Furaha ya Kuzaliwa

It’s almost funny the quarks and qualms one may find while traveling to certain areas. Where we’re from locally its funny how the Upper Peninsula of Michigan has the “upper” accent yah know? Or how etiquette from region to region changes. In Spain it isn’t regarded as impolite for someone to “stare you down” on subway, or in China and other Asian minor nations for an entire family to live in a space the size of and American style living room. Each local, regional, and national entity has quite a few of these distinct cultural agendas. In Kigoma, one of the regional quarks here is an extreme paranoia of photography/film. To draw a better picture, Pastor Lowell told us the story of how he witnessed his contracted guards apprehend a white foreigner who happened to stop outside of Lowell and his wife’s compound to snap a picture of the Port of Kigoma, a beautifully serene landscape anytime throughout the day that captures at its least the peaceful fishing town that is Kigoma. So the white foreigner snaps a shot of this image and is quickly apprehended by Lowell’s guards. Lowell witnesses this and comes to the foreigner’s rescue. After the incident he questions his guards about why they would do this, the response being that the government wishes them to stay vigilante about spies.
This photographic paranoia stems from when Tanzania used to be a very socialist country. The governing body at this time was severely against any tourist activity of any sort. The reason? Espionage. People were out to spy on them, to learn about them, to steal information from them. The solution, obviously, was to stop this behavior that happens to align with stopping tourism as well. So when average white Joe comes over to visit some relative at a missionary camp, or participate themselves in work, little did they know that they were also being looked on as a potential spy and everything they represent. Thank God that camera cell phones weren’t around during that time or every instance someone answers a phone they may be interrogated by the Tanzanian Gustapo equivalent.
For us now it means no camera taking at the market, the road, and quite a few other places. We are allowed to snap away at our own compound of the surrounding area and at a private beach we will hopefully be at soon, which is fine by us for now. The areas we will spend 90% of our time here will be within Joy in the Harvest’s compounds, and we can live with 90%.
In spite of all this, we were able to take one picture today. Claudia made a birthday cake for Sarah’s birthday, and of course we had to capture an African birthday celebration in American style (complete with chocolate cake with mint frosting!). Furaha ya Kuzaliwa, Sarah!
That’s all for now, thanks for following and hopefully we will be able to get pictures to you soon.