Growing Up With Tanzania by Karim F Hirji

Author:Karim F Hirji
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ingram Publishes
Published: 2014-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Despite the difficulties of starting afresh in a strange land, many of the Asians from Tanzania who migrated abroad in the 1970s did well in life. Hard work and persistence helped them obtain good jobs or set up successful business ventures. The solid educational foundation acquired from Tanzania served them well. Their children obtained high academic qualifications in science and the arts from prominent universities; a number distinguished themselves in their fields. For Ismailis in particular, overall it is a story of a community that has prospered, and at the same time, has managed to retain its cultural heritage.

But there is a curious aspect to this: While they had praised the communal based, private education system of the past in Tanzania, in Canada, the UK and the US, their children benefit from state run and funded education systems that are multiracial and multi-cultural. Calls for separate Aga Khan schools were not heard in those places. If they had been made, their legality and moral standing would have been called into question.

Not that the land in which they landed is a racial nirvana. These countries, including the UK, Canada and the USA, continue to function under the rubric of institutionalized racism and religious bigotry. They are divided societies in the arena of education, work, residence and political positions. Having taught at US universities for nearly two decades, I have experienced it first-hand. In the media and among politicians, anti-immigrant, racist type of rhetoric rears its ugly head periodically. Asians in the UK, for example, face violent attacks from white skinheads. The scale and rootedness of racism in all sections of the US justice and education system is enormous. Look up the appropriate news sources and you will be astonished. If the Asians of Tanzania thought they were escaping racism, they went to the wrong places.

The migration of locally trained professionals from Tanzania in the 70s was mainly an Asian affair. But it is not so any longer. Tanzanian professionals of all races now seek opportunities for relocating outside on a permanent basis. It was a common goal for my post-graduate students at the Muhimbili University. In a nation beset with an acute shortage of trained medical staff, about 8% of the local doctors, of all races, tend to move on to greener pastures. Of those who remain, about 40% cease to practice clinical medicine after a short while (Kisanga 2013; Msonsa 2013; Songa wa Songa 2013). Needless to say, the best and most qualified brains show a greater tendency to depart.

What in my days was a predominantly Muhindi affair, is currently a colour-blind matter. Children of the well to do – African or Asian – seek a way out. I meet many African friends whose children have settled in the UK, USA and other places. I am not saying that it is a bad or a good thing. My point is that economic motives rather than racial factors play a greater role in social affairs.

To reiterate, the fundamental issue is not

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