lenana.net

Kellen points out a cocoa pod in Kyela. Photo from Erin Kenny.

Lenana.net teamed up to work with a chocolate maker and a group of high school and college students from Springfield, Missouri, as they traveled to Tanzania in August 2010.
The chocolate maker in Missouri, Askinosie Chocolate, produces single-source chocolate. That means it can trace the cocoa beans used in each bar of chocolate back to the farmers who produced the cocoa beans, and the beans are bought from the farmers groups rather than from exporters. Through the company’s community outreach, Cocoa Honors, Askinosie brought together a selected group of 13 high school students from the area and four students at nearby Drury University. They started meeting in late 2009 as the students learned about the chocolate business.
Askinosie was looking to Africa to find its next source of cocoa for a new product, so the Cocoa Honors students became involved and after much research and analysis chose a farmers group from Tanzania as the new source.
The group raised more than $70,000 to fund an August 2010 trip to Tanzania to meet the cocoa farmers and see firsthand the agricultural and international part of the business. We wanted to help make sure they got the most out of their trip.
Daudi worked with the group during their weekly meetings, offering a crash course in Swahili and Tanzanian culture. Kellen met up with the group when they arrived in the Tanzanian capital, Dar es Salaam, and (with funding from Drury University) accompanied them on the 21-hour bus ride to Tenende village in Kyela District, Mbeya Region, in the cocoa-producing valley at the northern tip of Lake Malawi. She worked with the group in problem-solving some of the issues that inevitably come up in traveling in developing countries, and also in translating. The group also put some labor into construction at a secondary school in the village and fundraised to bore a deep water well nearby as a clean source of water for villagers.
The cocoa was shipped and the group made it back to Missouri without a hitch.
We worked with groups of American visitors in Tanzania in 2008 and 2009 and were always honored to be a part of the transformation that so many visitors experience when they interact with Africa. Of course we were especially honored to see the impact of the Tanzania trip on the high school students in our adopted home in the Missouri Ozarks.
http://facebook.com/askinosie.chocolate
http://www.chocolateuniversity.org
http://www.youtube.com/user/askinosiechoco

There was retired reporter in the newsroom today typing painfully slowly. His index fingers hooked, he hunched down so his face was close to the keyboard as he typed one … letter … at … a … time. He would stop midword to look up at the screen to see his progress, magnifying glass in hand.

Hank Billings submits a column about local history every Monday for the newspaper in Missouri, USA, that employs me. He’s a great writer and I admired the care that he put into the act of writing. After watching him for a minute or two, I introduced myself. He asked if I was the summer intern. He was surprised that I read his column, which I’d guess has an older audience. I told him that I’m a designer.

He said, ‘’When you get to my age, you’ve got a story for everything,’’ and went on to tell me about graphics from way back in the day.

Later I told him, ‘’You must really love to write.’’

He replied, ‘’There are things that are better paying, but there’s nothing that’s as satisfying if you love to write.’’

I love journalism and I love design. Most of my job is to make sure things fit in the paper in an organized way. I take pride in doing my job well, but I often struggle to find much satisfaction inherent in paginating.

I got a second job. It distracts me from my fear of living below potential. My task now is to make sure that my wife is equipped with everything she needs to be even more extraordinary, then to do the same for myself. Grad school and a return to East Africa are in our dreams. I’ll work so that we can achieve those dreams without incurring much debt. God will guide us.

When we are old and hunched over using magnifying lenses to read, the passion with which we do what we love — what we have made careers of — will be quietly obvious to anyone who stops and looks.

I used to work at a restaurant with a girl named Brooke. She was 17-years-old and fat with perfect white skin. She had dropped out of high school. Her life was difficult. There were many things in her life beyond her control. She needed to be tough.

When speaking comfortably, her natural tone was very gentle and soft, like a little girl. But when reminded about certain things (like when she was insulted or teased), she would suddenly start imitating black American English – complete with body language, sliding her neck from side to side and all. It seemed like her switch was made to portray toughness. It’s a survival skill. I wondered, though, why she choose black America as a model for toughness. Why not Chinese kung-fu all-stars, or Vikings, or cannibals? Why black America?

Part of the answer I found in urban East Africa, where bootleg Tupaq movies and profane 50-cent videos have introduced a stereotype of black America to the youth. And the youth have ingested it, tattoos and all, put it in Swahili so its accessible to the uneducated, and given it a name of their own – bongo flava.

