By Shaaban Fundi,

I have been thinking about the issues related to obesity lately. I was reminded about this with my doctor in my last annual check-up. He said, you have no other lingering issues to worry about “young man” except for the fact that you need to exercise regularly and make sure you wear your seat belt whenever you drive. Receiving that seal of health approval from my doctor was reassuring but living in North America provides you with a constant reminder of obesity every second of every minute.

I have gained some weight over the years and that has left me incapacitated in my own body. I can’t run like I used to. I can’t walk like I used to and I can’t play soccer anymore (as if I used to previously lmao!!!!). This sedentary life we live in, is a major contributor to our own body demise. Fast foods, 30 minutes dinners, video games, the cheap and unbalanced diet we eat increasingly perpetuate the situation.

This is a major cultural problem in America and it is, quite literally, killing all of us. This is not a tsunami, a famine or a flood over which we have no control this is something that only WE, each and every person, can change…or not!!

Here are some data about this issue in North America. According to a new study released this week by the Society of Actuaries (SOA), the total economic cost of overweight (BMI between 25.0 –29.9) and obesity (BMI of more than 30) in the U.S. and Canada reaches $300(1) billion per year, with 90 percent of the total – $270 billion – attributed to the U.S.

While much research has been conducted on obesity, the SOA study looked at the economic costs of overweight and obesity caused by increased need for medical care, and loss of economic productivity resulting from excess mortality and disability. In the study, the SOA also divided the $300 billion finding into specific causes of economic costs. The figure breaks down into the following economic costs per year:
Total cost of excess medical care caused by overweight and obesity: $127 billion.
Economic loss of productivity caused by excess mortality: $49 billion.
Economic loss of productivity caused by disability for active workers: $43 billion.
Economic loss of productivity caused by overweight or obesity for totally disabled workers: $72 billion.

In sum, let us just get outside…run some more, walk some more, drive less, ride bicycles some more and make some real dinners and lunches too. Maybe that will help.

Bill Zeller, a computer programmer, committed suicide recently. The news has been blazing around the Internet. He’s the guy who wrote a hack for iTunes called MyTunes that allowed you to pull music off another person’s iPod. Apparently he wrote a lot of other programs, too.
Zeller was abused as a kid, and the depression took its toll on him. He left behind a suicide letter that he requests is published in full. It’s long, but I want to publish it here. I hope you take the time to read it. I’m going to put it below the fold, but it’s definitely worth your time.
I don’t believe suicide is the right answer for anyone, but I have no idea the extent of the pain that went through Zeller’s mind before he died. I think this is only a small window into that
There’s a part about his parents religiosity that is very thoughtful. The whole thing is worth your time.

************BEGIN LETTER*****************
I have the urge to declare my sanity and justify my actions, but I
assume I’ll never be able to convince anyone that this was the right
decision. Maybe it’s true that anyone who does this is insane by
definition, but I can at least explain my reasoning. I considered not
writing any of this because of how personal it is, but I like tying up
loose ends and don’t want people to wonder why I did this. Since I’ve
never spoken to anyone about what happened to me, people would likely
draw the wrong conclusions.

My first memories as a child are of being raped, repeatedly. This has
affected every aspect of my life. This darkness, which is the only way I
can describe it, has followed me like a fog, but at times intensified
and overwhelmed me, usually triggered by a distinct situation. In
kindergarten I couldn’t use the bathroom and would stand petrified
whenever I needed to, which started a trend of awkward and unexplained
social behavior. The damage that was done to my body still prevents me
from using the bathroom normally, but now it’s less of a physical
impediment than a daily reminder of what was done to me.

This darkness followed me as I grew up. I remember spending hours
playing with legos, having my world consist of me and a box of cold,
plastic blocks. Just waiting for everything to end. It’s the same thing
I do now, but instead of legos it’s surfing the web or reading or
listening to a baseball game. Most of my life has been spent feeling
dead inside, waiting for my body to catch up.

