The Spotlight

Dear Tanzania,  

I am currently listening to “We shall overcome” by Joan Baez on repeat, a song that bring me back to my childhood, a song that was played in our loyal Mitsubishi car that would drive through your many mountains, slippery slopes, and past your luscious green fields, past all those young boys we met on the road to Segera, selling oranges, freshly picked mangoes, tangerines - all for the price of only “200 Tanzanian shillings.” A song that was played on my dad’s stereo each morning, whilst my parents would enjoy coffee and the simple, beautiful view of Kilimanjaro next to them, enjoying each other’s love and company. Even now my mother and I will sing along, and I will feel like I am in the backseat of my car, windows down, my parents humming along and the beauty of Tanzania all around us.

Kijito, the house of my childhood, my real home with its four walls and massive gardens, adjoined to a second house in which my best friends from the mere age of 6 lived. Dominic, Christopher, Gabriel. The kids who my brother and I would spend hours on end with everyday playing make-believe games, who taught me how to play football properly and how to master my left foot. Boys who taught me how to ‘drift’ on a bicycle.  All those wonderful evenings with radios from the guards in the background, my dad’s stereo being heard from the front, and us kids laughing and spending all those hours till late at night racing each other on bikes, our knees being scraped and our hands raw. Days spent learning how to build fires, picking pomegranates from the tallest trees, trying to create a pool in our back yard and getting old car pieces that were flat and sturdy enough that we could use them on our make shift “Kilimanjaro”, created from mud and termite houses. Days with the sun beating on our backs sliding down our mountain with dust in our hair and our smiles and laughter ringing through the whole street. I will always cherish the protection and lessons given to us by our gardeners Feliciani, Danny and Edward who always looked out for me and my brother as well as Dominic, Chris, and Gabriel, and who first taught us all how to ride a motorbike, how to defend ourselves, and how to garden. I will never regret giving them a warm cup of hot tea with buttered bread in the mornings in exchange for learning the ways of life and their forever protection during the day. I miss you all but thank you for staying connected with me even now and for teaching me how to love the simplicity of life and adventure.  

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One thing I especially loved about you was the safety and sense of family that you and your people gave me. So thank you to the wise lady who would sit by the little red shop about 4km from my house selling “Ivory Sweets” a common sweet that all kids loved, who would always talk to me about my mother and ask how we were doing, to the family that lived a couple of houses down from us, who broke rock for a living to create cement, and who’s kids I would play football with. To all the boys who would meet at 6pm on the streets during the clear nights with the smells of rice and beans, and the noise of children begging for more food would be heard while we passed a ball around chasing each other up and down the streets, lit by lamps – our only guide for the way back. To the family on the corner shop “Godi’s” where Godi the son would also come for the football sessions, and whose mother was best friends with mine.  It was a habit, during Saturday - what we called “shopping day” - for my mother to spend 20 minutes talking and laughing with ‘Mama Godi’ about the events of the week, the mother who always kept aside a bag of Ben 10 packets covered in green foil, and who would always look out for us. Thank you for teaching me the importance of keeping one another close and treating each other like family.

Whenever I think of family I think of Machame, the home of my grandmother, of my family. Where stood a house covered in green paint, big enough to accommodate around 20 people for Christmas. A beautiful veranda overlooking the stunning view of Kilimanjaro, my home. A garden filled with any number of fruits and vegetables, that me and my cousins at the mere age of 8 would trespass through only to earn a beating from each of our mothers that day. A massive “shamba” an acre of land filled with banana trees, the sun flooding through the leaves at midday and us kids running through them playing a simple game of “kombolela” also known as “Hide and Tag.” An area in which my 4-year-old brother had the misfortune of getting red ants in his pants which resulted in all of us laughing for days on end. Machame will always be my second home away from home. The place where I would finally get to spend two weeks or more with all my family distant and near.  

My favorite moments were Christmas and everyone would be out on the veranda under the starry night with the aroma of the meat that my uncle would be grilling nearby, and everyone sharing old stories and our laughter being heard through the night. Tumsini and Mama Lily, people who came to join us every morning for breakfast and who would greet us while we were on our way to collect water, with buckets too big for us balanced on our head, and water sloshing down our backs, enduring all this happily. Thank you for always making us laugh and coming to visit my grandmother when you could and teaching us real comedy.

Sitting in our living room with Joan Baez playing in the background and me and my mother singing together while my mother cooks rice and beans always leads to conversations of cherished memories and our hope to be able to go back home. Thank you, Tanzania, for more things than words can explain. I dream of the day that my bare feet will feel your soil and the smell of home will reach me. Nakupenda sana.  (I love you very much).