My Africa

KING’ORI, Tanzania — Before my arrival in Tanzania, I had a lot of preconceived notions about what Africa was going to be like. I thought it would all be savanna and that it would always be unbearably hot. I thought that I would see poverty at every turn, and that nobody would speak English. I thought I would stick out like a sore thumb because of the color of my skin—and on that count, at least, I was right.

But since I've been here, I've realized that there are many, many different sides of Africa. There's the barely-controlled chaos of

Arusha, where every taxi ride is a gamble for your life and flycatchers are waiting at every corner to follow unsuspecting tourists around, trying to sell them overpriced trinkets. In Arusha, you quickly learn that you will be overcharged for everything because you are a mzungu (a white person), and your bargaining skills sharpen quickly.

Then there are tourist attractions like safari and Zanzibar, where you can go for days without seeing any semblance of actual African life. Everyone speaks English, nearly everyone is white, and everything is catered to your needs. On trips to these places, where

I've been fortunate enough to travel on our long weekends, I have witnessed incredible things: baby elephants just outside our safari truck, lions resting with their morning kill, white sand beaches, and the sun setting over the Indian Ocean. But when I think of the thousands of tourists who come to Tanzania and see nothing but the Serengeti, Zanzibar, and the inside of an airport, I'm sad for them. They are missing out on what, to me, is the real Africa.

To me, Tanzania will always be the six weeks I've spent living in King'ori village, home to 4,500 people halfway between Arusha and Moshi (ie, the dusty middle of nowhere). Village life is nothing like I expected: Poverty doesn't define it, and you don't see the disease and famine that you hear about on the news. It's here that I've experienced the generosity of the African family—how they will continue to feed you long after you're full, and how they will take in anybody, no matter how distantly related, if they need a place to stay or a meal. I've learned which "hotel" sells the best chapati-and-beans lunch, and made friends with a shopkeeper who now invites me in for chai. I've spent hours teaching in the primary schools, laughing as our students yell "semen" in Swahili at the top of their lungs while we teach about HIV transmission. I've walked around town wearing a paper hat and cape, spitting memorized Swahili phrases through a megaphone to encourage people to get tested for HIV, I’ve tried to barter with women selling maize at the market, telling them in my broken Swahili that I'll mind their stands while they go get tested.

Whenever I return to the village after a weekend off, it's like coming home. I see the same people on my walk back every day, and am greeted by my students in the marketplace. When another mzungu shows up in the village, I get protective of my turf. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to experience all the parts of Tanzania—the bustle of Arusha, the beaches of Zanzibar, the savanna of Ngorongoro. But it's the walk home to my house in the village after a long day of teaching, with sunflowers on my right and Kilimanjaro to my left, that will always be my Africa.


Kate Leist '11, a Crimson associate sports editor, is an organismic and evolutionary biology concentrator in Adams House.