Dreams from Kibogoji

Kibogoji was a small, quiet village, sitting low in a valley cradled between mountains. The land folded inward, as if protecting itself from the rest of the world. The sunrises there were crisp—cool air brushing the skin, light creeping gently over the hills. The sunsets were something else entirely: wide, burning skies that seemed to pause time, as though the day itself hesitated before leaving.

It was there, between those mountains, that I learned how to live.

How to live among people I did not know.
People who welcomed me anyway, despite my strange ways, my unfamiliar speech, my difference. I was barely seven years old. It was 1979.

I arrived tagging along with my mother, my younger brother always close by, my shadow and my comfort. I did not know their language. They barely knew mine. I spoke Kiswahili. They spoke Kinguu—the language of the Nguu people. Mountain people. A people of raised land and steep paths. Though they are part of the Wazigua, who mostly live on flat plains, the Nguu chose the hills, the mountains, the places that require effort just to exist.

My Kiswahili carried a Tabora swing, an accent shaped by where I was born. The children my age could not understand me. Their conversations flowed in Kinguu, fast and familiar, shaped by generations. Kiswahili, to them, was distant and awkward. So we spoke without words.

With our hands.
With looks.
With patience.
With time.

The journey to Kibogoji was long and exhausting, both in distance and in meaning. It began in Mabama, Tabora—where I was born and raised for the brief seven years of my life before everything changed. Mabama was a small village, but it carried many signs of development. There was a large primary school with over seven hundred students. A small but functioning dispensary. A train station where trains ran day and night, their whistles cutting through the air. There was a busy marketplace for tobacco and cotton processing. A large Tanzania Defence Force camp. Running water. Strong soccer teams. Several buses traveling to Tabora and other parts of Tanzania.

Mabama was connected. Alive. Positioned for growth. It was flourishing with people working, trading, building lives.

Then, suddenly, I was traveling thousands of miles away to a place that could not be compared to where I came from.

There were no real roads.
No school.
No dispensary.
Nothing.

Kibogoji sat in the middle of nowhere, near the border of Morogoro and Tanga regions. Remote in every sense of the word—geographically, culturally, developmentally. It felt as though the world had forgotten it, or perhaps never known it at all.

It took many months to adjust to the language barrier. To play with the other children, we had to teach each other. I taught them Kiswahili. They taught me Kinguu. It was an exchange I will never forget. Children are resilient like that—we find ways to belong, even when we have nothing in common but curiosity.

We played soccer with very few words.
We laughed without translation.

They taught me how to be self-reliant. How to hunt small animals. How to gather fruits from the bush. How to read nature and live from it. There was nothing to buy. Everything was bartered—skills for skills, food for effort, trust for trust.

Between those mountains, in that forgotten valley, I learned survival. I learned humility. I learned community. I learned that language is not only spoken—it is lived.

And somehow, in that quiet place called Kibogoji, I learned how to live.