Promising Practices I
This project was conducted as part of the CIS 668 (Social Justice and Inclusion Advocacy) class during fall 2023 that involved collaborating with Bwagamoyo Africulture on establishing a community library and archive. On this page, I present some readings, web-based resources, and case studies that inform this project.
Readings
Books
Cheche: Reminiscences of a Radical Magazine Edited by Karim F. Hirji
Studying under Walter Rodney, students at University of Dar es Salaam published Cheche, a radical socialist magazine to share their experiences, critiques, and analyses of the current government-controlled education system under the Presidency of socialist, Julius Nyerere. Cheche was active for only 1 year (1969-1970) before they were disbanded by President Nyerere. This text, Cheche: Reminiscences of a Radical Magazine is a collection of reflections published in 2010. This book of essays fills in gaps in the historical record providing readers with context to consider Tanzania's policies on public education, historical memory, and freedom of speech according to the principles of Nyerere's Ujamaa.
Street Archives and City Life: Popular Intellectuals in Postcolonial Tanzania by Emily Callaci.
Callaci's analyses of the history of Dar es Salaam from the perspective of popular urban intellectuals makes space for the redefinition of archives and rearticulation of migrant subjectivity in postcolonial Tanzania. By looking at all utterances of inhabitants as socially constructed and historically situated texts, she reveals a method for approaching history and preservation from stories in the idyllic margins and urban centers. While Calacci focuses on Dar es Salaam as an urban center, the interplay of urban and rural she so well describes makes this a practical application for Bagamoyo. This 2021 text informs my approach to the process of collecting and gathering of memories that will constitute the archive.
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney
Walter Rodney was a radical scholar and researcher teaching at University of Dar es Salaam when he was writing this book, published in 1972. His scholarship and activism have become foundational to black radical movements on the continent and abroad. His political economic analysis is grounded in his understanding of the Europe's role in the technical stagnation and distortion of the African economy and Africa's contribution to capitalist development. By detailing the impact of the slave trade and colonialism, he provides a basis for building strategies of liberation for post-colonial societies.
Articles
Education for Self-Reliance by Julius K. Nyerere
This essay was published in 1967 as part of the Arusha Declaration which solidified President Nyerere's ideas of a socialist governance, rural reorganization, and anti-urban sentiments. In this document, Nyerere questions the purpose, origins, and goals of the current education system. He prioritizes agricultural work in the educational system through shambas and school farms. He reconnects the idea of training students to take pride in the care and cleanliness of their rural environments and encourages administrators to think of schools as communities. This analysis and proposal offer a basis for understanding the nature of work, community, and education in Bagamoyo.
Web-based Resources
This online resource called Archive of Forgetfulness is a 3-part project that includes a podcast, online exhibition, and small regional projects. It was started in 2021 as a way to rethink mobility and infrastructure during the Covid-19 Pandemic This project was curated by Huda Tayob, a South African architect and theorist and Bongani Kona, a writer and editor based in South Africa. In the About Us section of the website, the project is described as “hold(ing) together acts of remembering: collecting and gathering stories often untold. The contributions renew lines of connections, resurface forgotten conversations, and establish the beginnings of future collaborations. This project is a space for interrogating the archival gesture, from the bodily and spoken, to the written and performed. Beginning with our interest in the entangled histories of how we live our lives, the project is framed by a series of questions: We ask what personal and political histories emerge via infrastructures? We question how thinking through deep and recent histories, across water or through the skies, might reveal alternative ways of living? And how dreams of freedom, and other worlds that might have been possible, haunt our present, and suggest other possible futures?” This research project is relevant to my project because it explores archival frameworks in creative ways, is an example of funded research by the Goethe Institute that I can use as a model in my proposal for funding and includes projects on Bagamoyo and Tanzania through the work of Margarida Waco and Arafa Cynthia Hamadi, respectively.
The University of Dar es Salaam Library Journal (UDSMLJ) is a double-blind, peer reviewed, interdisciplinary, open-access academic journal that publishes scholarly articles on all aspects of Library, information Science and related fields of study. The journal is published twice a year in June and December. It is available online starting from 2001 with Vol 3 no. 1-2. This collection of scholarly material is available through African Journals online and covers organization of knowledge, information dissemination, information and knowledge management, Information Technology and its application, Management in Libraries, Communication, Human Information Behavior, Records and Archives Management, Information Literacy, Information Retrieval, Reference Services and Information Systems. This is useful to my research in regard to finding the scholars who are invested in this research area and understanding the discourse.
Case Studies
Figure 1. a photo of Windy Radical, author's daughter in front of Bagamoyo Maktaba.
Bagamoyo Maktaba
"Maktaba" is Kiswahili for "library". Maktaba is a single-story cement building with large windows and a corrugated roof. The building sits next to a huge Baobab tree and across from Baobob Studios, a music production space. The gated door remains open during the hours of operation. There is one attendant, a desk, tables and chairs, and racks of books.
When I visited, it was absent of patrons. In conversations with locals, I learned that it is not considered a resource to and it costs to enter. The library does not currently have an online presence.
Figure 2. Screenshot of the website for The School of Library, Archives, and Documentation Studies
The School of Library, Archives and Documentation Studies (SLADS) was founded in 1989. It was established under the then Ministry of Education and Culture and is run by the Tanzania Library Services Board (TLSB). Before the establishment of the School, TLSB was running Basic Library Training at Certificate level since 1972 at its headquarters in Dar es Salaam. This course was merged with SLADS in 1990. SLADS is Located at Ukuni 72 Kilometers from Dar es Salaam and 4 Kilometers from Bagamoyo town. The School is full registered with the National Council for Technical Education (NACTE) with registration number REG/PWF/1006P.
(from the SLADS website)
References
Archive of Forgetfulness (n.d.). About Us. Retrieved October 23, 2023, from https://archiveofforgetfulness.com/About
Callaci, E. (2017). Street Archives and City Life: Popular Intellectuals in Postcolonial Tanzania. Duke University Press, North Carolina, USA.
Hirji, K (Ed.). (2010). Cheche: Reminiscences of a Radical Magazine. Mkuki na Nyota Publishers Ltd.: Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Nyerere, Julius K., 1922-1999. (1967). Education for self-reliance / Nyerere, Julius K. Dar es Salaam: Information Services Division, Ministry of Information and Tourism
Rodney, W. (1972). How Europe underdeveloped Africa. Bogle L'Ouverture Publications: Great Britain, UK.