We don’t have to look far to find a long history of inaccurate and damaging approaches to teaching non-Africans about the African diaspora. The classist, derogatory nature of colonialism casts a lasting shadow: long after European superpowers withdrew formal governing and subjugation of African nations, fundamental ignorance and disdain persisted in Western-to-African international relations. Into the twenty-first century, Westerners have viewed Africa as a monolith, consistently treating the term Africa like it could refer to one cohesive entity rather than as a tectonic landmass containing a multiplicity of societies as varied and distinct as those found on Eurasia or North America. Academics have often studied African cultures without learning directly from the people in those cultures, not viewing the societies they study as equal or capable of collaboration, and certainly not teaching students to view African societies as such. The average American’s exposure to the African diaspora is rife with misinformation and dehumanization, with mainstream media efficiently perpetuating stereotypes of poverty and violence and social media crudely exoticizing African cultures and individuals.
But there are better ways to learn about the African diaspora—and some educators and institutions are evolving to adopt them. The BYU Kennedy Center’s Africana Studies program has been reimagining and reshaping education about African societies. Currently, the Africana Studies minor centers on genuine respect for the cultures it studies and is built to provide a knowledge of African cultures that is both accurate and appreciative. Courses emphasize that human life on the African continent has been and continues to be as deeply rich and complex as anywhere else in the world, including in a Western student’s own homeland. People of the African diaspora are Westerners’ full equals, with much to teach those who are willing to listen. Essentially, the minor’s ethos is one of curiosity and honor.
Potentially the best illustration of this ethos is the Kilimanjaro: Adventure Travel in Tanzania study abroad that takes place each May. “In the preparation for the study abroad, we teach the students that on this trip, we sit at the feet of Tanzanians and learn from them,” says Professor Leslie Hadfield, Africana Studies faculty coordinator, codirector of the study abroad, and a professor of history. The program takes a full month and comprises three phases:
- A main hike to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro (eight days)
- A week-long lecture series at the College of African Wildlife Management, Mweka (seven days)
- A safari on the Serengeti (fourteen days)
The Value of a Guide
Tanzanian law requires all hikers to climb Mount Kilimanjaro with a licensed hiking guide. Guides hike with the tourists, and porters carry the camping supplies, averaging about three Tanzanians per tourist hiker. In 2023, seventy-four guides and porters accompanied the fourteen students and five professors from BYU who were climbing the mountain.
The BYU entourage has done the hike with the same group of main guides since the study abroad’s inception in 2016. “We know these people well; they’ve become our friends,” explains Professor
Hadfield. “And the students then fall into that. So then when we’re on the mountain and we’re hiking with them, they’re asking questions about how to speak Swahili, questions about life in Tanzania. When you’re hiking for four to five hours and you get a chance to talk to these people, you really get to know them. The climb is really not only hiking, it’s also engaging with people on the ground.”
Harriet Huang, a geography major who attended last year’s study abroad, breaks into a large smile when asked about hiking with the guides and porters. “That was my favorite part,” she says immediately. “They were really interesting people. They had a lot to share with us. And they cared a lot for us. On summit day I got to talk to my porter the whole way up; he was super cool. He was around my age and told me about his life. We didn’t have a lot in common, but we had a lot to talk about. It was an amazing experience to spend so much time with people from Tanzania, who knew so much. That was the part where I felt like I learned a lot about the culture—from those people rather than from what I’ve heard in passing or from a class taught by a professor.”
The Kilimanjaro hiking guides are unique professionals, their job requiring expertise in more than one sphere. Not only are they backpacking specialists, they also have a wealth of knowledge about the five different ecological zones of Kilimanjaro, which they readily educate their hikers on. “Our guides just knew so much about the mountain,” Huang recalls. “It was so cool. We learned so much about the landscapes, the biodiversity, the birds, and the patterns on the mountain. They could answer literally any of our questions.”
The guides also play the role of physician, closely analyzing and assessing their hikers every hour of the hiking experience. This begins long before they gather at the base of the mountain; the guides carefully observe hikers starting the moment they meet, taking note of people’s resting state so that they can recognize stress signals on the climb. Their job also demands a bit of psychological profiling—they size up people’s cultural backgrounds and their communication styles, accounting for how those will affect the way someone expresses their needs on the climb.
“The guides and the porters are 100 percent committed to having you make it to the top of the mountain; they want to make sure you make it,” emphasizes Professor Jeffery Nokes, associate dean in the BYU College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences and an associate professor of history. “And they’re watching really carefully to see if there are any areas of concern, because they’re not going to push
you higher than you can [go]. Early on in the hike, you go to some pretty high elevations, so they can see how your body reacts to higher elevations.”
Over the last several years, Professor Hadfield has done original research on the history of the guides and porters of Mount Kilimanjaro, and she is currently writing a book in collaboration with Tanzanian experts. “This book seeks to bring to light the history of porters and guides who have worked on Kilimanjaro from the late nineteenth century to the present day in order to acknowledge the work of those who perform the hardest and most valuable tasks on the mountain and to examine important dynamics of the climbing tourism industry,” she explains. “Unlike other accounts of the history of climbing Kilimanjaro, this book does so from the perspective of Tanzanians, primarily those who have constituted the backbone of the industry.
