Yukari @ Tea Lounge, 21 April 2010

Flute is my thing, so when I learn about new flutists on the scene I always head out to check them out. Yukari has been around for a while and has actually produced several CDs under her own name (the latest one, Dreams, is just about to be released and features recording artists such as Greg Osby). I’ve heard her play in bands and in a private party. Recently I’ve also come to know her personally. However, I had never heard her own band live before I listened to her at the Tea Lounge in Brooklyn last month. It has to be said that she is very versatile and plays many kinds of music—from jazz to pop to classical—so the Brooklyn performance was but one example of her many sides.

The Tea Lounge in Brooklyn's Park Slope neighbourhood is an eclectic place with a variety of comfy sofas for folks to lounge in and a well stocked bar (‘tea’ in this case has to be understood more broadly than just referring to the stuff brewed from the leaves of the evergreen bush grown in Asian highlands). When I entered from the rain outside, the place was already crowded, so I settled into the bar to wait for my buddy Nanthi to arrive. Not all people in the spacious joint were there for the musical experience, but as the evening wore on I noticed that a solid following had gathered at the back of the room where the band would play.

Tonight’s band consisted of a trio, with Yukari on the flute, Mike Pride on drums and Peter Bitenc on double bass. The two lengthy sets remained interesting throughout despite the limited instrumentation and no-one providing chordal accompaniment. This of course is testimony to the creativity of the players. Yukari herself is a highly skilled flautist. Since moving to New York from her native Japan, Yukari studied at the Manhattan School of Music and has played with many of the city’s premier young jazz players.

The repertoire of the evening ranged from free improvisation to be-bop tinged contemporary pieces. Most were Yukari’s own compositions, although one or two standards made it into the mix, including one Ellington ballad, which showcased the flutist’s beautiful sound. The mood in the dimly lit cozy café was warm and enthusiastic as the audience witnessed the performance of this highly original new force in jazz flute.

Tomasz Stánko New Quintet @ Birdland, April 13, 2010

In Europe, Tomasz Stanko is a legend. The Polish trumpeter has been around as a composer and band leader in the forefront of modern jazz since the 1960s. He made it big in the 1970s when he co-led a highly innovative orchestra with the late Finnish percussionist Edward Wesala. When my friends and I headed to the famous Birdland club on a mid-April evening, I wasn’t sure what to expect and whether the audiences on this side of the Atlantic would be equally familiar with Stanko. I needn’t have worried. While the place wasn’t exactly packed, most of the tables were filling up quickly. I could hear Polish and Finnish spoken.

Tomasz Stanko is often compared to Miles Davis, whom he is also said to admire. There are distinct similarities in their rather sparse and thoughtful style of playing, Another particular parallel between the two is that both musicians have been known to be sharp-eyed scouts and cultivators of new talent. Stanko’s new quintet that he brought to New York consisted of four young Nordics joining the leader: two Finns—Alexi Tuomarila on piano and Olavi Louhivuori on drums—and two Danes—Jakob Bro on guitar and Anders Christensen on electric bass. As we would find out, the band was already very cohesive and created its own distinct sound around Stanko’s compositions.

The concert basically featured songs from the new Tomasz Stanko Quintet CD, Dark Eyes, released on ECM in 2009. Stanko stood in his tennis shoes at the centre of the stage wearing a hat and all grey clothing. He would not once communicate verbally with the audience during the concert, which started with the rubato theme of ‘So Nice’ played in unison by trumpet, piano and guitar. The piece would then gradually break up into a slow and lyrical solo by Tuomarila, his playing clearly reminiscent of Keith Jarrett.

The rubato melody starting a song, often played in unison, is a Stanko trademark and several numbers in the concert followed that formula. Stanko’s melodies contain a haunting beauty. His music is introspective and rather dark, belying his Slavic background. It is definitely northern European and perfectly fits the ethereal ECM trademark sound. This doesn’t mean that Stanko’s music doesn’t have a groove. On the contrary. But it is different from the blues based harmonies and syncopated rhythms of American jazz.

Alexi Tuomarila received the first real applause of the evening following a crisp and thoughtful solo that reminded me of the playing of another ECM pianist, Richie Beirach. After a couple of more soft tunes which Louhivuori backed with brushes, the band started a tune based on a one note bass pick. Bro played a Scofield-inspired solo on his Telecaster on top of the vamp. Then the trumpet entered with a high growl that was the most exuberant that Stanko had played thus far in the evening. An inspired piano solo followed and the temperature in the room rose noticeably.

This was followed with yet another rubato passage with a unison theme by the entire band. Then Tuomarila started a vamp in the lower section of the piano. The drums followed with an enthusiastic, light but steady beat on top of which the trumpet and guitar played a catchy melody. This was ‘Grand Central’, perhaps the most memorable piece in the entire evening.

My friend Nanthi commented how he was startled to discover similarities in the tonalities and rhythms of Stanko’s Slavic dances with those of his own native Sri Lanka. This was a new connection to me as well.

The next tune, ‘Samba Nova’, continued in similarly festive mood. It started with a long rubato segment before settling into a soft bossa nova rhythm. Louhivuori’s light and nuanced percussions ensured there was not a dull moment. The tune provided one of the rare opportunities in the evening for Jakob Bro to solo. His guitar solo was clean with no gimmickry.

‘The Dark Eyes of Martha Hirsch’, a slow tune with oriental overtones brought a new twist to the repertoire. It highlighted the baseball cap wearing Anders Christensen, who played an oddly low keysolo on his bass guitar. His sound was quite without resonance and the solo left me cold. Apparently, both of the Danes see their role as adding to the sound of the band, rather than shining as soloists. Both seem to approach their stringed instruments more from an intellectual rather than emotional perspective.

Another one chord romp followed. Then came a tune with an actual straight jazz rhythm and walking bass plucked by Christensen on his electric instrument. The solos by Stanko, Bro and Tuomarila were short and controlled. This was one of the most enjoyable moments of the concert.

Clearly some of the most inspired playing this evening (and I’m not saying this as their compatriot) came from the Finns. Louhivuori’s percussions were sensitive and musical throughout the evening and, at best, his beats were truly intense. The most sparkling solos were no doubt provided by the young Tuomarila who increasingly found his own style as the evening progressed. He follows in the intellectual tradition of Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett, thoughtfully developing his solos with a beautiful sense of melody. He also possesses an admirable technical facility.

All in all, this was a beautiful and satisfying concert, but despite the intensity of the faster jams there was strangely little what could be described as ‘physical’. Although the program was paced with the quiet segments intercepting the upbeat sections with fine solos, I afterwards found it difficult to distinguish between the different pieces. That was probably the intention, to create a whole that flows seamlessly from one part to the next. Stanko melodies have great brooding beauty, which make even the more joyous romps feel a bit melancholy. I do think that his new quintet is one of the more cohesive and interesting working bands around these days. And that’s a lot.

Randy Weston's African Rhythms Quintet

Randy Weston is one of the first and foremost American artists to convincingly incorporate African sounds into the jazz vocabulary. Wait a minute, you might think, African sounds and rhythms have been around in jazz for a long time. Well, so has Randy Weston. The concert at New York’s Jazz Standard club I heard on April 8th, 2010, was part of the weeklong 84th birthday celebration of the maestro. The last time I had heard Weston live was during his 80th birthday celebration at the same venue.

