Brainstorming in Jyväskylä

I just returned from a weekend spent in Jyväskylä, central Finland. It had been years since I last visited that beautiful city. My friend Jussi and I hopped on the Helsinki-Jyväskylä train on Friday and returned a few hours ago.

[Photo of me and Jussi taken by Jani Salokangas.]

Our mutual friend, Jani, who lives in Jyväskylä turned out to be the best of hosts. We ate well, listened to excellent music, took refreshing walks, and - the main purpose of our visit - held several brainstorming sessions together (a creative joint project). Jani lived in Tanzania for two years with his family: that's where we first met. Jani's wife, Laura, spent the weekend at her parents' place with their little girl, Noela, and let us guys take over the house.

Gone Hunting

Gone hunting. Be back Sunday night. Friends, nature, game, and Internet detox.

On Holidays

There hasn't been a blog post for a couple days and neither will there be for the next couple of days. Over the next week I'll be on semi-holiday: Helsinki -- Nurmijärvi (2 days) -- Kerimäki (3 days) -- Tampere (3 days) -- Helsinki. On Friday the 24th of July my brother and his family are coming to Finland for 5 weeks.

Monkey Thieves

We drove through the Serengeti National Park on our journey to Lake Victoria. We make a quick stop at the exit gates. Danny goes to show the documents to the park officials. He buys us drinks and chocolate bars, and we decide to sit down for a while before continuing on. A family of vervet monkeys seem to be interested in our car.

Tanzanian car inspection (=stealing our oil filter).

"Wait, I think he saw us..."

"False alarm. I'll move on the the bolts, you take the side mirror."

"I look goood."

We were enjoying this "car inspection". The monkeys were cute. But cuteness was part of their devious plan. For soon I hear Danny behind me shouting something, "Shooo!". I turn around and he says, "They took your snickers bar!" Apparently their cousins had been lurking behind as all along, just waiting for an opening. If Danny hadn't reacted quickly, I'm sure the little rascal would have my coke bottle in his other hand.

Ngorongoro Camo Zebras

This zebra is preparing to jump. We have completely stopped the car to enjoy the episode. There are several other zebras behind this one waiting for their turn.


The zebra, unlike most animals, cannot trust its hide coloring for protection against the probing eyes of the predators. The zebra's defense lays in numbers. The black and white stripes, easily visible against a green background, may distract the predator, make it difficult to single out an individual member from the pack, especially when the pack is on the run.

Ngorongoro Water Buffalos

On our drive to Lake Victoria through the Ngorongoro and the Serengeti National Parks my brother and I, because of the dense morning fog, failed to see the Ngorongoro Crater and its famous black rhinos. We were at the gates of Ngorongoro at six, when they open, and the fog hung heavily during our careful 20km/h drive up the spiraling mountain road. By the time the fog gave away, at around nine, we were already past the crater area.

But it was an experience in itself. Visibility was horrible, so we took our time -- where the road ended a steep deadly drop began, 30 meters or 300 meters, you couldn't tell. Our windows were open so that we could hear the morning sounds and breathe in some of that crisp morning air. Every now and then a group of water buffalos (or zebras, as you will see in the next post) would appear out of nowhere. The warm-blooded buffalos seemed to steaming and exhaling smoke in the cold air. Anyone who has seen these beasts knows what power they weild.

Suomi kutsuu

(Photo: somewhere between Arusha, TANZ, and Nairobi, KEN.)

Time's up, Suomi kutsuu (Finland's calling). On Monday I fly back to Finland. Unfortunately I won't make pit-stops in Ethiopia and Sudan as promised by my original itinerary, because the flight operator just cancelled that route. So instead I'm flying via Switzerland and Germany. It actually works better for me, since the layovers are shorter and I'll have one long uninterrupted night flight.

There will be no more posts till Finland since my to-do list prior to my departure is crammed. In fact tomorrow morning I'm flying to the island of Zanzibar, thus far one of my favourite places in East Africa, for the weekend. It will be the last field trip before returning to Finland. I'm going with my brother and a Finnish-Canadian Fida-worker from Uganda, who is holding an HIV-Aids workshop in Dar es Salaam this week. We plan to visit some Zanzibarian spice factories and locate Freddy Mercury's childhood home.

In case anyone is wondering, VALMET is a Finnish company (VALtion=State's METalli=Iron). My late grandfather owned a Valmet tractor. When you start seeing Valmet signs in some bush in the middle of Africa, you know it's time to go home. (Although I doubt the reference is intentional, probably the shop owner just saw it somewhere.) That, and a phone call from Finland saying the beautiful Finnish summer has begun, settles it. See you soon.

Serengeti and Lake Victoria

Tomorrow morning my brother and I are leaving for a five-day roadtrip. Our final destination is Mwanza, a city on the coast of Lake Victoria, quite near the Ugandan and Kenyan borders. Fida has a large youth center there which I will be able to visit.

We have decided to drive through the Serengeti national park, which is on the way. I've been to the Mikumi national park but never to Serengeti. Apparently the wildebeests and zebras etc. are migrating. If we're lucky (or if we're told the real-time coordinates), we'll stuble upon them in herds of thousands. Ngorongoro, the crater famous for its black rhinos, will have to wait for another time, as it would double the entry fee and cost us an extra day.

