HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY

The Family of Tanzanians in Tamil Nadu are honored to celebrate this occasion with you Mr. Terence Vusile Silonda. HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY AND MANY HAPPY RETURNS!

COMMENTS ENABLED

For quite sometime it hasn't been possible to leave your comments. Now you can leave your comments on any posted item on the blog... Feel free! Ila tuwe wastaarabu.

SHARE THE FUN

Is it your birthday? Did you see something interesting? Want to share some info? Well, what are you waiting for

You can send to us your pics and articles that you want to share with the rest of the Tanzanians in the Community. Anyone is eligible, be it from Trichy, Madurai, Ooty, Erode, Chennai, Salem or Coimbatore. Just drop us an email at: watanzania.tamilnadu@yahoo.com and leave the rest to us.

Director of Information, Communication and Registration

Tanzanian Community in Tamil Nadu

GODFREY ROCKY ASHEREHEKEA SIKUKUU YAKE YA KUZALIWA NA MARAFIKI ZAKE

Mdau Godfrey Rocky (aliyevaa kofia), mdau Aaron na rafiki yao wakiwa katika shughuli ya kumpongeza Rocky aliyesherehekea sikukuu yake ya kuzaliwa tarehe 17/4/09

Rocky akipongezwa

Wadau wa karibu wa Bw. Rocky wakipata chakula cha jioni pamoja katika shughuli ya kumpongeza Rocky.

The Family of Tanzanians in Tamil Nadu are honored to celebrate this occasion with you Mr. Godfrey Rocky. HAPPY BIRTHDAY AND MANY HAPPY RETURNS!

Something to ponder about: You Are Being Lied to About Pirates

Who imagined that in 2009, the world's governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy - backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China - is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as "one of the great menace of our times" have an extraordinary story to tell -- and some justice on their side.

Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the "golden age of piracy" - from 1650 to 1730 - the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda-heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often rescued from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can't? In his book Villains of All nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence to find out. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then - plucked from the docks of London's East End, young and hungry - you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off for a second, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the Cat O' Nine Tails. If you slacked consistently, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.

Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains - and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls "one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century." They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed "quite clearly - and subversively - that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy." This is why they were popular, despite being unproductive thieves.

The words of one pirate from that lost age - a young British man called William Scott - should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: "What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirating to live." In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention."

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish-stocks by over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea-life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia's unprotected seas. The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters."

This is the context in which the men we are calling "pirates" have emerged. Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a 'tax' on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia - and it's not hard to see why. In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was "to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters... We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas." William Scott would understand those words.

No, this doesn't make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters - especially those who have held up World Food Programme supplies. But the "pirates" have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalian news-site WardherNews conducted the best research we have into what ordinary Somalis are thinking - and it found 70 percent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence of the country's territorial waters." During the revolutionary war in America, George Washington and America's founding fathers paid pirates to protect America's territorial waters, because they had no navy or coastguard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?

Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We didn't act on those crimes - but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 percent of the world's oil supply, we begin to shriek about "evil." If we really want to deal with piracy, we need to stop its root cause - our crimes - before we send in the gun-boats to root out Somalia's criminals.

The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarised by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know "what he meant by keeping possession of the sea." The pirate smiled, and responded: "What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor." Once again, our great imperial fleets sail in today - but who is the robber?

SALAAM ZA PASAKA

Ndugu watanzania wenzangu, Nachukua nafasi hii kuwatakieni nyote kheri na fanaka tele za sikukuu hii ya pasaka. Naamini Pasaka kama zinavoweza kuwa sikukuu nyingine zozote za kidini inatupa nafasi muhimu ya kutuunganisha sisi watanzania na kujumuika.

Naomba kuwaalika nyote kutumia nafasi hii muhimu kukuza ushirikiano baina yetu watanzania bila kujali dini zetu. Kama ambavyo tungeweza kuunganika wote kwenye tafrija ya kusherekea Eid el Hajj  basi vivo hivo tutumie nafasi hii kama watanzani kwenye miji yetu kukusanyika na kujumuika. Nawasihi kuendelea kuukuza moyo wa ushirikiano tulionuia kuujenga kupitia jumuiya yetu.

Naamini wote kwa namna moja au nyingine tutapata furssa ya kusherekea sikukuu hii. Tukumbuke basi kuwashirikisha watanzania wenzetu katika kuadhimisha sikukuu hii.

Naomba tukumbuke vile vile kubadilishana picha za tafrija tutakazofanya kwenye miji yetu katika kuadhimisha sikukuu hii ili iwe chahcu katika kuhamasishana.

Nawatakia nyote pasaka njema.

Mwenyekiti,

Jumuiya ya Watanzania Tamil Nadu.