Although jazz has its roots in Africa, it is a quintessentially American invention. The roots were dug up a long time ago, replanted in the soil of the new continent, and cross fertilized with implants from many other traditions. True, band leaders and composers like the great Duke Ellington inserted African influences into their music, like the Duke’s 'Black and Tan Fantasy.' But this was not African music. The real exotic influences from Africa and the Middle East were really introduced only by men like Randy Weston and Yusef Lateef starting in the 1950s.

The big man—Randy Weston stands 2.03 metres (6ft8) tall—came on stage and sat behind the grand piano. The solo introduction soon led to a slow blues in 3/4 tempo in which his long-time band, African Rhythms Quintet, joined, all five musicians donning white African Muslim style caps. The crisp-toned alto saxophone of TK Blue took the lead in stating the theme of the tune and continued with a lively solo. The band’s rhythm section differs from the average jazz combo as it does not include a regular drum kit. Instead, Neil Clarke sat behind three large congas surrounded with cymbals and other percussion instruments. Another feature that makes the rhythm section distinctive is the presence of Alex Blake, another long-term Weston collaborator whose work on the double bass is just unique. In a world full of amazing bass players, I am not aware of anyone else quite like Alex Blake. In these hands, the slow tune soon developed a tension that forced me to sit on the edge of my high bar stool.

Following the alto solo, Randy Weston himself began a solo using distinctly North African tonalities. He was on firm ground, having studied the region’s music for the past half a century. The atmosphere was ripe with Saharan winds as Weston hit the keys carefully choosing the notes using a scale that contained the telltale 1.5 step intervals. As the tension further increased, Blake and Clarke would alternate the slow tempo with sudden bursts of double time.

Sitting down on a low stool and hanging onto the fretboard high above his head, Blake picked the strings with the four fingers of his right hand. He slapped the thick strings and beat the big instrument as if it were a flamenco guitar. At the times I’ve seen him perform, I’ve always feared that any time one or more of his fingertips would just be severed and fly across the room.

The second tune, 'Saucer Eyes,' also started with Mr. Weston’s solo piano introduction. This time it displayed clear ragtime influences, as the leader launched into some mean stride piano. Like all real music reformers, Randy Weston is deeply aware of the history of jazz and stands firmly on the shoulders of his predecessors. The song turned more into a conventional jazz tune, with Neil Clarke playing the role of a conventional drummer with a cymbal ride above the congas. Alex Blake slapped his bass irreverently in the up-tempo piece. The tune also gave the opportunity to the trombonist, Benny Powell, to join in and to show his chops. Again, TK Blue took a solo, his clear alto soaring with references to well-known classics such as 'Take the A Train' and 'St. Thomas.'

Randy Weston was born in Brooklyn in 1926. He is a New Yorker who grew up listening to American piano jazz à la Fats Waller and Duke Ellington (he even recorded their songs in the 1950s) and, later, Thelonius Monk. You can still hear this tradition clearly in his playing.

But his adventurous mind led him to explore other musical styles. At the end of World War II, Weston was sent to the Pacific Theatre where he served as staff sergeant in the Philippines and Okinawa. This experience exposed him to Asian music, which in these archipelagos has a particular flavour and rhythm. In the late-1950s, he started exploring the integration of African musical forms into jazz. Already at that time he created a number of highly original and to my ear extremely successful fusion records, such as Uhuru Afrika and Highlife celebrating the newly independent African states. During those years, Randy Weston travelled to West Africa, visiting countries such as Nigeria and Ghana to study their music and culture.

In fact, Randy Weston clearly sees the connection between jazz and its African roots. According to him, there is no contradiction between the tribal traditions found in the villages of West Africa and the urban culture of New York. This is demonstrated, for example, by his masterful composition, 'African Village Bedford-Stuyvesant,' featured on the wonderful double LP The Spirits of Our Ancestors recorded in 1991. The album features a 9-piece jazz band amended with African percussion and instruments, such as the stringed genbri and karkaba metal castanets, all arranged by Weston’s long-time musical partner Melba Liston who regretfully passed away in 1999. The music benefits from guest appearances by two other great musicians who have sought to expand the geographical limits of expression, Dizzy Gillespie and Pharaoh Sanders.

Like all tunes that recent Thursday evening, the next one also started with the leader’s solo piano. Randy Weston again introduced new elements in his prelude to 'African Sunrise.' Playing a powerful bass with his left hand, Weston combined liberally traditional jazz elements with atonal quirks reminiscent of Monk. After the lengthy introduction, the trombone joined the piano in a low ostinato that evolved into a slow Latin tinged rhythm in 7/4. The alto again took the lead, backed by Blake’s bass and Clarke’s conga and maracas.

The next tune was a ballad featuring the horns. TK Blue’s alto was this time so old-fashioned lyrical that one could imagine sitting in a smoky Harlem jazz den of the 1940s. Alex Blake’s bass highlighted the big instrument’s amazing melodic and percussive possibilities in the right hands.

My first introduction to Randy Weston’s music was his 1972 album Blue Moses. I remember as a young schoolboy visiting the NK record store in Stockholm with my mother and choosing this album based on the intriguing concept that the cover and the names of the tunes conveyed. I also recognized the sidemen listed on the jacket. They included both established veterans, like Freddie Hubbard and Ron Carter, as well as rising stars of the calibre of Billy Cobham and Grover Washington, Jr. Perhaps most importantly, the cover informed me that the group included Hubert Laws, who was a great idol and inspiration to me as an aspiring flute player. While the record was a Creed Taylor production on his successful CTI label, there was nothing too sleek or superficial about it. The music was raw and its North African influences unapologetic. Don Sebesky's arrangements featured more instruments than most of jazz orchestras, including such unusual additions as oboe and the French horn.

Randy Weston himself played the Fender Rhodes throughout the record, which somewhat oddly did not distract from the genuineness of the music. On the contrary, the reverb of the Rhodes produced a haunting atmosphere in the rubato parts of the music against which the vocalist Madame Meddah could wail her Berber voice. At times when exotic rhythms took over, the Rhodes sounded more like a West African balaphone.

The interplay between Carter and Cobham is impeccable, the latter refraining from displaying his most showman-like pyrotechnics. The trumpet, tenor and—yes!—the flute all play inspired solos. Still today, the record holds a central place in my collection and, every time I listen to it, I get the goose bumps when, after a complex rhythmic element on the title track, Cobham cracks the rim of his snare drum indicating the beginning of the most swinging straight drive ever and Hubbard dives into a broad-sounded trumpet solo. Or when the electric piano intro of 'Night in Medina' turns into a compelling slow melody played by the horns, with Laws’ flute and percussionist Airto Moreira’s voice hovering mysteriously around it. Yes, indeed, Blue Moses is still just about the best record ever made.

A number of years ago, I was lucky to catch Randy Weston at the World Financial Centre in downtown Manhattan. That time he had brought with him a group of Gnawa musicians from Morocco to supplement the African Rhythms Quintet. The vast atrium with its evergreen winter garden and huge windows giving to the Hudson River and skylights allowing sunlight in from the blue sky was an appropriate location for the music that really should have been played outdoors. The Gnawa are a Moroccan ethnic group belonging to the Sufi Muslim sect known for their music that involves hypnotic rhythms, call-and-response vocals and string instruments.

The concert turned into a riot. The mood was so celebratory that Randy Weston himself, dressed in a flowing Berber gown and wearing a white North African cap, spent more time dancing with a big smile on his face to the music of the Gnawa than playing the piano. I remember that my wife Yoko and I went home completely exhilarated and exhausted, although it was only afternoon and no other stimulants had been involved apart from the music and the general joy.

