A Law Student's
Educational Sojourn in Africa

By Peter Kim

Disembarking from the air-conditioned plane, I stepped into the outdoor sauna of Tanzania, immediately drenched in my own sweat. In contrast to the Portland environment I just left, I found myself slightly overdressed for my new equatorial climate. I quickly learned, however, that my externship with the Lawyers Environmental Action Team (LEAT) would be a study in cultural and legal contrasts - my unforgettable learning, working and living experience had just begun.

Why Tanzania?

Before entering law school, I wanted to pursue a career in the emerging field of international environmental-human rights law and policy. I knew that by attending Northwestern School of Law of Lewis & Clark College, I would receive the best environmental and natural resources education. However, to satisfy my international and human right goals, I knew an externship would be an essential learning tool.

I searched the globe for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) focusing on international human rights and environmental law issues, and I came across the Lawyers Environmental Action Team (LEAT), an NGO started in 1994 by three graduating students with idealistic views of changing Tanzania's laws to protect the environment, its people and the wildlife. LEAT lawyers actively litigate public interest suits and collaborate with organizations such as ELAW, Center for International Environmental Law, World Research Institute, United Nations, World Bank, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. LEAT also analyzes environmental land laws for the Tanzanian Government, helps formulate new environmental law and policies, advocates local indigenous people's rights, and helps create environmental awareness through outreach programs and education.

Due to LEAT's focus on environmental-human right issues, current cases in litigation, and ties with international organizations, I decided to pursue LEAT for an externship. Luckily, they accepted me, and I was off to what Hemingway once deemed the land of gods.

Life in Africa

I arrived at the LEAT offices with the bare essentials of clothing, insect repellant, bug net, sleeping bag, and my laptop computer. I had no idea what the office would be like, but I had images of an Indiana Jones movie scene where Harrison Ford is detained in a third-world country "office." I imagined broken shutters, a half-working fan, incessant noise coming from outside, a few desks, and people working in a packed room.

To my surprise, I found a newly renovated five-room house surrounded by a brick wall and space for a garden, on the outskirts of the city. Upon my arrival there were two desks, several chairs, intermittent electricity, minimal lighting, some office supplies, and loads of books. There were only two air conditioners in the office (air conditioning was a must, because the clay walls heated the rooms to over 100 degrees like an oven). The office made a comfortable home for the next five months.

I had no need for an alarm clock. My sweat and the sunrise woke me each day around 7 a.m. With no electricity or refrigerator for food, I ate breakfast, lunch and dinner with the local boys at the mkahawa (restaurant). The mkahawa was a self-contained metal sheeted hut, with wooden planks for both seats and tables, forming a rectangular bar-like seating. Variety was not an option, so every day I slurped and chomped on the local food to the sound of reggae and local Tanzanian pop music blaring out of a makeshift stereo. I practiced my Kiswahili, hung with the locals, and made new friends.

Lawyering in Tanzania

At the office, LEAT has two full-time attorneys - Rugemeleza Nshala (Nshala) and Vincent Shauri (Shauri) - and a secretary (Margaret Mrema). They do the brunt of the work, and only recently have they received salaries. As do most of the other LEAT attorneys, Shauri and Nshala hold other legal jobs in order to pay for their housing and food, but by no means do they save money. Instead, they dedicate most of their free time to LEAT. Other members of the 20-30 person staff, whom I met during my stay, consist of volunteer lawyers, scientists, journalists, teachers, and advocates who become members through an election process.

Daily routines at the office varied, as the lawyers at LEAT ensured I was involved and participated in all LEAT activities. These varied from drafting briefs analyzing the new amendments to the Village Land Act, searching for documents to prepare a brief for the High Court of Tanzania, or meeting with local villagers of the Rufijii Delta, to participating in World Bank workshops via telesatellite.

Equity for the Maasai

While interviewing Maasai tribes, safari companies, and the African Wildlife Foundation, I learned about inequities in land-lease contracts between the safari companies and the Maasai. Most safari companies entered into oral agreements with the Maasai leaders to use the village land in return for some compensation. These contracts typically favored the safari companies as the Maasai had no contract drafting experience.

