A return to Tanzania

Guest Blog Post by Chocolate University student, Bryn Prater on her return to Tanzania.

The Africa I first fell in love with is vastly different than the Africa where I lived for five months after high school. When I traveled, occidental safari style, with my family to Zambia and Botswana after my freshmen year of high school, I fell in love with the breathtaking wildlife, the diverse landscape and the genuine warmth of the people. I thought I might return for a second safari someday, but I had no way of knowing that by my senior year I would be even more in love, but with a completely different Africa.

I traveled to Africa for the second time the summer after my junior year with a group of twelve students, two teachers and most importantly a chocolate maker, Shawn Askinosie. Askinosie Chocolate makes small batch, single source chocolate bars, each type made of beans from a village in a developing country. When Shawn decided to develop a bar from Africa, he created Cocoa Honors, choosing twelve students to participate.

We learned about cocoa beans and chocolate making but more importantly, we studied Africa: economies, stability of governments, and transport difficulties. We studied business: fair trade practices, child labor standards and the concept of “a share of the profits”. We also raised $75,000 to fund our trip, and enough resources to dig a deep-water well for the 2,000 person village of Tenende, Tanzania-our destination.

Without meaning to do so, I adopted the idea that we were going there to help the poverty stricken village of Tenende. By the time I stepped foot on American soil ten days later, I realized two things: the villagers had taught and shown me more than anything I could have done for them, and that I had to return to Tanzania for an extended period of time.

During my senior year of school, Tanzania was never far from my thoughts. The lessons I learned of a selfless lifestyle, how it felt to be genuinely welcomed and loved by a group of strangers and the memory of how happy so many of those villagers were despite the virtual absence of material goods, (ones that I had always taken for granted), stayed with me. As I considered a gap year, one thing remained a constant among shifting plans: I would spend a few months back in Tanzania.

I did not realize, however, that being under the age of 18 would create such a problem; many groups and organizations would not even consider taking me. So, I made my own “Tanzanian Experience”. The first six weeks were spent at an education center in Moshi taking intensive Swahili classes and a course on empowerment skills. Road Monkey was willing to include me on a trek to summit Kilimanjaro. Three months of my time, however, was spent working with Empowered Girls, a nascent organization whose primary goal is to teach secondary school girls the life skills necessary to complete their education.

In the five months I spent in Tanzania I learned lessons that no college offers. I experienced what it feels like to be a minority. I had crash courses in culture and language. I learned that alone does not equate to lonely. I searched for grant money, helped find land for a new school and even purchased a cow. I experienced challenges unlike any I had before, and I felt the love of complete strangers.

In this different, unvarnished Africa I found that while some teen themes are universal, many more are not – girls whose fathers want them to marry young for their bride price, and those whose tribes still practice female circumcision. I watched women and girls walk hours a day for water leaving no time for education and met a young Maasai warrior whose desire for, but impossibility of, an education is so great that while talking with me tears fell – Maasai do not cry.

While I have discovered much beauty and joy here, there are a litany of raw images etched in my memory that will stay with me focusing my thoughts on the infinite need. I am left with questions I cannot answer. Who to help? Where to help? How to help? How do we as individuals, communities and governments make these decisions given finite resources and time? There is no correct answer to these questions. I only know that for me to glean my answers, I need an education that teaches beyond the facts, one that helps me learn to ask the right questions, to think critically and analyze options. Maybe then I can return to Tanzania and continue learning.