Back at Jazz Standard, the final full piece the band played was another slow blues in 3/4 time, with Alex Blake producing rubbery glissandos on his bass. As the concert ended and the big man rose from his piano chair, TK Blue finally picked up his flute. Throughout the concert I had watched longingly at the flute and soprano saxophone that he had brought with him to the stage. Alas, he had until now chosen to focus on the alto. This was the first set in the series and I am sure he’d play more on the smaller winds later in the week. At least I was happy to hear the husky flute blow against the slow North African rhythm as the gentleman we had come to celebrate walked backstage.

I truly wish for many, many more happy birthdays to celebrate with the musical force and genius of Randy Weston.

Sandy Weather in Beijing

When I returned to Beijing on a late March evening, the sandstorms had subsided but one could still taste the dust particles in the air. The night was moonless and there was a slight haze. The meteorological authorities had recommended that residents stay inside as much as possible and keep their windows closed. Inhaling too much of the dust would have negative health effects, especially on respiratory organs.

The worst sandstorm of the year hit Beijing on a Saturday. It was the 20th of March 2010. On the following Monday, a second storm enveloped the capital city in a shroud of yellow dust that covered everything from the rooftops to the pavement on the streets. Trees as well as cars were coated by a layer of sandy dust. As an immediate result, dust pollution in the air rose to intolerable levels. People on the streets wore facemasks to protect their mouths and noses. Pharmacies were reportedly selling these items in ten times larger quantities than during normal times. Patients with asthma and other respiratory illnesses flooded the hospitals. Schools banned outdoors sports and even class breaks in the school yard.

Despite these dramatic consequences, the sandstorms were by no means unique in Beijing or elsewhere in China. In fact, according to the Chinese National Meteorological Centre, there have been on the average eight to nine sandstorms in Beijing each year over the past decade. Four-fifths of them occur in the spring.

The news reported that sandstorms over the weekend affected some 270 million people in 16 Chinese provinces covering an area of 2 million square kilometres. The numbers are staggering, but so is the scale of these storms. Fuelled by high winds from the north, the storms affected not only the capital region and the provinces north from it—Shaanxi, Hebei and Shanxi—but reached far south to the coast. Reportedly, the touristic city of Hangzhou—known as the most beautiful in China—in Zheijiang province in the east, and Fujian province on the southeast coast of the country were blanketed in yellow dust. As far south as Hong Kong, air pollution levels caused by the dust shot through the roof. Not even the island of Taiwan was spared: the dust pollution index in the capital of Taipei doubled.

In an interview with the China Daily on 23 March 2010, Duan Li, chief weather forecaster with the Beijing Meteorological Bureau, explained that, strictly speaking, rather than a sandstorm, we had just experienced a mere dust storm. The word ‘sandstorm’ is used when visibility falls to less than 1 km, she clarified, while this time visibility averaged between 2-3 km. Whatever the definition, the Beijing municipal Environmental Protection Bureau reported that the air quality was promptly deteriorating due to the dust and the city was experiencing level-four air pollution.

The perennial sandstorms plaguing the city originate in the northern parts of the country, often in the vast dry open areas of Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet. A perfect sandstorm is created when cold Siberian winds from the northwest meet with soil that has been dried by the warming spring weather. The high wind velocity associated with the winter monsoon can reach 18-28 metres per second. Historically, strong winds occur for about a month every year but in rare cases they can last for up to a hundred days. Often the windiest days coincide with the dry season when sandstorms develop and blow away the dry loose surface soil. This time the epicentre of the sandstorm was located in the Inner Mongolia and Ningxia Hui autonomous regions.

Needless to say, the sandstorms are frequently seen as yet another consequence of human mismanagement of nature. Surely this must be yet one manifestation of how the greed of the contemporary man destroys the very base on which our lives depend? Undoubtedly, overgrazing of animals and deforestation in these naturally arid lands has caused significant erosion and loosened the topsoil that can now be blown away by the winds. Urbanization that these traditionally pastoralist societies are facing has put additional pressures on the natural vegetation that holds the soil together. The grasslands of northern China have been significantly degraded and deserts now cover 16 percent of the country. No-one can deny these facts.

But is this a new phenomenon? And is it particularly related to the exceedingly rapid economic growth and modernization of China over the past couple of decades? It would seem safe to argue, no, on the contrary, grassland degradation and drought have plagued northern China for centuries. My Beijing–based friend John explained how Chang’an, the former eastern terminus of the legendary Silk Road in Shaanxi province, collapsed in the 10th century C.E., partly due to environmental stresses on land and water caused by the large settlement. Sandstorms must have been a nuisance already then, more than a thousand years ago.

It is easy to blame recent developments for environmental degradation and the current trajectory may indeed not be sustainable. However, people’s memories are short and many environmentally concerned folks are intuitively sceptical about economic development. Yet, the history of degradation is often much longer and in some cases economic development has actually helped halt environmental damage as local people’s awareness and possibilities to invest in environmental protection improved. This has been convincingly shown by Jack Ives and Bruno Messerli in their now classic 1989 volume The Himalayan Dilemma: Reconciling Development and Conservation in which the two geographers show that, based on a historical record, the deforestation and land degradation in the world’s highest mountain range goes back hundreds of years and was largely due to colonial policies. According to their research, the intensive smallholder terraced agriculture has actually resulted in the stabilization of the slopes.

A similar storyline emerges from the book The Ordos Plateau of China: An Endangered Environment by another geographer and friend, Hong Jiang at the University of Hawaii. Ordos Plateau in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region is a fragile environment that is easily impacted by human activities, be it animal grazing, agriculture or construction. Subjected to overgrazing and deforestation, the flat open land becomes increasingly exposed to wind erosion that can have disastrous proportions. However, Hong’s detailed historical and field research demonstrates that the most rampant degradation in the region occurred during the first three decades after the takeover by Mao’s revolutionary guard in 1949. During this period that included the 'Great Leap Forward' (read: the opposite), the Chinese masses were mobilized to conquer the nature for the benefit of the new communist state. Since 1978, the degradation started slowing down and has in some areas even been reversed after environmental protection efforts were put in place.

Human factors were the triggering forces for environmental degradation, as well as the determining forces for environmental improvement, she concludes. Government policies played the most important role both in initially leading to the runaway degradation and, later, its reversal. Such policies were more important in determining the environmental outcomes than other factors, including economic growth, population increase and social practices.

With wealth often comes a raised awareness of the importance of environmental quality and an ability to do something about it. The Beijing-based Global Times reported that the Tibetan authorities have pledged to improve close to a million hectares of desert areas over the coming two decades by planting trees and grass. Similarly, according to China Daily, Beijing and its port city Tianjin have invested 4 billion yuan (more than 500 million dollars) into wind and sandstorm control since 2000.

Then again, the prominent ecologist Jiang Gaoming of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has pointed out that tree-planting projects in north China have been in existence for three decades and 60 billion yuan has been spent on preventing the sandstorms, but the results have not been impressive. To the question why this is the case, Jiang provides a set of answers that combine the technical (planting grass rather than trees; need to include remote, inaccessible areas that are ecologically degraded) and the social. His point is that many of these formerly nomadic areas in the northwest just are too fragile for permanent settlement and their carrying capacities have been exceeded by the current population levels (just as they were towards the end of the glory of Chang'an). Furthermore, there is a link to poverty, as poor people rely on the grasslands to feed their livestock and clear land for their crops.

