The Radical Truth of Volunteering in Tanzania.

A Reckoning with Systems, Self, and the Stories We Carry

By Pearl Sakoane-Nogi Medi Trip Volunteers

Introduction: Beyond the Fantasy

Every year, hundreds of volunteers travel across borders seeking experience, purpose, and personal expansion. Their journeys are often framed around helping, impact, or giving back. Yet behind this comforting vocabulary, we need to re-examine some uncomfortable truths: the experience volunteers imagine and the systems they enter need realignment.

This dissonance is not a failure of intention. It is a failure of understanding.

To volunteer ethically in Tanzania, or anywhere shaped by historical inequality and contemporary underinvestment, requires entering a space where systems behave differently, time moves differently, communication flows differently, and where structural limitations shape every interaction.

Here, the volunteer encounters not just a new place but the outer edge of their own assumptions.

This discussion is an invitation to step into that reckoning.

1. Systems Shape Behaviour: Not Individual Morality

Much of what "shocks" Western visitors in Tanzanian institutions, the slow pace, the conditions people are struggling with, the indirect communication, the hesitancy, the uneven skill distribution, is not the product of individual failure. It is the result of what Paulo Freire termed the “structural conditioning of consciousness.”

Understaffed institutions, limited training pathways, hierarchical labour cultures, and chronic resource scarcity create in locals patterns of behaviour that are adaptive within their context.

Fanon, writing in The Wretched of the Earth, reminds us that “the system teaches the rhythm of its own survival.”Tanzania’s rhythm is not Europe’s rhythm. Its priorities are not European or North America’s priorities. Volunteers who mistake the unfamiliar for the “unprofessional” are not seeing clearly. They are seeing through the lens of their own conditioning.

This is the first radical truth: the system is not broken; it is simply built for different pressures.

2. The Myth of Efficiency: A Western Export That Doesn’t Travel Well

The Western world treats time as currency. Tanzania treats time as a relationship.

Achille Mbembe writes that African temporalities do not orbit the clock; they orbit human coordination, collective flow, and the negotiations of daily survival.

Schedules drift.Plans shift.Communication is indirect.Urgency is situational, not constant.

For the young volunteer raised in a culture of logistics, speed, and productivity, this can feel like inefficiency.But as Ivan Illich cautioned in To Hell with Good Intentions, “efficiency is not a universal virtue; it is a cultural preference.”

The second radical truth is this: your pace is not the default pace of humanity.

3. Poverty Is Not a Stage, and People Are Not Props

No matter how any organisation wants to sell it to you.

To witness poverty without voyeurism requires maturity.To engage without pity requires discipline.To support without centring oneself requires humility.

Too often, volunteers mistake emotional intensity for ethical contribution.They believe that playing with children constitutes aid, that proximity equals impact, or that momentary affection bridges systemic gaps.

This tendency echoes Gayatri Spivak’s critique of the “benevolent imaginary”, where the desire to help becomes a narrative about the helper rather than the helped.

Anywhere, poverty is not symbolic. It is not content. It is not "inspiration".

It is a structural condition shaped by global inequity, political economy, and historical extraction, not by personal moral failure of individuals.

The third radical truth is simple and difficult: your feelings do not equate to social change. Sounds harsh, I know. But once we DE-CENTER ourselves and center only the people we want to serve, it becomes an obvious truth.

4. Asking for Help Is Not Exploitation; and Your Reaction Reveals You

Yes it does.

In many African contexts, social networks are built on reciprocity, shared burdens, and collective resilience. A visitor who appears privileged is often approached for assistance, support, or opportunity.

This is not manipulation. It is socio-economic literacy. It is also not specific to particular demographics (white, foreign et.c), locals are approached for donations, help and opportunities too.

How a volunteer interprets and reacts to these encounters reveals more about their worldview than about Tanzanian behaviour.

Do you perceive friendliness as opportunism? Do you experience requests as pressure? Do you assume that approach equals expectation? Do you project guilt or superiority into the interaction?

Sara Ahmed writes that emotions “stick to bodies,” shaping how we see the Other before they even speak. To navigate Tanzanian social life ethically, one must question: what sticks to me?

The fourth radical truth: what you think others want from you is often a reflection of internal fear system rather than sociological truth.

5. Money, Transparency, and the Limits of Western Accountability Frameworks

Volunteers often arrive with the expectation that every shilling should be accounted for with Western precision. But the structures they enter are not built on audit culture, they are built on sustainability, relational trust, and resource improvisation. What's the difference, allow me to explain.

In Western institutions, especially hospitals, universities, NGOs, and government systems, the dominant organising principle is what anthropologists call audit culture.In much of East Africa, including Tanzania, the organising principle is fundamentally different.

Here is the difference in clean, precise terms:

What is Audit Culture?

Audit culture is a system where everything must be documented, measured, verified, and justified.

