My trip to Tanzania was amazing, transformative.
I was there for seven weeks, and I did almost every single thing I had wanted to do when I planned my trip. I reconnected with old friends and the children of old friends, payed respects at the graves of those who had passed away, revisited my village and Ron’s, and gathered loads of information for my memoir.
I carried a hefty booklet of organized, printed, translated interview questions with me everywhere I went. I don’t think the booklet was ever more than twenty feet from me in my entire time there! I was working almost constantly: I never watched TV, unless it was on in the background as I talked to someone, and only read when in bed. The rest of the time, I was almost always working in some way—taking pictures and notes, conducting interviews, writing, organizing notes, or working on trip logistics. Between the trip and the months leading up to it, I don’t remember another period of my life when I have sustained such intense focus and productivity for so long. (I did take two little breaks to be a tourist: a three-night safari and a brief stay on the island of Zanzibar. But even in those places, I was still often working!)
By the end, I was amazed that everything had gone according to plan. I had expected some major snafu along the way, with my health or miscommunication or some endeavor falling through, but there was none. My hard work had paid off.
All that said, the trip was also quite challenging, or at least, the first half of it was. The challenges were largely about sleep deprivation and cultural discomfort. Not culture shock—I learned, in the course of this trip and my return home, that I’m still very familiar with both Tanzanian and American culture. To my surprise, I felt zero culture shock either upon arriving there or returning here.
But nevertheless, being familiar didn’t mean I was used to things there anymore. I was exhausted for the first couple weeks, and exhausted by all the things I had known would be hard. Jet lag. Getting lots of attention as a white person. Needing to negotiate frequently for prices and fares. The chaos of traveling in noisy, squished, diesel-infused vehicles. I sorely missed Ron and my family; I was frequently vexed by bad Wi-Fi connections that made it hard to communicate with them.
I was particularly harassed by noise, something that did surprise me. I had remembered that travel in Tanzanian cities could be noisy, but I feel like the noise has intensified since I lived there. The population has exploded; it’s now twice as large as it was when I served. There are just a lot more people and vehicles around, and more electricity means more stereos and TVs. And I had forgotten that Tanzanians have very different cultural norms around noise than many Americans do. In the first few weeks, noise made it hard for me to sleep and rest at all times of the day and night: there were so many intrusive sounds, from car horns and loud stereos, to roosters and catfights, to people shouting to each other or talking loudly or even singing to themselves.
Once, staying with a friend whose home was thankfully very peaceful and quiet, I was awakened at 2 a.m. by the neighborhood church, whose pastor was for some reason preaching into a microphone and blasting his sermon all over the neighborhood in the middle of the night! My Tanzanian friend was a bit annoyed at this too, I think—but much of the time, I got the sense that Tanzanians didn’t notice or care about sounds that I cared about. That only added to my exhaustion and loneliness.
But then something unexpected happened: I changed. It happened midway through my stay in my village, where I spent eight days in the home of an acquaintance who became a friend. She was unendingly gracious to me, and I came to feel very close to her by the end of the stay. In her house, too, I struggled with noise, but after several days there, I nevertheless discovered that I was sleeping well, and that I was starting to feel really sad to leave her home and the village. I had finally gotten used to things—used to this new version of visiting Tanzania, without having my own peaceful village home to return to.
In the cities again after the village, I found myself uncomfortable whenever I was in quiet spaces. I started leaving hotel windows open just to hear more of the sounds from outside! By the time I got to Dar es Salaam, the big city that was the last stop on my trip, I was deeply comforted by the sounds out hotel windows. There was an almost constant prattle of men’s voices; I was staying in Kariakoo, the African part of town (as opposed to the Indian or expat-heavy districts), and there were always men hanging out in the street, talking to friends or selling things. There were occasional car horns too, but they didn’t bother me much anymore.
There were other shifts in me as well. One was physical: I once again became accustomed to being dirtier than I typically am in the States. The air in Tanzanian cities has a lot of diesel in it, and sometimes also dust or dirt, and it can be muggy. In the village, on this trip, I always felt dirty—it’s hard to stay clean in the rainy season when the courtyard is dirt and the floors are cement, and I wasn’t in my own space. But over time, my standards of cleanliness changed. My American family was surprised, the day after I returned home to Portland, to hear that I hadn’t bothered to shower yet. They had assumed I would want to shower first thing upon returning home, but I had taken a cat bath in the Amsterdam airport the day before with airplane wipes, and by now that felt good enough. As with my getting used to noise, I had come to feel a certain comfort in not being squeaky clean.
Other shifts were cultural. I never came to love being the only white person everywhere I went, or the attention I got in touristy areas from the young men yelling to me on the street, but I got used to it all again. By the end of the trip, I was comfortable bantering with the men—someone would yell something to me and I would yell right back to him, more comfortable in Swahili now and with more energy to balance his. That is to say, I became more comfortable being loud and assertive myself.
