Teaching, and learning, in Africa

Thinking about glacier-topped Mount Kilimanjaro gracefully overlooking the African landscape below, complimented perfectly by sounds of children singing in Swahili and the smells of rice, beans, and vegetables cooking over an open flame, it is nearly impossible for me to articulate my love for Tanzania. This love, even passion, isn’t for the landscape, the children, the leisurely pace of life or the local food. This love is for the life that these elements, each beautiful in its own right, coalesce to create.

I first traveled to Tanzania, a small impoverished East African nation, a year and a half ago to teach English. After less than a week surrounded by women in bright wraps, children singing, and animals freely roaming, I knew deep down that I had found a second home and that eventually I would return to rekindle the sense of true happiness and purpose that had been instilled in me that winter. That “homecoming” occurred this summer as I returned to Tanzania to re-live and hopefully build on that experience.

My mission for the summer was to return to the Faraja (“comfort” in Swahili) Orphan Center to teach English. My mission included to make use of  $2,000 generously donated by the Portland community, and to spend time with a 9 year old girl named Elizabeth. Elizabeth, who I consider my daughter and who calls me Baba (father) is one of six children living in a one room house with their HIV infected mother. Her father, like so many others of his generation, lost his life to AIDS. As a result, Elizabeth, like so many others of her generation, had no prospects for an education, a job, or a positive future.

The Faraja Orphan Center is a small one-room schoolhouse abutting  a river and surrounded by lush green mango, banana, and avocado trees, mud and stone homes, red-dirt roads, and corn fields that occupy any-and-all unused land. As it is to Elizabeth, the center is the daytime home to some 40 children, most of whom have lost one or both parents to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. For two months I spent my mornings, six days a week, alongside the school’s director, Baba Massawe, teaching these children basic English and math skills. Maybe more importantly, we also worked to teach the children home based skills ranging from the importance of good hygiene to how to wash vegetables and eat a balanced diet. Regardless of the daily lesson, we tried to fill the void in love often left by the absence of one or both parents.

While I treasure the memory of my mornings at the Faraja Orphan Center, my biggest joy came from the afternoons that I was able to spend with Elizabeth. Nearly every day Elizabeth would return me to my childhood and we would play some variation of “tag” in the shadows of Mount Kilimanjaro along some long, dusty road. Stopping only for the occasional splash from a river, or corn on the cob from a roadside vendor, we would laugh and play until the sun set on the tallest mountain in Africa. Before walking home we would stop for tea and talk, this time in English, about what she had learned that day.

I am confident that the education and skills that these bright eyed, ambitious, eager-to-learn children receive from the orphan center improves their lives. However, in my heart, I know that these children, Elizabeth in particular, have had a far more positive impact on my life than anyone could hope to have on theirs. The reason is simple; they have taught me something that is inherent in them: true happiness.