I spent one and a half days at school during this trip. And with so many students working on their English, and more specifically their questioning techniques, I would ask to be interviewed a lot. The basic format of the interview, regardless of which grade level I visited, were the same. It went something like this:
Student 1: Where are you from?
Me: The United States.
Student 1: Oh...you look Tanzanian.
Me: Really? Huh...well, I'm from the United States.
Student 2: Do you speak Swahili?
Me: No, I don't speak Swahili. I speak English because I'm from the United States.
Student 3: What tribe are you?
Me: Uh...I'm not part of a tribe. I'm from the United States.
Student 4: Where is your father from?
Me: He was born in Haiti, but I was born in the United States.
Now this back and forth wasn't a language comprehension error although, I think many of the students I met feared that it was. The problem was far broader than that. It seemed that throughout Tanzania, the people I met had a very narrow image of what an American looked like, and I didn't fit into that mold.
This is not super surprising given that as the United States exports tons of films, music, books, and other cultural media to the world, we are simultaneously exporting our troubled relationship with race. And so those of us who don't look like Jennifer Aniston or Julia Roberts, well we can't really be American. Or maybe more precisely, people who look Tanzanian - people who are black - we couldn't possibly have access to the wealth, glamor and power that is associated with the United States. It was total cognitive dissonance to the students that someone who looked like them could be from the land of opportunity.
I did my best, traveling from class to class to give them a real life example of a black American to shake up their prior worldview. And through patient responses to their questions, I thought I might actually have gotten through to them.
At the end of a day, a student went up to one of the teachers named Lani. He said that he liked meeting me in class that morning. "But," he said, "I'm just confused about one thing. Where exactly was that girl from?"
Student 1: Where are you from?
Me: The United States.
Student 1: Oh...you look Tanzanian.
Me: Really? Huh...well, I'm from the United States.
Student 2: Do you speak Swahili?
Me: No, I don't speak Swahili. I speak English because I'm from the United States.
Student 3: What tribe are you?
Me: Uh...I'm not part of a tribe. I'm from the United States.
Student 4: Where is your father from?
Me: He was born in Haiti, but I was born in the United States.
Now this back and forth wasn't a language comprehension error although, I think many of the students I met feared that it was. The problem was far broader than that. It seemed that throughout Tanzania, the people I met had a very narrow image of what an American looked like, and I didn't fit into that mold.
This is not super surprising given that as the United States exports tons of films, music, books, and other cultural media to the world, we are simultaneously exporting our troubled relationship with race. And so those of us who don't look like Jennifer Aniston or Julia Roberts, well we can't really be American. Or maybe more precisely, people who look Tanzanian - people who are black - we couldn't possibly have access to the wealth, glamor and power that is associated with the United States. It was total cognitive dissonance to the students that someone who looked like them could be from the land of opportunity.
I did my best, traveling from class to class to give them a real life example of a black American to shake up their prior worldview. And through patient responses to their questions, I thought I might actually have gotten through to them.
At the end of a day, a student went up to one of the teachers named Lani. He said that he liked meeting me in class that morning. "But," he said, "I'm just confused about one thing. Where exactly was that girl from?"
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