Hotel Tanzania: Strake Students Explore East African Culture

Strake Jesuit student Trevor Schneider embracing his time in Tanzania. 

I’ve always been something of a germaphobe. Not quite “six bottles of hand sanitizer in my backpack” level of germaphobe, but certainly someone who finds it imperative to take long, blisteringly hot showers at least once a day. This comfortable lifestyle, however, was rendered wholly impossible by Strake Jesuit’s service trip to Tanzania - placing 14 students into a tiny village guest house, it challenged even the most hardened travelers among the group. And yet our humble lodging set the stage for the trip’s purpose, casting modern amenities aside and placing a greater emphasis on service and selflessness. As much as I would’ve appreciated the comfort of a tourist-magnet four-star hotel, even a city boy like myself came to realize that such a setting would have tainted our service with an air of inauthenticity; if we couldn’t be bothered to live among those we were serving, would we truly even be worthy of serving them?

Enough about the housing, though. Once our group began to immerse ourselves in Njoro Village, its culture, and its people, the subpar water pressure was the last thing on my mind. There’s something enthralling and even a bit admirable about the East African way of life, a realization that surprised me - I’ve always been a true believer in the comfortable, “American Dream” lifestyle, but the boundless generosity and smiling faces of the humble villagers offered a new perspective on our world’s countless cultures and walks of life. Even the two short weeks I spent in the village succeeded in giving a human face to a country I’d only known through soundbites and solemn news reports.

Strake students in Tanzania. Pictured: Jack Brindle, Brian Naff, Josh Cordingley, Blake Newell, Mr. D'Souza, Dane Giunta, Dennis O'Connell, Mario Hernandez, Collins Simpson, Joey Lyons, Trevor Schneider, Jackson Lyttleton, Dr. Scott Berger, Jimbo Maher, Ignacio Perez, and Tristan Glynn. 

Manual labor, a concept with which I was not entirely familiar or comfortable, made up a vast majority of the trip. Shoveling cement from sunrise to sundown is not my idea of a good time, and carrying 120 pound bags of dirt probably guaranteed extreme back pain in the near future. And yet there was something oddly rewarding about this wholly new experience, a sort of education that can’t be acquired through lectures and blackboards.

Getting sore and sunburned under the African sun alongside the village masons taught me more about East African culture than any textbook ever could; what many proud Tanzanians lack in monetary wealth, they more than make up for in determination, diligence, and overall kindness. Whether working office jobs in the bustling American cities or raising livestock in African villages, people are people - and though this sentiment is comedically simple on the surface, I couldn’t claim to fully comprehend or appreciate it before spending my own share of time in the belly of the whale.

In a rare instance of downtime, the Houstonians soak up a bit of culture under the sun.

From a traveler’s perspective, Tanzania’s environment is as diverse as it is beautiful. Though Njroro Village is a largely tropical locale, I awoke from my nap on a cramped two-hour bus ride to a brilliant view of the African savannah straight out of The Lion King. The country’s vast, expansive national parks and rolling plains are largely untouched, offering a glimpse into a time before skyscrapers and shopping malls were the norm. I half expected to see a T-Rex pop out from behind some particularly large trees.

From any perspective - cultural, touristic, or environmental - Tanzania is breathtaking. Never before have I come across a more genuine or hardworking group of individuals, and never before have I learned so much about anything in such a short period of time. And yet there’s still so much I don’t know, and so much that I’d like to; two weeks isn’t enough to understand any culture, much less one that’s such a dramatic departure from what we’re used to. As a personal experience, I found the trip invigorating. As an educational and cultural one, it was utterly invaluable.