Rakesh Rajani: Changing the world, one challenge at a time

Dar es Salaam. He still remembers standing at the Post Office in Mwanza with his sister Pratiksha, looking at the two-page letter that changed his life that afternoon in 1980. They had been anticipating this letter for weeks. The back of the envelope indicated that it came from the International School of Moshi, the school of his dreams.

“I got in,” he shouted. His family cheered with excitement. But when he turned to the next page, the title confused him. Even at 14, Rakesh Rajani knew that an invoice had something to do with money. What he didn’t understand was why the tuition fee was twice his family’s annual income. “I am not going, mother,” he announced. His life was over—or so he believed.

His mother, Indira, took the letter from him and refused to accept defeat. “You are going to school, my son,” she said to him. “But how?” he asked. “That is none of your business. You are going to school,” she told him.

We are in his office in Dar es Salaam and Rakesh says his memories of that day are still fresh. He will be joining Ford Foundation in New York next January as the director of Democratic Participation and Governance. As a man who has been involved with children’s rights, governance and policy change for over two decades, it is easy to assume that the position came to him on a silver platter. “La hasha, it came through a lot of struggle and sacrifice,” he says, “and not just my own, but my mother’s too.”

Rakesh is the fourth generation of a family that migrated from Kenya in the colonial times. His fore parents came to East Africa via two major strands. One group settled in what was then British East Africa, now Kenya. They then escaped from harsh taxation and settled in what was the German East Africa, now Tanzania. From a young age, he was taught that he had to work hard. “We didn’t complain, we found solutions,” he recalls. “My mother had every reason to give up when she faced a challenge, but she didn’t say ‘pole son, there is no way out of this’. She found a way out.”

It frustrates him when young Tanzanians, especially those who are educated, get a sense of entitlement when they have done nothing to deserve it. “The young workforce will say, ‘I have a Master’s degree’, thinking they are God’s gift to mankind. You work for six months and you want a promotion while you do sloppy work. He firmly believes in the principle that you must struggle to do well in life. Opportunities were never handed down to him on a silver platter. “I had to work and prove myself,” he explains. “It is not about who you know but actual performance.”

Rakesh was fortunate enough to start his education on the right footing. Born a Hindu in Mwanza, he went to Isamilo Primary School—which was managed by Anglican Church—and left in 1980. He later converted to Christianity as an adult.

“My teacher, Mr Richard Wiggins, is one of the three people who have been most influential in my life,” he says. Mr Wiggins, who was also the head teacher, would play with them on the weekend. He would also give them extra classes with no extra pay. And if he announced that there was a task to be done—say clear the field—the students did it without complaint. The school itself was very influential. He admires the commitment of the six teachers who taught nine classes ranging from kindergarten to Standard 7.

He recalls: “I still remember what we called ‘jobs’ time from 4pm to 4:30pm. The school didn’t have workers. The students did everything themselves. We cleaned the toilets, we scrubbed the floors. We tilled the garden and fixed broken furniture. We did everything ourselves. We took pride in it because it was our school.”

When Rakesh returned home, he looked forward to his evening ritual with his father, Rasiklal—a businessman who owned a small shop in the city. They would always listen to the 8pm news on BBC. “I still remember that short wavelength fine tuning,” he says, imitating the sound of the tuning. “It was through the radio that I learnt English and was introduced to the world.”

The Rajani’s apartment was along Rwegasore Street, right opposite the main bus stand. Growing up in the era of socialism, many things were hard to get. But since he loved reading, he befriended Oloo, a Jaluo, the newspaper vendor.

He adds: “My father used to buy the Daily News twice a week, on a good week. If my father couldn’t buy the paper, Oloo would let me read it as long as I wanted. I would fold it back nicely once I was done. And then there were the glossy magazines from China. It’s funny, I haven’t thought about this until now. He was a lovely gentleman.”

Dreams

He did not really have any dreams when he was a primary school student. They had enough to eat but were not really well off. Rakesh adds: “When you are poor, sometimes you don’t dream, thinking that I want to be this or that. You just hope you will get a job. And somehow you will make ends meet.”

In secondary school, he wanted to be a journalist—and he often wonders whether it is something he can still do.

His father dropped out of school at Standard 6. He had to help his father, Rakesh’s grandfather, to move to Bukoba for business purposes. Rakesh’s mother was pulled out of school after Standard 4. Her parents considered this enough school for a girl. This was very painful to his mother, who dreamt of being a lawyer. “Sometimes she says she would go to school if she could,” he says. “She told me she promised herself that when she had children, they would get the best education.”

When her son was admitted to the International School of Moshi in 1980, she sent him to school. Had he known the kind of sacrifice she would make for him, Rakesh says, it would probably have been hard for him to go. He came to find out when he came back for the holidays that she did not rest, day and night, until she single-handedly raised enough money to send her son to school.

In Indian tradition, a woman is given jewellery when she marries. His mother sold her jewellery for him. And she worked and worked. She would wake up at 3am and stand in line to buy stock from the regional government shops. She would take food orders. She would cook all night. And, just like that, she singlehandedly came up with the money. “She made sacrifices for me,” he recalls.

