October 14 is the ninth anniversary of Julius Nyerere’s death and a national holiday in Tanzania. Yes, I’m at the office anyway (I’ve discovered that the public holidays are more for local staff than for me), although I should be able to take off a bit early today if I stop blogging and finish editing this proposal. :-D In honor of Nyerere Day though, I thought I’d share a quick history lesson about one of Africa’s great leaders. In order to be able to enjoy the rest of my Nyerere Day, however, I’m going to borrow that lesson from one of the websites I found (http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-nye.htm) instead of writing it myself.
And (before I get back to work) some words of wisdom from the mwalimu himself that are no less relevant now than they were years ago: “a nation which refuses to learn from foreign cultures is nothing but a nation of idiots and lunatics …[but] to learn from other cultures does not mean we should abandon our own.”
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