Learning

By Megan Zapanta
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Swahili class sometimes makes me crazy. When the teacher, a young linguistics grad student, can’t understand enough English to figure out what we’re asking her, or she draws unnecessary detailed pictures on the board because they are somehow vaguely connected to the lesson, I tune out.

But class is getting better. We’re going to get a new teacher and I understand more and more. Best yet, for the first time, I saw serious research potential in Tanzania. Each day, a different student presents a short lecture in Swahili. Today, an African history grad student from Stanford talked about the history of the University of Dar es Salaam and the student protests that sparked national change in the late 1960s. To write her thesis, she interviewed socialist intellectuals now living in Canada who taught at the university after Tanzania gained independence. She told me that she is now considering researching Chinese Maoist connections to Tanzanian socialism. I see so much to love in a topic like that…post-colonial development, Afro-Asian connections, African research, maybe some social activism…I’m really eager to start classes and take “race, class, and ethnicity” and an “economic history of Tanzania.” I thought I was just here for fun, and my real intellectual interest was in US or Caribbean Afro-Asian social activism, but maybe I did come to the right place.

Ok, nerd rant complete. On to girly, baby-loving rant...

I had a hard time leaving the orphanage today. They taught us how to carry babies on your back wrapped in a Khanga. I’m sure people would protest if I held a baby tied to my back like that in the US, but it feels so secure to have a baby tied to you so close that you can feel its heart beat. We all took turns carrying a one-year-old girl. This baby looks so sickly with her extended stomach that she mostly toddles around moaning and crying. I pick her up and hold her close to me and she often stops. Some of the other kids have taken to handing her to me whenever she whines. I’m afraid of getting sick by touching these kids so much, but once I pick up the baby and she stops crying, I never want to put her down.

But no, Kristin, I will not keep the baby and bring it home to you.

I love how eager people are to teach us things. At the orphanage, adults and kids gathered around to show us how to carry water on our heads. We failed miserably, but I’m going to learn someday. When we asked, they thought Americans didn’t know how to carry anything, even in our hands. I told one of the girls that I want to learn to cook, so I think I’ll be getting a lesson soon. They'll make a real Tanzanian woman.