Posted by student JAMES MITCHELL – Wednesday morning I was standing at the bus station in Dar es Salaam waiting to catch my bus back to Moshi after taking the State Department exam at the U.S. Embassy. My timing wasn’t planned, but it couldn’t have been better.
As I stood in the terminal two TVs were tuned in to CNN. It was around midnight back in Chicago and Obama was set to come out and give his acceptance speech any minute. I stood among a crowd of Tanzanians and watched as the president-elect took the stage with his family.
I watched the camera pan across a sea of faces, some old and some young, blacks, whites, men and women–all waving American flags, all smiling and exuberant. Watching the TV screen I found myself incapable of viewing this moment through the lens of an American political junkie. All I could see was what every Tanzanian in that room saw–the greatest country in the world reaffirming its commitment to a dream deferred; the greatest country in the world emerging once again as the cradle of liberty, the beacon of hope, and the guardian of a brighter tomorrow.
In that bus station Obama’s election wasn’t a visceral event happening out in the street and around the corner; it was a distant occurrence, but to them it was a reminder; a reminder that there is a place in this world where anything is possible. I stood in that crowd of Tanzanians and knew that in five months I would come home to that country, while they would take comfort in the knowledge that such a place can exist at all.
James Mitchell is a Clinton School student from Cleveland, Miss., who is compeleting his Capstone (final) project in Tanzania.
Responses