What I Learned when I Moved to Africa 20 years ago

Twenty years ago, in August 2000, I moved to Tanzania to study at the University of Dar es Salaam. I’ll admit that when I first learned of the opportunity to study there, I had no idea where Tanzania was.

One of my biggest lessons moving there was that you can learn “a lot” about a place and a people by reading books, but there is nothing like first-hand experiences to truly know someone or some place.

Before I moved there, I knew that at that time, Tanzania, with a population of over 30 million people, was one of the top 10 economically poorest countries in the world. I knew that preventable diseases were the leading cause of death for most children and adults. I knew that most people went to school for about 8 years. I knew of the Serengeti and Kilimanjaro. I had heard that people were incredibly nice and that sandals made out of tires were a popular thing.

So, I packed my bags and boarded a plane for Tanzania. After traveling for 30 hours I landed in what would become my second home.

It didn’t take me long though to realize that my expectations of what life would be like in Tanzania couldn’t have been further from reality. While the stories of living there are too many to tell, I learned several things that first year that still mark my life today.

What does it mean to be poor?

I started to really wrestle with what it means to be “poor.” Yes, Tanzanians were by and large economically poorer than most people in my home country of the United States. And this in large part played into people still dying of preventable diseases, among other things. But the quality of life seemed almost incomparable between the two countries.

What is the actual definition of poverty?  If it deals with merely material things such as the monetary value of a home, or whether one has running water, or if one has shoes or not, then I would say that most people in Tanzania live in poverty.

But, if it is the quality of life that defines poverty, then the question is still raised.  If wealth is measured in happiness, love, peace, respect for one another, making sure people are well cared for, then Tanzanians are actually very well to do. I wrote this at the time:

I have yet to see so much love, smiles, sheer joy and peacefulness in people as a whole in such developed countries as the United States.  So, the question still remains, is this country living in dire poverty?  Not in my opinion.  Tanzanians have found a way to sustain themselves on very little and they are satisfied with this.  And in being satisfied, they have allowed themselves to find the joy in simply living each day as it comes.  Their lives are rich with love and happiness.  I have much to learn from them.

Though Tanzania possesses aspects of economic poverty, such as preventable diseases, higher infant mortality rates, lower percentages of people with formal education, these statistics do not run the lives of Tanzanians. While there are Tanzanians who live in poverty, the culture does not reflect a people of poverty—Tanzania is not a poor country.  There are poor people there, but the culture and community are not poor, but rather rich and full of life.

Humbled by the hospitality

And their richness of life didn’t just end with them, I was the beneficiary of it whether I was living in an urban community or an extremely rural one. When I first stayed in a rural village called Nyanzwa in the central part of the country (it’s not on a map), there was no electricity, no running water, and yet, the hospitality was more generous than I had ever experienced.

Prisca was an 18-year-old secondary school student, who had been asked by her uncle to accompany me to Nyanzwa. (The thought was that I wouldn’t last staying in the village more than a night or two since no foreigners had ever spent more than a couple of hours in the village at a time; our plan was to stay for one or two weeks.) Prisca was on winter holiday and had been asked to accompany an American woman to a village for a week and a half. She agreed and became one of my dear friends and an example of living a life of that put the needs of others first.

Prisca helped me figure out the ins and outs of living in a village—how to take a sponge bath by the light of a kerosene lantern, how to ride gracefully on the back of a bicycle in a skirt, how to enjoy raw sugar cane, how to climb a mountain in sandals (yes, I had blisters the next day), and how to support a family dealing with the death of a loved one.

The hospitality and kindness that I experienced in Tanzania were humbling.  I had never been in a community with so many loving, generous, kind, and hospitable people. I still vividly remember sitting in a house one day that was made from mud and clay and making up my mind to be more generous and hospitable to others when I returned home. How much better off our world would be if we all cared for each other such that people knew they were seen, valued, and had immense worth whenever they were around us?

We are more alike than we are different

And it was during my time in Tanzania that I learned that even though every person is so unique, we are all also very much the same.  We all have the same basic needs:  food, water, and shelter, but they go beyond just those.  We all want to love and be loved, we want purpose in our lives, we want our loved ones to be healthy.  And still, it goes even deeper than that—we are all made in the image of God.

It doesn’t matter whether we were born in the Northern or the Southern Hemisphere, in the West or the East, we all have more in common than not.  It doesn’t matter if we were raised in a house in the suburbs of the U.S. or in a thatch-roofed house in rural Tanzania. It doesn’t matter if we have electricity or running water. It doesn’t even matter if we have shoes—we were all made in the image of God. And our innate worth and value cannot be overstated.

Twenty years ago, I had no idea that a place I'd never been to on the other side of the world and people I had yet to meet would have such a transformative effect on my life. In fact, living in Tanzania changed the entire trajectory of my life. And I've never second-guessed being more generous, hospitable, or loving towards people (especially those who don't look like me) with all the value and respect they deserve.

What’s one of those events or places or people that has left such an imprint on your life that changed you for the better? Let me know in the comments below!