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Preface
- Indiana University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Preface Toward the end of 1987, as I was preparing to leave Tanzania after three years of working in community development for the local Catholic Diocese (now Archdiocese) of Arusha, I was invited to lunch by Lepilall ole Molloimet . At the time, Lepilall was in his second five-year term as the member of Parliament for Monduli District, one of the so-called pastoralist districts comprised of predominantly (but not exclusively) Maasai people. I was completing my second year as coordinator of the Arusha Diocesan Development Office (ADDO), the organization responsible for coordinating and implementing community development and food relief efforts for the local Catholic Diocese of Arusha. We used participatory problem-posing methods to encourage dialogue, critical awareness, and self-defined development among communities. Since the boundaries of the Diocese of Arusha encompassed the entire former “Masai District” (which was initially the “Masai Reserve”), much if not most of our outreach, education, and development work occurred with Maasai. I had therefore come to know Lepilall through our work in Monduli District, as we asked for (and received) his constant help in navigating the bureaucratic thickets of the Tanzanian government and oneparty state for permissions, delivery of materials and supplies, secondment of personnel, and more. We met in the lush garden of the Equator Hotel, a formerly glamorous hotel in the center of downtown Arusha that was somewhat rundown by 1987. Over a lunch of grilled goat meat and beer, Lepilall discussed his dream: I want to start an NGO [nongovernmental organization] that is run by Maasai to serve Maasai people and interests. We have been well served by ADDO, and we have learned a great deal about how to do development. We very much respect the work that you have done. But it is now time that Maasai take responsibility for themselves. Several of us been talking about forming our own NGO and we would like your help. Could you perhaps review our constitution x Preface and funding proposals, and help us raise money from donors? We’d like for you to serve as an informal advisor of sorts as we get ourselves started.1 After a lengthy conversation, I agreed to help. In the end, however, they asked me to do very little, since I soon returned to the United States and it was still difficult to communicate between Tanzania and the United States at the time. By the time I returned to Tanzania in 1991 to begin two years of research on gender and social change among Maasai for my dissertation, several NGOs had been started by Maasai, and more were being organized every day. I knew most of the organizers and leaders from my three years of work with ADDO (before I became coordinator, I spent a year as the women’s development fieldworker and project proposal writer) and three years in residence (including one year of part-time teaching) at Oldonyo Sambu Junior Seminary, one of the few institutions at the time to offer a secondary-school education to Maasai boys. The leaders of these fledgling NGOs—my friends, former colleagues, and students—invited me to attend various workshops and meetings, to review constitutions and funding proposals, and to introduce them to my donor contacts. My ability to help was severely limited by the logistics and demands of my research, which required prolonged periods in remote areas, but I did what I could during my almost weekly overnight visits to Arusha for supplies, hot showers, and clean water. I followed the progress and rapid proliferation of these NGOs during subsequent research trips, and included a brief discussion of their emergence in my first book, Once Intrepid Warriors (Hodgson 2001a). By the summer of 2000, however, the trickle had become a flood: I counted more than one hundred NGOs and CBOs (community-based organizations) that had been started by Maasai and other pastoralists in northern Tanzania. Many had organized themselves by positioning themselves as “indigenous people,” in order, in part, to engage with the increasingly powerful international indigenous rights movement. By most measures, they had achieved tremendous success, attracting millions of dollars from international donors and becoming prominent actors at the United Nations and other international fora. But my participation in a major workshop in June 2000 to discuss the future of PINGOs Forum, the “umbrella group” that was supposed to help nur1 . This is a paraphrase of our conversation, based on notes that I wrote that evening. [44.197.113.64] Project MUSE (2024-03...