Hello all!
My spirits are high, and this is turning out to be a great summer and project. I have already met some incredible people, and had some great experience that I will do my best to share.
Let me begin with a brief profile of my translator, Jackson.
Jackson is Tanzanian, from Iringa, in the southern highlands. Jackson and I met playing basketball while I was studying abroad in Dar es Salaam last fall. By trade, Jackson is a woodcarver, and is always interested in showing me various things he's carved and constructed as a testament to his skills. But like many Tanzanians, Jackson will tell you that he has many different trades (he also aspires to be an Actor), which is perfectly understandable given the country's economic climate. Jackson makes a brilliant translator, because he has an incredible gift of language. He has not gone to college, but he speaks near perfect English, but you can certainly tell that he has a certain charisma about him, because people listen. He also has shown that he has the makings of a teacher, because he's insisted on teaching me Swahili, which I have been thankful for. When I was Dar before, I picked up enough to get around, but we're trying to do an hour every morning of grammar, so hopefully by the end of this experience, I'll have a good handle on the language.
The scope of my research has stayed the same: I am really concerned with how communities that have potential for agricultural export production can be a means to development. The community that I originally planned to begin my research in, Kibaya, asked that I postpone my arrival until July 15th. This has been a little frustrating, but I have been using my time well getting acclimated to Dar, and have been proactive. I did take a trip to the Songea border, and did a few profiles of traders between Malawi and Dar es Salaam. I cannot give the dates that I was conducting research due to protecting my research subjects, but I was able to compile some very interesting profiles of traders along the border. I will be following up with several traders who run import schemes from Dar to Lilongwe, and a few that go trade along the bus system all the way from South Africa to Dar. These trade routes are very complicated, and take weeks spent on cramped busses, but eager entrepreneurs have seemed eager and proud to share their ventures. You would think that the high tariffs for import into Malawi would deter trade, but the traders I interviewed were trading everything from wedding dresses to weave for hair. Its especially interesting to see how the Malawian ban on Maize exports shapes trade in the region. While this portion of my project doesn't specifically relate to agricultural exports, it does help a foreigner like me get an idea of the kinds of aspirations that urban traders seek, and the means to which they seek them out.
