Tanzania

Dr. Leslie Mancuso, 50, is a world traveler, but most of her destinations are not exactly haute couture hotspots. "I just got back from Ghana, the Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso. I leave in a month for Malawi, Tanzania and South Africa," says Mancuso, the head of JHPIEGO (pronounced ja-pie-go), a Johns Hopkins affiliate and international health group that focuses on improving access to medical care for women and families in developing countries. "We're the jewel of Baltimore, and we've been here for nearly 35 years," says Mancuso, who joined JHPIEGO five years ago and lives in Fells Point with her husband.

JULIUS NYERERE was one of the founding fathers of post-colonial Africa. He had the patience of a teacher, which is what his Swahili honorific -- "Mwalimu" -- meant. The irony is that by the time he died Thursday at 77, his East African nation had largely discarded his teachings as irrelevant.Such a harsh verdict is not surprising. The political conditions that defined the world in 1961, when Mr. Nyerere led his country peacefully to independence from Britain, have disappeared. The struggle between communism and capitalism is over.

The tragedy of the twin bombings at U.S. embassies in East Africa came home across continents yesterday to a tiny chapel in Northeast Baltimore.There, more than 60 parishioners, mostly Kenyan nationals, gathered for song and prayer at Faith Presbyterian Church, 5400 Loch Raven Blvd., to grapple with the grief from Friday's hTC bombing that killed at least 200 people and injured 4,000 in Kenya.Almost simultaneously Friday, a bomb exploded in the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam, killing 10 and injuring 74.Twelve Americans have been confirmed dead in the attacks.

ARUSHA, Tanzania -- When Canada's Gen. Romeo Dallaire gave his testimony last month, he could not hold back tears.Wiping his eyes with a handkerchief, Dallaire described scenes of horror and his own powerlessness as Rwandan killers in 1994 unleashed one of the worst mass crimes since World War II -- three months of systematic slaughter that left nearly a million people dead.For the general, who was the U.N. peacekeeping commander in Rwanda during the genocide, blame lay with the international community for not stopping the killing.

WHEN THE bombs exploded in Kenya and Tanzania, I was already agog over new and past reports and studies that reflected pointedly the contradictions of modern America. A recent study by the U.S. Agency for International Development reported the astonishing fact that the United States spends less than one-half of 1 percent of its gross national product on foreign aid, lowest of any other industrial power. That's contrary to what a majority of Americans believe -- most think the figure is at least 10 percent.

MOST OF THE harm in the exchange of explosives between terrorists and the United States was to neither of the above. It was, to use the euphemism of the military, collateral damage. Unintended victims. The innocent.This was notably true of the terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Although 12 U.S. citizens were murdered in the Nairobi attack, so were 247 Kenyans.More than 5,000 people were treated in Kenya's under-equipped hospitals and 542 hospitalized.

ARUSHA, Tanzania -- The wheels of justice move at their own pace in this remote, dusty place, home to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, though better known as a tourist ++ layover for safaris to the Serengeti and treks up Kilimanjaro.The tribunal has only one courtroom, so the three trials under way have proceeded intermittently. The phones work only marginally. The hallways in the Arusha International Conference Center, a crumbling concrete behemoth, are dark and, though mopped on occasion, dingy and full of potholes.

Some vacation dreams do come true. Just ask Lynne Weaver.Ever since she visited Africa as a young student, Weaver wanted to return. Twenty-two years, one husband and two sons later, the Massachusetts antiques dealer finally made it. This time she shared with her family the world that for so long had been the stuff of her vacation fantasies.Their trip last summer to Tanzania, she said, was every bit the "grand adventure" she'd waited for and well worth the thousands of dollars it cost."I fell in love with the elephants," she said.

William Hickey,69, a longtime acting teacher whose portrayal of a dying Mafia don in "Prizzi's Honor" brought him an Oscar nomination, died Sunday in New York of complications from emphysema and bronchitis.William Leonhart,78, a former U.S. ambassador to Tanzania and Yugoslavia, died Thursday in Washington. President John F. Kennedy named Mr. Leonhart the first U.S. ambassador to Tanzania when the country became independent in 1962. He was ambassador to Yugoslavia from 1969 to 1972.Erie J. Sauder,92, who founded one of the nation's largest ready-to-assemble furniture companies, died Sunday in Archbold, Ohio.

When a pharmaceutical company wants to train someone from Tanzania or an organic food processor wants to train an East German, an ocean of paperwork stands in the way.But the Association for International Practical Training in Columbia's Town Center is one of a handful of companies nationwide that specializes in sailing over that ocean. AIPT helps cut through the bureaucracy and works to ensure the training programs are legitimate -- and not just a way for a U.S. company to get cheap labor.

