Midwestern Teen Gains Global View
By Chris Haugen

B ecause we traveled a lot when we lived in Tanzania, I attended many different schools, one of which was a Christian school in Dodoma. It was one of the wealthier schools in town and had a lot of Muslim students. It was somewhat perplexing to me to observe Muslims singing Christian songs at school, while knowing their beliefs at home were different.

Another school I attended was in a small village in the Usambara Mountains. I stayed with two Peace Corps volunteers who taught at the local high school. The three of us walked three miles daily to get there. Hiking home in the unbearable heat was even worse than hiking over in the morning. One very hot afternoon, I looked around the room: It was filled with hot kids sitting at wooden desks -- no books, no fans, no teachers, no anything -- only kids writing down words in English that they didn't comprehend.

What is there to think when you look at the person on your right and they have a huge house, five cars and everything they could ever want, while the person on your left is living on the street begging for money to buy food to stay alive? Then there is me, stuck in the middle -- wanting what I don't have and taking for granted the things I already own.

Yet, ironically, no matter how or where my mother and I lived, because we are white, we were seen as having lots of money. We didn't feel like we had a lot -- yet by comparison, we did.

While I was living in a small village in the middle of Tanzania called Nkinga, I met a boy who who saw everyone around him as an equal -- nothing more or less. I hung out with him every day. He taught me Swahili and some of the other basics of life there, such as how to eat certain fruits and how to cut sugar cane.

When I first got back to America, my expectations of people were not that high because other expatriates had told me that people would not care about the fact that I could speak Swahili or that I had lived in another country for three years.

Even so, my Habitat experience has opened my eyes to future possibilities and made me a more knowledgeable person. The people there made me feel special, like I was somebody. They made me feel respected. Although I was sometimes homesick, I loved living in Tanzania and I would like to take a work group back there for a few weeks and just be back.


In early 1997, Debra Haugen relocated with her 13-year-old son, Chris, from Minneapolis, Minn., to Tanzania for three years to serve as an international partner with Habitat for Humanity. Four months after their return to the United States, Chris, now 17, is teaching a course in Swahili to his classmates in school and planting seeds in his church that he hopes will flourish into a church-sponsored short-term mission trip to Tanzania next summer.



Reprinted from Habitat World Magazine, April/May 2000.
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