Tanzania

When I was in high school, my dad was invited to go to Africa to advise in various hospitals. We didn’t say Tanzania, we said Africa. But he came back talking about the amazing Ngorongoro Crater and, therefore, I now know he was in Tanzania. I still have the slide carousels with his pictures and I’m thrilled to make this connection with him by seeing some of the same things he saw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45eddk-pMuY

Ngorongoro Crater isn’t the only beautiful place in Tanzania. This week I immersed myself in the wildlife by watching:

· Elephants of Kilimanjaro, a PBS documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqDpZnW0KFA

· Welcome to Earth: Mind of the Swarm about the wildebeest migration in the Serengeti on DisneyPlus

· Footage from Serengeti National Park: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfxoZ_tiE0g&t=3s

· Jane’s Journey on Kanopy about Jane Goodall’s work with chimpanzees. I also watched a 60 Minutes profile on her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5Q6-hh49mU

In January, Heidi, Linda and I cooked for Tanzania. The plantains were the favorite. The beans were good and Heidi said they tasted good for you with the ginger and turmeric. This is a common thing I hear when cooking African food – that it is so healthful. I really appreciated the cardamom and coconut in the peanuts. Heidi had given us the assignment to read “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” by Ernest Hemingway before we met. Linda had done great research on it that we discussed before we watched the movie together.

· Here are the recipes we made: https://www.internationalcuisine.com/about-food-and-culture-of-tanzania/

· Here is the movie The Snows of Kilimanjaro: https://pluto.tv/en/on-demand/movies/61e0ab95635aeb001ac87373

Heidi, Linda and I were cooking for the mainland. Parts Unknown first covers the food and history of the island of Zanzibar, just off the coast, before moving on to also appreciate the wildlife and food on the mainland: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kg0ZX0XFE0Q

Kristen gave me the book Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah for Christmas. It is set during the time of German colonialization as Tanzania experiences World War I. Gurnah won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2021. He is interviewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaxajFGnhBQ

Another World War I story from Tanzania is The African Queen, one of my favorite movies. I rewatched it this week just for the fun of seeing Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBEIileGQJ8

Because Gurnah is originally from Zanzibar, I specifically went looking for a Swahili author and found this collection that includes poems by Shabaan Robert: https://exchanges.uiowa.edu/issues/without/seven-poems-and-songs-and-nbspspanfrom-the-swahilispan/

There is also an old collection of Zanzibar Tales on Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37472

For music and art:

· This CNN video on Tanzania’s musical heritage is a great place to start: https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2016/04/11/inside-africa-tanzania-music-spc-a.cnn/video/playlists/intl-inside-africa/

· NPR has an article on more music from Zanzabar with several example videos: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/09/29/650073622/the-hot-new-musical-trend-in-zanzibar-is-from-the-80s-the-1880s

· I appreciated this video about woodcarvers from the Makonde tribe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhbliSgj7nI&t=2s

· I wasn’t expecting palace ruins in Tanzania, so those at Kilwa Kisiwani were fascinating to me: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-africa/east-africa2/tanzania/v/kilwa-kisiwani-tanzania

There are more incredible places to visit in Tanzania, not just the ones I listed above: https://www.thecrazytourist.com/15-best-places-visit-tanzania/. I would love to go! I look forward to that time when we can travel broadly again. In the meantime, I’m hoping we all survive, thrive, recognize our mutual humanity, learn to deal with our conflicts, and allow peace, health, and safety to flourish in Tanzania and throughout the world.

Photo Credit: Matteo Di Iorio https://unsplash.com/photos/v-9hnUGyuOU