A Year of African Life Opened My Eyes -
05-07-2002, 01:35 AM
A Year of African Life Opened My Eyes
The simple, slow pace of Tanzania helped me see what I needed to do: quit my job and start over
By Joann Hornak
NEWSWEEK
May 13 issue — Anyone who has considered following a dream career is often told by well-meaning family and friends, “Don’t quit your day job.” I didn’t listen.
THREE YEARS AGO, while I was working as a prosecuting attorney, I took a year’s leave of absence to pursue a goal I’d had since college: to volunteer in a developing country. During the year in Tanzania, I made several discoveries that ultimately led me to change careers when I returned home.
In Africa I worked on research proposals with several Tanzanian attorneys, including Julius, a struggling public-interest lawyer at the East Africa Law Society. One of my first surprises was to find a country where lawyers are held in the highest esteem. That may be because with a population of about 30 million, Tanzania has fewer than 600 lawyers.
One day Julius and I had lunch at a cafe in Arusha, a tourist town and starting point for safaris to the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater. One of our favorite pastimes was discussing the many differences between life in the United States and in Tanzania. Dessert presented another opening for debate.
Julius ordered a dish of vanilla and banana ice cream, two of three flavors offered on the menu. I told him that in the United States we have at least 50 flavors, some mixed with chocolate chips, chunks of cookie dough or caramel swirls, sweets that were difficult to describe because they don’t exist in Tanzania. I thought he’d be interested and ask a lot of questions, so I wasn’t prepared for his response.
“That’s too many,” he said, and then went back to enjoying his two plain scoops melting in the equatorial heat. Considering that he longed to visit the United States someday, I was surprised by his lack of curiosity. But his observation struck me.
I thought about how complex U.S. life can be with our countless lifestyle-and-consumer options. In Tanzania I’d learned to live without luxuries like constant running water and electricity, a refrigerator, car, television, telephone and shopping malls. I grew to prefer the lack of choices, the time not spent in making the perfect selection.
My housemates, Katie from Toronto and Ruth from England, felt the same way. Near the end of our year, we talked about returning to our First World homes.
“I’m afraid to go back,” said Katie.
“I’m going to stay in my village and not leave for a month,” said Ruth, who grew up in Calne, population 800.
“We don’t have villages! What am I going to do?” I worried. I loved the simple, slow pace of African life that had given me time to spend hours each day writing. I felt I loved it enough to leave the practice of law and make writing my new career. But when I returned home, reality struck. What if I failed? How would I pay my bills? I was afraid.
I went back to the district attorney’s office. For months I resisted the decision to take a leap of faith and quit my job that for nearly 10 years had provided a steady paycheck, health insurance, four weeks’ paid vacation and the intangible benefits of a successful profession. I’m the first and only person in my family to have earned a college degree. To pay for undergrad and law school, I had always had part-time jobs and taken out student loans. I was reluctant to let go of a career I’d worked hard to achieve.
But often I’d think back to a conversation I had had at a conference in Nairobi a month before returning to the United States. It was at the Carnivore Restaurant, and I was sitting next to Edwin Mtei, former executive director of the International Monetary Fund. Over dinner of Cape buffalo, crocodile and zebra, Mtei asked if I was going back to my job as a prosecutor. I told him that I was thinking of other possibilities, that I hoped to try something new.
“You people have so many choices. You’d never hear a Tanzanian say that. There are so few jobs, we need to take whatever comes along,” he said. He wasn’t bitter, just pointing out something I hadn’t appreciated until I’d spent a year abroad: that I live in a country that gives me the opportunity to reinvent myself.
How could I not try to become a writer when, by accident of birth, I had the option and my friends like Julius, the so-called elite in Tanzania, didn’t? I finally realized that the only things holding me back were fear and the golden handcuffs.
I gave notice at the D.A.’s office last August. The past nine months haven’t been easy, but I can honestly say my only regret is that I wish I’d done this sooner.
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Hornak lives in Milwaukee.
© 2002 Newsweek, Inc.
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