I have no beef with bongo flava in general. I even like some of it. My issue is the messages of American rap that are exported to the rest of the world, and the effect that they have on young people. The messages I hear loudest are materialism and acceptance of violence. Materialism means you do what you have to do to get money so that you have access to expensive shiny things, and your worth is measured in those things and their shinyness. Acceptance of violence is a way of coping with a violent environment and rather than fighting it, participating in it. Both of these are foreign concepts to Tanzania – among the world’s poorest countries, but peaceful and stable. How could those messages of American rap take root in a place like this?

Toughness. Living in jail takes toughness (tell Lil’ Wayne). Taking nine bullets takes toughness (50-cent). Even pummeling your superstar girlfriend takes toughness (Chris Brown). That toughness is admired in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi and even my little city, Arusha. I went to visit some students at a secondary school and a boy who was probably about 17-years-old was trying to impress a girl by talking to me with the black American speak that he was parroting from pirated movies and copied rap, sprinkled with “you know what I’m sayin’, G,“ and ”Shit, nigga.“ He told me his ”game beez tight.“ I told him he watches too many movies. He got kicked out of school a few weeks later for smoking bhangi (marijuana), and the girl said she wasn’t impressed with him anyway.

That boy at the school and Brooke at the restaurant might be naturally tough. But they both needed to make it outwardly obvious that they are tough. And they both decided that imitating the stereotype of black America is the best way to do that.

Dreams are born
From a secret, sacred womb
They’re conceived

Mine are worn
From ancestral memory
They’re retrieved

Some will die
Waking moment’s casualty
Morning’s thieves

Mine will grow
Side-by-side with yours until
They’re achieved

Dreams are born
From the darkest earthen tombs
They are freed

I substitute teach in schools where most of the students are white and all of the teachers are white. Last week I subbed at the very high school where I graduated from in 1999. In a class of about 300, I was one of two blacks who graduated that year (I think the following year had none). I never had a non-white teacher until I went away to college, except for a Mexican Spanish teacher in high school. And so last week for most of my students, I was the first black that they had seen in front of the blackboard (actually dry-erase whiteboard, these days).

Subbing isn’t very hard. It’s just following a lesson plan and being able to improvise a little to keep the students from drifting outside of their attention spans. I was doing that in a class with high school sophmores and juniors where the funny guy in class was a black kid named Darryl. He wore an oversized Colts jersey and a huge cubic zirconia that fit awkwardly on his earlobe. He seemed to consume every negative stereotype of black Americans that is in the minds of his teachers and classmates and wear them all on his sleeve. The teacher’s aide tried admonishing him when he came to class late and he joked his way out of a tardy. He sat on the age-old steam heat register in the back of the classroom and listened as we talked about résumé building and references.

The after that class, I went to the teachers’ lounge for lunch. The teacher’s aide told the women at our table that I had managed to keep Darryl interested. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him behave like that for an entire class. Two of the teachers went on to talk about their experiences of calling his mother, who said Darryl is a grown man now and she has other kids to deal with.

Said one teacher, ”He’s 17. I don’t know why he even bothers coming to school.“

”It’s either this or jail for him,“ said another. I tried not to cringe.

The next day I was subbing for a second-grade teacher in another district. Second graders are out-of-control creatures and I had to work for my money that day. One student was a caramel-colored girl named Kaia. Toward the end of the day she took opportunities to be my helper and she confided in me very sad things about her family. ”I wish I could sleep at school so I never had to go home,“ she told me after she put on her snow boots and the kids lined up at the door.

I wish that her parents and grandparents weren’t so messed up. And that Darryl had better choice of role models. These are children of my village, and so they are my children. It’s my job to help (and it’s your job, too). Lives are complicated and I don’t expect that a few minutes of my attention will solve problems of generational poverty and break cycles of violence. But I can help.

On a cultural level, I am more of an African or a white American than I am an African-American. But the mere color of my skin can make it easier for children of color to identify with me. Color matters. I saw it in my racially integrated neighborhood in St. Louis where one’s hangout and one’s race were linked. And I saw it in Tanzania, where many whites would cling to each other socially to the point where they could live in Swahili land for 10 years or more without learning to speak Swahili.

I’m biracial and drifting across boundaries happens without much effort. There are some blacks who don’t have that luxury. And there are some biracial kids who corner themselves into one category, taking on the negative stereotypes associated with it. That’s why I’m committed to being a mentor in some capacity when I move to Springfield, Missouri, in February to take a design job at the Springfield News-Leader. Whether it’s mentoring at my neighborhood school or working with journalism students of color at the local university, I have a responsibility to be a positive force for the youth of my village.