At times growing up I would feel inconsolable rage, but I never
connected this to what happened until puberty. I was able to keep the
darkness at bay for a few hours at a time by doing things that required
intense concentration, but it would always come back. Programming
appealed to me for this reason. I was never particularly fond of
computers or mathematically inclined, but the temporary peace it would
provide was like a drug. But the darkness always returned and built up
something like a tolerance, because programming has become less and less
of a refuge.

The darkness is with me nearly every time I wake up. I feel like a grime
is covering me. I feel like I’m trapped in a contimated body that no
amount of washing will clean. Whenever I think about what happened I
feel manic and itchy and can’t concentrate on anything else. It
manifests itself in hours of eating or staying up for days at a time or
sleeping for sixteen hours straight or week long programming binges or
constantly going to the gym. I’m exhausted from feeling like this every
hour of every day.

Three to four nights a week I have nightmares about what happened. It
makes me avoid sleep and constantly tired, because sleeping with what
feels like hours of nightmares is not restful. I wake up sweaty and
furious. I’m reminded every morning of what was done to me and the
control it has over my life.

I’ve never been able to stop thinking about what happened to me and this
hampered my social interactions. I would be angry and lost in thought
and then be interrupted by someone saying “Hi” or making small talk,
unable to understand why I seemed cold and distant. I walked around,
viewing the outside world from a distant portal behind my eyes, unable
to perform normal human niceties. I wondered what it would be like to
take to other people without what happened constantly on my mind, and I
wondered if other people had similar experiences that they were better
able to mask.

Alcohol was also something that let me escape the darkness. It would
always find me later, though, and it was always angry that I managed to
escape and it made me pay. Many of the irresponsible things I did were
the result of the darkness. Obviously I’m responsible for every decision
and action, including this one, but there are reasons why things happen
the way they do.

Alcohol and other drugs provided a way to ignore the realities of my
situation. It was easy to spend the night drinking and forget that I had
no future to look forward to. I never liked what alcohol did to me, but
it was better than facing my existence honestly. I haven’t touched
alcohol or any other drug in over seven months (and no drugs or alcohol
will be involved when I do this) and this has forced me to evaluate my
life in an honest and clear way. There’s no future here. The darkness
will always be with me.

I used to think if I solved some problem or achieved some goal, maybe he
would leave. It was comforting to identify tangible issues as the source
of my problems instead of something that I’ll never be able to change. I
thought that if I got into to a good college, or a good grad school, or
lost weight, or went to the gym nearly every day for a year, or created
programs that millions of people used, or spent a summer or California
or New York or published papers that I was proud of, then maybe I would
feel some peace and not be constantly haunted and unhappy. But nothing I
did made a dent in how depressed I was on a daily basis and nothing was
in any way fulfilling. I’m not sure why I ever thought that would change
anything.

I didn’t realize how deep a hold he had on me and my life until my
first relationship. I stupidly assumed that no matter how the darkness
affected me personally, my romantic relationships would somehow be
separated and protected. Growing up I viewed my future relationships as
a possible escape from this thing that haunts me every day, but I began
to realize how entangled it was with every aspect of my life and how it
is never going to release me. Instead of being an escape, relationships
and romantic contact with other people only intensified everything about
him that I couldn’t stand. I will never be able to have a relationship
in which he is not the focus, affecting every aspect of my romantic
interactions.

Relationships always started out fine and I’d be able to ignore him for
a few weeks. But as we got closer emotionally the darkness would return
and every night it’d be me, her and the darkness in a black and gruesome
threesome. He would surround me and penetrate me and the more we did the
more intense it became. It made me hate being touched, because as long
as we were separated I could view her like an outsider viewing something
good and kind and untainted. Once we touched, the darkness would
envelope her too and take her over and the evil inside me would surround
her. I always felt like I was infecting anyone I was with.

Relationships didn’t work. No one I dated was the right match, and I
thought that maybe if I found the right person it would overwhelm him.
Part of me knew that finding the right person wouldn’t help, so I became
interested in girls who obviously had no interest in me. For a while I
thought I was gay. I convinced myself that it wasn’t the darkness at
all, but rather my orientation, because this would give me control over
why things didn’t feel “right”. The fact that the darkness affected
sexual matters most intensely made this idea make some sense and I
convinced myself of this for a number of years, starting in college
after my first relationship ended. I told people I was gay (at Trinity,
not at Princeton), even though I wasn’t attracted to men and kept
finding myself interested in girls. Because if being gay wasn’t the
answer, then what was? People thought I was avoiding my orientation, but
I was actually avoiding the truth, which is that while I’m straight, I
will never be content with anyone. I know now that the darkness will
never leave.