Audit culture assumes that legitimacy comes from traceability,that every action or expense must be provable on paper.

This is the default in Western Europe, North America, Australia, and many institutions globally influenced by colonial administrative logic.

Audit culture = trust the paperwork, not the person.

What Tanzanian Systems Are Built On Instead?

Sustainability

Sustainability in many Tanzanian institutions means:“Will this decision keep the hospital/clinic/project running tomorrow, next week, next month?”

Spending decisions are based on survival of the system, not granular reporting categories. Money flows to:

• Fuel

• Staff stipends

• Electricity

• Repairs

• Emergency needs

• Unexpected shortages

• Community obligations

Even if it is not always recorded line-by-line.

Sustainability here is practical continuity, not documented compliance.

In Tanzania, financial flows must sustain:

• Staff livelihood/salaries

• Operational stability (overheads)

• Infrastructure maintenance

• Community partnerships (often paid in some form)

• Crisis flexibility (lockdowns, unrest)

• And the unavoidable unpredictability of supplies

Relational Trust

Many institutions rely on relationships, not paperwork.

“Trust” works differently in East African contexts:

Trust the person, not the document.

• Trust the relationship, not the system.

• Trust the verbal agreement, not the contract.

• Trust loyalty, longevity, and community accountability.

In Western systems, institutional trust is transactional.In Tanzanian systems, trust is social, historical, and human.

Relational trust holds institutions together when:

• Formal local systems are weak

• Bureaucracy is slow

• Supplies are inconsistent

• Leadership rotates

• Funding is irregular

Relationships give continuity where paperwork cannot.

Resource Improvisation

By far this is one of the most misunderstood features of African systems.

Improvisation is not “messiness.” It is a cultural technology, a learned survival skill.

It means:

• Making do with what is available

• Adapting in the moment

• Reconfiguring tools to fit the environment

• Shifting staff

• Reusing materials

• Adjusting plans on the fly

• Prioritising outcome over process

Improvisation fills the gap where:

• Equipment breaks

• Staff are absent

• Budgets are late

• Supplies run out

• Infrastructure fails

  
  

Western systems equate improvisation with risk.African systems equate improvisation with resilience.

Improvisation is the glue that keeps the system functional despite scarcity.

Why foreigners Misinterpret All This constantly

Because volunteers come from systems where:

• Transparency = ethical

• Documentation = professionalism

• Structure = safety

• Consistency = competence

• Speed = respect

• Clarity = accountability

  
  

But in Tanzania, the equation is different:

• Flexibility = survival

• Relationships = accountability

• Improvisation = skill

• Patience = professionalism

• Continuity = success

• Trust = social currency

The fifth radical truth:your financial expectations are shaped by your context, not by universal reality.

6. You Cannot Fix What You Do Not Understand

Perhaps the most damaging myth among young volunteers is the belief that they are here to “fix,” “improve,” or “upgrade” something.This assumption, however unconscious, repeats colonial logic: the idea that solutions originate from outside rather than within communities.

To intervene ethically, one must first understand three things:

1. History — the long arc of global inequality.

2. Structure — the policies, budgets, hierarchies, and constraints of local institutions.

3. Culture — the collective values, communication norms, and social rhythms that shape daily life.

Franz Fanon warned that intervention without understanding is simply another form of domination ---> interference.

The sixth radical truth:you are here to witness and support, not to reinvent or rescue.

7. The Real Shift Is Internal, Not External

The most profound shift happens not in Tanzanian hospitals, schools, or communities, but inside the volunteer themselves.

You will confront:

• Frustration

• Confusion

• Helplessness

• Pride

• Guilt

• Discomfort

• Expectation

• Privilege

• Identity

• Meaning

  
  

Kwame Anthony Appiah argues that cosmopolitanism requires the “courage to listen without needing to master.”

You are not here to master Tanzania. You are here to allow Tanzania to reshape how you see systems, people, and yourself. Why? So you can actually become part of the solution.

The seventh radical truth: growth comes from humility.

So, to close....

It will be hard, but also revealing. Volunteering with Medi Trip I want it to become a Practice of Radical Openness, what does this look like?

To volunteer ethically in Tanzania is to undergo an initiation:

• from certainty to curiosity

• from expectation to observation

• from judgement to understanding

• from centring yourself to giving space

• from control to adaptation

• from saviourism to solidarity

  
  

If you can hold all these truths without collapsing into defensiveness, superiority, frustration, or avoidance, then Tanzania will teach you more than any classroom ever could.

But if you cannot, then you are not ready.

Volunteering with Medi Trip is not performance, our most negative reviews is often when people find this out too late expecting performative charity.

It is a disciplined and slow practice of de-centring yourself, submission to complexity,and learning to see reality as it is, not as you expected it to be.

That is the radical truth.