Tanzania Without A Guidebook, Or Any Books

Illustration by Taimur Malik

The easiest way to talk about Africa is in terms of material conditions. When my friends ask me about my six months in Tanzania, I’m usually pretty indulgent. I tell them about water shortages, bed sharing, and the lack of books in the library—all of which are what I think most people expect to hear about universities in Africa. It’s certainly what I expected, especially after reading a New York Times article (“Africa’s Storied Colleges, Jammed and Crumbling” May 20, 2007) before I left that described African universities as in “a crisis of mismanagement and neglect.” The terminology of development has permeated a lot of the discussion about African studies, and as a result it can be difficult to talk about higher education in Africa without materialism creeping in. Those conditions really are important parts of the university experience for foreigners in Tanzania, but the tendency to privilege describing material circumstances over other parts of the experience obscures a lot of it.

I had expected that the academic experience in Tanzania would be roughly the same as at Columbia. After all, many of the professors from the University of Dar es Salaam where I studied have degrees from American universities and publish in the same journals as professors at Columbia. Plus there’s a fair amount of academic exchange between universities in the U.S. and in Tanzania. I was wrong. In reality, the classroom experience in Dar es Salaam is deeply different. Teaching often takes place through rote memorization, and the British-influenced seminar structure gives students a greater deal of independence and responsibility for their education than the American system does. This isn’t necessarily bad, but when the educational resources available are as minimal as they are in Dar es Salaam, it can be difficult to direct your own learning.

Most students realize that the education they’re receiving isn’t as good as it could be. There are frequent student strikes, and almost any student you talk to will express a lot of resentment about the way classes are taught. One morning, the campus woke up to find dozens of big yellow banners with questions like, “How many books have you read during your time as a student?” and “Your professor tells you that Iraq is part of Africa—should you believe him?” written on them. The banners were anonymous, but they expressed a kind of honest criticism that I thought was braver and more direct than any protest I’ve ever seen.

Another point of contention for a lot of students, both Tanzanians and Americans, is the political content of most courses. Some of my Soviet-educated professors received tenure during the socialist period, and felt no obligation to teach anything other than the party line, circa 1975. Others were fresh out of graduate school in the U.S. and were at pains to reform what they saw as an outdated way of teaching. Regardless of where professors fall on this spectrum, all of them challenge the way that Columbia teaches its students to think in one way or another. While the core curriculum and the educational ideas it represents are valued by many at Columbia, the idea of a universally-applicable canon is an anathema to most academics that I encountered in Tanzania. When I tried to dredge up a Foucault reference from CC in one of my sociology classes, the professor laughed and dismissed me by saying, “But this is Africa. It is different.” This can be hard to hear from a professor when I’ve spent my entire time as an undergraduate arguing that it isn’t really different.

Even if my Swahili was perfect, which it isn’t, and I were physically identifiable as Tanzanian, which I’m not, I would still feel a degree of alienation from being an American at the university. Foreigners of any race are constantly reminded of the fact that they are outsiders, and this was especially clear in the classroom. In a West African History class of 400 students in which I was the only foreigner, the professor would inevitably refer to me sarcastically in Swahili as “our European friend” when talking about colonialism. In classes where there were other Americans, there was often a considerable divide between Tanzanian students and foreigners. I don’t mean to say that I felt hostility all the time, but there’s a definite alterity involved in being an American at an African university.

This exists outside of the university, as well. Once, when walking through a market with a Tanzanian friend, a man sidled up next to her and hissed “mzungu Mwafrika we”—“you white African”—in her ear. She brushed it off, but it upset me that I was perceived as so unforgivably foreign that even their proximity to me opened up my friends to criticism and abuse.

But that’s the way it is. Much of what I learned in Tanzania was about myself and my identity as an American, and that in itself was a valuable experience. I don’t pretend that I learned something timeless about Africa or found my people or something. There were no sunsets over the Serengeti, and no touching encounters with orphans. It was a good study abroad experience, but not unqualifiedly so. The short answer for when people ask me how my trip was involves book shortages and tight living arrangements. I’m still thinking through the long answer, and I will be for a while.

The author is a Columbia College junior majoring in African studies. He studied last semester at the University of Dar es Salaam.