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A transformation in Tanzania After 15 years, a writer returns to Tanzania, where he once taught English, and finds a changed country.
Children walk along Uhuru Road in Arusha, Tanzania. In 1996, when he was 24, writer Frank Bures landed in the African country to teach English, living in Arusha for just over a year. On a recent return trip, he found that many things had changed.
Sarah Elliott
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FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
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Former student Simon Mosses is co-owner African Safaris Planner, but his business card says he is the “Operations Manager.” He said he didn’t like to use “Director,” because people thought you were a big man and would pay for everything.
Sarah Elliott
/
FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Simon at work. When Bures left years ago, his students’ prospects seemed grim. But Africa’s economies have grown over the years. According to a 2011 report from the African Development Bank, the number of people in Africa’s middle class tripled from 1980 to 2010, and today fully a third of people on the continent are considered middle class. Africa’s economies were barely affected by the latest global recession.
Sarah Elliott
/
FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
In the far distance behind Arusha sits Mount Meru, a 15,000-foot peak that sits inside the borders of Arusha National Park. Like its sister to the east — Kilimanjaro — it is the remnant of an extinct volcano. It has a steep grade on one side, giving way to foothills and then Arusha. On the other is a long slope rolling out into lakes and plains.
Sarah Elliott
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FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Today, the lepers who used to beg by the river in Arusha have been kicked up the road by trinket vendors. The “Modern Supermarket” has evolved into a liquor store. The Metropole Bar and Restaurant is the “House of Burgers.” People, in general, have gotten fatter, and they have cellphones. Hotels are going up everywhere.
Sarah Elliott
/
FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Signs of economic growth in Arusha: a corporate-sponsored clock tower. During a lunchtime reunion, some of Bures’s students began talking business and discussing “access to capital” and “tendering” and other things that, Bures says, went beyond his grasp in either Swahili or English.
Sarah Elliott
/
FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
One of the main forms of public transportation in Arusha is the minivan.
Sarah Elliott
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FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Uhuru Road bustles with minivans, motorcyles, businessmen and children returning home from school. From Simon, Bures heard about his other former students. Upendo, one of the brighter girls, was a teacher out in Mbulu. Seuri was a driver for a hospital. John was in Germany studying. Digna was a traffic cop. Josephat worked for an NGO. Gerald, a bright and hardworking student (and Simon’s cousin), was an engineer with his own construction company.
Sarah Elliott
/
FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Women selling bananas walk down a small road in Arusha.
Sarah Elliott
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FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Vendors sell used shoes by Uhuru Road.
Sarah Elliott
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FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
A mural of Jakaya Kikwete, president of Tanzania, elected in 2005.
Sarah Elliott
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FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Magilani Olelemeirut stands outside of one of five cellphone stores that he ownes in Arusha.
Sarah Elliott
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FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
A small secondhand clothing market in Arusha.
Sarah Elliott
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FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
A vendor sells various beaded goods.
Sarah Elliott
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FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Arusha's largest open-air market.
Sarah Elliott
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FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Vendors sell used shoes.
Sarah Elliott
/
FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Despite all the changes in town, the library was still a sorry, run-down affair, filled with books on Dianetics and other irrelevant subjects, Bures says.
Sarah Elliott
/
FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
The city’s oldest cemetery in Arusha for both Christians and Muslims.
Sarah Elliott
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FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
The villages around Arusha offer “cultural tourism” — capitalizing on a Tanzanian natural resource: hospitality. Here, tour guide Faraja M. Meliary in Kioga at the foot of Mount Meru. He was trying to get his own tourism company off the ground with (coincidentally one of Bures’s former students), but it was hard to come up with money to register it.
Sarah Elliott
/
FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Simon Mosses outside the concrete home he is building slowly over the years with wife Nai, an accountant for another safari company, and their two daughters, Abigail, 7 months, and Aneth, 6. Bures says Simon still struggles, but his struggles sound oddly familiar, such as marketing his safari business.
Sarah Elliott
/
FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
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