Oh, the Places You'll Go!

I often think about freshman year orientation and how nervous I was about leaving Frankfort. Before moving to Furman I received an email with the schedule for orientation and the theme of it was "Oh, the Places You'll Go!" and I immediately felt so excited for college. At the time I knew Furman had an impressive study away program, but I had no idea that it would be able to take me to Africa. I'm finally home from 7 inspiring weeks in Tanzania. I can't even begin to express how grateful I am to have had the opportunity to see and experience a different culture, meet wonderful people, and learn a little bit about myself as well.

After the three week May Experience came to a close, Grant, John Michael, Kylie, and I headed back to Zanzibar to start our research. We all spent a few days in Stone Town, Zanzibar before venturing out to our home stays in a village. Kylie and I spent our two weeks in a village by the name of Bweleo that is at the southern tip of a peninsula on the eastern side of Zanzibar. After spending those two weeks living in a village I can't begin to describe to you the effect it had on me. I realized how many simple things I take for granted at home. It was an incredible experience that, while being very difficult, was not one I would take back for anything. It was so important for me to see how other people live and how incredibly happy they are. In my last post I talked a lot about culture shock after visiting a Maasai village, but that was nothing compared to what I experienced while living in Bweleo.

My home stay mama was named Safia Hashim Makame. She is easily one of the most welcoming and warm-hearted people I have ever met. Although she spoke very little English and Kylie and I spoke even less Swahili, she made every effort to make us feel comfortable in her home. Safia has six children-four daughters and two sons-and then she took Kylie and me in without hesitation. Living in Bweleo with Safia and her children was a huge growing experience for me. I learned to always be appreciative for what you have. I also learned that I could probably live with WAY less stuff than what I have. It was unbelievable to see how creative Safia and her friends were. There were no stoves or ovens so they would make a little fire and cook all of their food overtop of it while sitting the pots and pans on rocks they have found. It worked perfectly. They made do without any ovens by baking their homemade break outside with the hot coals and somehow the bread came out perfect every time.

          This is a picture from our last day with Safia. Safia is the woman to my left in the green kanga.

                                       

During our down time Kylie and I would read books, watch Sofia cook, play around with henna with some other women from the village, teach some of the children card games, or just sit around with the family while they watched tv. Everyday at Sofia's was a chance for me to learn something new about another culture and also something new about myself. Before coming to the village I was quite nervous. At home I adapt to change pretty well, but this time the unknown really frightened me. Luckily, I had an awesome host family who taught me very much and hopefully I was able to teach them a few things as well.

Safia's youngest daughter, Ghania (pronounced Rania).

I have been home for almost a week now and honestly I'm so thrilled to be home. My first night back I slept like a rock (which probably had to do with the 43 hours of travelling before getting home) and anything I ate tasted like heaven (especially the club sandwich from Chili's in the Detroit airport). It's so nice being able to have consistently warm showers, air conditioning, and being able to eat any raw vegetable I want to, but I have to admit that part of me does already miss Tanzania. The people there were so entertaining and there was never a boring day. From people harassing me trying to persuade me to buy a souvenir to the babies crying right when they saw me because they had probably never seen an mzungu (Swahili word for white person; pronounced m-zoon-goo) before to getting lost in all of the tiny, identical alleyways, I never had a dull moment in Zanzibar.

So if you're reading this and you are either in high school, preparing to start your freshman year of college, or already in college, I strongly recommend that you take advantage of every opportunity in college you have to study abroad in another country or to study away in the United States. You never really have another opportunity to drop everything you're doing and go away to Africa, France, Washington, D.C. or anywhere else you might want to go once you graduate from college. There is so much more to the world than just Frankfort, KY, Greenville, SC or wherever your hometown might be and the more you travel the more you will come to appreciate where you started out. I know that travelling to Africa for seven weeks has really made me appreciate Frankfort so much more than before.

Safia on the left with her oldest daughter, mother, sister-in-law, and her sister-in-law's son.

Now only about 2 months separate me from my next study abroad adventure: Versailles, France!

À bientôt!