (ATC - Any Time Cancelled or Air Maybe), has only 4 aircraft - 3 in service (2 Boeing 737s and a Dornier 228) and one parked Fokker F27 . What need Tanzania has of a military air traffic control system when the country can't afford the fuel to fly the MiGs parked at Mwanza? Furthermore, what hope has Britain of being paid for the system? Even ordinary people in Tanzania, speak in normal parlance, of 'soft loans' when, in reality, they mean 'gifts'.

Mr Jeffrey Marcus tells us that there are 130 tribes in Tanzania not in tribal conflict with each other and it is a country of many Christian sects and Muslims who are not killing one another. Quite right, but did he tell us about Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) widely practised on girls in East Africa? No! In Arusha, where he spent his first week of his blinkered holiday, the reported figure for FGM is 82%. A different kind of cruelty and unnecessary bloodshed. That's savagery in my book.

Earlier Mr Marcus condemned me for being 'very narrow minded, short-sighted and bigoted 'who should not be in the work he is'. Mr Marcus has no idea of the work I am in and never will! What Mr Marcus needs to know is that my experience of Tanzania, the length and breadth of the country, from Bukoba to Tanga and Mbeya to Namanga, is somewhat wider that his one-month-stay with another in prospect for next year! I do hope he's in Tanzania long enough to read this reply.

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