But for now the dust had settled and I was able to enjoy a pleasant lunch in a courtyard of an old hutong converted into a trendy café near the Lama Temple just two days after the second sandstorm. The sky was blue and breathing the air was no problem. Still, another eight to ten sandstorms are expected to hit northern China between April and May this year. Zhang Peiqun, chief forecaster at the National Meteorological Centre, explained in the newspaper that this could be predicted due to the fluctuation between warm spring weather and sudden cold spells causing heavy winds to blow away the dry sand. We got a demonstration of the sudden variability of the weather the same evening when wet snow like white rags was pouring from the sky and everything was momentarily covered in sleet.

Like everywhere, springtime weather in Beijing is unpredictable. What is sure, however, is that the sandstorms will recur for the foreseeable future.

Tripoli

Libya does not have a great reputation amongst Westerners. That’s too bad, because the country actually has a lot to offer for a visitor: it has unique historic sites—including what is said to be the best preserved Roman ruins outside of Italy in Sabratha and Leptis Magna—decent food and a beautiful Mediterranean coastline. Yet, the US State Department keeps Libya on its watch list and even the Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler included Libya in his travel book Bad Lands: A Tourist on the Axis of Evil.

Libya’s bad rap of course has its roots in the unorthodox rule by the country’s long-time dictator, Muammar al-Gaddafi, whose larger-than-life pictures adorn all public spaces in Tripoli. There are so many of them and most of them different from each other: some depict the leader scanning the horizon for new challenges with a far-sighted look in his glinting eyes, while others show him smiling at his subjects in a fatherly and encouraging manner. Some are clearly from his younger days; others show a more mature Gaddafi sporting a moustache and a goatee. There are even posters of him praying on his knees at a mosque. The pious colonel is personally well-known for travelling with a troupe of gorgeous but lethal female bodyguards.

In 2009, the nation celebrated 40 years of Gaddafi’s rule. Libya has been accused of being a state sponsor of terrorism, and most likely for a good reason. Already in 1986 during the Reagan administration, the United States bombed Tripoli and the Benghazi region accusing Libya of terrorism. The United Nations imposed sanctions on Libya in 1992. These were suspended in 1999 and finally lifted in 2003 when Gaddafi agreed not to pursue weapons of mass destruction and voluntarily gave up his nuclear program. The relations with the West took a new hit in August 2009 when the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi was freed from a Scottish prison due to his terminal cancer. Unwisely, Gaddafi gave the convicted terrorist a hero’s welcome back home.

Personality cult aside, Gaddafi has done many good things for his country. He has posited himself as the self-proclaimed champion of Pan-Africanism, but his is probably the only country on the continent where abject poverty really does not exist. Women’s position is also quite equal compared with most other Arab countries. Women still wear headscarves and dress modestly in Islamic garb, but in all offices that I visited there were many highly professional and outspoken women in senior professional positions. Women’s literacy rate at 78.4 percent is almost as high as that of men—and exceptional in the Arab region. Today, the UN ranks Libyan Arab Jamahiriya—as it is officially called—as a country of ‘high human development.’ Its GDP per capita has doubled from $7,250 in 1990 to $14,364 in 2007 and life expectancy of the Libyans has risen from 62 to 71.6 years (and for women it is now 76.8 years, at par with many industrialized nations!).

One obviously unintended consequence of the international sanctions was that over the decades when the country was isolated ordinary Libyans suffered from deficiencies in education. Due to the isolation, the generation that today occupies important positions is largely monolingual Arabic speakers. Some people speak English, but the language skills of even well-placed government officials tend to be meagre.

The capital, Tripoli where I spent several days in December, is a historical city, dating back to 7th century BCE when it was apparently founded by the Phoenicians. Today it is a clean, white city, despite being Libya’s main port and commercial centre. Coming from anywhere in the neighbouring countries east or west—or north across the sea, for that matter—it gives a neat and organized impression. The architecture is quite attractive and most of the buildings are white, irrespective of whether they are of colonial or Arabic origin. Many have been renovated or are now being renovated. There is no litter on the streets and the traffic is more orderly than in other cities of comparable size.

My travel companions, Ragaa Makharita and my colleague Mike, and I had to visit a number of government offices, many of which were located in the suburbs outside of the city centre. Driving in the daylight confirmed what I had already observed during my first drive into town from the airport at night time. The suburbs were generally neat and orderly. Plenty of new housing seemed to be available and most of the complexes looked rather attractive. I asked Ragaa, an old Libya hand, whether there were any slums in Tripoli. He said no. All the slums that used to be there were or are being cleared and new housing is being created for the inhabitants. There are apparently many new projects that are being constructed by Korean firms. It was striking to see large groups of African day labourers gathered at virtually all major junctions outside of the centre waiting to be picked up for the various construction sites. This entire arrangement thus bypasses the traditional 'development partners' in Europe and North America.

One of the institutes we visited was the Libyan National Meteorological Centre on its new and impressive premises outside of the city. The UN has supported the centre in upgrading its operations and facilities with technical assistance from the World Meteorological Organization and the French Meteorological Services. The spic-and-span facilities now contain state-of-the-art computer systems capable of receiving satellite information and translating it into accurate real-time weather reports. This has been one of the most successful international collaborations in the country in recent years and a flagship project for the UN. What characterized the project and also lay behind its success was that weather services are largely technical and their political dimensions do not seriously challenge any mode of cooperation. The UN Development Programme that was managing the international effort was able to procure equipment and expertise where it was available without getting into the ill-defined issues of governance and democracy.

I had an interesting discussion with two senior officials at the centre, Muftaf Khdashi and Hisham Ganedi, Director of Forecasting and Director of Technical Directorate, respectively, about cloud seeding. Libya, located between the Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara desert, is dry, its natural climate characterized by sparse and erratic rainfall. The country's leader has for long attempted to overcome such challenges to boosting agricultural and industrial development through various schemes, many of them quite bold to say the least. One of the more ‘visionary’ (read: ‘dangerous’) schemes has been the Great Manmade River, which aims to transport huge amounts of water from the Nubian Aquifer to Tripoli, Benghazi and other cities. While Gaddafi has called it the 'Eighth Wonder of the World,' it has been widely criticized for its unknown and potentially disastrous ecological impacts, including exhausting the huge fossil aquifer it draws upon in possibly just a century. But the project has proceeded since 1983 when the Colonel passed it through the General People’s Congress.

Another scheme, implemented by the Libyan National Meteorological Centre where I found myself on that particular sunny but extremely dry morning, pertains to cloud seeding. The aim is to distribute silver iodide into the clouds so that moisture in them will condense around these artificial particles and fall onto the ground as rain. Such technocratic solutions to natural problems are embraced also by other hubristic countries, notably China, with little consideration for their potential unforeseen negative impacts. How is the work going?, I interrogated my hosts as we strolled along the long corridors inside the centre’s headquarters. Not very well, was the answer. While cloud seeding appears to increase rainfall, it is very difficult to manage. Of course, it can only be applied from November to April when in the first place there are some clouds and rains might also appear naturally, so it’s actually hard to verify the actual increment caused by the seeding. More importantly, it’s impossible to accurately direct the rains. The Mediterranean weather patterns are unpredictable and orographic rains fall as moist air cools down while climbing the slopes behind the coastline. Sometimes, the rains become torrential and destroy the very crops they were intended to sooth.

Our visit to the meteorological centre took place on the day following the end of the 2009 climate summit, which had in the last minute produced only a watered down version of the Copenhagen Accords disappointing many activists. One of the many frontlines in the climate change debates is between those who urge serious cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and those who believe in technological solutions. On a small scale, the Libyan cloud seeding experiments demonstrate the practical difficulties in managing weather. Influencing global climate through technological means—many of which are now being cooked up in the wild dreams of mad scientists—would be infinitely more difficult and wrought with unimagined and possibly catastrophic consequences.