Last spring I met someone who was unlike anyone else I’d ever met.
Someone who showed me just how well two people could get along and how
much I could care about another human being. Someone I know I could be
with and love for the rest of my life, if I weren’t so fucked up.
Amazingly, she liked me. She liked the shell of the man the darkness had
left behind. But it didn’t matter because I couldn’t be alone with her.
It was never just the two of us, it was always the three of us: her, me
and the darkness. The closer we got, the more intensely I’d feel the
darkness, like some evil mirror of my emotions. All the closeness we had
and I loved was complemented by agony that I couldn’t stand, from him. I
realized that I would never be able to give her, or anyone, all of me or
only me. She could never have me without the darkness and evil inside
me. I could never have just her, without the darkness being a part of
all of our interactions. I will never be able to be at peace or content
or in a healthy relationship. I realized the futility of the romantic
part of my life. If I had never met her, I would have realized this as
soon as I met someone else who I meshed similarly well with. It’s likely
that things wouldn’t have worked out with her and we would have broken
up (with our relationship ending, like the majority of relationships do)
even if I didn’t have this problem, since we only dated for a short
time. But I will face exactly the same problems with the darkness with
anyone else. Despite my hopes, love and compatability is not enough.
Nothing is enough. There’s no way I can fix this or even push the
darkness down far enough to make a relationship or any type of intimacy
feasible.

So I watched as things fell apart between us. I had put an explicit time
limit on our relationship, since I knew it couldn’t last because of the
darkness and didn’t want to hold her back, and this caused a variety of
problems. She was put in an unnatural situation that she never should
have been a part of. It must have been very hard for her, not knowing
what was actually going on with me, but this is not something I’ve ever
been able to talk about with anyone. Losing her was very hard for me as
well. Not because of her (I got over our relationship relatively
quickly), but because of the realization that I would never have another
relationship and because it signified the last true, exclusive personal
connection I could ever have. This wasn’t apparent to other people,
because I could never talk about the real reasons for my sadness. I was
very sad in the summer and fall, but it was not because of her, it was
because I will never escape the darkness with anyone. She was so loving
and kind to me and gave me everything I could have asked for under the
circumstances. I’ll never forget how much happiness she brought me in
those briefs moments when I could ignore the darkness. I had originally
planned to kill myself last winter but never got around to it. (Parts of
this letter were written over a year ago, other parts days before doing
this.) It was wrong of me to involve myself in her life if this were a
possibility and I should have just left her alone, even though we only
dated for a few months and things ended a long time ago. She’s just one
more person in a long list of people I’ve hurt.

I could spend pages talking about the other relationships I’ve had that
were ruined because of my problems and my confusion related to the
darkness. I’ve hurt so many great people because of who I am and my
inability to experience what needs to be experienced. All I can say is
that I tried to be honest with people about what I thought was true.

I’ve spent my life hurting people. Today will be the last time.

I’ve told different people a lot of things, but I’ve never told anyone
about what happened to me, ever, for obvious reasons. It took me a while
to realize that no matter how close you are to someone or how much they
claim to love you, people simply cannot keep secrets. I learned this a
few years ago when I thought I was gay and told people. The more harmful
the secret, the juicier the gossip and the more likely you are to be
betrayed. People don’t care about their word or what they’ve promised,
they just do whatever the fuck they want and justify it later. It feels
incredibly lonely to realize you can never share something with someone
and have it be between just the two of you. I don’t blame anyone in
particular, I guess it’s just how people are. Even if I felt like this
is something I could have shared, I have no interest in being part of a
friendship or relationship where the other person views me as the
damaged and contaminated person that I am. So even if I were able to
trust someone, I probably would not have told them about what happened
to me. At this point I simply don’t care who knows.