KIKAO CHA BARAZA LA JUMUIYA YA WATANZANIA TAMIL NADU

Mnamo tarehe 4 April 2009. Viongozi wa jumuiya ya watanzania Tamil Nadu wakiwemo viongozi wa kamati tendaji na wawakilishi wa matawi ya jumuiya kutoka miji husika walikutana mjini Tirruchchirapalli (Trichy) kwa ajili ya kikao cha kwanza cha ngazi ya baraza kama ilivyoainishwa kwenye katiba ya jumuiya.

Kikao hicho kilihudhuriwa na viongozi wa kamati tendaji pamoja na viongozi wa miji ya Trichy (wenyeji), Madurai na Chennai. Kikao hiko pia kilihudhuriwa na waalikwa kutoka miji ya Ooty na Erode kwa ajili ya kuja kujifunza na kubadilishana mawazo na uzoefu.

Miongoni mwa mambo yaliyaojadiliwa ni vipaumbele katika utendaji wa jumuiya kwa kipindi cha mwaka 2009, namna ya kuwahamasisha watanzania wa miji mingine kujiunga na jumuiya na taratibu za kiutendaji za baraza la jumuiya.

Akifungua kikao hicho Mwenyekiti wa Jumuiya ya Watanzania Tamil Nadu Ndg. Deus Valentine Rweyemamu aliainisha kuwa wakati wa kuandaa Kongamano la watanzania Tamil Nadu kipaumbele kilikuwa ni kuwakusanya watanzania waliopo Tamil Nadu. "Wakati wa kongamano tulijikita kujadili ni namna gani tutautunza na pale inapowezekana kuupanua mkusanyiko wetu, na ndipo wazo la kuunda jumuiya lilipoanzia kwahiyo tukaridhia na kupitisha katiba ili tuwe na chombo rasmi cha kutukusanya sisi kama Watanzania tunaoishi katika jimbo hili la Tamil Nadu."

Wajumbe walikubaliana kimsingi kwamba Jumuiya hii si chombo cha kisiasa ila ni utaratibu wa kurahisisha mahusiano ya kijamii kwa watanzania waliopo Tamil Nadu. Jumuiya itakuwa imefanikisha malengo yake kama mwisho wa siku itapelekea watanzania wa Tamil Nadu kujumuika zaidi, kufahamiana zaidi na kushirikiana zaidi.

Kulingana na Katiba ya jumuiya ya Watanzania Tamil Nadu kama ilivopitishwa Tarehe 26 Disemba 2009 Baraza la Jumuiya ni chombo cha maamuzi kinachoundwa na kamati tendaji na wawakilishi wa kila tawi. Baraza hili husimamia utendaji wa Kamati tendaji na ni chombo kinachotumika kuyashirikisha matawi yote katika kufanya maamuzi na hivyo kuwa na dau sawa (equal stake) katika uendeshaji wa jumuiya. Baraza hili kulingana na Kaitba hukutana kila baada ya miezi mitatu.

Tunatarajia kuwashirikisha habari zaidi punde tutakapopata miniti za kikao hicho kutoka kwa ofisi ya Katibu mkuu pamoja na tamko la baraza lilitokana na kikao hicho.

Tunawashukuru sana washiriki wa kikao kwa moyo wao wa dhati wa kujitolea. Wajumbe walikuwa tayari kujighramia kuhudhuria kikao hichi kwa moyo mkunjufu wakielewa wazi kuwa Jumuiya bado ni changa na haina uwezo wa kujiendesha ipasavyo kwa sasa. Tunawashukuru sana wenyeji wetu Trichy kwa kujitolea muda wao na kwa kuwa tayari kuchangia sehemu ya gharama za kikao.

Tunawashukuru vile vile dada zetu wa Madurai kwa kukubali kuwa wenyeji wa kikao kijacho cha baraza.

Kwa mawasiliano zaidi kuhusu kikao hichi pamoja na Ajenda zake wasiliana na Idara ya Habari, Mawasiliano na Uhusiano kupitia watanzania.tamilnadu@yahoo.com.

Mungu ibariki Tanzania, Mungu ibariki Afrika, Mungu awabariki nyote.

Aluta Continua!!!

Imetolewa  na Idara ya Habari, Mawasiliano na Uhusiano.

Jumuiya ya Watanzania Tamil Nadu.

THE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL TO MEET IN TRICHY - 4/4/09

The first executive council meeting is expected to take place at Tirruchchirappalli on Saturday the 4th of April 2009. Delegates from Chennai, Erode, Madurai, Ooty and Trichy (the hosts), will be meeting with the Executive Committee to discuss the various issues regarding the Community. 

This being the first executive council meeting, it is expected to provide a very important opportunity for the members of the community to participate actively through their representatives/leaders in determining not only what they want the community to do for them but also what they want to do for the community. 

Among the issues to be discussed include the Action Plan for the year 2009, the Budget for the year 2009, the Restoration of new branches and many more. 

Stay tuned for the the proceedings and the resolutions of the First Executive Council Meeting.