Dar es Salaam Diary

"A woman willing to go to Tanzania 'needs to be strong, independent and willing to take a lot of harassment.'"

The above quote is from an article in The Minnesota Daily, the student newspaper of the University of Minnesota. In the article, which has been circulating among my friends here in Dar, a female student describes her rather harrowing experience studying abroad at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. She describes rape attempts, catcalls, and assaults, as well as a general lack of support (and in some cases further harassment) from University officials here.

I found this article highly upsetting. First off, the experiences described are extremely unpleasant, and my heart goes out to this young woman. But at the same time, I was more upset by the implications of this (rather shoddily written) article - that sexual harassment in Tanzania is the norm. There's a somewhat more balanced account of the incidents here (from InsideHigherEd.com) but to a great extent, the same message comes across. As one of the comments on the latter article puts it, "Kind of makes you wonder what our Tanzanian sisters are putting up with on a daily basis. Sobering."

I don't know. I have certainly received more unwanted attention in this country than I did back home. Part of that simply comes from being a white person, and thus, something of a novelty. And since there is not the same sort of Political Correctness filter here, it's not uncommon for people to vocalize the fact that they think foreigners look different and weird.

OK, I have also been proposed to and propositioned multiple times over the past year - on the daladala, in taxis, and via text messages. Most of the time, I have just been able to make a joke of it ("I think you're a little old for me" to the 50-something taxi driver who parks outside of my office, after he explained that he could take me as his second wife since he's Muslim.) There have been a few instances that made me truly uncomfortable, and those were harder to deal with. I basically tried to deflect the more inappropriate advances and also show that I thought the behavior was not acceptable.

Anyway, one thing that upset me about these articles was the way in which they took one woman's experience and generalized it to the whole country, so I don't want to do the same thing with my experiences. But... what the hell, I will make a few generalizations (with the excuse that this is a blog and not a newspaper and therefore journalistic ethics do not apply) based on what I've seen and heard.

As far as I can tell, Tanzania does not have a culture of machismo. That is to say, while I've been propositioned by strangers, I doubt most Tanzanian women have. Sex is not so out in the open here. Men and women often do not even dance together, especially not in the same bump-and-grind style that is so popular in the States. However, it is probably safe to say that "traditional" Tanzanian culture puts men above women, at least in terms of the respect and authority that they command. This leads to certain assumptions about rape and baffling policies like the one that prohibits pregnant schoolgirls from attending their classes, while doing nothing to reprimand the boys who knocked them up.

But I digress. Getting back to the quote that I started this post with, I don't think that any (American) woman coming to Tanzania should necessarily expect "a lot of harassment." Unwanted attention, perhaps. More to the point, she will have to deal with certain stereotypes about American culture (and thus, American women) that are perpetuated by movies, television shows, and images in advertising that come from the West.

I'm not trying to excuse sexual harassment in this country, but rather to understand it. Living abroad, I find that I must constantly walk a fine line between respecting the culture of my new home, and staying true to my own values - that is, respecting myself. And choosing my battles.

In light of all of this, I'm excited for next Saturday, when I will be attending a Tanzanian production of The Vagina Monologues. (Apparently it was a huge hit last year - among Tanzanians as well as ex-pats.)