We'll be back on Tuesday. The following weekend I'll fly to Zanzibar for a mini vacation, just before returning to Finland on the 1st of June. My time in Africa is soon over. Six months has gone past quickly.

Can You Fit a Plane in the Trunk?

Indeed you can. While traveling around Tansania you become the witness of some of the most funny scences (and sometimes the not-so-funny ones, like car crashes).

Hmm...how can we get this Cessna from here to there?
Hey, I know! How'bout we take off the wings and put them on the roof, and stick the chassis in the trunk?
*Murmur of agreement*
Abdullah, you are wise.

Notice me with the camera? The mirror broke when someone tried to rip it off. Many mirrors have the car register number carved on it, as you can see, but sometimes even that doesn't keep the thieves at bay.

Africa needs God, says Atheist

Matthew Parris, the columnist for Times magazine and former English politician, published a controversial online article some time ago titled, “As an Atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God”. You can read it here.

His main argument is this.

“Missionaries, not aid money, is the solution to Africa's biggest problem – the crushing passivity of the people's mindset.”

Parris, who as a boy lived in Malawi, explains.

“Anxiety – fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things – strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won't take the initiative, won't take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.”

What exactly does he mean by this?

“How can I, as someone with a foot in both camps, explain? When the philosophical tourist moves from one world view to another he finds – at the very moment of passing into the new – that he loses the language to describe the landscape to the old.”

But he tries to give an example: the answer given by Sir Edmund Hillary to the question: Why climb the mountain?

“‘Because it's there,’ he said. To the rural African mind, this is an explanation of why one would not climb the mountain. It's... well, there. Just there. Why interfere? Nothing to be done about it, or with it. Hillary's further explanation – that nobody else had climbed it – would stand as a second reason for passivity.”

Christianity is offered as the antitode to the African tribal collectivism/passivity. But Parris seems to misrepresent Christianity as being purely individualistic.

Although it is true that Christianity stresses the importance of the individual person, who was made in the image of God, the individual person finds his self and purpose in relationships. Above all with his Creator, and secondly with other human persons.

In the Bible God's relationship to mankind is expressed as Father to children and Bride to Bridegroom. The Christian God is not an Absolute solitarity, but a Love Community between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. And man is made in this image, not in the image of absolute individualism.

I would be very interested in hearing what others thought of the article. What do you think, did he misrepresent the African rural mind? Or did he hit on a certain truth?

Last Month in Africa

Five months has gone since I arrived in Tanzania on December 1st of last year. It's been a wonderful experience. Although I wouldn't vouch for my hosts, it feels like time has gone by quickly. My return flight, June 1st, is more exotic than usual: Dar es Salaam - Addis Ababa - Khartoum - Frankfurt - Helsinki. This will be my first time in Sudan... Hey, it could be worse, as in Darfur.

As you can see from the photo, I'm very happy. I'm also a bit tanned, so at least I won't immediately get a sun-burn in Finland (sic). (Photo by Jani Salokangas, whose daughter has placed her hand gently on my shoulder. I didn't cut her out, I swear, her dad did.)

Grandpa in the Trunk

Some time ago my parents visited us here in Tanzania. They had been invited by Fida International to participate in a one-week Disability Forum Seminar in Northern Tanzania, Tanga. Naturally, the prospect of spending time with the grand-children was attractive too.


I stayed at home in Dar es Salaam as the rest of the family drove up to Tanga for the week. It was quite crowded in the car, so Vaari (Grandpa) got his own little space in the trunk, literally. Getting in and out was a bit challenging, but apparently the "seat" itself was quite snug.

Maisha Poa

Maisha Poa (engl. The Good Life), a Fida-sponsored centre for street children in Nairobi, Kenya. I had the privilege to visit it a while back. Paula Konttinen (in photo) is one of my brother and his wife's collegues. A native Kenyan, Paula Konttinen has studied and lived in Finland for several years, speaks fluent Finnish and, as some of you guessed, is married to a Finn.

Maisha Poa's mission includes empowering youth by way of education and work. One project which is still on the experimental level is artefact-production, bags, boxes, and cards from hand-made paper. The paper is made from elephant dung, and I was shown the process. Hopefully soon they can start making a profit. For those of you who speak Finnish, click on the photo and check out the label text on this bag.

An Update With Photos...

...can be found, not here, but here. Since my brother and his family already updated their blog, I see no point in dublicating the stories told there. Whew, saves me a lot of trouble.

Some highlights from our trip from Dar es Salaam through Tanga and Moshi up to Nairobi, Kenya, and back:

1. Sirkku ran the Kilimanjaro half-marathon during our pit stop at Moshi, near Arusha just a few hours away from the Kenian border (photos provided).
2. You can, indeed, fit a Cessna plane into the back trunk of your car (photo provided).
3. "Overseeing" a problematic two-hour tire change under the scorching sun without any sun tan lotion is possible, but not advicable (photo provided).