Rakesh says that he was always very practical in knowing what they could afford. He recalls an incident when he had to travel with his mother to KCMC to treat his eye. “Only one of my eyes has sight, my right eye. At a time when we were trying to fix my eye, we had to go to KCMC in Moshi. Mwanza didn’t have very nice health care. Even Bugando hospital was built as I was growing up. I remember that when we went to KCMC, we had to buy one bus ticket and share the seat, my mother and I. But it didn’t work out,” he explains.

The Toilet Paper King

When Rakesh was in school, he would use the skills his father taught to make some money. “I started doing business at school,” he says, laughing. Since imports were limited then, he would ask friends travelling abroad to bring him empty audio cassettes.  He made mix tapes and label them English Songs 1, English Songs 2 and so on. “This was at a time when there weren’t any copyright issues,” he says. “The Beatles and Abba were the top artistes of the time.”

But this was not his biggest deal in High School. In 1983, the Tanzanian economy shut down. They could import nothing. The shops were empty. There was a conflict with Kenya and the border was closed. In those days, if you were caught with toothpaste from Kenya, you were arrested for being a peddler. The Economic Sabotage Act was passed in 1981.  It was an atmosphere loaded with fear. You could be stopped by members of the TANU Youth League and questioned on where you bought your shoes. You had to show them the receipt or they would harass you.

It happened that, during one of the long holidays, Rakesh’s school wrote parents a letter that said:  “Sorry, the school has not been able to buy any toilet paper because there is no toilet paper in the country and the factory, Kibo Paper, has been closed. The border with Kenya has been closed. You can use water and newspaper at the school. But if you are able to, send your children with toilet paper.’

Rakesh and family were highly amused on receiving the letter. It was no big deal because they did not have toilet paper at home. They used water. And they wondered what the big deal was. But many parents, especially those who had travelled abroad for the holidays, were very angry at the prospect of sending children to a school that had no toilet paper.

 “I was the student representative on the board and part of an emergency board meeting that, among other things, discussed the toilet paper crisis,” he says, laughing. “They asked themselves what they could do.  Parents threatened to send their children to Nairobi and elsewhere. We thought of getting the toilet paper airfreighted from Europe, but the cost was very high. And then there was the long process of getting the import permits.”

Then he remembered that there was toilet paper in the shops in Mwanza. In those days, goods produced by a factory were distributed according to factors such as population. Mwanza had a high population and this translated into a high proportion of toilet paper, except for one thing—there was no demand for it in Mwanza. “There were few white people,” Rakesh recalls, “and the rest of us didn’t prefer it.”

Rakesh told the school officials he could get the toilet paper at half the cost. He still remembers the price--15 shillings and 50 cents. In those days, you could get them for Sh5 in Mwanza. He made three times the profit.  His mother borrowed money and bought every roll of toilet paper in Mwanza—all 155,000 rolls. “That one deal solved the school’s problems and paid for two-and-a-half years of tuition fees for my sister and I. My friends would laugh and call me the toilet paper king,” he recall with a laugh.

Giving back to the community

Eight years later, he was back in Tanzania after his studies in the United States of America. He and Mustafa Kudrat started Kuleana Centre for Children’s Rights in Mwanza. Patriotism has nothing to do with the colour of your skin, Rakesh says:  “I have seen wazungu working hard for the benefit of Tanzanians and Tanzanians who don’t care about their country. Growing up, I was aware of my Indian heritage. But my friends were completely mixed.”  He was always aware of the need to focus on the dignity of a person rather than ethnic stereotypes. 

Rakesh returned home 23 years ago. He started three NGOs--Kuleana, Hakielimu and Twaweza. In between, he has played a key role in creating the Policy Forum and Ten/Met. He chairs the government’s Open Government Partnership.

He adds: “Although President Obama was not my classmate, we graduated from Harvard University in the same year--1991. I was one of a small group that championed the Open Government Partnership from the beginning. And now it involved 65 countries. I was in New York a few weeks ago.”

In his view, change is hard and it is not linear. He explains: “I came back 23 years ago because I wanted to be home. After working with children through Kuleana, I realised that if I was to make any big change in children’s rights, it had to be through education. That is how HakiElimu came into being in 2001. After HakiElimu took off, we found that if we wanted to solve education problems it would not be just about technical matters but also about governance and access to information. That led to Twaweza in 2009. This is the link between these three.”

It is time to move on, though, and play a different role—time to take on new challenges. As a family man, Rakesh also has some personal reasons to go away. “My wife, Maggie, who has been with me for 22 years, is originally from the US,” he confides.  “She feels that perhaps we could spend some years there.” Rakesh and Maggie met in Tanzania in the early 90s. They have been together for 22 years. They have two children, Amar, 13, and Chaaya, 11. Rakesh says that his family has been very supportive of him and his work. His wife, Maggie Bangser, was founder of Utu Mwanamke.