Taratibu

While pole is the most commonly used word here to describe things as “slow,” my new favorite word is taratibu. Like a few other words in the very plastic and flexible Swahili language, taratibu has the multipurpose ability to function as several parts of speech (note that there are 22 different meanings returned on a search on the Yale University Kamusi Project website: http://www.yale.edu/swahili), among them:

• Adjectives: slow, composed, self-possessed, systematic, orderly
• Adverbs: carefully, systematically, quietly, in an orderly fashion
• Nouns: composure, collectedness, self-possession, method, structure, procedure, system

You get the drift.

The proverb Haraka haraka haina baraka (“things done in haste bring no blessing,” the Swahili equivalent of “haste makes waste”) is treated here as an almost inviolable code one should live by. I get weird stares all the time for walking quickly, a practice I just can’t seem to find the time or desire to change. It has often been written that in Africa time is conceptualized differently than in the West, and some scholars have speculated that it is tied to whether or not that time has a monetary value (i.e., wasting time means losing money). Perhaps the differences have been overblown, but there certainly are differences. Waiting and relaxing, practices that may have originated out of necessity and survival strategy here, have over time become exalted as almost spiritual virtues here. The relaxed pace of life is one of Tanzania’s greatest draws, particularly if you’re a tourist seeking to escape from the stresses of city life in America or Europe. The easy, convivial way people interact here presents a welcome reprieve.

But if you are trying to live in Tanzania and are beholden to a perhaps more Western sense of the value of time and efficiency (which I am, thanks to the terms of my grant, my degree program, and the fact that I left a life with another sense of time behind to do this), then the relaxed pace has its pluses and minuses. One minus being that one is no stranger to procedures. Confronting the labyrinth of rules and procedures to begin to get permission to do research here has revealed to me how ironic but also oddly apropos it is that taratibu means both “slow” and “procedure.” Most procedures are slow, usually the brainchild of a vast, multi-personed bureaucracy. Getting a residence permit, for an example, involves inputting a maximum of a one-page form into a computer, paying a fee, and stamping my passport. But the process requires going to the Immigration Office three times (once to drop off paperwork, once to pay, and once to pick it up), each visit spaced approximately 1-2 weeks apart. Extend the same logic to getting a driver’s license, paying utility bills, registering a business, getting a phone line installed, or renovating a property, and you can see why things happen a little slower here than what I’m used to.

But Heinz Law applies: good things come to those who wait. I got my residence permit and national ethical approval on the same day last week, so I'm ready to roll!

[NOTE: The picture at the top is of a giant tortoise on Prison Island, off the coast of Zanzibar, where I went for the Sauti za Busara (Voices of Wisdom) Festival two weekends ago. I would like to say I saw the tortoises personally on Prison Island, but I missed the boat...I must have been on Tanzanian time!]