Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

In rural Tanzania, cinemas are non-existent and TV access requires expensive satellite dishes that few people can afford. To entertain themselves during their free time, locals tend to buy cheap pirated DVDs for computer gaming , or more commonly, drama series and movies. Carts and shops selling these DVDs exist not just in market towns but even in some bigger villages, allowing common people to access some of the latest visual entertainment from the outside world at quite affordable prices (if not the best of quality).

In rural Tanzania, the locals have a habit of referring to any poor-quality product as "kichina," which, in Swahili, roughly means "a thing of China." Whenever something they use breaks or gets damaged when they think the product should not be, they just shrug and casually blurt out, "well, it's kichina." It is not particularly targeted toward Chinese products though; in fact, the saying is used for all products, whether or not the product is from China. The connotation, however, is pretty clear: it goes without saying that Chinese products, as they have elsewhere, acquired a negative reputation in Tanzania.

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.