Hello and welcome to EdUKaid. We are involved in education, we are based in the UK and we provide long term aid for the children of Tanzania. If you have any questions about our charity, contact us
I’ve stayed at the EdUKaid house for almost four weeks now and I’ve really enjoyed it. It has been the perfect base for me to delve into my studies (which is Kimakonde, Kiswhaili, and language choice) and at the same time being able to enjoy my leisure time in the company of good people – and not to forget; an amazing variety of reading material.The book shelf in the mess room has an impressing collection of world literature generously donated by the many people who have lived here through out the history of the house. You can choose between almost every genre, ranging from the grand classics of Hemmingway, Tolstoy and Le Carré, to a wide variety of titles with a more practical application, such as Swahili dictionaries, “The Guinness Book of Answers”, “The Encyclopaedia of Ball Juggling” and of course lots of travel books. The guide book-Bibles LP and RG go without saying, but there are also quite a few semi-fiction travel descriptions, e.g. “Swahili for the Broken-Hearted” about a guy travelling Cape Town-Cairo to get away from a nasty break-up. You will also find bestsellers such as Stephen King, Ken Follett’s “Pillars of the Earth” 1&2 (2500 pages in total, in case you really need to kill time) and more recent masterpieces, such as “The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night-Time” (one of my favourite books, I was so excited when I found it here that I had to read it again). Besides from that you’ll find an incredible collection of political and semi-academic literature, “The White Man’s Burden” and Joseph Stiglitz’ “Making Globalization Work”, just to mention a few. In the other end of the scale you find Sharon Osbourne’s autobiography “Extreme”.The latest contribution was made by Kate from Trade Aid, who was moving to Dar, and leaving us her latest two Cosmopolitan Magazines. The Cosmos never made their way to the book shelf though, as they started on the table on the porch, and almost everybody popping by the house – which is quite a lot of people, on a regular Thursday like today I have counted at least seven people so far – just has to have a peek. ”You put magazine of semi-naked women out on the table in a predominately Muslim country, you can be sure people will take a look at them” says Ben, one of my fellow residents, and continues with a story about the day the bread lady brought our bread wrapped in a page three-picture of “a women with her things out – she had pants on though”.‘What goes on in the head of a 21 year old Muslim girl in rural Tanzania, when she sees western women exposing themselves in a Cosmo?’ we asked ourselves, when we found out that our house maid Halima was secretly peeking at the magazines too when she thought no one was watching. Does it liberate her to see how women can feel so free and unashamed about their body? (which we presume the Cosmo-women do feel, or that is at least what Cosmo intends us to believe) Or does she feel it is derogatory to women? My wonderful host here at EdUKaid and I decided to ask Halima.As I also discovered when I tried to make qualitative research interviews on language attitudes, the cultural differences and the linguistic barrier makes it quite unlikely that you will succeed in asking an open question and getting a self-reflective evaluative answer back. The questions have to be less complex, and the answers will most likely be “yes I like it” or “no I don’t like it”. We found out that Halima mostly likes to look for cloths in the magazines, and that jeans and dresses are her favourites. She would like to have a pair of jeans, and if the dresses were longer she would wear them too. But “maybe you could have the fundi make them longer” she suggested. She wouldn’t wear shorts because her mother and family would disapprove of that.
We did manage to get a little further on revealing attitudes than I did in most of my linguistic interviews, and found out that Halima relates the white people in Cosmo with white people she know here from Mikindani. A women in an advert for big-size bras reminded her of Sally, a former volunteer, and a man with a kind face and half-long blond curls kissing a girl on the beach reminded her of Jack, another volunteer. I have never met Sally or Jack, but Marta says the resemblance is somehow good for the first case, but dubious for the second (other than that Jack did do some girl-kissing on beaches). Halima likes to look at pictures of people kissing, but she doesn’t like to look at the centrefolds of “21 celebrity men stripping for you”, she’s scared of their muscles. She was a bit confused of the bathing suit section – “is this all you wear, if you wear it?”. We wanted to know who she thought the target group of this magazine was (yes, we are westerners and we think in terms like target group). Halima thinks Cosmopolitan is for everybody, even Tanzanians would enjoy reading it if it was in Swahili. Even men could like to read it. She’s definitely right about the last bit, considering how many hours the male residents of this house spend glancing our Cosmos while pretending they’re reading the newspaper.
