sisal, sisal, sisal - scary! (i.e. Halloween in Africa)

hello from Super Mzungu Tourist Warrior! i'll explain later. seeing as i didn't really cover much recent stuff in my last edition, i'll go over some of the highlights from the beginning of the Northern Tanzania part of the program. the focus for this part was on the agriculturally-based sectors of the Tanzanian economy, specifically the sisal plant. since you obviously already know what sisal is, i'll just jump right into it. just kidding, i'll be painfully descriptive. sisal is a cactus in the agave family that originated in the Yucatan but was imported into Africa by the Germans during the colonial period. unfortunately, it is not used to make tequila (my first question), but the leaves are instead ground up and the sinuous fibers inside are used to make natural rope. they're really strong, too. they gave us a sample, and one clump of 20 strands no bigger than human hairs was almost impossible to break by hand.

the sisal economy in Tanzania was government-run until recently. the price had dropped dramatically in the 60s due to the introduction of synthetic alternatives, but it started gaining popularity again in the early 90s, so the govenerment decided to privatize it in order to take advantage of the market shift. we were hosted by a one Mr. Shamte, a former government official who now runs a large-scale private sisal company with some interesting strategies. first of all, they divided their sisal-growing land into smaller plots, usually around 15 hectares, and then handed the plots over to families on the condition that they grow sisal and sell it to their company. the families are allowed to grow sustenance crops on their land as well. the company itself owns several sisal processing plants, two of which we were able to visit and see close up. the conventional factory was your standard industrial agriculture facility - large biomass goes in, small valued output comes out, and lots of waste is produced. however, they had just completed a new factory using state-of-the-art technology, and it seemed to be moving much more progressively towards their goal of sustainability. in addition to the processing of the fibers for ropes (a mere 2% of the sisal plant), this factory utilized almost the entire plant to create a variety of marketable products like natural chemicals, fertilizer, and methane gas, which was used to run their on-site generator to provide power for all the industrial processes. although they were still in the red because of the high investment costs, the factory is supposed to be completely self-reliant and nearly waste-free, within a few years.

while i was touring the facilities and walking through the fields of sisal, mostly i just wanted to say "bravo!" for the seemingly successful ingenuity and creativity of it all. but, seeing as this program is called Rethinking Globalization, i knew that i should not jump to conclusions. true, the efforts we witnessed were more progressive than the majority of industrialized agricultual cash-crop production schemes, but the entire industry was admittedly and overwhelmingly export-based and proudly capitalist. neoliberal definitions of development were prevalent in many of the conversations i had with employees and farmers, and they seemed to be totally okay with that. from this perspective, it is difficult for me to award this economy my personal seal of sustainability. however, the controversial debate is still open and i don't think i'll ever really be able to take a conclusive side on the issue.

in order to unwind from the rigorous theoretical analysis of this part of the program, we held a pretty spectacular halloween party at our hotel in Moshi. not everyone dressed up, but the common theme of the night was to take someone elses clothes and impersonate them for the evening. in this picture each of the girls dressed up as the one to their right, and Jasmine dressed up as... can you guess? well, perhaps she accentuated my subtle hippie/rasta qualities a little much, but yeah, she was me. last minute as usual, i dressed as SuperMzungu (mzungu is the Swahili equivalent of gringo, or white person). basically i went as the tourist from hell (see picture at top). it was a good time.