The Indianapolis Star is promoting its call to action to touch 10,000 new volunteers to help in troubled schools. For Jamila, who showed me how to navigate the newsroom at my first job out of college; for Cynthia, who showed me how to get the job I want; for Bill, who pushed me to apply for programs to advance myself; and for all of my other mentors, I’ll answer that call.

This is from a 1901 book called The Last of the Maasai. He recounts a Maasai man recounting the day the great loibonok Mbatian died, when he predicted the rhinderpest outbreak that decimated Maasai herds (and therefore people) in the 1890s and the coming of the whites.

When our father Batian felt he was about to die he
called together all the elders and warriors of the Masai.
We came in great numbers, until the place was black with
us, even as our villages are black with flies in the time of
the rains. We sat round in lines, curved like the moon
when she is first born, and our father Batian sat amongst
us in full sight and hearing of all. He first sat, saying no
word, his eyes seeing what no man else could see. Then
he arose, and pointing to the great hills he spoke : ‘ I see
no men : all, all are finished and gone down. My children
are no more.’ He sat down again, and covered his eyes
with his hands, we all sitting silent, for the breath had
gone from us. Again he looked where he alone saw, and
said, ‘ Now I see neither men nor cattle, the cattle have
followed my children, and the land is empty and bare, as
the palm of my hand is empty and bare. Woe, woe for
my land and children.’ As he again ceased the sweat
poured from us, and we could not see for fear. The
silence was yet longer, and each man, and our father too,
was thinking of the evil days to come. When the great
one next spoke the grief had fallen from him, as the cloud
disappears when the rain falls, and with gladness in his
eyes he pointed to where the great water is, saying, ‘ They
are coming, they are coming, those who will protect and
save my children. See you them not, first one, then
many, many, until the land is full of them, and peace and
plenty again reign. See you not the man, who is not a
man but a god, with a fair and shining white face, and
behind him many more, until my eyes cannot see the end
of them, all, all fair and white. These god-men will
follow quickly on the evil times ; they will live in my land,
and they will care for my children when I shall be no
more. My eyes shall never see them, but you, my people*
will see them ; fear them not, and harm them not, for they
it be who will protect you. Go to them and let them be
your father, and be you as children to them, for they are
wise and great, even beyond your father Batian.’ We
looked long and earnestly to where our father pointed, but
no god-men saw we. But we believed what we heard, and
shook for fear. Ten moons passed, and a great sickness
came upon us all. Men, women and children died and
were not ; few, only few, were left, but our cattle still re-
mained. Five more moons passed, and another great sick-
ness came, and all our cattle died — not one cow was left,
only a few sheep and goats, and we that remained lived
with difficulty. Many of us died, for we had nothing to
eat, and those death spared were shrunken and weak as
though age had fallen upon them. More moons came and
went, but not many; and then came men running, saying
that the god-men had come, and we feared greatly and hid
ourselves. But we remembered the words of our father
Batian, and we came, trembling, to the god-men, and they
were indeed as gods. But they did not treat us evilly,
and since they live in our midst we dwell in safety. At
first they lived not near us, but now you have come, great
medicine man, and we know but you among all the white
faces, and you and Lenana are our father. Thus have
come to pass the words of Batian, who spoke before he
died.

I like the story. It’s entertaining. The talk of ‘many moons ago’ and the portrayal of the whites as ‘god-men’. It’s cute. It’s also adorable how the strong warrior tells of the days to come when Maasai will be saved by the god-men, ‘those who will protect and save my children’. It gets better: ‘Let them be your father, and be you as children to them, for they are wise and great’.

He characterized the Kikuyu as a ‘cowardly and treacherous’ race (p16). But he seemed to like us Nilotes: ‘All Masai are quick at learning and, since they are both quiet and intelligent, they make excellent servants. They acquire claenliness with surprising rapidity, seeing that they naturally seldom wash.’

That seems to be a theme of the author’s — that the Maasai are better than their Bantu neighbors. He has an old-fashioned habit of visitors to generalize everything. Also authoritatively portrays some crazy ideas as facts: He says that a Maasai year consists of 10 lunar months (p41), for example. He refers to unmarried girls who are old enough to conceive (the warriors’ girlfriends) as prostitutes (p73). He says Maasai once kept wildebeest with their herds and had dogs, presumably herd dogs (p82). He says that Maasai believe that mosquito bites are fatal (p109).

Here’s what he had to say about the Maasai creation story:

Concerning the beginning of things, and their own
origin, they have a peculiar legend.

