A Conversation About Tanzania and Americans

This morning I drove from Northfield to Rochester, to meet with Pam Schwalbach and Charles Mpanda. Pam is American and Charles is Tanzanian. Both are passionate about working with Tanzanians and Americans to foster understanding between the two nations. They seek to accomplish these goals through travel and tourism and offering people of both nations the opportunity to know one another through living and working together.

Charles and Pam run a tour company, Tanganyika Ancient Routes, whose motto is "Travel,  Learn and Serve." They are also involved with Simple Hope, a non-profit that Pam and her friend Karen Puhl founded. Working in rural Tanzania, the mission of Simple Hope is to "to save and empower lives through faith, nutritious food, clean water, education, and other identified long term sustainable processes."

Our long conversation today dealt with all these issues. We spent much time brainstorming on cross-cultural orientation and developing tourism that is truly educational and liberating. We realized that we all are passionate about cultural orientation to enable people to interact and work together free from problems that are likely to arise due to cultural differences.

Charles and I first met in Arusha, on June 21, 2008, when I conducted a workshop on Culture and Globalization, which he attended. In the photos from the workshop, he is seen wearing a jacket and a cap. He has been in the USA for a few weeks, and he suggested that we should meet. We are all happy that worked out.