The Maasai also lost out in land law conflicts. Newly amended Tanzanian laws governing village lands, wildlife, natural resources and land lease procedures fail to differentiate between village lands (controlled by the village) and wildlife areas on village land (controlled by the government - Division of Wildlife and Natural Resources), an ambiguity leading to conflicting interests; the Maasai might lease lands to safari companies, while the government grants hunting privileges on the same lands. As a result, the Maasai rights would typically succumb to the government's needs. To remedy this inequity, I analyzed and drafted recommendations on the effects of Tanzania's Land Laws, and proposed ways to improve business contracts with the safari touring companies.

Environmental cases

Helping to prepare pending lawsuits for litigation, I learned all too clearly that Tanzania's lack of laws and enforcement, and its disregard for natural resources, more often than not created health hazards, depleted natural resources, destroyed the environment, and altered human lifestyles dependent upon the environment.

In one case, LEAT represented 3,000 villagers of the Rufiji River Delta area against a multinational corporation and the government planning to build a fish-prawning farm. LEAT argued that the proposed project would destroy the largest mangrove forest in Eastern Africa, wipe out all marine aquatic life, and deplete natural resources - altering the lives and livelihood of over 3,000 villagers.

In another case, LEAT represented 1,300 villagers of Vingunguti against the local government for illegally designating their residential area as a dumpsite. Chemicals and flies emanated from the dumpsite, and a noxious odor engulfed the Vingunguti area. Many people suffered respiratory problems, eye infections, and other diseases from the foul air. The villagers had to wait for over a year to have their case heard before the Court of Appeals (the Supreme Court of Tanzania). However, due to the lack of judges, high case load, and judicial turnover, the case was continually postponed. During this time, illegal dumping continued and the Vingunguti became uninhabitable, but people still lived there as they had no money or alternative places to go. During my externship, the case reached the High Court, but again, the judge set another court date because the opposing counsel failed to appear. The judge ruled that it would be unjust to hear LEAT's witnesses and evidence without presence of the opposing counsel. So, residents were left to suffer.

This was both a frustrating and an eye-opening experience, as I saw how poor people's welfare is balanced against politics, law, and economics. Developing country governments, courts, and non-government organizations (NGOs) face questions not present in the United States. A government's desire for economic growth and stability usually supplants indigenous peoples' rights to land title and a clean and healthy environment. When governments relocate indigenous people and pit them against foreign companies and the wildlife for resources that they had been using for centuries without government control, they are put in a situation to "fight or die." Thus the indigenous people compete to use the natural resource for their own benefit, before other parties deplete them for themselves. This creates animosity between the competing interests, and no trust.

With less than perfect working conditions, a pittance of financial resources, and as the sole environmental law NGO, LEAT accomplishes more than many well-known and established NGOs doing similar work. They work with the foresight that change is a slow and agonizing process, and that patience and persistence eventually prevails. No matter how insignificant their achievements may seem to outsiders, the time and dedication LEAT puts into their work allows them to feel good about themselves and let others know that the environment and its inhabitants are important.

Looking towards the future

During the last week of my externship, LEAT and other Eastern African NGOs convened in Bagamoyo, Tanzania to discuss the future of LEAT and formulate their action plan. LEAT members saw this as an essential tool to help them define their future role and unite the forces of the Eastern African countries to combat problems of environmental injustice, abuse of human rights, and destruction of natural resources. During this seven-day process, we met daily to hammer out the issues we thought were relevant, discussed current problems and how we could address these problems, determined budgets, discussed future aspirations, and created a mission statement for LEAT. Even though I was the only mizungu (foreigner) at the table to discuss and voice my opinion, the other participants treated me as an equal. This process helped me contextualize my externship and exemplified how I contributed to the betterment of the group.

Perspective

My experience at LEAT provided both an educational tool and life experience not available in the typical law school classroom. What I gained from my externship far exceeded all my goals and expectations. Not only did I further my learning as a future lawyer (especially in the context of human rights law and policy, and as it relates to the environment), but I left Tanzania a better researcher, writer, and perhaps most importantly, a better person. My main concern now, after finishing my externship, is whether I can serve the public and the environmental-human right cause with half as much dedication, passion and integrity as the lawyers at LEAT.

Peter Kim's externship took place in spring 2001. For more information about LEAT, see the organization's Web site at http://www.leat. or.tz.