Day 243: United Nations Day

"By linking material progress with fundamental spiritual aspirations, by appealing to those universal values which enable the individual to transcend narrow self-interest, the peoples of the world can be empowered to translate high-minded ideals and principles into constructive, sustained actions for their own well-being and the betterment of their communities."

- "Toward a Development Paradigm for the 21st Century," Baha'i International Community

Our United Nations Day event is finally over! What a relief! There are some pictures up on the Flickr site.

At first I was convinced that the event was going to turn into a huge disaster. We'd put such an extraordinary amount of resources and the public image of the Faith on the line that I was very nervous about how things would turn out here. After experiencing a vicious African form of Murphy's Law while organizing the National Baha'i Convention and the Inter-Institutional Conference I knew that anything could happen at anytime.

Thanks to traffic we arrived a mere half an hour before the event was scheduled to start to find a few of the panelists hanging around outside the hall. We discovered that the man responsible for the halls, who has been a constant thorn in our side, had locked the hall and left his mobile number attached to it. When we first called, he didn't pick up. And then after ten minutes of constantly calling, someone appears who can open the hall for us. We'd assumed that the inside had been set up for us and it was locked to prevent someone from disturbing things, but we soon found out that wasn't the case. Besides the desks and chairs naturally found in a lecture hall there were no chairs or tables for the panelists and materials.

Mitra dashed off to take care of some of the logistical matters while I worked to get the projector and technical things taken care of. Just as we got the projector adjusted and people were starting to trickle in, the power went out. Luckily the microphones and projector worked on a battery, but there was only enough to use one of them so we stuck with the microphones. At 2:00 PM when the event was scheduled to start we'd just gotten the room arranged and taken care of but we were missing several panelists, the chairperson and attendees! The room was literally empty except for maybe six people. At that point I started to panic. But half an hour later, the room was filling up, and we had all of our panelists but one. We left one of the Baha'i youth outside to direct people inside, and Mitra got the show on the road with opening remarks.

The event was to commemorate United Nations Day, which is actually on Tuesday but it's not practical to hold something like this during the week, especially since it will probably be Eid al Fitr (عيد الفطر). The theme for the panel discussion was "The Role of Family & Youth in Establishing Brighter Communities" with a sub-theme of achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Our panelists were Hon. Stella M. Manyanya, member of Parliament; Ms. Elieshi Lema, publisher and author of "Parched Earth"; Mr. Killian Nango, chairperson of the Youth of United Nations Association of Tanzania; Mrs. Sohaila Loftus of the Baha'is of Tanzania; Dr. J. Mwani, senior lecturer with the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at the University of Dar es Salaam; Dr. Adeline Kimambo, Director of the Christian Social Services Council and former member of the Board of the Tanzania Commission for AIDS (TACAIDS); and Ms. Shalli Tumaini, Minister for Gender and Women's Empowerment of the student government of the University of Dar es Salaam.

Each of the panelists gave a presentation about 10 minutes in length (some more, some less) on the topic, and then the floor was opened to comments, discussion and questions and answers. One thing we learned was that seven panelists and 10 minutes each is way too much. Next time around we have to focus on less panelists and higher quality presentations because people were getting restless at some points through the event, although I suppose the lack of electricity and the fact that it was hot didn't help a whole lot. In fact at some point some people were asking if they were going to get paid for coming! Unfortunately, that is a culture that has developed around conferences and symposiums here - participants are paid, instead of the other way around. Everything is a handout in Tanzania.

Probably the most controversial presentation was Dr. Mwami, who argued that colonialism had broken the family system that was in place before and thereby led to many of the problems that Tanzanian society faces today. I can't speak about whether or not that's true, but Sohaila stood up and blasted that theory in the end, saying that the country has had independence for a long time now and that continuing to use the crutch of colonialism is never going to let the country advance. I tend to agree, but I also thought it was extremely important that Dr. Mwami was present and delivered a presentation that was a "dissent," at least for the sake of interesting discourse.

In the end we had about 100 people attend, which included (surprisingly) many students from the university. At the end, many of them pledged their support to a brainchild of Mitra's that we should form a team of interested parties to carry the dialogue forward and eventually refine the ideas into actionable items that can be presented to the government. I warned her that we would be taking on more than we could handle if we did that, but she plans to just get the ball rolling and try to get DARUSO (the student government) to take the reins. We'll see how that goes.

After the event there was a reception, which offered us an opportunity to touch base with a number of the organisations who attended and for the audience members to mingle with the panelists. Overall, I would call it an astounding success for us. We put a lot of hard work into it, and it seems to be paying off. We're working now with members of the press to publicize the event, and more than likely the Baha'i World News Service will also cover it.

When we finished with everything at the university, we headed to an Ethiopian restaurant to meet Susan Lamb, an Australian Baha'i who is serving as Chief of Staff of the Prosector's Office at the Rwanda Tribunal in Arusha. She was visiting her brother in Dar es Salaam and graciously invited us to dinner. The food was fantastic, especially the coffee! Those Ethiopians know their coffee. It was nice to finally meet Susan after knowing for so long that she was in Arusha but never having an opportunity to see her.

Today, I was supposed to go to Kilwa Kisiwani, but I decided against it at the last minute. I was so absolutely exhausted from the United Nations Day celebration that whatever adventurous spirit had motivated me to go was gone. There's no way I would have been able to survive in a bus of questionable quality on roads of even more questionable quality. Mitra headed to Zanzibar to spend some time with the rest of the family, who went there on Saturday morning, and I slept in.

When I woke up I decided to walk to a shopping centre a little over a kilometre away to get some cash from the ATM and that turned out to be a big mistake. It was in the mid-90's today and the humidity and sun were brutal. It was so hot and nasty that the horizon was obscured. The roads I was walking on were so dry and glaringly hot that I felt like I was trekking across the Sahara. By the time I got back home my shirt was literally completely drenched in sweat. A cold shower has never felt better! Really I don't know how people here manage to survive the summertime with all of the physical labour and walking they have to do. I guess I'm just not cut out for it!

The rest of the day I spent following up various things from the event yesterday, so it turned out to be a good thing that I'd stayed home. This evening, as I was bringing dinner to the table for Sohaila and myself, the dish simply fell apart in my hands and sent ghormeh sabzi splattering all over the Persian carpet. We opted to go out to eat after that and ended up at a place with American-inspired cuisine. It was nice to spend some more time with Sohaila, who is always full of amusing stories and wonderful insight.

The rest of the week I anticipate spending getting ready for my trip to western Tanzania and Uganda. And resting. Definitely plenty of resting.