Out of Africa! - Reflections by RLB

I had asked my family to share some of their reflections on their trip to Tanzania on my blog, and they've been gracious enough to write something for me. It's heartwarming and enriching for me to get to read about their experience. Here with some reflections, my dad...

The trip of a lifetime is what we anticipated when we made our plans to visit Angie in Tanzania. We were right on several accounts. You have all heard about the lost luggage, bus rides and volcano flight interruptions that extended our vacation from 14 to 22 days. Here are my impressions of country of Tanzania and the people of Tanzania.

It is very interesting to visit another continent and country, and see how people live. Of course, we all have the same basic human needs; but they are met differently. First of all, Tanzania feels like a unified country (not a bunch of competing tribes) thanks to the original wisdom of the original leadership adopting one language (Swahili). They have pride in their country and they want visitors to enjoy their stay. Tanzania people are friendly and genuinely kind. We felt safe and we did not see any hint of crime (probably better than in the U.S.). I was struck by how industrious the Tanzania people are, with minimal resources. They are always dressed nicely with clean clothes in spite of the lack of easy access to good water. I don’t know how they do that. The Tanzania people are not afraid of hard work. We saw many large fields of corn with groups of men, women and children hoeing weeds by hand. We also saw groups of men swinging hand tools to cut the grass that had trimmed miles of roadway. I don’t think we would have the patience in the U.S. for this type of work today.

The Tanzanian people are modest in how they dress. One of them suggested to Mary to put on some pants in Zanzibar (she was wearing jogging shorts). Their children are well behaved. We saw one lady with two small kids on a bus for seven hours; and we did not hear a peep out of them. Perhaps we can learn some important life lessons from these people. Tanzanians seem to know how to have fun in simple ways. Such as the group that gathered each evening on the beach in Zanzibar to demonstrate cartwheels and flips and jumps in the sand.

My lasting impression of Tanzania is the people have very little; yet they are happy and proud. Maybe we Americans should re-evaluate………….