I'm Searching for Tanzania

Each day I feel less and less like I’m in Tanzania. You may say I’m adapting or that I’m becoming a local, but in reality it comes down to the fact that I have yet to pee in a hole in the ground.

When I was here before it was literally the highlight of my day if I didn’t have to pee in a hole once. Now, we have these porcelain thrones everywhere we go! I would like to believe that the trip we took here in 2007 showed us the real Arusha. We spent time primarily with locals and we went where tourists simply do not go. We went to some schools, homes and health facilities that I felt were fairly representative of the lives the average Arushan. Now I’ve returned as a student. We make it very clearly to people selling us things on the street that we are neither tourists nor volunteers, we’re simply students (and thus don’t have money to spare for giraffe tail bracelets). But that student status has exempted us from seeing the Tanzania that I remember. I think that is part of the reason why I loved the orphanage so much on Saturday… I felt like I had finally returned to Arusha. From now on I think I will measure my experience outside of the classroom by the number of times I have no other option but a hole in the ground.

An intriguing fact: about 50% of Tanzania’s population is under the age of 18. With that in mind, I can think of no better investment for the country than education. Every country must look out for its future, but when half of your population is under 18 it is purely a survival mechanism for the nation to have accessible education.

There is a lot of talk with the East African Community (Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi) about opening up borders and creating a common market with free trade among the partner states. The debate surrounding the issue is endless, but one of our professors pointed out that Kenyans are more educated and qualified and so many Tanzanians are afraid that the common market would allow for Kenyans to come across the border, take their jobs, and then send the money back to Kenya. The issues we are studying in every class that I am taking come back to education. Transmission of HIV/AIDS can be prevented through education, gender equality can be achieved through education, poverty can be alleviated through education and human rights can be ensured through education. When I put the benefits of education and the number of youth in Tanzania together everything seems so simple to me. Obviously I know it’s not that easy, but it is undeniably the most important investment that could be made at this point in Tanzania’s history.