September 3rd -Tukuyu

The next day we went to Tukuyu, which is an extremely small town in the Southern Highlands. Both days we stayed here, I only saw one other white person. It was here that I had the most intense cultural experiences. So far, I had never been uncomfortable with people’s reactions to my presence, but here I definitely was. A lot of the girls have complained about people always staring at them or calling them mzungu or whatever, but I haven’t minded at all because it makes sense that they are curious to know what we are doing. I can’t really put it into words, but the looks people gave in Tukuyu were not honest curiosity, but almost cynical. It wasn’t as if they were just wondering to themselves “Why are you here?” but it’s more like “Why are you here?” if that makes any sense. And of course this wasn’t true of all people; I had plenty of people respond enthusiastically when I greeted them. However, just walking down the street, I was uncomfortable, which had never happened before. I felt like everyone thought that I thought that I was better than them or something. It was quite disturbing.

While in Tukuyu, there were a couple guys who came to sit with us for a while in the lounge of our hotel. At first we were talking about little cultural differences and discussing the politics in our countries, which was really interesting. However, one of the guys told us that he loved Siri and wanted to marry her. She asked why, and he started saying that white women are just so beautiful, blah blah. We said that black women are beautiful as well, but he didn’t agree. This was shocking to us. He said that all white people are more attractive than Africans, and even that white people never stink like Africans do. We had a really difficult time with this because we were almost shocked speechless. These attitudes have been around for ages, unfortunately, but I can’t figure out if they have existed that long here. It wasn’t until recently that a lot of white people started coming to African countries, so I don’t know that these attitudes could be still existing from colonial times. I think it’s more likely that the American media and Westernization is the culprit because a while ago it was possible for an African to never see a white person, so how could they believe they are more beautiful.

Anyway, while Siri and Stacey argued with that guy, I was talking to the other guy about it, and he didn’t say that he personally thought those things, but that many people here do. He said that people think of Americans as first class, Brits, Chinese, and Japanese and second class, and themselves as third class. I felt extremely awkward to say the least. As I struggled to come up with words, he asked if this was true, and of course I said no very emphatically. He said that Americans don’t have any problems. I told him that many Americans are very poor as well and explained that our cost of living is extremely high compared to Tanzania, so even though we make more money, we also spend more.

Then he tried saying “well yes, but have you seen the way people live here? The way the Maasai live?” I said yes, but that most everyone I meet here seems to be very happy. He agreed, but when I told him that many Americans are unhappy, he didn’t believe me. The concept that money can’t buy happiness was completely new to him, so when I said, “Things don’t make you happy; people do,” he really latched on to that idea. I told him that I think the reason that Tanzanians are usually so happy is that they have such strong family and community connections. He didn’t understand that many people in the States don’t even know their cousins, or that maybe some people don’t know all of their neighbors. He kept saying that a person should know their entire family and live closely with them, and also know everyone in their town. So yeah, that was the most interesting yet depressing conversations I’ve had while I’ve been here.