Language learning is a strange cognitive process. It often feels like two steps forward and two steps backward. Some days it flows, and some days it stalls. Today, you can see your progress. Tomorrow, you really can't tell if you're going anywhere at all.
If language was a wall with a dictionary's worth of words painted on it, we all start out with clouds over our wall. Maybe there are a few small breaks where we recognize a syllable here, a prefix there — glimmers of recognition through a haze of sounds or a maze of letters.
As we progress, we can recognize more parts, more fragments. The sounds start to resolve into ideas. We may not have all the pieces yet, but we can loosely track where the conversation is going. Maybe we even have enough pieces to nod or agree at the appropriate places, or to interject a simple question into a lull.
And ever so slowly, we accumulate modules. It's like solving an algebraic equation where unknowns become knowns, and we can start to pick out meaning from the string of symbols. The clouds over the wall are clearing, and we can make out the gist of sentences, and then paragraphs, and then pages.
Our brains also do a lot of work when we're not consciously focusing on knowledge acquisition. When I'm awakened by the neighbor's rooster in the dark hours of the night, or when I'm jogging down a track in the forest on a misty Saturday morning, fragments of sentences float to the surface. A response to a question I couldn't quite put together the day before. An imagined conversation with an acquaintance about the faint tracks of a dik-dik that I see on the trail, or directions to navigate to my favorite places in the forest. While I dearly wish these moments of clarity would come in the heat of real-time conversations, it's a small consolation prize that they come at all. Maybe I am moving forward.
"Polepole, utajifunza Kiswahili," my Tanzanian friends say. Slowly you will learn Swahili.
Meanwhile, I try to appreciate the little moments of connection and cultural exchange in this beautiful country. While we share much because of our common humanity, such as love for music, nature, and time spent with family, there are moments where the cultural differences are evident too.
For instance, I'm living in a country where being soft and round is considered beautiful — a sign that a woman is healthy and thriving. It seems that every week or so, we'll be sitting around the dinner table, and I'll be discreetly picking strips of fat off of my samaki (fish) or ng'ombe (beef) and politely hiding them in the communal bone bowl as I would back home. At some point, we'll realize my host mom is discreetly fishing them back out and eating them to increase her fat intake. This never fails to spark a round of laughter at our divergent body image goals.
We also connect over the changing role of women in Tanzanian society. For many people in the Global North, "Sub-Saharan Africa" might conjure up images of mamas in traditional garments huddled around a cooking fire or carrying babies in fabric slings across their backs. Yet my host mom breaks this mold in the best possible ways.
On my first morning in the household, she took me on a 3.5-mile trail run that involved a barefoot river crossing and a mix of fields and mountainous forest terrain. I felt like I'd had a pretty good workout, but I later learned that she won first place in a 100-meter dash that afternoon. She has also summited Mount Meru and Mount Kilimanjaro, and organizes hikes and safaris in the region. She is, admittedly, not a fastidious housekeeper, because she is too busy volunteering in her community, gathering local plants for herbal teas and green drinks, and staying fit. Probably not the first things that come to mind when you think of African women.
Similarly, my language teacher is a pioneer in her own way. Single, educated, and an Elder Millennial, she has lived abroad and traveled widely. She is outspoken about improving treatment of women in a country where harassment on the streets is as commonplace as hearing taxi horns in New York City, and the topic of gender discrimination often finds its way into our classroom conversations.
I find it deeply inspiring to meet Tanzanians who think it is high time for a change in social norms about the capabilities of women. This undercurrent of revolution is quiet but palpable, and has been strengthened by the rule of Tanzania's first female president, "Mama" Samia Huluhu Hassan. Whatever you might think about her politics, she unquestionably shattered traditional notions about the role of women when she succeeded President Magufuli after his death in office. For many Tanzanian women, this is hard-won ground that they're unwilling to yield again, and I sincerely hope to see a wave of peaceful but persistent change continue to unfold over this country as my research here progresses.
To join me on this journey, you can follow along with new posts in the Field Notes blog on this website or LinkedIn. I am in Tanzania on a Critical Language Scholarship for Summer 2026. My research is currently supported by the Center for Human-Carnivore Coexistence, a P.E.O. Scholar Award, and a Center for Collaborative Conservation Fellowship. I am actively fundraising for the next phase of my research, and welcome referrals to funders who are interested in supporting work on global challenges including human-wildlife conflict, poverty alleviation, biodiversity conservation, and the impacts of a changing climate on all of these issues.