ARUSHA, Tanzania — In the 10 days I've been living in Arusha, Tanzania, I've felt pretty much cut off from the Western world. No Internet, no TV, no radio—heck, even real indoor plumbing is a luxury. But while I've been in the city this past weekend, one person has made me feel completely at home—Michael Jackson.
Until Friday morning, as a group of 20 international volunteers, we didn't have any inkling of what was going on at home. No idea that Hillary Clinton had broken her arm, or how Obama's health-care initiative was going. But as we gathered for breakfast at our orientation site Friday morning, people periodically rushed in, clutching their cell phones, exclaiming, "Michael Jackson died!" —the one piece of news their parents thought important enough to share via text message from the U.S. Suddenly, home felt a whole lot closer.
When we got in the dalla dalla to drive into town, "We are the World" was playing on the radio. When we showed up at Masai Camp, a local club, on Friday night, we arrived right in the middle of a Michael Jackson tribute. Even the Tanzanian local papers have entire pages dedicated to the coverage of his death. And though it initially seemed funny that, of all the news to make its way halfway around the world, it was the death of a pop star that found its way here, it fits right in with Tanzania's perception of American culture.
Our Tanzanian teaching partners, mostly university students, all have songs from 50 Cent and Ne-Yo on their cell phones. They count down the days until films like Angels and Demons are released at the theater in Arusha. One of the guys carries a not-so-secret torch for Hannah Montana. I never would have expected to be singing along with an Avril Lavigne song while bumping down an African highway, but these little things make up a common language that reaches even to the furthest corners of the world.
Kate Leist '11, a Crimson associate sports editor, is an organismic and evolutionary biology concentrator in Adams House.
