One of the things I appreciate about the CLS Program is the investment in cultural immersion rather than simply language learning. I have always loved history. To me, learning about what shaped a place and a people is a window into understanding the cultural differences that I experience today. It also motivates me to learn more Swahili so I can fully understand the nuances of the story that is still being written.
Over the past two weeks, we've done a deep dive into Tanzania's journey through colonialism to independence in 1961 through lectures and field trips. It is unsettling to think that within my parents' lifetimes, multiple African countries were still under the long arm of an imperial power from another continent. Tanzania is known — even renowned — for being a peace-loving country. The people here are polite, restrained, hesitant to dissent from leadership publicly.
Yet at the Arusha Declaration Museum, we saw black and white images of Bibi Titi Mohamed leading women to protest in the streets for freedom in the 1950s. It was a window into a time so desperate that even the carefully maintained culture of civility was temporarily thrown off for a greater cause. After almost a century of colonial rule under German and then British leadership, the people of Tanganyika were hungry for the chance to chart a new course. Bibi Titi was a major figure in this movement, bringing women to the aid of rising leader Julius Nyerere, who had once been a schoolteacher but was a compelling voice for independence and the self-determination of African colony-states by the mid-century.
During this period, freedom fighters in Tanzania were sharing ideas, energy, and resources with the independence movement in neighboring Kenya. We visited the Amboni Caves, the largest limestone cavern system in Eastern Africa, located near the city of Tanga. Here, two activists lived in hiding for four years in the 1950s. It is also rumored that there were once tunnels from these caverns that ran under the border to Nairobi, Kenya, allowing freedom fighters from both countries to move people and supplies underground. The tunnels have since caved in, but we did get to stand in the tiny, eerily still cavern where Osale Otango (a Kenyan) and Paulo Hamisi (a Tanzanian) once hid, slept, cooked, and planned.
We also visited the Tanga Irithi Museum, and it was fascinating to stand in the Gothic halls where a leader in Germany's local colonial government and his family once lived. We even saw a photo of the same room we stood in, fully furnished, during the early colonial period. The spears and arrows that hung on the wall in the photo have been moved, but still hang on the wall in the Museum. They seem like a fitting warning of the dangers of trying to reduce a complex culture to a romanticized representation, of believing that one set of values can simply be juxtaposed over another. Native Tanzanians, as diverse as they were (the country has over 120 tribal groups) had a deeply rooted history and love of their land, and that kind of devotion can't be tamed forever.
Perhaps the most moving lesson of all was the exhibit at the Arusha Declaration Museum on Tanzania's hard-won independence.
To see the photo taken at 12:00am on December 9, 1961, when Julius Nyerere, in his first official act as the new Prime Minister of Tanganyika, and Sir Richard Turnbull, the last British governor to serve here, stood in the National Stadium in Dar Es Salaam as the Union Jack was lowered for the final time and the new flag of free Tanganyika was raised.
To see the photo of Lieutenant Alexander Nyirenda — in the same minute — lifting the new flag and the freedom torch on the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro in a precisely choreographed salute to a new dawn for the country.
It was a single minute that had been decades in the making. It was ushered in with all of the decorum, solemnity, and respect for peace that I am coming to admire this country for.
It would be three more years before the Zanzibar archipelago and Tanganyika joined to form the United Republic of Tanzania in 1964. Their shared desire for independence, self-sufficiency, and a government that empowered the people after a long history of exploitation set the country on a new trajectory that in many ways is still unfolding today.
Each Monday morning, every student and teacher in our program stands at attention to sing the Tanzanian National Anthem. And now, I look around the room at the future foreign service officers, architects, linguists, scientists, humanitarian aid workers, and international law experts brought together in this cohort and I wonder which of us might someday have a tiny part to play in this beautiful story.
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.