The Long Return to Tanzania

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I’ve been on the bus for four hours. My whole body aches from being wedged into an obsenely tiny seat, and the slight breeze from the opened window does little but add to the layer of dust collecting on my face. I already miss the beach, and my little wooden cabana, and most of all, the breeze from the ocean. I have at least four more hours to go before arriving in Iringa when the song “Time to Pretend” by MGMT comes on my iPod. Immediately, as if summoned into existence by the song, zebra appear by the side of the road. Then there are impala, then giraffe, then kudu. Finally, a troop of baboon comes into view and then disappears with the last bars of the song as the bus continues hurtling down the road. I don’t see any more animals the rest of the bus ride, but the magic of that moment stays with me through the rest of the journey. The song is still playing in my head when I finally drift off to sleep in my tent, hours later. And I smile with the realization that I am sleeping only about a mile from Houghton’s campus at Masumbo, where I started this journey over eleven years ago.



The Beginning:

Growing up I read a lot. I would read books set in exotic, unfamiliar settings and pretend that I was exploring that world in person, experiencing it all for myself. I saved up my baby-sitting money for an American Girl doll that came with an old-fashioned steamer trunk. I was more interested in the trunk than the doll. The empty little drawers held the promise of travel. I grew out of my interest in dolls before I had saved enough for that trunk, but the interest in travel remained. I saved up again when I was 14; selling candy bars and begging generous church ladies, until I had enough to go to Europe with People to People Student Ambassadors. Before that trip, the furthest that I had traveled from my home in the suburbs of Philadelphia was to Washington DC. The Europe trip was a catalyst and the very next summer I traveled to Trinidad and Tobago with a church group. Since then, I’ve done everything I can to make a habit of world exploration. I’ve even managed to build the foundations for a career in it, studying the anthropology of tourism on my way to my Master’s degree, working on a community-based tourism project in Vietnam, and now researching cultural tourism in Tanzania for my PhD.

I traveled to Tanzania the first time in 2001 as part of a study abroad program run by Houghton College. Dr. Arensen (“Bwana Jon”) introduced me to anthropology at Houghton, and then he introduced me to Tanzania. It was if he had introduced me to myself. Anthropology took my wide-eyed curiosity about the world and focused it down into an approach that was actually useful for understanding those things that had always fascinated me. And Tanzania became the focal point of that fascination. After three months in Tanzania, I was smitten. It was like puppy love, unexplainable, all gut feeling and deep longing, coupled with an insatiable need to know absolutely everything there is to know about my new obsession.

But life took me other places, and Tanzania is expensive. I couldn’t afford trips to Maine to see my sister; there was no way that I could make it back to Tanzania. But I wore a Maasai bracelet bought during the Houghton trip – one piece of metal wrapped in coils around my wrist – without ever taking it off for eleven years. It was a promise to return. Woods, my incredibly patient husband, grumbles whenever the coils catch and rip out his hair, but he’s always understood. Because he understands obsession. We laugh about how his guitar is his mistress, and he’s even written a love song for it. Woods and I have always supported each other’s dreams with fierce loyalty and belief in the possibility of their achievement. He jokes that Africa had stolen me away from him, but I never would have gotten here if it wasn’t for him.

When I was accepted into the University of Maryland’s PhD program for cultural anthropology, I knew immediately that I had to go back to Tanzania for my dissertation research. However, the funding organizations weren’t so sure. My advisor Erve and I poured over one revision after another, my heart sinking with every rejection. I spent over a year applying for funding, and reapplying, and reapplying. Then my friend Dan died suddenly this past April and I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care about Tanzania, or my degree, or anything at all. He had been a constant and incredibly powerful presence for over half of my life and I owe so much to him for shaping who I am now. When I lost him, I felt as though I had lost myself, and that included my ambitions. So when I learned that I had been awarded a department fellowship, and then about two weeks later, a prestigious National Science Foundation grant, I was grateful and relieved, but mostly because that meant that I didn’t have to submit any more applications. I felt numb to the accomplishment. And I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to explore the unfamiliar any more. I wanted the comfort of the familiar, of my husband, my family, my home.

I spent most of the summer drifting, until the date of departure loomed too close to ignore any longer. I scrambled, I stressed, I soaked in every moment I could with Woods, and I gradually began to get excited for the trip. My shuttle to JFK arrived at 4:30am on Oct 2^nd. I had only finished packing an hour before. Woods and I held onto each other for as long as possible before I climbed into the shuttle. Then I twisted around in the back seat and watched as Woods, the house, and all that was familiar disappeared from view.

Now I am in Tanzania. I will be here for ten months (Oct 3, 2012 to Aug 1, 2013) conducting ethnographic research on the Longido Cultural Tourism Programme in northern Tanzania, right outside of Arusha. I am here alone, but I have a small family of caretakers watching out for me. I spent three weeks in Iringa first to study Swahili, then I came to Longido, and I managed to stay too busy to begin the travel blog until now, so I will be playing catch up at first.

Anyone bored by my biography, and more interested in Tanzania, will get much more Tanzania in all of the entries after this one. I promise. I will also be writing about my research, and finally revealing (drum roll…) what it is that anthropologists actually do. And I will try very hard to make it all entertaining.

Thanks for reading.

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