Travel Tips

Grateful Traveler: Tanzanian Refugee Returns to Africa as a Global Citizen

Locations in this article:  London, England Paris, France

SuitcasesWhen Amin Khan was 9 years old, his parents packed four suitcases—one for each member of the family—and left for the airport in Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania with all the casualness of people going on a short vacation.

They never saw their home in Africa again.

Their reasons for leaving Africa were the same as the family’s reasons for leaving India four generations earlier: political instability, social unrest and a desire for a better life for the children.

If Amin had been offered a vote, he probably would have stayed put.

Even now, more than 35 years later, he remembers Africa as “a place of great beauty with a climate that was always perfect. When my family would make the drive from our home in Dodoma to Dar-Es-Salaam, wild animals would be walking alongside the unpaved main road. Even the cities were beautiful.”

African JungleIn Africa, Amin’s family lived an almost idyllic existence. His great-grandfather, grandfather and father were all very successful businessmen. His huge family (his father had 10 siblings) lived in a compound of houses with aunts, uncles and cousins often getting together for large family meals and celebrations. As was typical in Africa for people of means, they had servants. There was even money to travel. By the time Amin’s family left Africa, his parents had already circled the globe twice.

But Amin’s parents were not out to see the sights of London or Paris or New York (although they certainly took them in); they were looking for a new place to live. “At that time,” says Amin, “many of the Indians who had settled in East Africa were looking to leave.”

Military dictator Idi Amin had already begun his reign of terror over Uganda. The Indian families there had fled, often with nothing to their name. Now the Indians in Kenya and Tanzania were feeling like they should get out. Amin’s parents decided on the United States.

When Amin’s family left the country, they were allowed to take only $5,000. They walked away with the dishes still in the kitchen cabinets, the sheets still on the beds and most of their clothes still in the closet. “My father handed my uncle the keys to his hardware store and that was that. We left with only what would fit in a suitcase.”

Schoolboy tieThe family’s first stop was England, where Amin’s parents put the two boys in boarding school. “It taught me everything I need to know about racism,” says Amin. “We were the only brown faces in the school. The bullying and the hazing didn’t let up until two boys came from Nigeria in our second year.”

Instead of the warm family connection Amin and his brother had had with his parents in Africa, it was six months before they saw them at all. “To me, as a kid,” says Amin, “those six months felt like six years. It was horrible.” The family was not permanently reunited for another two years.

Once Amin’s parents established a home and a business, they came and got the boys. But the business failed. “Life was so much harder in America than in Africa,” says Amin. But as one might guess, Amin’s father was not one to give up. With loans from others, Amin’s father opened another hardware store. Through perseverance and hard work (Amin and his brother were still expected to work at the store even after they’d finished college and had full-time jobs), he made it a success.

Now fast forward several decades. Amin is married to one of my closest friends and we met them for dinner in L.A.’s Chinatown. We begin to talk about the disastrous economy.

Amin says, “I never think about what is going on in the economy. I don’t care if it is up or it is down. My job is to constantly improve myself and my business so it stays strong. When my brother and I started our environmental consulting business, we had a lot of success at first. Then, as more people flooded into the field, the money we could charge for our expertise became less and less; but more importantly, the work became less interesting and creative. So we stopped what we were doing and reinvented ourselves.”

Global CitizenWhat they reinvented themselves into was a brand-new business that no one had ever done before. It’s technical. It’s difficult for the lay-person to understand. But it’s amazing and clients return again and again.

It didn’t start out this way. “For the first three years, we didn’t make a dime,” says Amin. “But we took that time to perfect what we were doing. It’s hard when you start a new business that is unlike anything else out there. You have to show people the need. Educate them. But when they get it, bingo, they are overjoyed.”

So I’m sitting there listening to this and I’m thinking, “Wow, this is a take on things I haven’t heard before. No self-pity. No what are we going to do? Just a cold assessment of the world as it is and the courage to take it on—on his own terms.”

And, fascinated by travelers and the life lessons they have to teach all of us about meeting life with grace, I’m blown away. Because, as Amin talks, I’m seeing a direct connection between his early years— being uprooted, starting over, having to adapt to completely new cultures and watching his parents fail and then succeed—and I’m thinking “like father, like son.”

When I posit this theory to Amin, he says “Nah,” and gives me a million reasons why his business has flourished. Maybe. But when our conversation is almost at a close, Amin says something that, for me, confirms his status as an authentic traveler. After explaining the arcane and technical ins and outs of his business, he adds, “But if this hadn’t worked out, we just would have found something else.”

Said like a man who understands the lessons of the road—persistence, adaptability, curiosity, and a fervent belief that everything will be okay.

By Jamie Simons for PeterGreenberg.com.

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