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26 chapter two Locating the Field Official stories of structural adjustment tell of a better life for all Tanzanians found in The Free Market, and in a world of expanded and expanding horizons and opportunities that accompany it. This “opening up” is natural , rational and so obviously amoral and desirable that it scarcely merits attention, let alone discussion. From the sidelines, ordinary Tanzanians tell a decidedly different story of the present. . . . This is a present of ever-increasing uncertainty, where hard questions must be asked, and tough choices be made. todd sanders 2001:179 But the stories that anthropologists tell from the field overwhelmingly speak to a new intensity of immiseration produced by adjustment programs that have ravaged public sector services for the poor. james pfeiffer and rachel chapman 2010:150 Mainland Tanzania is administratively divided into twenty-six regions (mkoa), and each region is further divided into districts (wilaya) and wards (kata). The Dar es Salaam region is divided into three districts: Kinondoni , Ilala, and Temeke, which is the largest of the three districts. It has an area of 407 square miles and, as of 2007, a population of 886,529. Temeke district is comprised of sixteen wards. One-third of the district is urban and another one-third is peri-urban—a mix of urban and rural setting. The remaining larger section of the district is predominantly rural. Of the three districts, Temeke has the largest underserved population and the least developed health facilities, roads, water, power supply, and organizational infrastructure. It is ethnically heterogeneous, with at least forty-five ethnic groups co-residing in the district (Tripp 1997).1 The Zaramo, 98 percent of whom are Muslims, are the original settlers and the largest ethnic group in the district. I chose Temeke district as the site for my fieldwork because the district’s socioeconomic profile was well suited to my general theoretical concerns Locating the Field · 27 about health-care-seeking among the poor in the context of social transformation and my expectations about working at the margins of urban Tanzania. Moreover, the district’s ethnic heterogeneity, the absence of the South Asian and expatriate communities, and the predominance of the Wazaramo ethnic community, were also important considerations. I conducted most of my fieldwork in the Chamazi ward on the district’s periphery . Within the Chamazi ward, I initially concentrated my fieldwork in an ethnically heterogeneous village called Mbande.2 Mbande was also my home base from which I did additional research in the surrounding smaller villages and hamlets. Mbande is located about thirty miles south of downtown Dar es Salaam, and about twelve miles inland from the coast. I conducted continuous fieldwork from August 2000 to September 2001 in the Chamazi ward,3 followed by several short research-related visits of eight to ten weeks every summer from 2005 to 2010, totaling about thirty months of field research.4 This length of time afforded me an advantage that stems from doing ethnographic research over an extended period; it allowed me to stay in touch with the people in the fieldwork site over several years and follow developments in their lives (see Whyte 1997). In this chapter, I provide a brief history of the main village, and then describe the physical, social, and political landscape in which people lead their everyday lives. This chapter sets the stage for an examination of the particularities of the locality that shape social relations and local responses to global neoliberal discourses and practices pertaining to health in general and malaria in particular. Tales from the Past Mzee Mlanzi was a poor farmer who lived on the village’s periphery. He was in his early sixties when I first met him at the baraza, a hangout next to a small tea stall located in the center of the village market (soko or magenge). He was engaged in an intense debate with a group of village elders on the advantages and disadvantages of Tanzania’s decision to abandon its one-party system and embrace a multiparty democratic system . Bedraggled in appearance, thin, bony, almost half-blind because of untreated cataracts in both his eyes, he was a well-known figure in the village. Despite his animated, argumentative style of engaging in political conversations, he was better known for his skills as a peacemaker, especially in land-related disputes, which were rare. In a life story interview I conducted with him in August 2000 at his home in Mbande, he told me [18.221...

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