Many freshmen entering UCLA want to graduate in four years. I
was one of them. However, you may miss out on some incredible
opportunities if sticking around Los Angeles most summers is the
plan.
This past summer, my final one as a student, I went to Tanzania
to teach HIV/AIDS prevention and education with Students for
International Change.
I lived in a rural village with a modern Maasai family for two
months without electricity or running water. I taught in the
classrooms with a Tanzanian teaching partner who translated what I
talked about into Kiswahili. I learned how to carry buckets of
water on my head.
My home consisted of two bomas (round mud huts with
straw-thatched roves), one rectanglur house for Babu (grandpa) and
another slightly larger one for eight women. My choo (bathroom) was
a mud hut with a hole in the floor that housed spiders.
My expectations and assumptions were drastically different from
what I experienced. I expected to feel an intense sadness for the
poverty I would witness. I expected to feel guilt for living a life
of luxury in the United States. I did not think I would be able to
buy anything because in the back of my mind would be my Tanzanian
family who worked hard every day picking coffee beans, shucking
corn, and spending two hours preparing each meal.
And I did see poverty. After living in Tanzania for the first
month, I didn’t really feel an abundance of emotions. When I
concentrated on it, I saw the suffering, pain and hope in
people’s eyes. I focused on how happy these people were and
how much they cared for one another. It was rare to see a child
without a running nose. And some of them had white spots on their
heads, indicating worms. Yet they live a life of happiness and
hope.
I was not expecting my village to be as receptive as it was to
our teaching. Most believed that HIV could be transmitted through
sharing food.
My favorite lesson was about stigma. People do not get tested
because they are afraid of being stigmatized. This really hit home,
and during one community teaching with a group of Babas (dads), we
had over 40 of them stand up and ask where the testing van was.
It’s impossible at this moment to know how much I learned,
but I will miss the kindness these Tanzanians share with one
another. If I was lost, they would walk me to my destination.
I’ll miss being stopped on my way to school for greetings.
I’ll miss the fact that I can make a group of children keel
over with laughter simply by flashing them a smile and giving them
a high five. I’ll miss the three-hour dinners I spent with my
family, cooking in the tiny boma and listening to them giggle over
the day’s work. Despite the desperation that some of these
people face, I feel they know more about humanity and how to help
one another than many other cultures.
I’m going into my final quarter at UCLA as a fifth year
because of the incredible experiences and challenges I faced while
taking a chance in doing something unknown.
How difficult is it to be a friend to someone walking by?
Tanzanians have something figured out that many societies never
will.
Corso is a fifth-year psychobiology student.