Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

昨日であの当時日本在住だったの皆さんの人生を変えた事件から五年になる。マスコミの報道を見ると、福島の復活や被害者の「第二人生」を描く楽観的なストーリーがあれば、被害地の人口が6％減るとか、現地の経済が完全に国の支援だけでまわされているなど、悲観的な指摘も少なくはない。だが、これらの報道に一つ残念なことがあるとしたら、たぶん「量」である。前年度に比べると、この記念すべき一日は人々の注目を浴びなくなっている。各報道局はこの傾向を認知しているのに違いない。

As the NGO industry expands, the broad all-inclusive term "development" has become more and more vague over time.  Anything that remotely suggest provision of additional resources for betterment of people's lives have now fallen under the category of "development."  The methodologies f implementation and assessments have only become more and more varied as a wider and wider spectrum of ideas and personnel have involved themselves in the industry.  Thankfully, the central goal of an NGO is still clear: the job is to ultimately make people's living standards higher.

著者記得從小頻頻聽到父母如此般的教導：“人窮但不能窮志氣”。當時以他那乳臭未乾的小孩身份，對這類教導的具體理解不外于“不能嫉妒同學課後買的零食”這類非常幼稚的想法。坦白講，當時的自己總會覺得“不窮志氣”不過就是爲吝嗇的父母爭面子的某種心態。但是人總會改變。著者走入了勞動者社會，變爲一名 被好奇心和刺激感所驅動的國際打工仔 。在這個過程中，漸漸的，原來對吝嗇的怨恨被“自我控制”的需求所代替。有限的薪水能滿足一些自我需求，但絕不會是全部。如何選擇突然變成了“志氣”的一個代號。

It is not every day that a rural Tanzanian government official goes around the village with a loudspeaker to make announcements. And it is even rarer when the announcement called for all eateries in the area to shut down until further notice. But the government officials went around this time to sound the alarm for a massive cholera outbreak, people obliged quickly. When they heard that 80-some victims of the outbreak are already lying in the hospital, having a proper sit-down lunch, no matter how simple , becomes much less important.

It is a bit unfortunate, but it suffices to say that the average African's hair is not particularly suitable for styling.  Genetically created to be hard and not so malleable, attempts at being creative with what is on top of one's head often involves donning a stylized wig.  Of course, for most local males, who neither see the need nor have the financial resources to keep up with such superficial pursuits , the average hair cut becomes not much beyond shaving off extra hair with a simple electric shaver.  With foreign clientele so few and far in between, foreign males pretty much get the same treatment.

The expatriate community in rural Tanzania is quite separate from the local one. Expats come to have their own restaurants, shops, and hobbies that are often not only financially unreachable but also culturally unpalatable for Tanzanians. The sad reality is that the phenomenon is not limited to foreigners. A holdover from the continent's colonial era, still active populations of white and Indian Tanzanians dot even the remote landscapes of rural townships, sometimes making their presence felt in ethnically familiar expatriate communities or creating their own separate ones.

In the past couple of years, there is a growing focus in the tech world on the topic of mobile payment platforms.  The idea is to use smartphone apps loaded with money as replacement of cash in everyday business transactions.  Paying for groceries, restaurant bills, and transport will no longer involve searching for petty cash, not only reducing time and hassle for digging through small change, but also dramatically decreasing possibilities of errors, frauds, and thefts while making it all the easier for tracking spending, checking available balances, and splitting bills across multiple people.