In Swahili, I started to fall into the rhythm of the language sometimes, the way I used to—not just the words, but also the inflections. Asking a question, the tone is different than in English: less gentle, more forceful, the same tone we would use for an emphatic statement or an accusation. The casual “Eheee” for “Yeah” often starts with an emphatic tone too. I found myself doing these things naturally.
All these personal shifts aside, it was fascinating to see the way the country is changing. I am nostalgic for the quiet life I once had in my village, which during Peace Corps often felt like a retreat from the modern world. But my quality of life was much higher than that of most villagers—while I, like them, had no electricity or running water, I had several other key amenities that most of them did not have. A mattress to sleep on rather than a thin grass mat on the floor. Money to buy enough blankets and clothing and charcoal to stay warm in the biting highland cold. A water tank that captured rainwater off my roof, so that most of the year, I didn’t have to carry it from the stream in the valley. Access to whatever medical care I might need, and the easy ability to afford travel outside of the village. Etc.
So I am happy for my Tanzanian friends, almost all of whom now have a higher standard of living than twenty-two years ago—indeed, the whole country is rapidly modernizing. Electricity appears to have reached even the remotest villages, including mine and Ron’s. Piped water is becoming more common, although only in some cities is it somewhat potable. Most people’s homes are now at least partly plastered with cement, rather than being made only of burnt or unburnt brick or mud. New metal roofs are taller, better constructed, and factory-painted to prevent rust. People have beds with mattresses. Sit-down toilets are becoming very common, and most squat latrines are the more sanitary ceramic kind, rather than just dirt floors with holes in the ground. The internet and cellular service are widespread; everyone has a cell phone or smartphone. More roads are paved. Schools often have at least a couple new buildings, with electric lights and modern windows with glass panes. (Neither Ron’s nor my school had glass windows in most buildings when we served, which meant that bad weather shut down classes. Closed shutters plus no electricity meant it was too dark to see the chalkboard.)
Tanzania still has many problems to contend with. Not everyone has the amenities I listed above. There is still widespread poverty and struggle, and there are still many premature deaths—the saddest aspect of preparing for my trip was learning how many of my friends had died. University education is much more common than before, but not necessarily useful, because there are few jobs for graduates, many of whom become things like motorcycle taxi drivers. Oppression of LGBT people has worsened, and the country has descended into dictatorship in the last decade.
But there are positive social changes, too—it isn’t only infrastructure that has improved. Women are visibly working in more jobs than before and have risen to leadership positions at all levels of society, in schools, in villages, and even in the presidency (or dictatorship). Access to health care seems to have improved. I was surprised to talk to several friends who have survived major medical ordeals, for instance having multiple surgeries or undergoing years of cancer treatments. I think this must be new. It felt like during Peace Corps, such problems would almost invariably mean death, at least for villagers. And thanks in large part to the U.S. PEPFAR program, HIV/AIDS is much less stigmatized now, and people are much more educated about it and have far better access to life-saving medicine than in the past. (PEPFAR was started by George W. Bush and has been credited with saving 26 million lives. In an act of colossal cruelty and short-sightedness, the program was cut last year by Trump, so that positive trend could easily reverse.)
These are just a small fraction of my observations, but I hope they capture my trip somewhat. To me, it felt like I was witnessing an invigorating era for Tanzania: there are still many struggles, but overall there is upward movement as the country modernizes. It felt like everyone I knew was determinedly working to make their lives better, and with hope of success.
I will conclude by saying what a meaningful trip this was on a personal level. When I describe it to friends and family, a word that often comes to mind is “empowering.” I was nervous about traveling in Africa as a forty-seven-year-old chronically ill person—intimidated by having to carry many medical supplies with me, worried about how my often-frail body would hold up. But what happened was, the trip slowly made me hardier and more resilient, so that I came back feeling far more confident in my ability to travel.
And it was so meaningful to reconnect with Tanzania now, as forty-seven-year-old me. Twenty-two years is a very long time: people who weren’t even born when I was in Peace Corps are now grown and parenting children of their own! I was a different person when I lived there before. Tanzania was in some ways a different country. But now I feel a new connection there, and it’s a deep connection because it’s rooted in that older past. For a long time, since Peace Corps, my life and service there had come to feel almost like a dream, like something someone else had done. Now the “Tanzanian” part of me has reawakened, and it’s a joy to feel connected there again. I love getting WhatsApp greetings from my friends there, which happens frequently; I miss them a great deal and was very sad to leave. And I love the fresh perspective my trip has brought to my life back home.
As I traveled, I found myself spontaneously writing a book about my travels. I didn’t expect to produce this “bonus” memoir, but now I have! It captures my experiences in much more detail, and I hope to eventually share it publicly in one form or another. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, on an unrelated note, it’s a time of political anxiety in my own country, and I want to take this opportunity to send love and solidarity to everyone working to defeat Trump’s movement and to restore our democracy and humanity. May this beautiful fall bring the change we so desperately need.
