The white man's burden

We’ve had clean water in our taps for over twenty-four hours now. Caroline has washed everything in sight. If that wasn’t luxury enough, we are off to the market this morning to look at toilet seats. Without going into too much detail, we have needed a toilet seat for some weeks now, and, even after painstakingly learning what I thought would be the Kiswahili for it, I couldn’t trace one in Mtwara anywhere, until, that is, the other day, when I found a small shop behind the market.

“N’omba kiti ya choo,” I guessed.

The woman in the shop looked bemused, then a look of comprehension washed over the shopkeeper's face,

“Cover for toileti?”

“Exactly,” I sighed with relief.

“We have three,” he boasted. “One at 5000, a medium grade at 10,000 and a heavy duty one from England at 35,000.”

“Can we look at them? I don’t want to rush into this.”

“Come back on Saturday,” he beamed.

I can’t wait. It is one sign of the luxury we expect in our lives, that not only do we have a flush toilet –that alone places us in the top twenty per cent of high-livers in Tanzania - but we have a choice of toilet seats.

An old man sat at a table near us the other day as we ate our rice, beef and beans for lunch. He looked sixty, but was perhaps only forty with one leg so withered that he could only move it by lifting the boney stick with his hand. He walked with the help of an old wooden pole, in broken flip flops and torn and stained shorts. His shirt flapped open, showing a sunken greying chest and his toothless mouth gaped. He mouthed pleading to women asking for the scraps from their trays.

With what I reflect now to be supreme mzungo arrogant patronage, I was able to say a couple of words, make a couple of gestures, agree to part with the equivalent of 40p and had a tray of substantial wholesome food served to him by one of the catering staff– enough to sustain him for the whole day and more. The woman who served him thanked me with a warm smile as he fed himself hungrily.

Every day, every time we go out, every time we meet an African, we are reminded of just how much more money we have than ordinary Tanzanians. Having disposable income fifty times that of my colleagues brings challenges which I wouldn’t have to deal with in Europe. At least a couple of times a week, someone, usually a teen-ager, will say “Mambo” and then ask for money. It’s disconcerting because it’s done so casually and so often. Perhaps we would feel better if a destitute beggar were asking for food, rather than happy, healthy youngsters just chancing their arm. We have to remind ourselves each time it happens, that even these happy, healthy youngsters have so little and in their eyes, we have so much.

A parcel from my sister arrived the other day, a Christmas present that had done a tour of colleges across the region before it landed at my door – a testament, actually, to the Tanzanian postal service. I was excited, two books, wrapped in expensive Christmas paper. Instinctively and naively, I turned to Neema and laughed,

“Better late than never,”

She didn’t smile. She didn’t ask to see. Like a brick it hit me, that I was showing off. Neema, as worldly, relatively, as she is, has no conception of just how rich we Europeans are. When a small gift, a bottle of soda or a plate of chipsy mayai represent luxury, I can’t always pitch just how we are perceived – colleagues, neighbours, but, above all, wazungo. 

Living as we do we sometimes we feel caught between the true mzungo life of four-wheel drives, safaris, air-conditioning and housegirls, on the one hand; and, on the other hand, counting every shilling, never travelling for pleasure, sodas as a treat, often being hungry, the African way. We will always be wazungo because we will never be poor. It affects every relationship we have with every African we meet. I don’t look for sympathy but that’s a white man’s burden.

Well this white man will shortly be able to unburden himself thanks to a luxury, heavy-duty toilet seat, imported from England for just this occasion. Decadent or what!