Being thankful – five

This is part five of our short series on some of the cultural/practical/emotional differences we’ve experienced between our two lives (in the UK and in Tanzania). Use the ‘Blog Archive’ list in the right-hand column to find the previous parts.

Things we miss about Tanzania:
Seeing Tanzanian colleagues gaining in ability and confidence as we work together. Much of our work in Mbeya was centred around training Tanzanians to better serve their language communities. We come from the west, where we have been privileged to receive good education and training, to share some of those skills and training with people who already have the knowledge and experience of the culture and the languages. If these two realities can properly meet, and learn from each other, then that is a powerful thing. So we spent a lot of time working closely with our Tanzanian colleagues, showing them different ways to do things, giving them assignments to do, and working through the feedback once they had finished. It was so encouraging for us to see our colleagues (who were also our close friends) growing in their ability but also in their confidence. It was hard to leave earlier this year but one thing that made it a little bit easier was knowing that our colleagues were better equipped to carry on without us than when we had arrived.

Things we like about the UK:
Long, light summer evenings. It feels strange to write this one now we are in December, however we did arrive back in the UK at arguably the best time of year, May! We felt so lucky to be able to enjoy the lengthening summer evenings after having been used to the sun setting at 6:30pm every night for the last 2.5yrs! To people who are used to having to make sure they get home before the sun sets at that time (or otherwise risk walking in the dark – which is dangerous for many reasons), the idea of it still being light at 10:00pm is magnificent! The freedom light evenings give you to be outside later, visiting people, walking, eating outside, is so nice. Although it took us some time to get used to, especially the very early light mornings, we enjoyed making the most of those evenings.