I feel an evil inside me. An evil that makes me want to end life. I need
to stop this. I need to make sure I don’t kill someone, which is not
something that can be easily undone. I don’t know if this is related to
what happened to me or something different. I recognize the irony of
killing myself to prevent myself from killing someone else, but this
decision should indicate what I’m capable of.

So I’ve realized I will never escape the darkness or misery associated
with it and I have a responsibility to stop myself from physically
harming others.

I’m just a broken, miserable shell of a human being. Being molested has
defined me as a person and shaped me as a human being and it has made me
the monster I am and there’s nothing I can do to escape it. I don’t know
any other existence. I don’t know what life feels like where I’m apart
from any of this. I actively despise the person I am. I just feel
fundamentally broken, almost non-human. I feel like an animal that woke
up one day in a human body, trying to make sense of a foreign world,
living among creatures it doesn’t understand and can’t connect with.

I have accepted that the darkness will never allow me to be in a
relationship. I will never go to sleep with someone in my arms, feeling
the comfort of their hands around me. I will never know what
uncontimated intimacy is like. I will never have an exclusive bond with
someone, someone who can be the recipient of all the love I have to
give. I will never have children, and I wanted to be a father so badly.
I think I would have made a good dad. And even if I had fought through
the darkness and married and had children all while being unable to feel
intimacy, I could have never done that if suicide were a possibility. I
did try to minimize pain, although I know that this decision will hurt
many of you. If this hurts you, I hope that you can at least forget
about me quickly.

There’s no point in identifying who molested me, so I’m just going to
leave it at that. I doubt the word of a dead guy with no evidence about
something that happened over twenty years ago would have much sway.

You may wonder why I didn’t just talk to a professional about this. I’ve
seen a number of doctors since I was a teenager to talk about other
issues and I’m positive that another doctor would not have helped. I was
never given one piece of actionable advice, ever. More than a few spent
a large part of the session reading their notes to remember who I was.
And I have no interest in talking about being raped as a child, both
because I know it wouldn’t help and because I have no confidence it
would remain secret. I know the legal and practical limits of
doctor/patient confidentiality, growing up in a house where we’d hear
stories about the various mental illnesses of famous people, stories
that were passed down through generations. All it takes is one doctor
who thinks my story is interesting enough to share or a doctor who
thinks it’s her right or responsibility to contact the authorities and
have me identify the molestor (justifying her decision by telling
herself that someone else might be in danger). All it takes is a single
doctor who violates my trust, just like the “friends” who I told I was
gay did, and everything would be made public and I’d be forced to live
in a world where people would know how fucked up I am. And yes, I
realize this indicates that I have severe trust issues, but they’re
based on a large number of experiences with people who have shown a
profound disrepect for their word and the privacy of others.

People say suicide is selfish. I think it’s selfish to ask people to
continue living painful and miserable lives, just so you possibly won’t
feel sad for a week or two. Suicide may be a permanent solution to a
temporary problem, but it’s also a permanent solution to a ~23 year-old
problem that grows more intense and overwhelming every day.

Some people are just dealt bad hands in this life. I know many people
have it worse than I do, and maybe I’m just not a strong person, but I
really did try to deal with this. I’ve tried to deal with this every day
for the last 23 years and I just can’t fucking take it anymore.

I often wonder what life must be like for other people. People who
can feel the love from others and give it back unadulterated, people who
can experience sex as an intimate and joyous experience, people who can
experience the colors and happenings of this world without constant
misery. I wonder who I’d be if things had been different or if I were a
stronger person. It sounds pretty great.

I’m prepared for death. I’m prepared for the pain and I am ready to no
longer exist. Thanks to the strictness of New Jersey gun laws this will
probably be much more painful than it needs to be, but what can you do.
My only fear at this point is messing something up and surviving.

—

I’d also like to address my family, if you can call them that. I despise
everything they stand for and I truly hate them, in a non-emotional,
dispassionate and what I believe is a healthy way. The world will be a
better place when they’re dead–one with less hatred and intolerance.

If you’re unfamiliar with the situation, my parents are fundamentalist
Christians who kicked me out of their house and cut me off financially
when I was 19 because I refused to attend seven hours of church a week.

