Tanzania - Eastern Africa
People and their colors — the unknown.
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I was fortunate to learn about the Masaai, to meet some locals, some refugees, and to see lots and lots of people who shared with me the curiosity about the other.
Traveling is the chance to study - live - history, geography, sociology, economy, human rights, environment. If we are open and pay attention, we absorb the world out there and go back home different. Tanzania changed me in ways I am not even aware. Beautiful country, beautiful people.
Wondering
I only find myself when I get lost in others, with others, around others.
An almost deserted beach in Dar es Salaam
Food market in Stone Town, Zanzibar
Zanzibar.
A 30-minute flight in a 6-persons plane will take you from mainland to Zanzibar, a muslim-majority island off Tanzania’s coast — a country otherwise of Christian majority.
The island is made of a very complicated reality: luxurious resorts brutally contrast with a mostly-poor population that clearly lives with the baggage of its history.
Stone Town, part of Zanzibar City, is an old trade center that still has fresh memories of slavery. It was the Africa Great Lakes' main slave-trading port, and studies estimate that in the 19th century as many as 50,000 slaves were passing through the slave markets of Zanzibar annually. The scars of this history are still evident.
It is an intriguing place, but it can be hard sometimes to connect with locals. Language and cultural barriers can be too high to trespass. However, I sometimes find that the camera helps me with that. A smile with the corner of the mouth and a deep stare acknowledging our differences and similarities serve sometimes as permission to take the shot.
A child’s curiosity
When I look at her face, I imagine her having as many questions about the world out here as I have about her. How is her daily life, how will be her future? What does she like to eat, how does she play, does she play at all? I find that everywhere I go travel, children are usually the easiest ones to connect with. I believe we have a mutual curiosity that doesn’t see barriers.
Social projects.
I went to Tanzania not as a tourist or a journalist, but as a scholar studying crisis situations. I was fortunate to be introduced to social projects, humanitarian aid efforts and all kinds of local and international help to fight inequality.
