Appeared in print: Tuesday Feb 2, 2010
“Maize is an important cultural food in our country,” said the student in the front row in the English class that I visited at a rural high school when I was in Tanzania. I nodded my head, while picturing in my mind Tanzania’s national dish, “ugali,” which is made from corn and looks like mashed potatoes.
But I did not expect the question that followed.
After a pause, she asked me, “is it true that in America people don’t eat maize, but use it only to feed cattle?”
The entire class of about 35 students stayed silent and looked at me, waiting for my response. I told the students that we eat a lot of corn in many forms, and added that we also use it to feed cattle. The student who asked me the question seemed to be pleased with that reply. Or maybe she was simply being courteous and respectful to the visiting college professor.
Later, I felt relieved and thankful that she did not ask me about the use of corn to manufacture ethanol. I would have had a tough time explaining how and why we use food as fuel for cars!
That student’s question about their staple food is a reflection of the main concerns of an average Tanzanian — food and poverty. Corn is a relatively inexpensive source of ample carbohydrates, and provides more than half the dietary calories of the Tanzanian population.
An interesting juxtaposition, indeed: a New World crop, with its origins perhaps in Costa Rica, being grown in plenty as the primary food crop in the ancestral Old World of Tanzania.
The basic need for food that might preoccupy the average Tanzanian is in sharp contrast to the fantastically plentiful lives that we lead here in the United States.
An overwhelming majority of us here in America have access to so much of food that under-nourishment is not our typical concern.
Our worries, on the other hand, are about problems at the other end of this spectrum — overeating and obesity. Increasingly, we in America are also concerned about the links between the extensive use of high fructose corn syrup and obesity, an ironic and unfortunate contrast to the life-sustaining role that corn plays in Tanzania.
More than 95 percent of Tanzania’s population subsists on less than $2 a day.
The United Nations Human Development Index, a composite measure of economic and social development, ranks Tanzania at 151 out of the 182 countries analyzed in the latest report.
The Tanzanian government defines abject poverty as an income of 641 Tanzanian shillings a day, per person, in Dar es Salaam, or about 469 shillings in the villages.
At an exchange rate of about 1,350 shillings to a U.S. dollar, a person living in rural Tanzania needs 35 cents per day to be above the official poverty line. Yet more than a third of the country’s population is very poor — perhaps beyond our wildest imaginations.
It is no surprise, therefore, that there is no McDonald’s franchise in Tanzania. I do not recall spotting any of the other leading global fast food outlets either, even in Dar es Salaam.
It was a coincidence that the main academic activity in that English class in the high school was a discussion of a poem that was about food.
Titled “Eat More,” the rather cynical and revolutionary poem was authored by Joe Corrie, a Scotsman with a lot of firsthand experience with the struggles of the working class in Britain’s coal mines in the early decades of the 20th century.
With profound thanks to the teacher, Mr. Phillip, who offered a wonderful analysis of the poem, and his students — especially to the female student who asked me about corn and cattle — here is Corrie’s poem, “Eat More”:
“Eat more fruit!” the slogans say,
“More fish, more beef, more bread!”
But I’m on unemployment pay
My third year now, and wed.
And so I wonder when I’ll see
The slogan when I pass,
The only one that would suit me —
“Eat More Bloody Grass!”
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