Loliondo is the last place you’d expect a miracle, an area in northern Tanzania so remote that there are no signs of civilization. The roads that do exist are so rocky, any car that ventures on them inevitably suffers at least one punctured tire.
But Loliondo is where a retired Lutheran pastor lives in a one-room mud home near a tree with a miracle cure. In 1991, the Babu (“grandfather” in Kiswahili) had a dream telling him to cure people. He ignored the dream. A few years later, he ignored a second dream with the same message. In 2002, in another dream, he was told to cure people by giving them water boiled with the root of a special tree. The instructions also included a specific plastic green cup. When the Babu awoke, the cup was in his hand. This time he paid attention to the dream.
First he began with the people in his village, but they tended to dismiss his dream and his miracle cure. However, others did not, and word spread gradually. Per the dream’s instructions, the Babu focused on five main diseases: cancer, diabetes, heart disease, HIV/AIDS, and asthma. The dream also told him to charge only 500 Tanzanian shillings for each person, the equivalent of less than 50 cents.
In about February of this year, someone¬—not the Babu—told journalists that he would stop curing people the day before Ash Wednesday (an utterly false rumor). Suddenly the fame of the Babu spread nationally, not to mention internationally. People came in droves. Stories of miraculous cures became the daily story in the news. In one case, a woman with cervical cancer was hemorrhaging so much she had to change adult diapers eight times a day. The day after she took the miracle water, she changed diapers twice. The day after that, none.
Since February, an entire sector of the Tanzanian population has been lined up in cars for weeks at Loliondo. There are now 24,000 people in about 6,000 vehicles, and the Babu has asked for assistance from the government to stop allowing people to come so that he can catch up on the 24,000.
People now come to work and find co-workers absent for days because they’ve gone to Loliondo. Mama Viktor, one of the cleaning ladies at SMMUCo, took her father-in-law. She was gone for three days. When her father-in-law returned with the ability to walk and leap for the first time in years, Mama Viktor turned around and took her mother-in-law.
Besides stories of miraculous cures, there are daily stories of conditions at Loliondo. People in cars wait up to seven days before they are served the miracle water. Some people try to butt in line, and the Babu warns them that the water will not work for them. People are forced to sleep in their cars and relieve themselves outside, creating foul conditions. Yet the flow of people seeking the miracle cure from the Babu has not waned. He works from sun-up to sun-down boiling the tree roots and serving from a plastic green cup.
No one complains of going to Loliondo and not being cured. No one tries to explain the miracle. They only wonder if they can make it to Loliondo before the miracle runs out.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
The Complicated Act of Sharing
At the Mwika campus of Stefano Moshi Memorial University College where I teach English courses, I found my students studying for a phonology test. They had removed desks from the classrooms, put them under the shade of the trees, and quizzed each other over the fine details of tongue frontness, lip rounding, allophones and phonemes.
Joseph, the class representative, called me over and said he had questions. After I clarified more details about the allophones of /t/, Joseph wanted to know if America had as much corruption as Tanzania. This was when I knew they were tired of phonology. I said we did, but probably not as much as Tanzania.
Then I launched into my ever-evolving theory of why corruption is so prevalent in Tanzania. I said to Joseph that corruption begins as a way of thinking that isn’t necessarily bad. In Tanzania, children are taught to share—-share the food, share your clothes, share your bedroom, share the money that you earn to pay for your younger siblings’ school fees. During a test, students share their rulers, their white-out, and their extra pens.
This is a way of cultivating a care for others, but it has a sinister under-side. The other day, I sat on a bus and watched as a secondary school student boarded the bus with a small bag of peanuts. Four of his fellow classmates immediately put their hands out. I could see his whole body droop as he distributed his peanuts to yet another insistent hand, emptying his bag to three peanuts. But if he hadn’t, he would’ve been cast into the outer darkness.
Any adult fortunate enough to buy a car must absolutely give free rides to his or her friends and enemies. And the freeloaders feel no shame, no sense of responsibility in helping to pay for gas. The driver must carry all of that burden because he or she has the car, and the rest do not.
Students must also share the answers on a test. Joseph and his fellow students, though most of them have already taught in secondary schools, are notorious cheaters. Some of those who are tired of sharing, like the boy with the bag of peanuts, sit in the very front so they cannot be disturbed by the person behind them who wants to the phonemic symbol for the “th” in “thy.” When someone becomes president, he--so far, it’s only been “he” in this country as in the States¬—he must share his advantages with his friends who helped him become president.
Then Joseph complained that no change can take place unless it happens through government mandate. I disagreed. I said, if you’re a teacher, you have 70 students in one class. If you teach them a new way of thinking, you will change how they think. Then they will change how their students think. And after five years, you’ll have changed hundreds of students who will change hundreds of thousands of students. Teachers, I said, have more power than presidents.
But Joseph didn’t like that answer. First, it makes him responsible. Second, it gives him a lot of work to do. I did not tell him this, but the biggest impediment to corruption is accepting that it happens with every individual on a daily basis with the simple act of sharing, whether it’s a bag of peanuts or the answers to a test.
Joseph, the class representative, called me over and said he had questions. After I clarified more details about the allophones of /t/, Joseph wanted to know if America had as much corruption as Tanzania. This was when I knew they were tired of phonology. I said we did, but probably not as much as Tanzania.
Then I launched into my ever-evolving theory of why corruption is so prevalent in Tanzania. I said to Joseph that corruption begins as a way of thinking that isn’t necessarily bad. In Tanzania, children are taught to share—-share the food, share your clothes, share your bedroom, share the money that you earn to pay for your younger siblings’ school fees. During a test, students share their rulers, their white-out, and their extra pens.
This is a way of cultivating a care for others, but it has a sinister under-side. The other day, I sat on a bus and watched as a secondary school student boarded the bus with a small bag of peanuts. Four of his fellow classmates immediately put their hands out. I could see his whole body droop as he distributed his peanuts to yet another insistent hand, emptying his bag to three peanuts. But if he hadn’t, he would’ve been cast into the outer darkness.
Any adult fortunate enough to buy a car must absolutely give free rides to his or her friends and enemies. And the freeloaders feel no shame, no sense of responsibility in helping to pay for gas. The driver must carry all of that burden because he or she has the car, and the rest do not.
Students must also share the answers on a test. Joseph and his fellow students, though most of them have already taught in secondary schools, are notorious cheaters. Some of those who are tired of sharing, like the boy with the bag of peanuts, sit in the very front so they cannot be disturbed by the person behind them who wants to the phonemic symbol for the “th” in “thy.” When someone becomes president, he--so far, it’s only been “he” in this country as in the States¬—he must share his advantages with his friends who helped him become president.
Then Joseph complained that no change can take place unless it happens through government mandate. I disagreed. I said, if you’re a teacher, you have 70 students in one class. If you teach them a new way of thinking, you will change how they think. Then they will change how their students think. And after five years, you’ll have changed hundreds of students who will change hundreds of thousands of students. Teachers, I said, have more power than presidents.
But Joseph didn’t like that answer. First, it makes him responsible. Second, it gives him a lot of work to do. I did not tell him this, but the biggest impediment to corruption is accepting that it happens with every individual on a daily basis with the simple act of sharing, whether it’s a bag of peanuts or the answers to a test.
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