As the dim lights of downtown Moshi disappeared in our rearview mirror, my husband squeezed my hand across the backseat and flashed me the look.
The sun had set hours ago on this town at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Our new friend Magembe drove – and drove and drove and drove – promising a taste of local nightlife ahead.
In the glow of the dashboard, my husband’s face reflected what I was feeling: We either made a horrible mistake, or we’re gonna have one hell of a story.
Every true traveler has surely made that face at least once. By “true traveler,” I mean those who don’t stick to the well-worn tourist circuits. Who at least occasionally venture off on some sideways adventures – much like this one, which left my husband and me exchanging that look in the back of Magembe’s aging but meticulously maintained car.
I’d missed seeing the look.
We were in Tanzania for a trip I’d longed to take since I was a child, growing up among squirrels and deer in Big Bear while dreaming of giraffes and elephants in Africa. We originally had a safari booked to celebrate my 40th birthday, which, miserably, fell in fall 2020. We postponed a year. And in September 2021, fully vaccinated and tested multiple times over, we were fortunate enough to celebrate our 10th anniversary with this trip of a lifetime just before the Omicron wave.
It was the first trip we’d taken since the pandemic hit. While I’d traveled to six continents and hiked into the Amazon and jumped out of an airplane, I found myself feeling more anxious than usual on this adventure – and it wasn’t just the virus. Watching our collective response to the pandemic had left me feeling a bit jaded about humanity.
Of course, my day job probably didn’t help. I cover state and federal politics for the Orange County Register. Don’t tell the lawmakers on my beat, but while I’m a naturally curious person, I’m also pretty trusting. During 16 years as a journalist, I’ve trained myself to be more skeptical and to question people’s motives. So, it can feel like a constant tug-of-war between being a sucker and being cynical.
The latter has been winning out in recent years, given how partisan everything has become. I get my share of trolls. There have been some sexist email rants I won’t repeat. Even some death threats. In short, my faith in humanity was at an all-time low when we boarded a plane to Tanzania.
Always before, travel has helped. And there’s research to explain why.
People who’ve visited multiple countries tend to have a greater sense of “generalized trust,” according a 2013 study, “Does Travel Broaden the Mind?” This “belief in the benevolence of human nature” is less about particular interactions along the way, which can of course be positive or negative, and more about interacting with diverse groups of people. While a focus on finding similarities can be comforting, the study found the more travelers recognize and appreciate the differences in foreign cultures, the more that sense of generalized trust grows.
Having more faith in the humans around you is “a key element of successful societies,” the researchers wrote. Generalized trust is linked to greater civic engagement, economic growth and social capital, where people of all backgrounds can work together toward common goals. So, between isolation brought on by the pandemic and hyper-partisan times that have driven us further into our own bubbles, it’s little wonder our sense of generalized trust is floundering.
Perhaps even more concerning, heading into our Tanzania trip, I’d been feeling a lack of confidence in one particular human – me.
If my years of traveling have taught me anything, it’s that I can get myself through many sticky situations. There was the time guards started waving their guns and screaming at us in Vietnamese when we tried to take photos of the arched gate along the road into Cambodia. Also, the time our horseback guide in the mountains above Cusco in Peru dropped us off on a remote street just after dusk, or when I got pick-pocketed on the streets of San Jose, Costa Rica. These moments rattled me, but I dealt with them and came out the other side feeling more confident and emboldened to keep exploring.
The pandemic is something else. No amount of self-determination, even coupled with careful precautions, can guarantee we won’t get the virus. And if we do, it’s not just us we’re putting at risk.
Then there’s my work again. Somewhere amid fights over masks and elections, I accepted that it didn’t matter how many experts I interviewed or how clear I tried to make the information; there simply were facts some readers weren’t going to accept.
Both situations had left me feeling powerless. But I knew, once again, that travel could help. And I carried all of those hopes and fears as I slid into Magembe’s backseat with my husband that September night, on our first full day in Tanzania.
We’d met Magembe 12 hours before, when he pulled into the red clay driveway of our Moshi hotel. We’d hired him to lead us on a hike to the Materuni waterfall and a tour of a nearby coffee farm. After hours of chit-chat that turned into deeper conversation, and laughter as we slipped along muddy clay paths and toasted banana wine, we felt we’d made a new friend.
We mentioned we wanted to grab a drink later that night, and Magembe jumped at the chance to show us his favorite local spot. So, we made plans over WhatsApp to reconnect.
Expecting a quick trip to a nearby bar, we started to question our life choices after Magembe had been driving for 30 minutes with no businesses in sight. Suddenly, a large, open-air bar emerged on the outskirts of Moshi town. Five hours and multiple karaoke performances later, we’d had a night to remember, making more new friends along the way. (Pro tip: “Sweet Caroline” is a sure hit in Tokyo, not so much in Moshi. Crickets…) Magambe dropped us safely back at our hotel. We tipped him, unable to repay him for all he’d given us.
Of course, no single trip can fully restore rattled confidence or faith in humankind. But, as that 2013 study showed, it’s the breadth of encounters that add up.
In my tally, I count Kim Anh, a waitress at a restaurant in Dalat, Vietnam, who took friends and me on a tour of her university and, by day’s end, told us, “You are my happiness.” I count Alfredo, who cleared a snake from our tent in the Amazon and sang a traditional song as fireflies glowed around us. I count Magembe.
Tanzania reminded me that some of my most cherished moments from trips over the years – the ones that sustain me when work or a pandemic have me homebound – have come from times I’ve taken a chance and had some faith in people. And it helped me realize I still want to give people that chance.
