Bono comes to town

I was sitting in the classroom today, just before quitting time, a little tired, squeezing in one last session, when the door opened, the principal standing there, and an mzungu (white person) rushed in. He walked around and shook the hands of all the kids, who just sat and stared, hands limp in his, confused. We, too, just looked at him, until we caught ourselves and asked why he was there. Oh, Bono was going to be there in 10 minutes, and he was selecting some classrooms for him to visit. And off he went.

We went back to work, and 10 minutes later one boy ran to the window, “I see them! The wazungus!” Of course, he has an mzungu in his class every day, but I am just one, and I have a name, but this—this was the wazungus to beat all wazungu-visits. There was Bono, who walked in and shook our hands and was clearly the visitor. Then there were about 5 Tanzanian officials, taking him to visit us, and then there were the 20 wazungus who took pictures or stood and just looked at Bono looking at us. He was polite and (except for his signature shades) looked like every other mzungu on a project visit. He stood, he smiled and nodded a lot, was somewhat distracted by (more attracted to?) the kids while the district chairman introduced the class. “This is a unit for those children who are mentally retarded. Some of them can learn so that they can pass and enter the regular classes. It is a gift from a Dutch non governmental organization.” (Yes, the physical classroom is an NGO gift, but the class? It is a public classroom, with public school teachers.) Our teacher rose from her seat and said a few words—how do you explain in a few minutes, to total strangers, what you do in this room? It would have been so nice for her to have some warning, to have some idea of who these people were and why they came, to maybe take this opportunity to plant a few choice words of advocacy for out kids. Bono looked mainly at a little girl who was rocking from side to side and saying “Shikamuu”. He said nothing, and she said it again, and again, leaning toward him. I told him to say “Marahaba,” and he obliged, again and again. They had their conversation. The teacher said her words. And they left. Bono and one woman said thank you, and the entire crowd moved out again, on to the next classroom.

The kids sat completely still, even after the crowd left. This was not as great as an mzungu visit could have been—there were so many of them, and they just stood there and then they left, and it was all over before it started.

I asked a man on the outskirts of the crowd, overflowing from the next classroom, where they were from and why they were visiting. And I will quote his answer, so succinct and simple: “To understand Africa.” Wow. They are TED—an organization of very rich people who meet and talk about ideas. And they are in Arusha for a four-day conference to understand Africa. And I felt so slow and ineffective, sitting there with my little data sheets in the classroom, day in and day out, just trying to understand one little part of one little classroom. If I were somebody, I could breeze through a few project visits in a week and understand the entire continent. When I walked out of the school, trudging through the mud, past the caravan of shiny minibuses in front of the office and the huddle of drivers under the tree, the visitors were taking a group picture. Maybe they need a picture to remember what they saw? When I sat on the daladala on my way home, the man next to me—a farmer who smelled like fresh dung and rain—moved his hoe and held my backpack for me, since I had another big bag of cupcakes and peanuts and crisps for tomorrow’s end-of-semester party for the kids. It occurred to me that if you have only four days, it would probably be better to simply follow one person around for a day than to do 40 project visits. Anyone on the bus would do. Maybe just following someone home, taking the bus and then walking to the house, would give more understanding. Then again, maybe talking about ideas and trying to understand are two different things, and the man I spoke with simply misunderstood TED’s purpose.

And how did I feel, shaking hands with someone famous, introducing myself, and teaching him a word in Swahili? Mainly that it was nothing. That if I had gotten to lay our issues on the table—to put our kids on the table of grand ideas and agendas—then it would have been something. It always comes back to this, I think: that some people are created more equal than others, and our kids are always the ‘others’.