Issue Ten

    As children, my sisters and I frequently returned home to Tanzania with our parents.  July and August in Tanzania are the country’s equivalent to winter, when the temperature is usually eighty degrees Fahrenheit with crystal clear sunny skies.  Those summers, away from the rain and slight chill of London’s inclement summer weather, were glorious.
    Tanzania is such a magical country.  I have always marveled at its spectacular landscape so varied in splendor from north to south.  As children, we wanted to go on Safari every year; it was absolutely paramount.  For those two months, the Serengeti, Ngorongoro, Manyara or the Selous were, as we would say here, “in our own backyard.”  Flying above Kilimanjaro thrilled us.  To see its dusty white snow-capped peak surrounded by the green, luscious vegetation forces you to marvel at and believe in the genius of God.  Every year this sight left me feeling blessed to have this country in my life.  After all, I do come from a family who emigrated every generation or two and my chances of ending up somewhere else in the world would have been just as likely.  I remember my father applying for British citizenship.  It upset me to no end.  How could we forfeit our link to the majesty of Africa and betray her?  Tanzania runs through our veins and was at the epicenter of our soul.  My parents and I were born there!  As good as England has been to me, it was Tanzania that captured my heart; after all, I have known her more intimately.
    The magic of Africa intoxicates: the food, the land, the white sandy beaches touched by the azure waters of the Indian ocean, and her people.  I cherished our time there and saw her for all of her beauty.  After my grandmother died, our trips back home became less frequent.  I suppose my life was also entering a new phase.  London began to hold me, and she demanded more of my time.  I seemed captivated by all of London’s charms and sophisticated old world ways.  As she drew me in, Tanzania seemed to beckon less.
    I have always felt great nostalgia for my birthplace and I pride myself on being an African.  After my husband and I married in 1992 we decided to make another trip to Tanzania with our families.  My husband was born in Zanzibar and grew up in Uganda.  For my husband, Uganda held a panoply of different feelings.  He relished his childhood there, but his adopted home was abruptly forced out of his life in1972.  Overnight he, along with an additional 60,000 non-black Africans, became refugees.  After twenty years, this would be his first trip back to East Africa.  Two days into the trip, my husband became very ill.  His symptoms did not seem to be physical, but rather emotional.
    My husband did not see the grandeur or beauty of Tanzania as I did.  He saw the poverty and the sickness that plague her.  As a physician he could not ignore the human suffering and the daily tragedies that befall most Africans.  During our trip, my father arranged a meeting with Tanzania’s First Lady whose main focus was to decrease the infant mortality rate that for many years remained the highest in the developing world.  For the indigent population, the situation in Tanzania was grave, and my expatriate view of a Hemingwayesque Africa had been shattered.  My husband and I both felt that it was time to give back to Tanzania, just as she has given of her beauty and soul.
    The following year, in response to the war and human crisis in Bosnia, my husband founded a relief organization.  International Medical Relief aided the region by establishing the first cardiac care unit in Tusla.  After the project with Bosnia came to an end, we decided to turn our focus to Tanzania.  We had received such an outpouring of support from the community in response to Bosnia that we expected the same for Tanzania.  We soon realized that that would not be so.  It seemed a nation at war was far more worthy of charity than a poor African nation suffering silently.  The next summer we took a group of very brave Buffalonians to Tanzania to aid us in our mission.  The hospitality that we received from the Tanzanians was overwhelming.  We found a country that desperately needed help.  Personally, I was at a loss.  They needed so much.  Where were we to begin?  The average life expectancy in Tanzania is forty-nine.  AIDS and malaria are rampant and the country’s biggest killers.  As AIDS rates increase so to do the number of orphans.  So began our task.  In an area where even basic human needs are not met, focusing on one life at a time was our only hope.
    Last summer brought great personal hope for us.  We took our two boys Karim, who is seven years old, and Mikyle, who is five, to Tanzania for the first time.  As two thoroughly all-American boys living sheltered and self-absorbed lives, it was time they saw the realities that the majority of children face in this world.  My husband and I decided that our legacy to them should be one of giving and making a difference, one life at a time.  Like me, the boys relished the luscious beauty of the landscape and the friendly smiles of the Africans.  However, they were not there just to vacation and safari.  They would experience Tanzania in all her myriad of splendor and sorrow.  The boys accompanied us to the cataract eye camp, that over the years had become a project that my husband and I dedicated ourselves to.  We also took them to an orphanage, a school for the blind, and the Salvation Army school for the handicapped.  At the orphanage they were shocked to see the living conditions of the seventy-five children there.  Initially, they were unable to respond to the situation at hand.  I could see that their young lives would be touched by this moment and the word orphan would no longer be just a metaphor for them.  What marveled me is the way that children from totally different backgrounds can form an instantaneous connection with a smile or a song.  Once the initial shock of the poverty surrounding them wore off, the boys reveled in giving the food that they had bought earlier to the orphans.  They also sang and prayed with them.
Now they collect and save their money for these orphans.
    My last trip to Tanzania has given me hope.  In the eyes of my children I see a social conscience that as humans, we should have at our very core.  Sometimes it is easy to forget that we have a social responsibility, and if we want a world of equity among races, genders, religions, and countries we should start instilling these very basic tenets in our children.  As my younger son says, “Don’t people in America know that they are wasting food?  In Africa children don’t have enough to eat.”  As we in the West grapple with excesses, Africa
suffers in silence.