I met a woman who lived on a sailboat moored off the Yacht Club beach in Dar es Salaam, and it sounded so romantic to me; to live on a boat in a palm-fringed bay and watch the sun set over the sea at the end of each day.

The artists I met in Tanzania spent years honing their skills and trying to sell paintings to support their families. This became exponentially harder after the economic downturn in 2008 forced many galleries to close. A decade later, after the economy had recovered, Covid caused tourism to dry up altogether.

Soon after we moved to Tanzania, a friend sent me to the Magomeni Fish Market in Dar next to the busy port. The visit inspired me to write an article to help newcomers navigate the place, especially since I was intimidated to the point of being scared on a first visit.

With her long dreadlocks, angular cheekbones, and toothy smile, Carola Kinasha was a notable presence around town. Most striking was her sonorous voice, which patrons at select hotels and restaurants in Dar instantly recognized.

It takes a special person to welcome someone else's child into their heart and home. Brooke Montgomery, who fostered and adopted children in three African countries, had an inkling that this was her calling when she did volunteer work at an orphanage in China after college.

One of the private orphanages I visited while living in Dar es Salaam provided shelter for 120 children, ages two to twenty, Christians and Muslims alike. It was started by a Tanzanian woman who’d lost seven brothers and sisters to AIDS or malaria and was left to raise 19 nieces and nephews herself.

HIV/AIDS was the reason my husband and I moved to Tanzania in 2005. As Director of an AIDS project funded by the CDC, his mandate was to help HIV-infected people get access to life-saving medications.

Through friends I met a Tanzanian woman who ran a health and massage business in Dar es Salaam. Besides giving therapeutic massages, Numi also plaited hair and gave manicures and pedicures to support her three children. She’d built up a clientele in the expat community by word of mouth and was able to open a bank account to save for her children’s education.

When we lived in Ivory Coast and Tanzania, people constantly came down with malaria. The guards who worked outside of people’s homes and businesses were most at risk, staying out all night during rainy season and dry. Children and the elderly were also vulnerable.

If anything could rouse me to road rage, it was the sight of someone tossing an empty food container or bottle out of a bus or car. We saw it all the time in Tanzania, and sometimes our car had to swerve to miss trash that bounced onto the road.

One self-help group in Dar es Salaam would fashion earrings and necklaces out of glass beads made from recycled glass. Alexandra Wilson, a British anthropologist who’d worked with Krobo and Ashanti people in Ghana, knew about a low-technology method for using recycled glass to make beads.

Soon after we moved to Dar es Salaam, I was looking for volunteer opportunities when I happened to meet a Tanzanian woman who’d started a group called Kids on the Pitch. Gizelle’s mission was to engage local youths in sports and other activities that would keep them off the streets.

January is a month when people tend to make resolutions—to stop smoking, lose weight, get in shape, and learn a new skill or language. A new year offers us the chance to start over and work on self-improvement.

How do you say goodbye to a place that offered you a taste of Eden and a portal of peace, which is what Dar es Salaam means?