In the beginning, runs the legend, there were four
gods — the Black god, who was very good ; the White god,
who was good ; the Blue god, who was neither good nor
bad ; and the Red god, who was bad. All these gods lived
in the sky ; but the Black god came down to the earth and
became a man, and from him sprung the Masai. He
lived alone on Mount Kenya, but the other gods, seeing
his loneliness, said, ”This shall not be,” and they sent
him a child as a companion. When the child grew up, he
and the Black god used to wander from the summit of
Kenya. One day they met the Wakikuyu, and from them
they took women as wives, and thus the Masai race was
raised. Now the Red and Blue gods became angry with the
people on the earth, and they allowed no water to come
down from the sky, thinking they would kill all the people.
The rivers dried up, the trees, grass and cattle died, and
there came famine and terrible heat. Then one day the
child, who was now a man, disappeared, and the people
said, ”Where is the child?” But the Black god said,
“Wait, wait, he has only returned to the gods.” Five
days was he gone, and when he returned the rain came
with him, and after this he went back no more to the gods.
The Black god and the child were the fathers of all the
Masai — the Black god of the royal house,* and the child of
the remainder of the race. But the Dorobbo, Wakikuyu,
and Wakamba were found on the earth, and are of the
earth, and they know no god. After the rain was brought
to the earth the gods quarrelled among themselves, and now
there is only one god left, and he is the great White God.

* Lenana is held to he descended directly from the Black god, hence
the authority of the Masai royal family.

The passage above is contrary to what the old people told me about the origin stories of the Maasai. The old people’s stories synch well with the anthropologists’ theories, which involve a slow southward migration from the lower Nile Valley into the Kenyan Rift Valley and down into Tanzania. Of course the author, writing in 1901, wouldn’t have the luxury of having anthropologic research. But the old people’s stories aren’t supposed to change that much over time.

My take on this book is that it was written to advance the British agenda with its new settler colony Kenya. The government wanted more settlers to populate Kenya. The book had to appeal to the sense of adventure in prospective colonists, pushing forward exotic ideas of tamed wildebeest and quick-learning Nilotes. It also had to build confidence in Europeans. The title of the book, the Last of the Masai, suggests a wildness that’s fading (under control) by the hand of the white government.

Books like these remind me to read things about places or people with caution.

The images coming from the city of Port-au-Prince are etched into our collective mind. Grief, sadness, loss, weariness — all on monumental scale. Many are startling in ways that are surprising, not only in how horrific the scenes are but in that newspapers decided to run them.

An image of a suspected looter getting lynched ran on front page of the Toronto Star. He’s naked and being beaten, and was later burned to death. Photos by several news agencies show the morgue in the Haitian capital, where flies buzz around dozens of bodies with stiff limbs pointed in every direction. Some of the bodies are mostly naked. The images are powerful and I’m sure they evoke the emotion in people that causes them to take action (donate money, in this case).

I’ve been out of the U.S. since 2006. Not that long. But in that time, something monumental has changed in newspaper photography ethics. Photos that, back then, would have never seen print in most publications are now ubiquitous.

I was doing a copy editing internship in 2003 when the Iraq war was escalating. There were a few grizzly photos coming across on the wire that I was considering to run on my inside wire pages.

You might remember this photo from March 2004 of slain American contractors strung up on a bridge in Fallujah. This Poynter column shows the debate that many news outlets had, and many decided it was too graphic. Another Romanesko column from later in 2004 shows that even dead animal photos in a newspaper were too much for many readers.

It was during that era when I learned about the breakfast cereal standard: When newspaper readers (read 50-something homeowning whites) pick up their paper in the morning, we don’t want to put anything in the paper that might upset them while they are perusing over breakfast, lest they spit out their Cheerios. And gory images of wounded Marines or dead Iraqis might be upsetting.

That standard seems to have held up, more or less, through the rest of the Iraq war. It was there after September 11, 2001. It held up in the days after the 2004 tsunami. And even in the horrific scenes from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, corpse images in newspapers were limited and significantly tamer.

My employer, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, sent a team to New Orleans. They came back with some powerful stories and images. Among them was a photos of a corpse on a roadside. There was no blood and was the body’s identity could not possibly be discerned because only the back, shoulders and neck were visible. I was designing the Sunday news analysis section. My bosses, including the executive editor, crowded around my computer. The bosses concurred that it’s a great photo and should run, but wanted it to run smaller to reduce the impact of it. They were proud of themselves for having the guts to run it on a section front (it was Section B). In 2005, that was an edgy decision.

