June 6, 2008Our last day in Tanzania had nothing official planned until 2pm, when were were suppose to depart our hotel/resort thing and head to the airport. Most were anxiously waiting around so when some buses arrived early to start shuttling people to the airport, we hopped on. Things at the airport were more than chaotic. There seemed to be some confusion with our boarding passes, as none of them had been printed with any seating information. Ethiopian Air (I say that, but I mean one poor woman at the podium) had to call each passenger up and assign them a seat. People got mixed and matched and separated from their traveling companions. Despite that, the plane still left close to on time.
We took off at 5:20pm Tanzanian time on June 6th, and arrived at Washington Dulles at 7:05am June 7th in super heavy fog, we couldn't even see the wingtips. Doing a little math with the time zones, it works out to roughly 22 hours in transit. Almost as long as it took me to get from Canberra, Australia to Nashville, TN the previous November.
I had a wonderful time in Ethiopia and Tanzania. I think Africa is a place everyone should go if they have the opportunity. Here are some things I learned:
- Africa Time - There were hardly any clocks to be found at the places we visited. Hotel lobbies, restaurants, conference rooms... the only clock that was where I expected it to be was on the nightstand. I think this is a reflection of the mindset of the culture. Time isn't really that important. Almost everything we attended or saw started a little bit late. Lunches were pushed bad, buses that don't show up on time, plenary sessions moved to larger venues at the last minute, etc. Noone really seemed to know what was going on, we just went with the flow. I think it made many of us uncomfortable. We live with such structure...
- The drastic separation of haves and have-nots. The wealthy have it MADE in Africa. Cheap prices for goods, cheap labor, cheap real estate... Unfortunately, supporting all of this cheap stuff is a huge amount of poverty stricken people who very literally have nothing. For example, in Arusha, there is a giant glass and steel hotel right downtown. Outside, people sell fruit from donkey-drawn carts for cents. At the airport, a group of men dig a drainage ditch. It's cheaper to hire them for a day then to rent a backhoe. At one of the Masai villages, an investor talks to a client on his satellite phone while children crowded into a hut read along with their teacher from a few tattered books.
- Those children at school struck me. Bob Legg, Jane, Leah and I had a long discussion about how excited these children were to be in school and be learning. Education isn't a staple of adolescent life like it is in the first world. Not every child has the opportunity to be educated, and those that are fortunate enough take it very seriously. The dedication the children we saw in school was amazing. It's almost surreal to see 50 elementary aged kids hanging off of every word the teacher speaks with rapt attention. That would never happen here. We take our education for granted, even growing to resent the learning process. I wish I had had their attitude toward education while I was growing up...