“[The book] begins with the relationship of local Chagga groups with the mountain, then explores the roles and experiences of local guides and porters through the rise of Kilimanjaro climbing tourism in the 1930s to the turn of the twenty-first century, when more Tanzanians engaged in the work and more attention was paid to the conditions of porter work.
“The book demonstrates that even as the Kilimanjaro climbing industry developed in a colonial context and has been Westernized and globalized, local Tanzanian actors continue to play an important role in shaping the industry. However, the fight for the improvement of working conditions also continues. Ultimately, [the book] invites us all to take responsibility in paying respect to the mountain and the people who work on it.”
Students consistently reference the impact the guides made on them, whether it be the fact that they prepared ginger tea in place of coffee or that they gave physical and emotional support while hiking. Kameron Abilla, who attended the study abroad in 2022, recalls getting altitude sickness as they neared the mountain’s summit. “A guide singled me out and asked, ‘Are you doing okay?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, but can you stay by me in case I fall down?’ And he stuck by me the whole time. And he brought me down.”
The guides bring an energy the hikers rely on. “We’re struggling as we hike, going so slow—you need to go slow—and the guides are popping up around you like mountain goats; they’re laughing and joking,” Abilla says with a chuckle. “You’re like, ‘This is so hard for me. How are you jumping around?’”
Lessons from Local Experts
Like the guides, the faculty from Mweka College who lead the study abroad’s safari also make a lasting impression on the students. Jace Watt, a student who attended the study abroad in 2022, recalls, “They were so kind, and they were so happy they could show us their country. They’re experts in their field, and on safari it was really cool to pick their brains. I ask a lot of questions—that’s how I learn—and they always had answers.”
Professor Ryan Jensen, a geography professor and codirector of the study abroad, has written about the great landscapes of Tanzania, like the ones explored on safari. He is coauthor of the book Protected Areas in Northern Tanzania: Local Communities, Land Use Change, and Management Challenges, which was published in 2020; an additional book, Protected Areas in Tanzania: Land Use and Management Challenges in Complex Areas, will be published soon. These texts bring attention to issues at the intersection of conservation, tourism, and community livelihood. They also cover the use of geospatial technologies—geographic information systems and remote sensing data and techniques—to study land use and land cover conversion.
It’s an area of expertise Professor Jensen has spent time sharing with professors at Mweka College. These professors and other Tanzanian researchers made significant contributions to both books. “It’s been fantastic; they’re the local experts,” Professor Jensen says of his collaboration with these colleagues. “None of this would be possible without their ideas.”
The opportunities to study animal migration patterns and displacement of both animals and native peoples that he has had in Tanzania simply don’t exist in the United States. “There’s no way we could have learned these sorts of things in any other context,” Professor Jensen says. “Our colleagues over there have been really good to us. They’ve opened our eyes to examining how people interact with the environment in a variety of settings—in urban settings and rural settings. It’s really fascinating to see how policy can affect development and the resources that they’re able to draw on. It’s been really good in that regard.”
A Deep Spirit of Friendship
Professor Nokes has expertise in pedagogy, specializing in classroom research on the best ways to teach and learn history and apply it in civic engagement. He collaborated with a professor at Mweka College to develop teaching materials on the controversy regarding the removal of the Maasai people for the preservation of wildlife and tourism. In describing this work, Professor Nokes speaks with deep admiration for his Tanzanian colleague: “He is really dedicated to applying his research in a way that helps people. He understands that he’s doing that within a context where he can’t make all the changes he would love to make immediately. He has to work within the system, and so he’s got this level of patience with change, understanding what’s possible and what’s not possible. In America we have an attitude of ‘It’s my way; I’m not going to give an inch.’ And he has an attitude of making small gains. It’s a really wise approach to problem solving.”
The meaningful exchanges extend beyond academic collaboration. In March 2022, after three faculty from Mweka College presented at the Kennedy Center, they took a short trip with BYU faculty to several Utah national parks and the Grand Canyon. And when one of the guides who leads the BYU students’ Kilimanjaro summit each year went to the Johannesburg South Africa Temple in 2023, Professor Hadfield participated.
The deep spirit of friendship that permeates every aspect of the study abroad as well as the lasting relationships and academic knowledge it has produced are a powerful manifestation of the rich experiences and accomplishments that genuinely symbiotic relationships allow. “One of the guides said to me [that] the mountain is his classroom because he also is learning from us when we come,” says Professor Hadfield. “It’s really an exchange—they’re interested in our culture, our experience, and we’re interested in theirs, so we’re having these conversations and sharing.”
When one considers the history of Westerners in Africa, this study abroad is a beautiful example of change for the good. For so long, interactions between Westerners and Africans were defined by theft, violence, and prejudice. These recent interactions are defined by humility, friendship, and listening. The program took place again in May 2024, promising a new group of students the joys of strenuous hiking and mutual curiosity.
