I AM just back from the Nation’s capital city of Dodoma, after attending the 5th Annual General Meeting of the Valuers’ Registration Board. I put up in my now vintage hotel which sees no improvement as time goes by.
This time, I even saw a fat rat racing across the bar counter. In the rooms, I found a new innovation: A list of items found in each room, though it was far from reflecting the reality. A fan was listed as being in my room while there was none. It was written that there was “An extension cable or mult plug”. No.
There was neither an extension cable or a multi-plug (not “mult plug”) in the room. Item number 5 on the list of items to be found in the room, had me burst into laughter: “BED SHIT (MASHUKA)”. Looking at the quality of these pieces of cloth, it is understandable that whoever compiled the list opted to call them “bed shit.” However, let us give the devil its due: they are: ‘BED SHEETS’; and this would rightly translate into MASHUKA. “Bed shit,” whatever that means, is possibly singular, or uncountable and cannot translate into ‘Mashuka’ in Kiswahili, which is plural.
This Hotel needs new management, who may have great ideas of rescuing it from becoming “shit”. From Dodoma, we move to Longido in northern Tanzania, where, according to this story titled: “Menstrual Hygiene: Cattle urine in demand amid water shortage,” women have to improvise to cope with an acute shortage of water, especially when it comes to the situation when they are in “their days.”
The story is to be found on page 4 of the Good Citizen of November 12. A colourful photograph going with this story shows a woman whose face is blurred. The caption reads as follows: “Christina Denis (not her real name) shares her experience of using ‘rugs’ due to lack of sanitary pads.” Both “rug” and “rag” are three letter words found in the English language. A “rug” is a floor covering.
You cannot improvise that to be a sanitary pad. “Rag” on the other hand, means: “a piece of old cloth, especially torn from a larger piece, used typically for cleaning things”.
Torn or old cloth can be improvised into a sanitary pad, if one finds oneself in dire straits. By the way, one can always weave one’s way from such a bad situation. Remember the saying: “Rags to riches”? It means any situation in which a person rises from poverty to wealth and in some cases from absolute obscurity to heights of fame.
Hopefully the situation in Monduli and indeed in other parts of rural Tanzania, will improve, so that there is water which is readily available to all citizens conveniently and at all times.
The women in Monduli may move from using cattle urine and rags to water and sanitary pads for their menstrual hygiene. Wednesday 27 November was national polling day, to elect local government leaders, for 12,333 villages, 4,269 neighbourhoods and 64,274 hamlets.
The results are now wellknown but, on November 28 this was not the case. That is why the Good Citizen had this headline on its page 2: “Nation awaits local government leaders.” There were allegations and counter allegation of vote rigging, especially of claims of already filled in ballot papers getting introduced at polling stations.
In Mwanza, there were allegations of people trying to steal a ballot box from a polling station.
Those who were suspected of doing that denied the allegation saying they had taken possession of a box containing already marked ballots: “but when they called for help, ‘they were turned against’ and arrested.” Instead of: “they were turned against,” the writer should have opted for: “tables were turned against them”: “When they called for help, tables were turned against them and they were arrested”. Such is life! lusuggakironde@gmail.com