Clearly, one area where improvements are still needed if Libya is to attract more visitors is service. Ragaa, Mike and I stayed at what used to be one of the better large hotels in the centre of Tripoli. The building had all the necessary attributes to be fine—a solid construction, an elegant old-fashioned lobby, spacious rooms—but it wasn’t. The guest rooms had absolutely awful, narrow beds with only shallow flat mattresses and shabby linen thrown on them. The bathroom had hordes of uninvited non-paying occupants who would scurry to their hiding places brown antennae wagging always when I unexpectedly turned on the lights. After a couple of times, I learned to wait a few seconds before entering the bare room.

Most bizarrely, the hotel would want to receive payment for the room every evening in advance, although I had a reservation with them for the entire period I would stay in the country. Needless to say, this was a cash economy and no credit cards would be accepted. Like in cheap New York eateries that don’t either accept credit cards, there was an ATM in the lobby. So, one had to withdraw the funds and provide the lazy cashier a thick pile of well-worn dinars in order for him to agree to open the room door for you. On my last night, I had carefully miscalculated my supply of dinars, so that I wouldn’t have any left over upon leaving, and fell short by four (amounting to very little in any convertible currency). The man who knew me by then did let me into my room while I tried to contact Mike to lend me the missing notes. Unfortunately, he had gone out and couldn’t help at that very moment. Later, the cashier made a big joke about this to the both of us, repeatedly telling in halting English that I wouldn’t be able to leave in the morning without doling out the money.

On the last evening, our small group headed to the Alsaht Street fish market along the Mediterranean coast. Ragaa was our eager guide, as during his last visit to Tripoli he had been very disappointed to find the entire market closed. The evening was already dark when we arrived at the open door market but the numerous stalls were filled with fresh fish and other sea creatures. The vendors were all calling to us to inspect their catch. We approached one friendly fisherman and each selected a silver sided medium sized Dorato and instructed the delighted man to simply grill it to perfection. As a next step, we selected the restaurant where we would enjoy our meal. This was easy, as Ragaa led us directly to his favourite establishment, Astakosa, a spacious but warm restaurant spread over two floors. The system was interesting. The fishermen and the restaurants were independent of each other and one could order the former to bring the prepared fish to any one of the restaurants established adjacent to the fishing port. The restaurants made their money by selling the accompanying rice, cous-cous and vegetables. We started our meal with a wonderful assortment of olives, fresh salads and various mezze, as well as delicious seafood soup. When the fish came, it was grilled to perfection and tasted heavenly with ample lemon squeezed on it.

The enjoyable dinner helped me to endure the innate jokes of the lethargic cashier at the hotel and my full stomach provided a needed extra cushion against the hard cardboard bed before leaving Tripoli in the wee hours of the morning.

Casablanca

Casablanca. A city made legendary by a movie. The name conjures up images of intrigue, danger and, most of all, romance in a distinctly unromantic time. Casablanca is the largest city in Morocco and a major port on the Atlantic coast. The city, like the country, is quite liberal and rather cosmopolitan, defying the stereotypes of today’s Arab world. In fact, the North African nation of originally Berber culture is a relative newcomer to the ranks of Arab nations having been conquered by the Arabs arriving there via Andalusia only in the 8th century. Spain is just a stone’s throw away, only 14 km from the north coast across the Strait of Gibraltar.

Morocco has changed rapidly in the past couple of decades, much of it to the better. I was in town attending an international conference on national evaluation capacity, which focused on monitoring and evaluation for public sector accountability. The idea is that if citizens follow and assess the performance of their government, the latter has an incentive to ensure results that benefit the people. Transparent systems that monitor the performance of authorities and evaluate in an independent and credible manner the actual results of policies and programs can be powerful tools for democratic governance. The conference was organized jointly by the UN Development Programme and the newly established National Human Development Observatory under the Moroccan Prime Minister’s Office, known as ONDH based on its French name (Obvervatoire National du Développement Humain).

On the evening before the start of the conference, I was sitting in a lovely traditional restaurant, La Fibule, serving wonderful Moroccan cuisine. The host was Rachid Benmokhtar Benabdellah, president of ONDH, an intelligent and gentle man with a warm glint in his eye. Benmokhtar had studied IT engineering in France and started his working life with IBM. He had made most of his career in the private sector until he had been appointed Minister of Education by the King. He told stories about him being the first minister in the country to visit schools in remote rural areas and how his staffers were horrified when the minister wanted to talk freely with the local people.

The meal started with an amazing selection of mezze, small plates of North African starters ranging from hummus, babaganoush, tomato and beet salads to tasty pastries with meat and vegetable fillings. There were fantastic ornaments in the ceiling and the walls carved so delicately that one could only stare in awe at the craftsmanship. We were sipping good locally produced Cabernet Sauvignon and discussing the situation in Morocco.

“We’ve had some bombings here,” said Benmokhtar, “but always when there’s trouble here there’s some link to Europe, usually Belgium or France, from where the radicalized Islamists come from.” The soft spoken engineer continued: “Moroccans are not strict Muslims. It’s all mixed up with other traditions here.” This was confirmed by, Salima Aissaoua, a young woman who had only recently returned from France to join ONDH. Many Moroccans, like her own family, are not even believers but enjoy all celebrations, whether of Muslim, Christian or Berber origin. I noted that I had seen very few headscarves during my brief stay in Casablanca. Salima said that there was absolutely no pressure to wear a headscarf and that in the countryside it was even freer. This sounded counterintuitive, but on second thought may be understandable, as the Berber culture remains strong in the rural areas.

Another ONDH colleague, Mohammed Bijaad, was a Berber from Agadir. He had never learned English, so our discussion relied on my halting French. Bijaad originally went to a French school in Agadir. Then in 1960 a major earthquake struck his hometown and little Mohammed had to be evacuated with his family. Just when it would have been time for him to start learning English, his new school in the interior introduced Arabic instead.

As we continued with the main course, a delicious pot of chicken, rice and vegetables baked in a clay pot, Tajine, we were entertained by a highly skilful musician playing Oud, a traditional lute, and singing joyous songs whose lyrics mixed love and longing with religious themes. Some Moroccan colleagues joined in the songs and enthusiastically clapped their hands to the complex rhythms. It was a spontaneous and relaxing evening with excellent food and wine and delightful entertainment.

The conference started the following morning with more than sixty participants from twenty-two governments in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as select representatives from international organizations. One of the key discussions from the beginning focused around who has the right to evaluate government policy. The room became divided. On the one side were those, like Angela Bester, a former government official from South Africa now with the private firm Deloitte-Touche, who in her opening salvo questioned the assumption that policy was always right and the tendency to blame everything on poor implementation. On the other side were some government officials, vocally led by a gentleman from Ghana, who argued that only the government itself could assess policy and, ultimately in a democracy, the voters would decide whether it worked. The role of independent evaluation was only to focus on programs and projects. This debate would be a recurrent theme over the coming three days.

