“Bit by Bit We Fill the Can:" Security and Sabbath in Tanzania
By Suzanne F. Berman
Suzanne Berman graduated from the College of William and Mary in Virginia with a BA in English and the University of Malta with a MA in Human Rights and Democratization. Inspired by her experiences in the developing world, she focused her studies on Africa and the Middle East. She currently works as a ONE Campaign Organizing Fellow with Bread for the World, a Christian anti-hunger organization.

I believe that in a mere seven words, the Tanzanian proverb “Bit by bit, we fill the can,” says more about international development than any well-researched United Nations or government sanctioned report ever could.

It was spoken to me over a dinner of freshly slaughtered chicken and a plate of rice in rural Mtera, Tanzania. That night, I found my twenty-year old self in a self-imposed physical, emotional and spiritual crisis.

I had thought that I could handle it . Standing at an intimidating five feet tall, undeniably Anglo-American, I thought was ready to face extreme poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa. I knew that it would affect me profoundly, but what I didn’t know, was that it would irrevocably alter my perception of the world and that Africa would both enchant and haunt me long after I left its soil.

For the most part of my trip to Tanzania, I was myself. I taught comma rules at a secondary school. I laughed at my own ineptitude at carrying out “everyday” chores. My students told me that my hair was “too slippery” to steady a bucket, and apparently, I lacked enough “energy” to brandish a machete. I danced awkwardly to the girls’ perfectly choreographed moves and tried not to seriously injure myself when the older boys played soccer.

But less than a mile from Mtera Secondary School was Mtera village—a world away from the uniform clad and relatively well fed students I had befriended. And as soon as it appeared out of our dusty bus window, the Africa I had seen in late night infomercials became all too real.

As we turned onto the “main street” of Mtera, twenty children appeared in mass from behind mud huts covered with tin roofs. Unlike the regal appearance of my fellow teachers, their skin was paled with layers of red dirt, leaving them with an almost grey, sickly appearance. Their clothes were tattered, haphazard and undeniably American hand-me-downs seven or eight times removed.

We got off the bus, and for the first time, I found myself looking into the face of a child with a swollen belly. I couldn’t help staring in disbelief at his stomach, complete with protruding navel. The image seemed grossly ironic—a child near death, so resembling a woman about to give life.

A neon yellow band-aid had fallen off one of my teammate’s fingers. She hadn’t noticed, and neither had I, but a little girl in our audience had. She ran over, picked it up, and promptly put it in her mouth. Instinctively, I wanted to stop her, but I didn’t’ know the words. I couldn’t help but notice how bright and inviting and manufactured the band-aid seemed, and how much it stood out against the red-clay dirt. I realized that it would be cruel in some strange way to take away this girl’s new-found treasure.

“Five, ten, twenty kids. How many have AIDS? Was that cough TB? Where is my anti-bacterial gel? Do they all carry malaria?” I thought to myself, guiltily. My first thought, was not to pick up these children and hug them, but to wash my hands.

With the students at Mtera School, it was all fun and games. Literally. Laughter translates easily from English to Swahili and back again, and I am cross-culturally horrendous at volleyball, but Mtera village was just too much. They were too sick, too poor; there were too many of them. And I just couldn’t shake my need to retreat to the blissful ignorance of Virginia and curl up in the fetal position.

I hated myself for it.

That night, feeling insecure, useless and selfish, I turned to Bishop Mdgella who had joined us for dinner. As ridiculous as I felt, I knew I had to ask him one question, or I’d regret my silence forever.

“What’s the answer?” I posed, timidly.

One long but judgment-free look later, he replied, “Bit by bit, we fill the can. We have one poor man to another. You go to school; you lay a brick, and someone next to you lays another brick, and eventually we have a school. And eventually, we will be educated. Go home and tell people what you have seen. Makes them see it. Take back what you learned, but do not abandon where you came from.”

I’d be lying if I told you that my machete and my composition rules accomplished any great feat in Tanzania. I doubt that my tirade on dependant clauses inspired any Pulitzer Prizes, and I know that the brush I cleared was matched in one swing by sixteen-year-old Peter Letema. But as our bus pulled away from Mtera, both the school and the village, I knew that I would never be able to let go, and not one part of me wanted to release any of the emotions reeking havoc on my body and mind: awe, fear, passion, pain…it was the most alive I had ever felt.

Four years later, I carry the people and the images of Tanzania with me everyday. It’s my job. I work for ONE: The Campaign to Make Poverty History. ONE by ONE, we intend to rally Americans in the fight against extreme poverty, hunger and HIV/AIDS. We believe that each person, parent, teacher, or child can make a difference. All we have to give is our voice. We have to show our leaders that we want our foreign policy to reflect our compassion for the developing world, and we would like an additional ONE percent of the federal budget to go to programs that would meet the Millennium Development Goals to halve world poverty in the next ten years.

When I speak on women’s rights, I see Emaline, a kind woman who taught chemistry and made tea for us everyday. When I speak on the ravages of poverty, hunger and disease, I see those children in Mtera village in the audience, and I know that somehow, my voice must stand in for theirs. In my eyes, I must show America their pain. The only way that I can achieve my own Sabbath, my own peace with myself, is to believe that in some small way, I am adding my pebble to the proverbial can of need

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