But it doesn’t compare to this.

Sometime while I was out of America, this became acceptable. To many newspapers and to all the news networks, corpses and blood became okay. The papers in East Africa, dominated by two Kenyan media houses, allowed gory news photos all along. They showed lynchings and some gut-wrenching scenes of brutality during a 6-week spasm of violence following Kenya’s fake election in December 2007. The newspapers were careful not to mention the tribe of victims or perpetrators, or even to use the word ‘tribe’ during those weeks of ethnic violence. Ethics decisions were made and followed.

No doubt bosses in newsrooms across North America had discussions on how much is too much. But they moved that bar much farther than they ever have before. Why?

What would have happened in the decade’s previous tragedies if the media showed the hard-to-stomach images? It could have turned public sentiment against the Iraq war. It could have increased the anger even further in the reaction to Hurricane Katrina. It could have upset people.

Why is it okay now? One factor is that people can see any pictures they want on the internet, and through pictures and video uploaded on social media sites and youtube. So there’s less reason for the media to filter out images because they’ll get to us anyway. The geography is an issue, too. Haiti is close enough to the US that lots of reporters and photogs can get there quickly. But it’s far enough away that the goryness is palatable in a way that it would not be if the same thing happened on American soil. Haitians don’t look or speak or mourn like “we” do, and I can’t help but wonder if that has a role.

In any case, I welcome the change. Disasters, natural or otherwise, are ugly. Americans don’t need to be protected from the ugly truth by the media. Sometimes we need to be upset by the truth. We’re grown-ups. We can handle it. And if we can’t, maybe we’ll do something about it.

Here’s what Charles Apple and Mario Garcia have to say. Most pertinent is the first link below.

http://www.visualeditors.com/apple/2010/01/day-three-haiti-coverage-dominated-by-photos-of-bodies/
http://www.visualeditors.com/apple/2010/01/haiti-earthquake-day-two-now-thats-more-like-it/
http://garciamedia.com/blog/articles/one_word_headline_one_powerful_photo/

Here’s a rundown of the crime page from this week’s Arusha Times in Arusha, Tanzania.

13 June 2009

Suspected gangster lynched
A 40-year-old man and an accomplice were running from the cops in a white Toyota Corolla. They went to a place called Burka on the west edge of town, ditched the car and ran on foot. One lucky guy got away from the mob but was caught by the police. The other was beaten to death by the angry mob. In the Corolla they found a sub-machine gun with 30 rounds in its magazine, plus six empty magazines.

Meanwhile a 25-year-old named Niko from Ilboru was injured on his head and legs by gangsters who invaded his shop at 8:30 p.m. one night. They wanted to rob the shop, but they only got away with Niko’s phone because an angry mob was converging on them. “They couldn’t rob the shop as they had to run to save their lives from the wrath of the angry mob,” said the report.

Buffalo kills domestic animals herder
A 35-year-old peasant, Baba Shauri resdent of Mang’ola in Karatu District died instantly after being attacked by a buffalo while he was grazing his animals. …The victim had tried to spear the beast but it was faster in action and was on him before he could save himself.

Bakwata secretary’s car burnt to ashes
A RAV4 was burnt to ashes downtown Arusha at 4 p.m. one day. The owner, who is head of the regional branch of a large Islamic organization, had recently had conflicts with some other Muslim adversaries.

Theft of lover’s money earns man three months jail term
A tanzanite miner from Mererani was senteced to three months after he was convicted of stealing 2 million shillings worth of his lover, Angela Mongi. The magistrate gave the miner leniency, as the miner prayed for a break because he has a family of 10 children to support.

