Tribe, South Africa

            I’ve had a heartache for the word “tribe” since I moved to Tanzania. Around East Africa, it represented an identity in a way I couldn’t understand. It impacted financial, cultural, linguistic and family systems, to name a few. It bound the people to the world differently than I felt bound. While I historically called myself a nomad, I humbly came to realize that even real nomads had a tribe. In Tanzania, a man on the bus and a government official each spoke this word like it had a mountain of meaning beneath it. It sent me momentarily adrift in the world as I acknowledged to these men that I didn’t have such a thing.

            Like many young Americans I left home to seek my place in the world. My peers and I scattered to universities or the lights of bigger cities. I never heard anyone voice the opinion that one way forward might be through a commitment to an interdependent circle of people who would continue to raise and define each other. I moved around, meeting and loving many diverse and/or like-minded individuals. I left all these relationships in pursuing other adventures, partly because no social norms told me that the people were reason enough to stay. None of them were steering their lives around me, after all.

            What I’ve realized over time is that in those years, while most of us wondered where we might live and what we might do, we were actually in search of our tribe. Trying to find an ancient sense of connection that compelled us to stay.

            I don’t know how to explain tribe, but I do know that if we’re not born into one, there’s something missing until we find them. We Americans must define it differently from others in history, but I believe this is worth our time. It involves building ties that don’t fit neatly into our traditional relationship structures of romance, friend, or family. It definitely involves being vulnerable. I’ve met a few souls that I could have been platonically tethered to for life, and admittedly, it was a blow to my whole identity when it seemed like “my people” had better things to do than be my people. I’m sure I’ve accidentally done the same to others.

            And yet. While tribe has become a primitive-sounding word with few applicable examples in developed society, at the core I believe it speaks to something central in our humanity. As much as we might try, we haven’t evolved out of our need for this deep well of belonging.

            Last year, here in South Africa, between shared family runs and group meals, our friend Eric said out of the blue, “You know, I feel like we are different than friends. I sort of think of you all as, well, our tribe.” We were eating frozen watermelon, and sitting on the bumper of his car while our kids ran around. We’d never discussed this word or idea before. I nearly burst into tears.

            So I am finally in a place of learning and treading tribal waters. Here’s what I can report back so far: For me, tribe is having a common vision of the best possible life and envisioning together how to get there. It is being different in ways that inspire each other. It is sharing children. It is showing what is behind our walls and fears, and even then having someone willing to uproot their plan and family to stay with us. It’s accepting their traditions as part of our own family system, and vice versa. My tribe recently moved into our neighborhood, because five kilometers was just too far away. They want to carpool, share appliances and gardens and socks and pizza-movie nights and meals many days a week. It is new life breathed into our days, and a new childhood for our son.  We’re redefining this word for ourselves, together.

            Have you found a tribe? Where? How? Share this post with them. Tell them they’re yours.

Exhausted at the end of my half marathon, when the tribe came to run me in.

Mzungu, Tanzania

Mzungu. Someone hollers, and it floats through the air, always my label. It means white person, but it actually means “one who walks in circles.” I am told it is not derogatory. In the U.S. it seems that any label that points out your different heritage is derogatory. This word would surely be blacklisted back there. But this is not back there.

The legacy of my skin color is that of the colonialists, the people who came and then walked in circles, for all the Africans could tell. I have such a strong aversion to being associated with that era, its people, and their intents. Yet, walking in circles could sum up my experience in Tanzania quite accurately. No one ever sees me work, and I often head out the door with the sole intent of going for a long walk, in a big circle.

The ability to spend time in this culture walking in circles is a huge privilege. The name, much to my chagrin, is fitting. It singles me out, but is only fair. I am not living like they are. And even if my skin were dark, I wouldn’t blend in.

Tanzanians belong here. They move like their ancestors rose up out of this very ground. Those of us with a motley heritage find ways to compensate for this glint of confidence not naturally inherited. And yet, for those that come from a place for as far back as their people can remember, there seems to be a rightful spot in the scheme of things that is buried in their bones. I can see it when they step off a bus, look over their shoulder, or in the way they walk. It is sturdy and deliberate, as if the original design of the foot belonged to them. They linger on a corner without thinking there is somewhere else to be.

We hybrids will never have the same posture, I think, of a Tanzanian or Ojobwa or an Aborigine on Walkabout. I wonder if they are aware of this birthright, and if they know how many of us are missing it. There is a strange magic and sense of place, I imagine, in becoming yourself while wedged into a system that holds you. Harder, perhaps, to find and express your own individuality, and yet easier to not be forced to singlehandedly invent your whole own identity, in the course of one short lifetime.

            Standing on a crowded bus today, stuck in traffic, the driver made an unexpected turn onto a bumpy dirt road. We weaved down small streets, past a handful of people sitting outside their small concrete home/business, selling a handful of vegetables or braiding hair. The bus barely fit in the alleys. I bent over to see out the window.

            A man in a long white robe and a round hat was standing in front of me. He turned and said in English, “This is a shortcut.”

            We started casual conversation. I rarely met another English speaker on the dala dala. He found out I was from the US. He asked what I thought of Barak Obama. I told him I think he is a good man, with a very hard job.

            “You have been to Kogelo?” he wanted to know.

            “No. Where is Kogelo?” I asked.

            He looked taken aback. “In Kenya. You are from America and you do not know of Kogelo?”

            I admitted that I did not.

            “It is Obama’s tribe. It is where your President comes from. Some of his family is still there. Surely Americans must know this.” He seemed surprised, sad, insistent, confused.

            “I am sorry,” I said. “I don’t think most Americans know much about Kogelo.”

            He grew silent for a few minutes. He took a seat when someone got off, and looked out the window, maybe lost in thought. We merged back with the main road, and I moved infinitesimally toward the front as we approached my street. He turned to me, having reached some sort of conclusion. “You must go there,” he said. “Go to Kogelo. Then you must go back to your country and tell your people. Tell them about Africa, so they all know where their President is from. Americans must know that a tribe is something that matters.”

            I told him okay, then got off the bus.