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Reading culture is on the decline in Tanzania
2006-05-24 09:36:37
By Correspondent Ritah Wanza
When drugs addicts are going through a rehabilitation programme, they have what they call the 12 steps towards healing’.
The first step towards healing is accepting that one is a drug addict and that he or she needs help. Once an abuser accepts that he or she has a problem then she can move to the second step towards healing.
Today, Tanzanians need to accept that they have a problem so as to begin healing. We need to accept the fact that a ’reading culture’ does not exist among Tanzanians.
Lets accept it when was the last time you bought a book or a newspaper for your own reading? Am sure you cannot recall, but that’s no problem if you have accepted that a reading culture is slowly dying in Tanzania.
Have you ever wondered why every time there is a presidential election only about four candidates wish to be president and when there is a contest for miss Tanzania, miss tourism or miss whatever thousands of women in Tanzania show up to contest for the title of miss anything?
Do you know why? We have chosen to give beauty contests more priority than everything else. No wonder media houses record high sales during the Miss Tanzania season.
You want to know who won miss what, and that’s the only page you read, and if you go further it’s the classified ads pages where you scout for a cheap used car.
As Tanzanians when are we going to start reading? When are we going to realize that the more we read the more we strive to catch up with the rest of the world?
I watch plenty of Tanzanian talk shows and it scares the hell out of me everytime a Tanzanian is asked a simple question such as when Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete was inaugurated as the fourth president of Tanzania and can’t answer.
Where exactly are we heading to and how bright do we see our future if we can’t remember such defining moments in the history of our country?
Tanzanians are amazing people, amazing in every sense. 70% can name all the Miss Tanzania’s since 1995 but they can’t tell who the minister for foreign affairs is. 70 per cent know which team Beckham plays for but they can’t name any team member in Yanga or Simba. Isn’t it amazing how the Tanzanian mind is alive and well?
A few months ago, a local newspaper reported that a school in chanzige, coast region was running out of classes to accommodate the rapid increasing number of students.
In the weeks that followed after this report I tried to find out if any organization had offered to donate anything for the building of the much needed classrooms. To my surprise none had, and none was willing to contribute to such a worthy cause.
I have since learnt from reliable sources that different people and organization have begun fighting for the sponsorships of the beauty contests that are springing up prior to the big day when one skinny beauty will walk away with the title of Miss Tanzania, a car, a house and of course a name!
What would happen if Tanzanians chose not to hold any beauty contests for a whole year and dedicate all the money to a worth cause, may be say a building, a library, or buying computers for schools?
Nothing would happen because nobody would choose to forego a beauty contest.
The contests have their own benefits, publicity, and money. Contributing towards building libraries doesn’t have fame or any benefit for the sponsors.
Well, there is nothing I can do about it and to my anger we will continue crowning beauties who don’t know who the speaker to the parliament is as miss anything.
That will go on until someone can put a stop to this madness and realize that beauty and brains should mix, and that ’Akili sio nywele’.
It is very unfortunate that we view gossip as news; anything apart from gossip is not worth reading. Who is to blame? The Tanzanian brain has been conditioned into reading tabloids such that anything else that is not gossip is not news to it.
We give gossip a lot of priority and when the mind is conditioned into reading and thinking gossip, it can’t think of anything else let alone read anything else.
The people to blame for a dying reading culture are our parents.
They didn’t cultivate a reading culture in us while growing up. If it was not instilled in you while young, you won’t read when you are 20 or 30 no matter how interesting the publication is.
Most children are not encouraged to read by their parents. Once the child reads in school, that’s enough.
The child is left to watch TV while at home instead of being encouraged to read. I know parents who shop for music videos for their children and yet they can’t buy the child a book that will enhance his ability to read.
Someone said charity begins at home and, if a child is not taught how to develop a reading culture straight from home he won’t develop it anywhere else.
As a child you learn how to smile, talk and walk from your family. If reading is not instilled in you while you are young then you will never discover the joys of reading.
As Tanzanians, the lack of a reading culture is costing us a lot of opportunities. Knowledge is power and we can’t achieve without reading. Mahatma Gandhi once said that a brain that does not read is dead’.
If we wish to be at par with the rest of the world then we ought to develop a hunger for knowledge, forget about Miss Tanzania or who has left which local band for which, strive to how your MP is using constituency funds.
What is going on in parliament or who is who in the fourth phase government. When you know what’s going on then you can influence decision making in this country and make it even better.
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