They live in a black and white reality they’ve constructed for
themselves. They partition the world into good and evil and survive
by hating everything they fear or misunderstand and calling it love.
They don’t understand that good and decent people exist all around us,
“saved” or not, and that evil and cruel people occupy a large percentage
of their church. They take advantage of people looking for hope by
teaching them to practice the same hatred they practice.

A random example:

“I am personally convinced that if a Muslim truly believes and obeys the
Koran, he will be a terrorist.” – George Zeller, August 24, 2010.

If you choose to follow a religion where, for example, devout Catholics
who are trying to be good people are all going to Hell but child
molestors go to Heaven (as long as they were “saved” at some point),
that’s your choice, but it’s fucked up. Maybe a God who operates by
those rules does exist. If so, fuck Him.

Their church was always more important than the members of their family
and they happily sacrificed whatever necessary in order to satisfy
their contrived beliefs about who they should be.

I grew up in a house where love was proxied through a God I could never
believe in. A house where the love of music with any sort of a beat was
literally beaten out of me. A house full of hatred and intolerance, run
by two people who were experts at appearing kind and warm when others
were around. Parents who tell an eight year old that his grandmother is
going to Hell because she’s Catholic. Parents who claim not to be racist
but then talk about the horrors of miscegenation. I could list hundreds
of other examples, but it’s tiring.

Since being kicked out, I’ve interacted with them in relatively normal
ways. I talk to them on the phone like nothing happened. I’m not sure
why. Maybe because I like pretending I have a family. Maybe I like
having people I can talk to about what’s been going on in my life.
Whatever the reason, it’s not real and it feels like a sham. I should
have never allowed this reconnection to happen.

I wrote the above a while ago, and I do feel like that much of the time.
At other times, though, I feel less hateful. I know my parents honestly
believe the crap they believe in. I know that my mom, at least, loved me
very much and tried her best. One reason I put this off for so long is
because I know how much pain it will cause her. She has been sad since
she found out I wasn’t “saved”, since she believes I’m going to Hell,
which is not a sadness for which I am responsible. That was never going
to change, and presumably she believes the state of my physical body is
much less important than the state of my soul. Still, I cannot
intellectually justify this decision, knowing how much it will hurt her.
Maybe my ability to take my own life, knowing how much pain it will
cause, shows that I am a monster who doesn’t deserve to live. All I know
is that I can’t deal with this pain any longer and I’m am truly sorry I
couldn’t wait until my family and everyone I knew died so this could be
done without hurting anyone. For years I’ve wished that I’d be hit by a
bus or die while saving a baby from drowning so my death might be more
acceptable, but I was never so lucky.

—

To those of you who have shown me love, thank you for putting up with
all my shittiness and moodiness and arbitrariness. I was never the
person I wanted to be. Maybe without the darkness I would have been a
better person, maybe not. I did try to be a good person, but I realize I
never got very far.

I’m sorry for the pain this causes. I really do wish I had another
option. I hope this letter explains why I needed to do this. If you
can’t understand this decision, I hope you can at least forgive me.

Bill Zeller

—

Please save this letter and repost it if gets deleted. I don’t want
people to wonder why I did this. I disseminated it more widely than I
might have otherwise because I’m worried that my family might try to
restrict access to it. I don’t mind if this letter is made public. In
fact, I’d prefer it be made public to people being unable to read it and
drawing their own conclusions. Feel free to republish this letter, but only if it is reproduced in its
entirety.

By Brian Sandberg,

The Mara region of Tanzania lies to the west of the great Serengeti National Park. It is estimated that this is home to over 1.5 million Tanzanians. I’m reliably told that various government departments are working on strategies to bring greater economic activity and prosperity to this region over the next 5 years, to cater for what will be more than 2 million citizens resident there by 2015.
Doc1
Clearly the proposed commercial road linking Musoma on Lake Victoria, via Loliondo, to the hub city of Arusha sits at the heart of government plans. The crisis lies in the planned routing of this road through the pristine, iconic Serengeti.

To try to seek out solutions, one needs to understand several dynamics.

