TAN: Televised

We were still working at the house when the housemaid arrived. She desperately wanted to tell us something about the television and us. Our only experience with the television at Hanif’s thus far was that it didn’t get any signal. As the housemaid tried a second time to explain in broken English, all we could think about was the dysfunctional set. At this point, we decided it would be better to have her write down her message and have Maina give a shot at figuring out what it was. She only picked up on us saying Swahili, missing the pantomime of writing, causing her to launch into an animated explanation that was completely lost on us. Eventually we got the message down on paper. Later at the office Maina translated and much to our surprise, we had been on television the previous evening. A gentleman from TVT, the government television station had been filming at the Mac Expo we attended on Nov 11th. We hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but I guess it had been a fairly big deal.
We grabbed a quick bite to eat and headed over to Msasani to meet with the owner of a potential house. Chantal and Maina had been over here before. The house was decent, but certainly not worth the $350 per month rent due up front for one year. We have continued to be amazed by the amount of money due at one time to secure a place to live. The shortest period of time that rent can be paid for seems to be six months. I imagine it is very difficult for the average person to afford a decent place to live.
Anne Marie joined us after the owner had left. She was not at all impressed with neither the house nor the neighborhood it was located in. We all headed over to a South African owned rib joint with a American South West decor. The food, though quite good took an interminably long time to materialize. Chantal and I headed back to office, leaving Maina to spend the rest of the afternoon with Anne Marie.
Tonight’s order of business for the Pixel Corps was picking a project to work on. We had come up with a number of suggestions for graphic design and video and a set of milestones for each. I ended up spending the session resuscitating Mwanga’s fish handling movie. The Pixel Corps members picked an interesting variety of projects to work on. Two of the folks doing graphic design decided to do posters, one for a soon to be released dairy product and another for a video rental store. Chantal’s suggestions that they make one for a movie, music or cultural event were met with blank stares. One gentleman asked if a car accident was considered an event that a poster could be made for.
The video projects ranged from a piece about Tanzanian soccer to a humorous short and a documentary on the underprivileged fighting for their rights. The gentleman who wanted to do the documentary was so soft spoken that for all intents and purposes he was just mouthing the words. We are all very curious as to how his project is going to get done if no one can hear him speak.