Returning to a continent that I love: All you see is all there is

Lying on the beach in Nungwi

I am writing this from a hot paradise -- the clear water and white beaches in the town of Nungwi on the island of Zanzibar. Zanzibar is an island off of Tanzania that until 1964 had a unique existence and history from Tanzania. But shortly after Tanzania gained independence from the English and Zanzibar gained independence from the Oman sultans under the British Protectorate, Tanzania and Zanzibar united to form the United Republic of Tanzania.

The United Republic of Tanzania is the 12th African country that I have travelled/lived within (the others are South Africa, Mozambique, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Egypt, Morocco, Benin, DRC, Republic of the Congo, and Madagascar). Like many countries in Africa, Tanzania's diversity is astounding -- it has 120 different tribes of people. Most people speak at least two languages -- their mother tongue (Masai, Chagga, etc.) and Swahili (the language of commerce in Kenya and Tanzania). Tanzanians also learn English in school and to excel in secondary education -- they must master English since subjects such as Math and Science are at least partially taught in English.

Cultural Center in Arusha

Tanzania's diversity and complexity is common to the majority of Africa. And yet, it is so easy to treat Africa as a monolith. The uniformity with which Africa is often perceived seems strange when one considers its grandness. Four of the United States could fit within the borders of the continent. There are probably thousands of languages spoken here.

The vastness of the continent is felt much more strongly when one travels in the way that many Africans across the continent travel -- foot, bicycle, or bush taxi. Yesterday, Wilson and I travelled by bush taxi to get from the south of Zanzibar to Nungwi in the north. Bush taxies feel common in many places across the continent -- usually they are over-stuffed vehicles (either small vans or small trucks). The bush-taxis here are called Dalla-dallas and the one that we took on Zanzibar was a covered truck with benches along the sides. At one point, we counted that there were 25 of us in the back of truck with another 20 huge bags of rice or other goods, various metal, and an entire freezer on top of the truck's covered roof. I can't even begin to estimate how much weight was on this poor pickups springs. For the trip, we paid a little over one dollar to go 35 or 40 miles and it took us 3 hours. The rest of the folks on our trip took a private bus and it took one hour and cost them $9.




I think that the commonality of the living standard in many African countries (e.g. overstuffed transportation), the heat, and the fact that the lingua franca is often the language of the colonizers (French, English, Portuguese) make it easy to merge this complex and huge continent into a single entity. Seeing these peripheral commonalities in Africa and merging the continent is probably falling prey to what, nobel-winning economist, Daniel Kahneman would call -- "All you see is all there is". In Kahneman's book, Thinking: Fast and Slow, he discusses how human beings have a tendency to discard, as non-existent, things that we don't perceive -- thus, all you see is all there is.

Village outside of Arusha

Because it is very difficult to actually perceive and appreciate the complexity of an individual African's life, we only see what is on the periphery -- poverty, nature, external happiness in the midst of poverty, etc. And, even despite spending more than 3 years in total on this continent that I deeply love, I am guilty of this mistake of appreciating the commonality rather than delving into the complexity. Indeed, I am happy to be back on this continent basking in the dominant themes of heat, wild unpaved roads, vibrant colors, chaos and the joy that people express when you speak (or try to speak) to them in an African language. But I wonder what I am also failing to see?