REGIONAL LOGISTICS

Fortunately the Christmas season brings together old friends and I had the privilege of sharing a few drinks with an old business associate who has some extensive, recent experience in logistics and international trade in Kenya and Tanzania. As my home city – Durban – is Africa’s largest and busiest port, it is also home to many multinational freight and logistics companies – my friend’s business being but one of them.

Essentially, there are 2 key ports for international trade in Tanzanian produce. Dar es Salaam on Tanzania’s southern coast and Mombasa, on Kenya’s southern coast. Central and southern TZ goods (and those of her neighbours) route via Dar. Much of northern TZ routes via Mombasa.

Now look at the regional map I’ve laid out and see the geography and potential trade routes for economic produce for and from the Mara region and one begins to understand the real challenges facing government and her private sector.

In addition, you should be interested to know that Mombasa, as a port, offers many more benefits to shippers than does Dar es Salaam. Through the handling of a range of mineral products – cement, steel, soda ash, flourspar, etc – it offers greater versatility for a range of such materials. Through its agricultural produce handling, again there is wider experience in more types of goods for transshipment.

Another very key logistics factor is that Mombasa offers more frequent and more diverse options for salings than does Dar.
Hence, Mombasa is somewhat a key regional port for northern Tanzania, and that includes produce of Mara origin.

MARA REGION
Let’s ignore the eastern region of the Serengeti for the moment – i.e. Loliondo-Ngorogoro-Arusha. That’s easy to understand, since any goods or produce for or from that region requiring international logistics has no bearing on the Serengeti.

However, Mara is effectively an island. And soon, there will be 2 million people semi-cut-off from trade and commerce. In other words, a key life-blood to socio-economic development for their peoples.

I get really peeved when an American TV journalist – from NBC Today – produces a piece that centres on minerals for cellphones produced in China, without little other research or understanding of this region’s economy.

We need to accept that there are some valuable minerals to be found in the Mara region and commercial development will proceed in the years ahead. I’m not discussing ethical mining, I’m simply stating an economic fact. The people of Tanzania have every right to exploit their rich natural resources in this sector, to the advantage of their nation and their peoples who find work and wealth in such projects.

Now let’s talk more importantly about agriculture. There are many online research and seminar/workshop documents, so let’s skip some detail, to focus on a few simple issues:

1. Leading international development agencies are united in a critical economic matter – agriculture creates trade, jobs and food security, especially in impoverished regions. This means that Mara must accelerate growth and development in this sector to build more regional prosperity and opportunity;

2. Did you know that because of the high rainfall in the Mara region, cotton grown there produces a higher yield and a better cotton staple, compared to other local regions, thus leading to a better quality cotton yarn and higher prices? In fact, with widespread small-scale farmers in the area, plus an efficient access to markets, all coupled with a global growth in organic cotton goods, this agro-sector could in itself be hugely empowering;

3. Did you know that tobacco growth (leave out the dangers of smoking!) in this region is becoming increasingly important and 2009 produced some really positive growth in plantings, sales and related-trade for this sub-regional economy?

4. Did you know that there are plans to develop more Arabica coffee bean trade out of Tarime?

5. Did you know that with more advanced agro-processing techniques, the aqua-culture sector (such as fishing) can be quite extensively expanded, quite rapidly, with good logistics routes? and

6. Have you studied how abysmally poor the road infrastructure in the Mara region is? If not – please Google map it. Without a doubt, this must be urgently remedied by the state.

DID YOU FACTOR IN SOME OF THESE THOUGHTS INTO YOUR STRONG VOICE AGAINST A SERENGETI COMMERCIAL ROAD ?

I fear not, since I’m also still learning and thinking, and I spend a lot more on this project that most people I know.

SO – HOW DO WE MOVE FORWARD ?

Clearly, one can understand local voices saying the world cares more for wildlife than they do for people. Especially when thinking simply about the future prosperity and wellness of more than 2 million Mara residents.

If you look carefully at the map with it’s potential routes to ports and even with some new southern road development, it makes regional economic sense for Mara’s private sector to rely on “northern” route options.

So let’s say – NO commercial trade through the Serengeti.

