THE OTHER ARUSHA

Abstract

Evidently Arusha means different things to different peoples. For many foreigners it is the hub of the tourist industry in East Africa, the center from which Safari expeditions into the wild-life kingdom are organized and expedited. For African patriots, it marks the locus of Africa's Risorgimento, the source of Africa's awakening to self-consciousness typified by the famed Arusha Declaration. Although the social programme enunciated in that revolutionary document has been voided by lived experience, it remains nevertheless and forever the beginnings of Africa's renaissance. Indeed that Declaration can rightly be regarded as an earlier version of Obama's election slogan: “Yes, we can!” meant to indicate that African Americans were not children of a lesser god. One would wish that a refurbished monument celebrating that momentous event could be erected as a replacement for the present one such as to rival the Statue of Liberty in New York or the Arc de Triumph in Paris. If Arusha's International Conference Center boasts of bringing the world to Tanzania, it needs some outstanding landmarks to support that claim. But there is a totally different aspect to Arusha, which serenades my attention. It isa numinous dimension beloved by poets and mystics. Arusha’s geography breeds biblical evocations and associations. It is this transcendental dimension that is the theme of my song. Allow me to explain,