A fictional re-casting of the time my landlord tried to jack up the rent on me a few years ago.
He was king of Bomba Island long before he had subjects living there.
He would cool himself off from the hot sticky air by jumping into the pond at the bottom of the waterfall. He would feed himself by eating the earth-ripe fruits of the island. Nearby was a patch of fruit trees, where the limes were as sweet as honey, and the mangos were yet sweeter.
I came on a boat of weary travelers, all of us in search of an island. We came from the mainland nearby, where there are many predators. Tales of hippos and hyenas making meals of my people — those tales were true. Those who burn the forest scorch the soil black there.
From Bomba Island, you can see the distant smoke of those fires on the western horizon. When the sun sets, it burns red through the haze. My fellows got off the boat, and the warm sand of the beach felt good on our feet. Soon we were greeted by the king of Bomba. He wanted subjects. We wanted an island to live on.
The king showed us to the pond at the bottom of the waterfall, where we all splashed around in the water that seemed even clearer than the air above it. I saw at the bottom a smooth red rock, and dove deep to grab it.
He showed us to the meadow where you can hunt guinea fowl, and to the ravine where cocoa yams and sweet potatoes grow wild in the shaded earth.
He showed us to the patch of fruit trees, where we had a fresh feast. I put my red rock beneath a banana tree’s purple blossom that reached heavy toward the ground.
For days, weeks and entire seasons, we did much the same. My people and the king enjoyed Bomba Island in the way a monkey enjoys a mango, or a baby enjoys a rattle. Some evenings we would sit on the beach and look west, into the mainland fires of the forest and the sunset beyond. We were glad to be away from there, and we thanked the king by bringing him fruit.
After time had passed, the king started to become fat. He no longer wanted to go to the pond at the bottom of the waterfall, or the patch of fruit trees. The sweet limes were plentiful there, and the sugary mangoes were too. So when he asked for more fruit, we brought him more fruit. But the more we brought him, the more he wanted.
“We want to eat the fruit too,” I told the king one day when he asked for more. “We can only give you the same amount of fruit every day unless you give us a better island.”
The king was hurt. He thought we had insulted his island. That day, the smoke from the mainland fires caught the wind just right. Bomba was stinky.
“Every king of every island will demand even more fruit from you than I do!” the king huffed in the smoky air. “Now bring me more mangoes!” His belly by now was round and full, like that of a woman with a ripened womb.
My people went to the pond at the bottom of the waterfall. The water was much clearer than the smoky air, this time, and we decided this would be our last visit to play here. We didn’t want to go, but we would give no more fruit. I threw my smooth red rock into the pond
Our boats loaded up, I made one last plea to the king of Bomba. “We will give you fruit to fill your belly,” I said.
He spit out a foamy response: “Not enough. Go on. Find another island.”
We boarded the boat, sad to leave. The king thought he was happy to see us go. But then he got hungry.
He had to fetch his own fruit now.

It’s a bit taboo for Tanzanians to question the words of the beloved father of the country and first president, Julius K. Nyerere, who ruled for more than 20 years until retirement in 1985. As Tanzania continues to impede progress on the East African Community common market protocol, which is a step along the route to eliminate trade barriers and ultimately lead to federation, these are clues to what the late president would say about Tanzania’s efforts to hinder regional integration.

This is from a speech he made in October 1967, talking about pan-Africanism:
Every African leader knows that separately our individual states are appallingly weak in the face of any political or economic pressure from outside our continent. All of us must know that in unity we could be incomparably stronger. Yet our petty inter-African difficulties and our internal squabbles have time and time again overshadowed the most basic requirements of the greater goal. (Mushi 241)

And about neighborliness:
Talk of all-African cooperation and understanding can oly too easily degenerate into meaningless cliches. If it is to become meaningful it must be put into practice at a neighborhood level. (Mushi 243)

That was in the formative years of the first East African Community, which counted among its successes a single currency, rail network, airline, and postal system for Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. Ten years after that speech, the EAC collapsed. The following year Tanzania was invaded by Uganda, and responded by expelling the Ugandan forces, marching to Kampala, and occupying that country until elections were held. This is what Nyerere said in a speech to MPs gathered at Dar es Salaam in July 1980, three years after the collapse of the EAC and while Tanzanian forces were still occupying Uganda:

Tanzania’s desire to build economic cooperation within East Africa has not changed in any respect. Our desire for it is just the same as it was before the breakup of the East African Community. … We do not want the breakup pf the Community to be an excuse for abandoning efforts to build economic cooperation in East Africa. It is true we cannot revive the Community as it was. But we can, if we wish, begin cooperation on a new basis. (Mushi 269)

Later he explains the importance of following through on commitments:
A commitment to any of our neighbors must be taken as seriously as – or even more seriously than – a commitment to the World Bank, to a superpower, or any other industrialized nation. Resolutions about inter-African cooperation arrangements are worse tha useless by themselves. They may be positively harmful. … Good faith and actions are much more important than useless resolutions. (Mushi 271)

What Would Julius Do?

He’d make Tanzania the leader of the charge to federation, rather than the reluctant child dragging down the pack.

The references above cite the book Foreign Policy of Tanzania, 1961 – 1981: A Reader, edited by S. S. Mushi and K. Matthews. Tanzania Publishing House, Dar es Salaam. December 1981