ARUSHA, Tanzania -- One night when Neema Laizer was 14, her father announced that she had to go live with her new husband and his two wives the next day. Nobody asked the seventh-grader how she felt; it did not matter. But Neema, sensing her life was about to end, refused to submit. With help from her courageous mother and an uncle who was a priest, she fled her family's rural compound that night. Driven over bad roads to this city near Mount Kilimanjaro, she ended up at a center that places girls in schools and keeps them safe from forced marriage.

ZANZIBAR, TANZANIA / / It's 6 a.m., the sun is about to catapult above the horizon, and trays with the makings for coffee and tea, along with tins of sweet cookies, appear quietly and almost magically on the verandas of the thatched-roof Matemwe Bungalows on the northeast coast of Zanzibar. A woman wades in the low tide water below, hunting for seaweed to sell. Fishing boats, some of them with sail -- called dhows -- and smaller ones called ngalawa, propelled by poles in the strong arms of fishermen, pass by, heading for the deeper waters beyond the reef.

Dr. Leslie Mancuso, 50, is a world traveler, but most of her destinations are not exactly haute couture hotspots. "I just got back from Ghana, the Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso. I leave in a month for Malawi, Tanzania and South Africa," says Mancuso, the head of JHPIEGO (pronounced ja-pie-go), a Johns Hopkins affiliate and international health group that focuses on improving access to medical care for women and families in developing countries. "We're the jewel of Baltimore, and we've been here for nearly 35 years," says Mancuso, who joined JHPIEGO five years ago and lives in Fells Point with her husband.

ZANZIBAR, Tanzania -- Islamist forces in Somalia expanded their offensive yesterday, witnesses said, and began attacking the seat of the transitional government from a new direction. According to residents in the Bakal area north of Baidoa, the inland city where the transitional government is based, Islamist forces rushed in with several dozen pickup trucks bristling with heavy guns. Before this, their attacks had been limited to the south and the east of Baidoa, where they met stiff resistance and suffered many casualties.

The e-mail arrived with 50 others, but it grabbed my attention with its subject line: "1 friend $1." A neighbor, Susan Duff, was off to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. In researching the area, she found the Amani Children's Home, an orphanage (www.amanikids.org). Her e-mail requested that I send her one dollar, no more - and that I forward her e-mail to one friend. Meanwhile, Duff, who lives in Woodstock, had routed her e-mail to others going on the journey. One, Olivia Darden, lives in Dayton.

ZANZIBAR, Tanzania -- The long-neglected house fell during heavy rains a few months ago, leaving another ragged gap in the labyrinth of narrow streets and alleys where Arab, African, Indian and European traditions have long mixed. The three-story house was a remnant of the era when Zanzibar's Stone Town ranked as East Africa's leading exporter of spices and slaves. The rubble of coral stone and twisted mangrove beams is a reminder that the town's unique legacy is slowly being lost. "We are in a race against time," said Mwalim A. Mwalim, director of the government conservation authority.

Shy new species of African monkey Scientists have discovered a new species of African monkey - for the first time in 20 years. The highland mangabey (Lophocebus kipunji) grows to about 3 feet in length, has a 3-foot tail, elongated cheek whiskers, an off-white belly and bushy brown coat suitable for a mountain habitat, where temperatures frequently drop below freezing, scientists say. Two groups of scientists working 230 miles apart in Tanzania discovered the monkey independently about the same time.

Medical center empoyees buy livestock for Tanzania TOWSON -- Empoloyees of St. Joseph Medical Center have given $12,000 to buy chickens and goats for the poor of Tanzania, the medical center said in a statement. Tony LaPorta, laboratory manager, and Polly Ristaino, infection control manager, left recently to provide health care and bring medical supplies to Karatu, Tanzania, where St. Joseph has been participating in a Village Wellness Program since 2001. The program is supported by a three-year $324,000 grant from the Mission and Ministry Fund of Catholic Health Initiatives and a $25,000 grant from the Sisters of St. Francis in Philadelphia, the medical center said.

These days, most scientists don't worry about being denounced as witches, vampires or body snatchers. Sarah Tishkoff is an exception. In the course of her DNA research travels around Africa, she has been accused of these offenses and more. One tribe in Tanzania refused to let her into their village. "They thought that white people were coming to steal their children, or to kill them, or to take their body parts or their blood," Tishkoff recalled. "And I did want to take their blood. So, then it's really scary."

ARUSHA, Tanzania - In the first case of its kind since the Nuremberg war crimes trials after World War II, an international court here convicted three Rwandans yesterday of genocide. The trio used a newspaper and a radio station to incite machete-wielding gangs that slaughtered about 800,000 Rwandans, mostly of the Tutsi minority, over several months in 1994. A three-judge panel said the media executives had used a radio station and a twice-monthly newspaper to mobilize Rwanda's Hutu majority against the Tutsis, who were massacred at churches, schools, hospitals and roadblocks.