Then producers and traders have one of 2 options – north via Nairobi or south via Singida or a new route more northerly than Singida.

A. North via Nairobi – very expensive if one wants to route goods or produce from or to Arusha, but it looks seemingly fine for Mombasa. BUT – talk to the logistics specialists. Trucks travelling via this capital city would face enormous delays for traffic congestion, thus greatly impairing transit time. So that’s a problem for traders; and

B. South via Singida – roughly speaking it could almost be quicker to route via Nairobi, but yet it probably offers much the same transit time to Dar es Salaam as it would be the case for Mombasa. However, let’s not forget Mombasa’s far more competitive port advantage? Hmmm?

KENYA-TANZANIA BI-LATERAL CO-OPERATION

Now that I’ve triggered some critical thinking for readers, hopefully you might start to see that the only REAL solution for the future economic prosperity of the Mara region lies in the leaders of Kenya and Tanzania sitting down and discussing some meaningful bi-lateral co-operation, where a collective of smart minds and key sector role-players engage constructively.

It has just been announced in Tanzania that Africa’s first One-Stop customs and border control post is to be established between Arusha and Nairobi at Namanga, in terms of the East African Community economic treaties.

IF one assumes that government MUST develop proper commercial roads east (Loliondo-Arusha) and west (Musoma-Mugumu) of the Serengeti, and IF Kenya is committed to protecting its Mara Triangle eco-tourism and biosphere from threats to the great migrations, then surely some smart outcomes can be devised through some northern Serengeti-Mara new road network.

If one then looked at 2 options – upgrading roads north of Singida in the south for better trade access or north of the Mara triangle in Kenya, I’d say the Kenya bypass would be infinitely more cost effective and add more road infrastructure to their south.

So – it makes far more economic sense for Tanzania and Kenya to expand trans-frontier development in seeking solutions to protect the sanctity of the priceless Serengeti-Mara eco-systems.

To me, anyway.

Brian Sandberg
Durban. South Africa.

Organ transplants using ‘risky donors’ rising

More organs from higher risk donors are being used for transplants because of a donor shortage, the BBC has learned. Organs from patients with a history of cancer or drug abuse, elderly donors and those with serious illnesses have to be considered, say surgeons. They say they face a dilemma of leaving people to die without a transplant or operating with organs from such donors.

The use of higher risk donors has doubled from 13% in 1998 to 26% last year, BBC Radio File on 4 was told.An average of three patients a day are dying in the UK because of a lack of a suitable organ for transplant.

This means surgeons are having to use organs from donors they call “marginal”, meaning they come from the following categories: the over-70s, patients with serious illnesses, patients with a history of cancer or drug abuse, or drinkers and heavy smokers.

Professor James Neuberger, medical director of NHS Blood and Transplant, which co-ordinates the supply of organs, told File on 4: “There is no doubt that if we had more donor organs… we could be a lot more selective about those that are used.”

He added: “In some cases this is completely safe for the patient but we’re certainly seeing organs from higher risk donors being used in order to meet the ever growing need for organ transplantation.”

He said in an ideal world surgeons would not use organs that carried added risks but the alternative was more deaths of patients on the transplant waiting list.
Statistics seen by File on 4 show that in 1998 13% of 787 donors were in the marginal category, but by 2008 the percentage had doubled to 26% of 899 donors.
Surgeon Simon Bramhall, who carries out liver transplants at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, said factors such as seatbelt laws and road safety improvements had reduced the number of organs available from young donors.

“I’ve taken organs from a number of donors in their 80s and transplanted them successfully,” he said.
He said “beggars can’t be choosers”, but added: “The donors are getting older, they’re getting fatter and they’re having more of what I call co-morbid disease – additional diseases like heart disease, lung disease and even kidney disease.”

One patient who was given a kidney, which turned out to be cancerous and had to be removed, told File on 4 she had been so traumatized by the experience she had refused to put her name back on the transplant waiting list.

The woman said: “I felt as though my life had been ruined. I felt destroyed, my family was destroyed… my husband has to care for me now. When I was on dialysis before I was coping, now dialysis is worse.” Dialysis patient ‘Sally’ had to have her donated kidney removed when it was found to have cancer. She is clear of the disease but is reluctant to have another transplant.

