First Impressions of a New Job

Day two at my new job as the sole staff member in the research and monitoring department at the Mnazi Bay-Ruvumu Estuary Marine Park. As I draft this entry, I am sitting in on a meeting at one of the eleven small villages that fall within the park. Altogether there are close to thirty leaders, fisherman, and local residents, representing three of the eleven villages, sitting on straw mats in the shade of a large mango tree, helping to revise and update their "village environmental management plans" ("VEMPs") - documents that represent the local planning component of the park's General Management Plan ("GMP"), which is likewise due to be updated this year.

Given the fact that there has been no new substantive research completed since the last GMP was drafted five years ago (due to a lack of funds), the revised VEMPs being developed here will serve as the main substantive change to the GMP. Yet despite their importance, the four park representatives who are leading this meeting (and who unlike me, understand the mix of Kiswahili and Makonde being spoken) seem to be encountering some resistance from the attendees, who are perhaps somewhat confounded by the very concept of a VEMP, and perhaps even resistant to efforts related to the park, which is known by some locals as much for its rules and regulations as for any benefit it has imparted upon local residents.

For example, absent from today's meeting is the park's director, Red Fred Ngowo, who is currently in a meeting with the Mtwara regional commissioner to talk about relaxing enforcement of the park's rules and regulations leading up to local and national elections is October. Resident fisherman are apparently complaining to officials that park officers are harassing them, and the politicians want to appease constituents and show some results prior to elections.

Despite their initial hesitancy though, the attendees at today's meeting appear to be warming up to the process, a sign of the unusual level of local cooperation that underlies the park's foundation. Established just a decade ago, the Mnazi Bay-Ruvumu Estuary Marine Park is unique among other marine parks in the world for the amount of dry land included within the park's boundaries - 220 square kilometers, approximately one-third of the park's total area. Altogether, there are over 30,000 people who live within the park, making local community participation and involvement especially critical to the park's management.

This reality would seem to make today's meeting a fair success, regardless of any controversy surrounding enforcement of the park's rules and regulations. After all, the attendees have now been sitting here, patiently cooperating, for just shy of three hours, in the middle of the day, with no break, even for lunch (which may also be due to the fact that a majority of these people are likely fasting in observance of Ramadan). And so we sit here, discussing the village plans, as hens and their chicks dig through the leaf litter under this mango tree, roosters crow and children play in the distance, and the wind gently blows rough the fronds of the surrounding coconut and banana trees.

The villages on Msimbati Peninsula, ringing Mnazi Bay, are unusually tidy by Tanzanian standards, with little trash on the ground, and the dirt around the houses neatly swept. Even the homes, almost all of which are made of mud walls and coconut thatch roofs, seem somehow well put together, with a standard design that includes a front overhang to the roof, supported by four thin, evenly spaced poles. And the people themselves are a neat lot - the men almost all dressed in slacks and collared shirts, with varying styles of the conventional Muslim brimless cap covering their closely cropped heads, and the women covered from head to calf with brightly colored, if discordant, wraps, called "kangas."

So despite no end in sight to this meeting (now approaching four hours), I am happy to be here, working on Tanzania's southeastern coast. Merritt and I agree that the people here seem very kind and welcoming. And even though we're still both a little unsure of what our respective roles will be for the organizations were working for, not to mention still awaiting word that we can finally move into our house, we think we'll fit in well here and eventually be able to call this little corner of the country home.