Kuuliza si ujinga

It is nearly a year since the day I boarded a plane to Tanzania. A year since I came out of the airport into the humidity of Dar es Salaam, half-asleep, disoriented, and more than a little afraid. I remember walking into my room that night and feeling a sudden, overwhelming feeling of loneliness: I was alone in a room in a country I didn’t know, surrounded by people speaking a language I didn’t understand. I never stopped to ask myself, “Was my decision to come here wrong? Should I go back to the U.S.?” I never thought about running back to where I came from. But that first night, as I walked alone into my room, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of being utterly, completely alone.

I’m now on my way back to that same hotel, to meet the new trainees who will be arriving by plane in just a few days. I’ll be looking back in time, at the person I once was, as the trainees make their way to the hotel from the airport. It’s the perfect place to be on my year anniversary of arriving in Tanzania. And it leads me to look back and think, how have I changed since I’ve arrived here?

It’s a hard question for someone to answer for themselves, as change is slow and hard to measure while it’s happening. If you want a really good answer, you’ll have to come visit me and tell me how I’ve changed. All that said, though, here are some thoughts on life after a year in Tanzania:


1) Tanzania is home.

I rarely think about the country I left behind. I don’t think about TVs or paved roads, American food or reliable electricity sources. I have long ago stopped yearning for things which I can’t find here, and which after months of living here I have forgotten about anyway. Tanzania is now home. It’s normal for chickens and cows to be walking along the road beside me. It’s normal to pass women carrying baskets of bananas on their heads, small children walking by themselves, and school-children dressed in uniforms. It’s normal for greetings to be an important and daily part of life, for the public transportation to be crowded daladalas, for meals to be beans and rice or ugali and greens. I no longer feel the constant pressure one feels as a newcomer. Am I doing this right? Will I offend someone? Is this area safe to walk in? Does the guy next to me want to steal my phone? These and a thousand other little things used to put pressure on me. Now the pressure, if it comes, arises simply from daily life. I worry about things like whether I will teach my students enough of the syllabus before their exams, whether my neighbors are watering my garden while I’m traveling, and whether the ATM at the bank will be working when I reach town. Life in Tanzania is no longer daunting, yet neither is each event an adventure and each day a subject for an excited journal entry. After a year here, life in Tanzania is simply life.


2) Plans? What plans?

The bus is an hour late? No problem, I’ll sit here and read my book. Classes are canceled today, with no advance warning? Well, I guess I’ll sit in my office and correct exams, and maybe we can do that debate I scheduled for today later this week. I’m the type of person who likes to plan ahead and to know what’s coming next. Even now, after a year of having my plans foiled, I still write down what I want to do with my classes for the next two weeks, and I still have a grand, carefully-scheduled scheme in my mind. The difference is that I no longer expect this scheme to work. I write plans with the expectation that they will change. I walk to the school in the morning expecting to have to improvise and change my schedule at the last minute. I no longer worry about foiled lessons and destroyed schedules, nor do I blame myself for these problems. As a wise friend said, “Prepare for but neither worry about nor depend on what you expect from the future.” It’s a good way to live in Tanzania.


3) Learning to be assertive

I wasn’t particularly good at saying no in the U.S. You want me to help you with your chemistry homework? Well, I have a thesis due in two weeks and I’m way behind in all my other classes, but sure, I’ll help you. You want to borrow this book? Well, I kind of need it, but sure, as long as you give it back later.

I stayed reasonably sane in the U.S. despite being unable to refuse people, because people rarely asked me for things. Here, people ask for me things all the time. Can I borrow your watering can? Your camera? Your chemistry book? Can you leave the class you’re teaching to take a picture of me? My parents’ house is too far from the school, can I live in your house with you? I just met you, but can I marry you?

With a barrage of questions of this type, I quickly learned to say no. Drawing lines has been a little harder—I’m still deciding what I’m willing to lend out and what I’m not, who I’m willing to go out of my way for and who is definitely not worth the time and trouble. But while I’m still drawing lines, once the line is drawn, it stays there. No, I need to water my garden this afternoon. My camera batteries are dead. I need my chemistry book to write lesson plans. No way, I’m not leaving the forty students I’m teaching to take a picture of you. Sorry, I’d love to let you live in my house, but my organization doesn’t let me live with anyone else. And I suppose you could marry me…if you’re willing to cook, wash my clothes, learn fluent English, and give fifty cows to my father. Oh, and I should mention I have no intention of getting married soon, maybe you should come back in ten years with those cows.

If there’s any useful skill I’ll be taking back with me to the U.S., it’s the ability to say no when necessary. And to differentiate who I should say no to firmly and possibly rudely, and who is important/nice/friendly enough to say no to in a polite or humorous way.


4) The importance of relationships

I have always been an introspective person. In the U.S., this also meant I was a bit of a loner. I was perfectly happy spending hours by myself reading, writing, or simply thinking. I enjoyed the time I spent with my friends, but at the same time, I had no problem with being alone.

Tanzania has changed this. I have become good at being an extrovert. I can make small talk with the person next to me on the bus, and chat about anything from the school I teach at to the state of the local crops to American culture with neighbors who invite me to dinner. I have learned to make friends with a few words: to find out where people are from so I can greet them in their tribal language, or to find out where people have traveled and worked so I can make a connection with them based on places we have both been. I have a collection of phone numbers and e-mail addresses for Tanzanians I will probably never meet again—but who may prove helpful should I ever pass through their village. I have a wealth of stories of coincidences, from the guy on the computer next to me in Morogoro who knew a teacher that lives only a few houses down from me, to the guy on a bus seven hours from my village who had once been a student at my school.
It seems that I can't go anywhere in Tanzania without meeting either someone I know or someone who is a relative or friend of someone I know. Fairly amazing, considering that the population of the country is as large as that of California.

At the same time as I've become more extroverted, I've come to place a greater value on relationships. One of the main things we were taught during training is that Tanzanians place a greater value on relationships than on things like productivity, directness, and arriving places on time. This has become my view as well. I've learned to expect that a trip to the store to buy soap will take two hours, because I have to greet everyone on the way there and back. I stop by neighbors’ houses just to say hi and to exchange news. And while I won't give money to the drunken old men who sit around by the village stores, I will lend money to neighbors, or simply give them money in the case of weddings, funerals, and sick relatives.

As I've become more extroverted and more accustomed to having relationships with my neighbors, I've become worse at being alone. I'll find myself alone in my house for the first time in a while, and I'll simply think, now what? I've gone from being accustomed to spending my free time alone with a book or a pen, to having no idea what to do with myself when there's no one there to talk to.

Tanzania has taught be to how to start relationships with strangers, how to keep up relationships with neighbors, and, most importantly, how to treasure the relationships I have. I hope to take this skill back to America with me—and to learn to use it in a place where it is much harder to start conversations with strangers and much more challenging to keep up relationships with neighbors.


A last thought: Peace Corps volunteers often say that the days pass slowly, but the months pass quickly. This is very true. When I look back, the past year doesn't seem to have gone by in the blink of an eye, but it does seem to have gone by quickly. And, perhaps more strangely, it feels utterly and completely gone: the events seem so distant, so faded in my memory, that I wonder if I arrived here five years ago rather than one. As my second year in Tanzania begins, I have only one goal: to simply enjoy and make the best of each day, because before I know it, I'll be writing an entry like this again. And a blink of an eye later, whether or not I'm ready, I'll be on a plane home. So this year, I plan to simply take things slowly, do my best not to stress too much, and enjoy my life here while I can.

# posted by Kristen @ 6:23 AM