Surgeons have told File on 4 that they are carrying out transplants using organs from cancer patients, elderly people, heavy smokers, alcoholics and drug addicts due to a shortage of donors.

By Shaaban Fundi,

The dismal performance of Tanzanian students in science and mathematics from primary to secondary schools is not surprising.

The last time I was in Tanzania I had the opportunity to visit a couple of primary and secondary schools both in urban and rural areas and what I observed in the mathematics and science classroom was very appalling. Dilapidated learning environment, lack of basic teaching resources, and didactic teaching methods were ubiquitous .On top of all this, the teachers I visited demonstrated lack of teaching skills, firm content understanding in the subject area they were teaching, and the also lacked rigorous  professional development needed to perform proficiently in their jobs.

I know I should not generalize what I saw in those few schools to be a good representation of what is going on in the entire country. Data from the Ministry of education  suggests this to be the case. The percent failure rates in mathematics, biology, physics and chemistry  were at 77, 43, 35, 45  in the year 2003 and 78, 45, 35, 43 percents in the year 2004 respectively. Since no concrete corrective measures are in place to address the downward trends, I believe the failure rates in these subjects are worse now than they were before and will continue to worsen in the foreseeable future.

What Tanzania need to do?
I am optimistic that the situation is not beyond despair even though it is pathetic. We still have the time to change what is happening in our schools and educate our children to compete in the now increasingly flatter world. A four prongs approach can be used to address this problem.

First, building a conducive learning environment for our youngsters is vital in reversing this trend. The fact that most school children have no classrooms, desks, chairs and school supplies is a shame to all of us who wish well the next generation of Tanzanians. The government has the responsibility to collect taxes, cut spending, and to provide services to its citizens. One of those services is to provide a quality education to its people. We are purposely leaving our children behind in the East African Community and the global markets. How are they going to compete with our neighbors and the global community if we are failing them miserably in education?

Second, teaching our teachers especially those in primary and secondary schools to use pedagogically engaging and developmentally appropriate lessons. To develop Lessons geared to address the different learning modalities i.e. auditory, tactile, kinesthetic etc and needs of all children.  This can be achieved by preparing teachers that have a firm understanding for their content areas, brain developmental theories, and how to develop instructional methods that help children learn at their own pace and age group.

Teachings from the chalkboard and memorization methods are not very engaging for most, if not all children. Therefore, teachers need to be taught to use differentiation teaching strategies such as the use of hands on activities, manipulative, experiential learning, grouping strategies and the use of models in explaining abstract scientific and mathematical concepts to young children.

In addition, teaching at the highest levels of the bloom’s taxonomy is essential.Furthermore, it would be helpful to start teaching science and mathematics in English from a tender age i.e. primary schools onwards. This will not only help to improve science and mathematics performance but also will increase English acquisition and proficiency at an early age. Moreover, students who are performing poorly in these subjects should be identified early and remedial instruction should be provided to help them master the content.

Third, providing science and mathematics teachers with the resources they need to teach these subjects effectively. The presence of basic teaching tools like models i.e. the globe, DNA models, Bohr’s models etcetera in the classrooms are crucial at helping kids learn science and mathematics.  Moreover, incentives to attract and retain knowledgeable people to become and stay in the teaching profession will go a long way in helping to alleviate this problem.

Fourth, continued monitoring and evaluation of teachers and administrators performances in these schools is a key. We need to make sure first that these people have the resources and training they need to do their jobs successfully. And not just blaming them empty handedly. The auditing that is currently done through a checklist is not producing the result that is needed. Maybe an auditing system that rewards the schools, the teachers and the administrators that are performing beyond their calls of duty and punish those who do not, needs to be developed and effectively implemented.

I hope people in the ministry of education will see the need and start acting immediately before importing teachers from Kenya and Uganda to teach these subjects for us. I do believe that we do still have the talent pool to draw upon within Tanzania before importing teachers from abroad.
However, I do recommend the pairing of Tanzanian teacher with the peace-corps and other volunteer teachers as a means of exposing our teachers to the best practices in teaching mathematics and science.