In the evening I wanted to escape the hotel where the conference was held and where all the participants stayed. I went for a walk in the city centre—Centre Ville—where we were located. French is more commonly spoken in Morocco, at least in the big cities, than Arabic and I had noted that amongst all the government officials and academics I had met French was the language in which they would communicate with each other. I crossed l’Avenue de l’Armée Royale and entered into lively quarters with narrow streets and shops. I passed a bar from where an animated cacophony of discussion was flowing to the street. Its name was Chatan. With only a second’s hesitation, I entered the premises and ordered a Stork (bière de luxe première). The place was a far cry from what one could expect in an Islamic country. It was far from sophisticated (an understatement). Everyone—every single one of the patrons—was smoking and the air was thick with blue cigarette smoke. The age bracket was wide, I would say from people in their twenties into their sixties, which suited me just fine. I would melt in, I gathered. The present king and his father, King Hassan V and VI, stared from the wall above the bar counter. The old Italian hit Volare turned into Michael Jackson, while Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones were silently robbing a vault on the small old TV screen. A large elderly woman in a pink kaftan was gesticulating agitatedly to her companions. A guy leaning on the counter already had five empty beer bottles in front of him—and it was only 7 pm on a week night. In one corner, a young woman dressed in jeans and a sweater stood alone smoking and drinking beer. At a nearby table, a shabby looking man was pouring beer into the mouth of a woman wearing a baseball cap.

While I was taking in the scene, I felt a bump and thought the man with a moustache and dirty red jacket had accidentally crashed into me. To my surprise, he handed me another bottle of Stork and said in gruff English that it was for me. We went through an elaborate handshake, shifting grips and ending in a rough bear hug, as I was profusely thanking him. The man returned to his table and his red wine. In Casa, the lingua franca is French, yet the man had spoken to me in English. Apparently, I hadn’t quite melted in and passed for a local. Maybe he was a seaman who had sailed the seven seas and visited bars like this in innumerable ports? Or was I just romanticizing things?

The port remains an important part of this city of some 3.5 million inhabitants. The architecture is today mostly modern. Wide thoroughfares cross the centre. The old town, Medina, still stands and is surrounded by the tall wall since time immemorial. Inside it is bustling with endless alleys, small shops and a bazaar. There are also cafés and small hotels. It is a place where one had better keep track of the wallet, both for pickpockets in the crowded and winding alleys, as well as the shopkeepers determined to part you from your money. Bargaining was never a sport I mastered, so I mostly focused on enjoying the colourful scene in which locals and visitors mingled. Casablanca is not a touristic city. Its raison d’être is purely commercial.

Morocco’s economy is doing relatively well. On my first day while driving from the capital of Rabat to Casablanca by the fine houses lining the churning ocean front, I asked the driver, Habibi, about the economy. His initial comment: “Ça va.” But the business was still good, he elaborated, and generally things were looking up.

The United Nations ranks Morocco as a ‘medium human development’ country. The country has made strides in the recent past. Its GDP per capita has more than doubled from $1,700 to more than $4,000 in just two decades. Social indicators show similar improvements: life expectancy has risen from 62 to 71 years and adult literacy from 34 to 52 percent. Especially female literacy levels have improved rapidly. While in 1987, only 22 percent of the women could read, this figure is now 43 percent. In particular, during the rule of the present youthful King Hassan VI, the human rights situation in Morocco has improved significantly. Still, big differences do exist between urban and rural dwellers. Some 14 percent of Moroccans still subsist on less than $2 per day.

On the day after the conference, I walked to the Mosque Hassan II, which took me about 45 minutes along a main street. It passed between the wall of the old Medina and the harbour; then onwards past the fashionable restaurants of La Sqala and Rick’s Café, which successfully capitalizes on its imitation of the scene where Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman meet. There was a segment that was quite slum-like, although nothing compared with the shanties in other African countries further south. Women there wore their traditional djellabas. Like everywhere, poverty and tradition went hand in hand here.

The mosque, while not a historical building, is impressive nevertheless. It was commissioned by its namesake King Hassan II in 1980 and was completed only in 1993. The construction is said to have cost $800 million. It is located in a gorgeous spot right on the shore of the open Atlantic Ocean. The huge yard with the smaller buildings surrounding it reminded me of Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. The mosque has a capacity to accommodate 25,000 worshippers and its minarets rise to the height of 210 metres.

While I was admiring the considerable waves breaking to the shore by the Corniche, Casablanca’s seaside entertainment district, I met Mohammed Sharif, a man of my own age or perhaps a few years older. He introduced himself as a tour guide and after some chitchat offered his services to me. I told him that I unfortunately didn’t have time for sightseeing. This was partially true, as I had reserved the afternoon and evening for myself, having spent several days in the company of many people. We nevertheless talked for a while. Today was Hijra, the Muslim new year, marking the Prophet’s and his followers’ move from Mecca to Medina in the year 622 CE. This was a big holiday and a long weekend all over the Islamic world. Here in relatively secular Morocco people enjoyed the long weekend. Like Mohammed said: ”In Morocco religion is not that important. We welcome everyone here, Christians, Jews, Muslims.”

A powerful wind blew from the sea raising dust into the air from the dry sidewalk. My eyeglasses were dimmed by the salt in the air spraying from the breaking waves. Mohammed knew that this northerly wind had brought first snow into the Atlas mountains.

I walked back to Centre Ville. Everything was dusty and my throat was dry. I bought a Fanta from a kiosk and found an old shoeshine man. He did a good job on my dusty shoes. There was a Moroccan man standing next to me having his shoes shined. I asked him how much I should pay; he told me 5 dirhams. When I gave the shiner his five dirham coin plus some change, he protested wildly. Expectations are that foreigners should add another zero at the end of the bill.

I had indeed decided to enjoy my last evening alone in Casablanca. I started it with a visit to a sauna to relax my sore muscles after my walk of several hours earlier in the day. Clean and equipped with an appropriate thirst, I then again crossed l’Avenue de l’Armée Royale and entered Saillant, a bar that I had already visited on earlier occasion. It is in the same neighbourhood as Chatan, but a notch above in style and clientele. It still is just a simple establishment with a long counter and a few wooden tables. Like on my earlier visits, I was the only foreigner. I ordered a Stork from the bar maid who reminded me of Herman Munster. When I took out a 100 dirham note to pay, she pleaded with me to find smaller change. The equivalent of $12 was far too large a denomination for this place. She only relented when I promised to have a second beer afterwards. Having served me, she returned to her own beer and cigarette while Egyptian style pop played on the background.

I continued my trip and followed a route that I had memorized from a map that I had studied prior to leaving my hotel this evening. The shop-lined pedestrian streets and plazas with fountains in the city centre were crowded with people and the lights from the various establishments provided a cosy atmosphere in the darkening night. After one junction, the street turned dark and quiet and I started to doubt my mental map. Just when I was about to turn around, I detected the sign to Al Mounia. A wooden door opened to a garden and I walked through it to the restaurant known for its authentic Moroccan cuisine. The two small rooms were decorated with elaborate carvings. A sofa circled the walls and small round copper tables were arranged in front of it. The place was not crowded yet. In a nearby table were three men discussing in Swedish. The waiters, all men, wore red fezzes on their heads, pasha pants, vests and pointed slippers. While thinking about what to eat, I started the meal with succulent olives and delicious bread, which I washed down with local Cuvée du President Cabernet. I decided to order brochettes kefta—Moroccan grilled meatballs—which came with six plates with different kinds of salads of tomato, onion, eggplant, zucchini, carrots and peppers. The food was exquisite both to the palate and the eye, and one could hardly eat a healthier yet fulfilling meal. By the time I left around 9:30 p.m., the place was starting to fill up. With the Swedes also gone, all customers were locals.