Dar es Salaam -- Tanga -- Nairobi

(click photo to enlarge)

We're off to a one-week roadtrip tomorrow morning. The plan is to visit a few Youth Centers both in Tanzania and Kenya, so this is a worktrip. I'm a hired Nanny.

We leave Dar es Salaam at the break of dawn and drive north to the city of Tanga, just at the Kenyan border. There we'll spend to days and meet with some friends. On Saturday we'll continue north-west and make a pit-stop in the city of Moshi near Arusha, and continue across the border up to Nairobi on Sunday. Two days in Nairobi and then a two-day drive back to Dar with one pit-stop in Moshi.

No posting until next week, that is. But then my brother's in-laws arrive from Finland for a two-week holiday, so it'll be a happy reunion and I'll post some cool photos.

An Unforgettable Dinner

If ever the platitude "a picture speaks more than a thousand words" applies, it does so here. What in the world is happening in this picture?

We'll, we've been on the deserted island for way over a month by this time. Almost everyone's lost a lot of weight. The competition that preluded this (brim-)full-course meal involved oily liquid, as those of you with keen eyes can notice. We had to transfer a lot of melted butter in our mouths. Anyway, the two best competitors (Markku on the left) were entitled to -- get this -- a four-hour Roman style dinner on the beach under the evening sun, accompanied by a private chef (I don't know where they got him from), real chairs, a grill, and -- get this too -- the remaining competitors chained to a bench a few feet away from the table. They had to witness the entire feast without a bite (we offered the meal to them, but the production crew didn't allow it). The women -- Jasna, Mira, and Elena -- were really good sport about it. In fact they gave us some culinary suggestions.

And boy did we have a lot to choose from. You can see rye bread, white bread, cheese and other toppings, eggs, beef and pork and chicken in various different forms, olives, potatoes, sausages (HK sininen all the way from Finland!), fish (silli etc.), rice, sauces, most fruits you can name, and so on. For drinks we had water, beer, red wine, white wine, mineral water, club sodas, and (naturally) whisky and brandy. For dessert -- well we started the whole meal with strawberry ice-cream so it wouldn't melt, but in addition to that we had chocolates (managed so smuggle a few for the women), cakes, and Cuban cigars.

Every fifteen minutes we'd take a "break" (=run into the jungle, our bodies weren't used to food), and all through the next night I wanted to throw up but refused to on grounds of "not wasting it". Really, an unforgettable experience. One of the many we experienced during those 44 incredible days (summer of 2005).

Not "Hot" In Swahili

It's +33 degrees Celcius in Dar es Salaam, but it's not hot. Well, not in Finnish anyway. Hot in Finnish is kuuma. Unfortunately, kuuma is also a Swahili word meaning something quite different -- it's a part of human anatomy, woman's anatomy to be more precise.

So all the Finns here say it's lämmin (warm).

To spice things up further, the Finnish No onpa kuuma! means "Wow it's hot!" But no onpa, when one says it quickly, sounds a lot the Swahili word namba which means "may I have?". Summa summarum: shouting No onpa kuuma! in public (like in a restaurant during peak hours) will raise a few eyebrows and cause a chainreaction of chuckles.

All is Well in Africa...

...Well, at least as far as I am concerned, that is. One major reason behind my wellbeing is the fact that my nephew, Benjamin, and my niece, Daniella, are so adorable. Daniella, the little princess, can walk! She is barely 11 months old. Benjy's vocabulary is extensive and he is a very brave boy. I guess our honeymoon is over, for the other day Benjy asked his dad: "When is Uncle Jason going back home?"

Posting will be more sporadic in December. I'm trying to cut down on time spent on the Internet -- which is not that difficult considering that I arrived without a personal computer to a land that has a somewhat unreliable network. (Isi: Ruokomäet tulee 17. päivä. Toisin sanoen on vielä reilu viikko aikaa löytää mulle läppäri, jossa toimii ainakin Word...)

Tomorrow To Tanzania

This is my last day in Finland. I fly tomorrow morning. Ethiopian Airlines... will take me from Frankfurt to Addis Ababa and from Addis Ababa to Dar es Salaam. Better that than Somalian Airlines, I guess, but the adventure might begin sooner than planned. (Experience with Ethiopian Airlines, anybody?)

I've been so busy with all the preparations, the move, the dissertation plan, the ECLD seminar, etc. that I haven't had much time to think about it that much. Little by little it's sinking in. The darker the weather outside becomes (I'm looking out at grey sky and grey lousy-excuse-for-snow) the wider my smile. I'm super excited. In two days I will see these two little children, Daniella and Benjy. Benjy: Jasu-setä tuo sulle sulkaajoulukalenterin! [Trans. Uncle Jason is bringing you a chocolate Christmas calendar!]

December Departure: Dar es Salaam

(Sirkku and Danny, Helsinki 2008)

It's official now. I'm leaving to Tanzania on the 3rd of December. I already bought the tickets. I'll be back in June. The idea is to study hard (in December I'll know if my dissertation research plan is ratified) and spend time with Danny and Sirkku and their kids.

I'm very excited! But organizing everything before I leave is going to be challenging. I'd happily meet with anyone who wants to have coffee before I leave. Just call or drop me a line.