Yesterday’s TEDxDar event was a far cry from its humble beginnings last year. The location and organization was much better and the speaker lineup just as interesting. The speakers ranged from musicians, a politician, a scientist, an educator, a journalist, a former athlete and more. The theme of the event – Who Killled Zinjanthropus? – was meant to get us thinking about Tanzania’s past and future, especially its 50 years of independence, with Zinjanthropus (a fossil of early man) used as a metaphor for the historical context.
Roland Valckenborg kicked off the morning with by asking tough questions about our energy consumption, the mix of energy sources currently used in Tanzania and the sustainability of our energy demands. Roland has started a company – I Love Windpower – Tanzania – that makes and installs wind turbines using local materials and scrap. His company also educates others, including physically challenged students, on how to make these turbines and encourages us all to ‘Try This At Home’. He calls it ‘Open Source Wind Power’. His vision is that thousands of homes and villages across Tanzania will use wind power which in turn would provide a really good wind map of the country. An accurate wind map is essential before any major investments in renewable wind power can be made for large-scale power generation.
Next was Erasto Mpemba’s great story about how his curiosity and determination led him to discover the “Mpemba Effect” and then publish a paper about it. The Mpemba Effect is a phenomenon during which warm liquids freeze faster than cold liquids under certain conditions. Erasto observed this effect while freezing different ice cream mixes for his cooking classes. Initially ridiculed for this discovery Erasto was persistent and kept asking the reason for this effect until it was confirmed by Proffesor Osborne of the University of Dar es Salaam. Mpemba now explores traditional plants as cures for our daily illnesses. He teaches us to keep asking questions: Be persistent and you shall persevere.
Msafiri Zawose is an ambassador for Tanzanian culture, continuing in his father’s footsteps. He spoke briefly about our rich musical and cultural traditions and also described the bad current state of the industry. Zawose gave us a beautiful musical performance on stage.
January Makamba is a Tanzanian Member of Parliament (MP), but today instead of dwelling on politics, he provoked the audience by presenting an unknown view of Tanzanian consumption through statistics. His idea is ‘Sameness’. He looked at health survey data from a different perspective by comparing the typical Tanzanian and the upper 20% of Tanzanians. The typical Tanzanian (named Zawadi) is actually female, 17 years old, lives in rural Tanzania without any secondary education and has 6 siblings. Vanessa, who depicted the upper 20% in comparison is 17.5 years old and lives in an urban house with electricity and water. Vanessa is assured university education and will have 4 siblings. January then posed the key question. If we were to bring all the typical Tanzanians to the income and lifestyle of the upper 20%, what would it take? The results were astonishing and statistics ginormous. For instance it would take 900 million chickens annually to meet the demands of all Tanzanians, whereas the current output is 26 million. Oil consumption would need to go from 14 million barrels to over 200 milion barrels annually. January went on to observe that Tanzania’s population will be dominated by youth in the very near future, yet the country is not ready for this shift. Without the right foundation of freedom of speech Tanzania is not ready to harness their creativity and energy. Makamba left us appreciating what statistics from NBS can tell us and how a fresh perspective can shed new light.
This was followed by Richard Mabala, who emphasized the lack of imagination and creativity in the current educational system and its impact on what our students are learning. Richard humored us by calling for a minute of silence for the death of imagination in Tanzania’s education system. Richard’s argument was that without imagination our students will only regurgitate information fed to them and will not be able to think laterally (or horizontally). One story he told was that when asked by parents how to emulate him, Einstein prescribed a heavy dose of fairy tales to be able to imagine new physics. Currently, Tanzanian students sit on floors in brand new buildings, without any books, with a static curriculum. Such are the priorities of the government. The statistics about English and Math literacy are also startling. So who killed the creativity of Zinjathropus, Richard asks? Zinjathropus killed himself by not accepting change.
Susan Mashibe‘s story inspired and challenged us, it was one of dreams coming true through much hard work and determination. I personally could relate a lot with her story because of my journey up until starting Bongo Live. Susan had a dream from a very early a ge to become a pilot and understand how planes work when she saw her parents flying away from her for the first time. Susan eventually managed to get herself to flying school in the US. Before she could continue pilot training, Susan was forced to take English classes and simultaneously take flight maintenance courses. She completed all three and became the first female Tanzanian FAA certified pilot and flight maintenance engineer. Just as she was about to start working, 9/11 hit the US and the scarcity of jobs led her to return home. Susan went on to start a now very successful corporate aviation firm, TanJet. With her dreams of flying, maintaining aircraft and now owning an aviation firm fulfilled, Susan says she wants to give back. She is mentoring young leaders and also adopting her local primary school to support.
Bobb Muchiri from Kenya shed light on our African traditions of storytelling and how we are loosing them in the modern digital era. Bobb believes that only we can tell our stories the way they should be, not anyone else. He produced and directed the movie Kichwateli (see clip below) that masterfully combines African story telling techniques, local actors, props and costumes with the best animation and filming making techniques available. The story of Zinjanthropus’ killing must be told by our very own people, using our techniques, not by outsiders.
John Akhwari is a legendary former Tanzanian Olympic runner who completed a marathon at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City even after a serious injury. Akhwari shared a detailed account of his athletic career starting from a very young age when he competed against 69 other adults in a 10k run to the Olympics. Akhwari grew as an athlete in leaps and bounds competing in major competitions nationally and internationally in various distances, many of which he won and many where he placed in top ranks. One of the startling stories that he told us was that he won a check for $1000 for a competition held in Greece. Upon return to Tanzania he had a photo shoot with the then Minister of Sports & Cultural affairs where he held up the check in front of the camera. As soon as the photo shoot was over the Minister grabbed the check and told John to visit him the next day. John out of respect did not make a fuss and decided to return the next day. The minister refused to return the check and even after repeated attempts at talking to the Minister himself and through others he was unsuccessful ,the money disappeared. This happened to the man that still represented Tanzania at the Olympics after that incident and famously said that “My country didn’t send me to the Olympics to start the race, they sent me to finish”.
The last two presentations were from activists in two different sectors. Leila Sheikh asked the audience, who owns womens’ bodies? She asked because her work with sex workers has led her to understand female sex workers in a new light. She raised critical questions about legislation governing sex workers which punishes them on the grounds of morality. However, the government fails to consider that sex workers are filling a growing demand from customers. Secondly, how does the government differentiate between sex workers who work by choice (whom she has met), and those that do it by force (trafficked). After Leila, Evans Rubaru came on stage to discuss the mining sector. He said government officers have shared the same bed with mining investors for too long and not kept the interests of the country in priority. More importantly according to Evans, mining companies are polluting the water sources around the mines and destroying family fabrics as children and older people are left to live alone. He left us by asking “Whose responsibility is it to ensure our safety, our prosperity, and protect our environment, never to undermine the well being of future generations?”
The event wrapped up with some soulful and mystical musical pieces by Bibi Kidude. It was a fitting ending for a day of thought-provoking presentations and new ideas that left us thinking and with lots of questions, as is the spirit of TED.
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I was really looking forward to seeing One the Incredible perform, but the talks were great anyhow. Didn’t quite understand the addition of the TED talk about orgasms, hopefully the bigger picture will get clearer in coming weeks…
@Jack D, I didn’t either, but like I have said it before, probably Zinja died from the lack of orgasms, probably that was the link..hah