Not quite done yet, I headed to Cas-Bar, which I had heard was a hot nightspot in Casa. At 11 p.m. the place was still sedate but people were starting to arrive in groups. The majority appeared to be young women and all were Moroccan. The theme turned out to be karaoke, but what a feast it turned out to be. With the exception of a few English pop songs, all of the songs that evening were in Arabic. A bald headed DJ in the corner made sure that the right discs were turning. Without exception, the singers were good. They attacked with flair the polyrhythmic songs with meandering melodies. Two men sang a series of duets in complex harmonies. A particular young woman in a black miniskirt stood up to sing several songs with the panache of a professional karaoke star. The only place where the Islamic propriety was evident was the videos accompanying the songs: instead of people, they showed bees pollinating flowers. Their meaning would hardly elude the revellers.

On the last day of the conference Benmokhtar had once and for all settled the question of who could evaluate policy. In his final speech, he recalled how King Hassan VI was concerned with the lack of development in the country. While in purely economic terms Morocco was almost as wealthy as Portugal, it was lagging seriously behind in terms of human development. The King appointed a group headed by Benmokhtar to evaluate the policies of the past decades to find out what had gone wrong. The evaluation was highly critical and identified all the areas where the country’s policies were amiss: education, distribution of resources, gender, democratic governance, health inequities, and the differences between urban and rural areas. All findings of the evaluation were made public and decisions were taken to revise policies accordingly. Evaluating policy requires political will and courage, concluded Benmokhtar. As he said, the King did not have to worry about re-election. The point didn’t go unnoticed by many political appointees in the audience.

House of Peace (Still)

Dar es Salaam was like a breath of fresh air after Nairobi. Literally, as a breeze blew from the ocean. There were tree-lined boulevards and the traffic was completely tolerable. The Indian Ocean coastal city whose name translates into ‘House of Peace’ from the onset appeared to live up to its meaning. The harbour was protected from the worst outbursts of the sea by being secluded in the middle of the city, surrounded by land from all sides with just a narrow opening to the open water. I was staying with a less aptly named Harbour View Hotel that could only boast a sea view from a handful of rooms on the upper floors. I didn’t really mind, as my room was otherwise more than adequate (never mind the pigeon nest partly blocking my non-harbour view) and the walk to the seaside was rather brief.

On our first afternoon in the city, my travel companion Jed and I went for a long walk on the waterfront. At the pier where the ferries for Zanzibar departed, we were immediate accosted by persistent men who tried to sell us a boat trip to the island. We were only left in peace when we explained that this was our first day in town and that we couldn’t possibly travel immediately again. With the phone number of the most insistent tour promoter in hand, we left the port area. Jed would use their services some days later on a trip to the island. This afternoon we strolled on the lively but not too crowded Sokoine Drive, then up to Kivukoni Road and on to Ocean Road. The traffic was sparse and the sidewalks clean. Well-dressed ladies in colourful African dresses mingled with equally fashionably, but less colourfully dressed Muslim women with their heads demurely covered with scarves. A shoe salesman had spread his selection on the broad pavement in the shade of trees. In front of a white Christian church a choir was singing joyous gospel hymns.

A traditional felucca with its white sails contrasting against the blue sky was silently heading towards the ocean. Seeing the boat I fantasized of the fabled days maybe five centuries ago when Arab and South Asian traders prowled the coast of what is today Tanzania. What a cosmopolitan mix it must have been in the trading posts at that time, where a huge variety of wares, fish, spices and other things were traded. That was the time when Swahili, the lingua franca of most of East Africa, also developed, as the Arabic traders mixed with the native Bantu populations. Indian Ocean has almost a mystic glamour to me.

We entered into the fish market that was almost closing for the day. There were still many fishermen and women selling the morning’s catch of octopi and sleek silvery fish, although their supplies were getting depleted. On the beach behind the market, fishing folks were taking care of their nets and boats, while children were playing in the shallow water.

Further north, in front of the huge grounds of the presidential palace, the strand was wide between the thinly trafficked road and the sea. People were strolling leisurely or lingering in the late Sunday afternoon sun. A family with a child strapped with African cloth to the mother’s back; young couples holding hands exchanging glances; an elderly man with a white Muslim cap on his head sitting on a boulder contemplating the vastness of the ocean. The afternoon mood was tranquil and beautiful.

Unlike in most large cities on the continent, a walk through Dar es Salaam is not to invite trouble. Even two muzungus as clearly from out of town as we were are mostly left alone, except for the few eager trip salesmen around the pier. Not for a single moment did we feel insecure, let alone threatened. Even in the evening after dark when we would walk along Samora Machel Road to find a restaurant to eat dinner we felt no danger, despite the fact that even in the city centre the streets at night are dark and quite deserted.

Amidst all the bad news from Africa, Tanzania seldom grabs international attention. In Tanzania’s case, no news is indeed good news. The country has lived peacefully and rather harmoniously for the decades since its independence. It is a place where people of different cultural and religious backgrounds mingle peacefully. The name itself implies an amalgamation of two separate countries and cultures: Tanganyika and Zanzibar. Tanganyika, before the war a part of the German East Africa, then a British colony, gained independence in 1961 under the leadership of Julius Nyerere. Even the independence struggle was quite peaceful and the transfer of power uneventful compared with, say, neighbouring Kenya. The island of Zanzibar off the coast had in turn been ruled by Arabs for centuries. They had sailed there from Oman with the assistance of the monsoon winds. It too became a British colony but there the overthrow of the colonialists in 1963 was more sudden and not quite as peaceful. That story is told brilliantly by Ryszard Kapuściński who was among the handful of foreign correspondents to reach the island just days after the coup by Abeid Karume, the leader of Zanzibar’s Afro-Shirazi Party representing the black African population on the island. The two newly independent nations merged in 1964 to form the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar.

Nyerere became the long-term president and TANU (Tanganyika African National Union), the party he had formed in 1954 to oppose the Brits, would be the only one in the country until the mid-1980s. The president was known as Mwalimu or teacher in Swahili, his profession before turning fulltime into politics. A modest man who avoided the excesses of many of the other leaders on the continent, Nyerere made turning Tanzania into a socialist paradise as his priority. For its well-meaning socialist policies, the country became the favourite of ‘progressive’ donor countries, such as the Scandinavians. Taxpayers in the Nordic countries chipped in when Mwalimu launched his disastrous Ujamaa policies. The goal of Ujamaa—‘Familyhood’—was to collectivize farming and to bring about benefits to the community from rounding up the farmers into planned villages. Many a Northern socialist thought this a great idea.

In fact, Nyerere’s worldview had been strongly influenced by Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China. Tanzania sought the support of China, which willingly complied. Luckily while the teacher modelled his nation accordingly, the policies were implemented somewhat half-heartedly. Traditional villages were systematically destroyed and people were herded into the brave new planned settlements. Thousands perished, of course, but Ujamaa never resulted in quite such terror as the Cultural Revolution or mass starvation like another one of Mao’s lunacies, the ‘Great Leap Forward,’ had done in China. Yet, the collective economics continued in Tanzania much after China had abandoned its most extreme social experiments and decided that getting rich was actually glorious. The Tanzanians were to wear Mao-inspired safari suits long after the Chinese themselves has switched to dark business suits and designer silk ties.

The decades of socialist experimentation did impoverish this beautiful nation, rich in natural resources. According to the United Nations Development Programme, Tanzania ranks 159th in human development out of the 177 countries ranked. Almost 90 percent of its population lives with less than US$2 per day. Tanzania possesses huge wealth by way of gold, diamonds, platinum, uranium, coltan and many other precious minerals. Tanzanite is a precious stone that has only been found in Tanzania and has a higher price by carat than diamonds. The problem is that Tanzania has not been able to develop any industry and all of its valuable raw materials are shipped out in their unprocessed form providing the value added to foreigners from South Africa, Europe and North America.

Another, obvious, source of wealth in Tanzania is its fabulous nature, which holds enormous potential for tourism. Kilimanjaro that rises close to 5,900 metres above the sea level is the highest mountain on the African continent. Its snowy cap shines bright white above the surrounding savannah beckoning climbers from all over the world. World famous game parks like Serengeti with their still abundant wildlife, including lions, giraffes, elephants and other large animals, are also in Tanzanian territory. The crater of Ngorongoro is unique on earth with its stupendous landscape and animal wealth. In 2000 when I was in Serengeti I could observe the different levels of accommodations that had been put up for the safari tourists. Some of them were truly upscale catering to the wealthy foreigners who want to experience their wildlife watching without having to spend the night in conditions lacking adequate facilities. Others were closer to the bush. Either way, visitors would have a wonderful opportunity to experience the dramatic African nature.

The former US ambassador to the United Nations, Andrew Young, has recently produced a film focusing on the positive sides of Africa, choosing Tanzania as the scene for the movie. In my view, Young places far too much trust on tourism and associated services and industries as the saviour of Tanzania. However, commenting on how the wildlife in the park has become accustomed to the four-wheel drives hauling tourists as being just other peaceful animals, the good ambassador makes a sweet point saying that that’s how we all should be approaching Africa, like “just another peace loving animal.”

Unfortunately, environmental challenges are mounting. There has been a prolonged drought that threatens the farming communities. Agricultural production is naturally dependent on the erratic rains and food shortages are looming. It is predicted that there will be famine, at least in some parts of the country, in the coming season. I asked Damian Gabagambi, a senior researcher at a non-governmental centre for research and training on poverty reduction in Dar es Salaam, REPOA, what his thoughts were about the situation. He explained at length the challenges that the agricultural systems have feeding the rapidly growing population. The expansion of agriculture is leading to deforestation and farmers are invading protected areas, like the Kilombero Valley floodplain in the south that has been designated as a protected wetland under the Ramsar Convention. In an attempt to intensify production, the government is promoting the indiscriminate use of inorganic fertilizer, which will have serious environmental consequences.

According to Dr. Gabagambi, the free range of livestock is catastrophic. Especially with progressive land degradation in their traditional homelands, the pastoralists are roaming everywhere, their goats and sheep clearing the land of all vegetation.

One of Tanzania’s greatest challenges when it comes to both economic development and the environment pertains to population. The country today has more than 41 million people and still growing at an estimated rate of just over 2 percent every year. The population is young: the median age is just 18 years and 43 percent of the population is in the 0-14 age bracket. This puts an enormous strain on agricultural land. The limited availability of farm land and decreasing size of holdings forces people to move after better livelihood opportunities.

As people are pushed out of agriculture, small-scale mining has become one of the biggest environmental problems in this country of ample mineral resources. There is a veritable gold rush as people scramble to open up open pits for mining. In several parts of the country these mines have created a landscape pockmarked with unattractive scars. Habitats for plants and animals are destroyed as farmers cut the trees to gain access to the land perceived to contain their future fortunes and to provide fuel for its exploitation. At the same time, the mines are a major health hazard to the miners themselves. Many use mercury and other dangerous chemicals to extract the minerals. Many do not know about the huge risks they are taking for their lives, as the chemicals destroy their health and the heavy metals affect their central nervous system, like in the famous historical mercury pollution case of Minamata in Japan. Others know, but do not care. Like a assistant director in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, Servus Amo Sagday remarked when we were discussing the issue: “People don’t worry about the longer-term consequences as they want to make money now.”

Said another official: “Tanzania is committed to environmental conservation, but if a foreign firm now discovered uranium in one of the national parks, many members of parliament would be tempted to grant a concession for a mine.”

Many rural people move to the cities. The population of Dar es Salaam, the largest city in the country, has burgeoned from a medium-sized town of less than half a million inhabitants 30 years ago to the current 3 million. For how long can the city remain as liveable as it still is today? Many of the migrants have a hard time finding jobs. And as Tanzania’s education system has been able to train an increasing number of school leavers unemployment becomes a ticking time bomb.

Since the first democratic elections in 1995, there have been certain tensions. Some of the elections have been contentious and there have been squabbles between the mainland and Zanzibar. One day when we were driving through the city, Jed asked Blandina Chege, our counterpart in the Vice President’s Office, a question about Zanzibar. Her response was revealing: ”They are so much trouble,” she sighed. ”They don’t want independence but they want to be different. All the small islands are troublesome. You go to international meetings and they are always talking as if they were afraid someone annexing them. All the small nations are like that. Not Swaziland, but when you go to African meetings, the Lesotho representatives are always talking endlessly. Same with Uganda and Rwanda and Burundi; they want to have their way.”

Mwalimu, with all his mistakes, demonstrated that he actually was a descent chap by officially retiring from politics in 1990 and keeping to his word that Tanzania would be a democratic country. With this gracious exit from the national politics, he truly achieved the status of an elderly statesman. He continued to be active on the world scene and was the chief mediator in the conflict in Burundi towards the end of his life in the late-1990s.

In 2009, the Ibrahim Prize was not delivered. The news hit the stands while I was in Tanzania. In 2007 Mo Ibrahim, the Sudanese-born business mogul and founder of Celtel, established the Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership. The prize is awarded to a “democratically elected former African Executive Head of State or Government who has served their term in office within the limits set by the country's constitution and has left office in the last three years.” The selection committee is chaired by Kofi Annan, the past UN Secretary-General, and consists of such luminaries as the former president of Finland Martti Ahtisaari (who was awared the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize), Mary Robinson (the former president of Ireland and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights), Mohamed El Baradei (the high profile head of the International Atomic Energy Agency) and others. This year the committee refused to nominate anyone for the prize. This is sad testimony to the fact that in recent times no African leader can claim to have the qualities required to actually deserve such a prize. What is it with these people that makes them—allows them!—go against people’s will year after year, often decade after decade?

On my last day in town when there was a drizzling rain, Blandina, Jed and I searched for a place to have lunch. We entered a simple establishment with a few tables and coal grill visible from the dining area. Its name, Al Basha, and the menu suggested Middle Eastern specialties. We sat at a wooden table and after a while were approached by a large Tanzanian waiter with a friendly smile on his face. We said that we were a bit in a hurry and wanted to know what items could be served rather fast. The bearlike waiter slowly explained that, because the food was prepared on the premises, it would all take some time and it would be difficult to rush. There were no other customers in the restaurant. Three cooks were visible loitering around the grill. Deciding to try some other place—there were several in the vicinity—we got up to go, when a young Lebanese woman rushed from behind a counter and asked us to please sit down again. She was apparently the proprietor of the venue and had witnessed our interaction with the kind but inefficient employee. She immediately told us what would be fast and what to combine for a fulfilling lunch. In 30 seconds or so she virtually told us what to order and we were soon sitting contented with glasses of fresh mango juice in front of us. I couldn’t but help to wonder whether the lack of urgency displayed by the Tanzanian staff was not another legacy of Nyerere’s socialist experiment.

Still today Dar es Salaam remains a pleasant place, but one must be concerned about its future, as well as the future of the entire country. Coping with the challenges of a youthful and rapidly growing population, environmental degradation and climatic variability will require that the economy will be able to expand to absorb all the new entrants into the modern sector. Otherwise, the enviably harmonious lifestyle in the House of Peace will be threatened. It is up to the Tanzanians to create the conditions for such economic development that will provide opportunities and incentives for