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Chinese engineer finds friends in Tanzania
Hou Qianpeng, an avid traveler in his own country, used to dream of visiting some of the geographical wonders of the world – Mount Kilimanjaro, the Great Rift Valley extending from Lebanon to Mozambique, Lake Victoria, the largest tropical lake in the world, and the famed Serengeti National Park in Tanzania.
But the Chinese engineer had never imagined he would have any real connection with Africa. Nor did he foresee that one day he would have to cultivate the English language as an essential skill to survive and work.
“Life is like a box of chocolates,” the 25-yearold told Chinafrica. “You never know which flavor you are going to get. It was one of those [life’s] surprises that gave me a chance to know an enchanting foreign country, to see more than my Chinese peers, and to win friendship in an unknown land.”
Hou was working for the China Railway Seventh Group Co. (CRSG), which has operations in Africa and Saudi Arabia, when his life changed dramatically. After working in a domestic base for two years, the young engineer from Xi’an, a historical city in China that is among the oldest cities in the world, was transferred to his company’s Tanzania branch in November 2014. Then started his romance with the remote nation.
“I was so excited that I itched to set off the next day,” Hou recalled. For someone who had visited nearly 90 percent of the provinces at home, it was a dream come true.
Saying it with pictures
However, reality is not always as satisfying as anticipation. When he arrived in Tanzania, Hou initially didn’t have any time to either realize his dream of exploring the country or savor its cultural differences. His work was laborious and stressful and he had his hands full. The CRSG specializes in infrastructure construction and the projects in Tanzania were mostly located in remote areas where the living conditions were extremely harsh.
“We were short-handed and I needed to fit into the new work and environment,” Hou said. “Everyone had specific responsibilities and if one person faltered, it meant jeopardizing the whole project.”
As the company’s procurement manager, Hou needed to interact regularly with local suppliers and agents and English was the sole means of communication since they did not speak Chinese and he did not know Swahili. Unfortunately, English had never been his forte. He had never had to use it at work previously. The thought of the giant switch gave Hou butterflies in the stomach. “I had to brace myself and try my best, starting with beginning a conversation with the local driver I worked with,” he said.
The first assignment didn’t go off well. Hou and Sean Murray, the driver, set out for a local market at dawn, reaching there after two bone-rattling hours on a bad road. But when they reached the place, Hou realized that Murray had misunderstood his instructions and they had landed up in the wrong place.
Though he had difficulty communicating with Murray, Hou had to depend on him to convey what he wanted to the local buyers in Swahili. He had never realized before that buying stuff, which had been the easiest thing in life once, would become such an ordeal. How to communicate effectively became his priority.
“I finally found a solution,” Hou explained. “Every time I went out, I took a notebook and pen with me. When I couldn’t express myself clearly, I drew pictures or even used body language. There is nothing that you cannot express if you put your heart into it.” Now he is more confident in his job.
The changes started with Murray. When Hou first met him, they didn’t hit it off. Probably because of their cultural differences, their conversa-
When I couldn’t express myself clearly, I drew pictures or even used body language. There is nothing that you cannot express if you put your heart into it.
Hou Qianpeng, a Chinese engineer working in Tanzania
tions at first tended to end up in disagreements. Then Hou tried his hand at diplomacy. “Both of us are from the 1990s generation who have a lot in common,” he said. “I took the initiative to discover common grounds, for example, love of sports.”
So they started talking about shared interests and finally established a harmonious relationship. Today, they are colleagues and close friends as well, spending all day together exploring capital city Dar es Salaam.
The friendship has benefited Hou’s work. “Murray is smart,” Hou said. “He helps me find a lot of construction materials that are difficult to buy in Tanzania at a reasonable price. Thanks to him, my company doesn’t have to import them from China, which is expensive and time-consuming.”
Enriching experience
Life in Tanzania has made Hou grow up fast. Compared to his peers, he appears more mature and sophisticated. His cousin Zhang Jingwen still remembers her astonishment when Hou came home on vacation last summer and she saw him after six months. “I remembered him as the precious baby of the family, who would never enter the kitchen. I couldn’t recognize the slim, tanned man before me,” Zhang said.
But Hou regards the changes as no big deal. He is more taken up with telling his family every adventure that befell him in Tanzania with great gusto. The Tanzanian market is one of his pet topics. He gave the example of the fruit stalls. Unlike at home in China, where vendors in the fruit market display the same ware, Tanzanians never sell the fruits their neighboring stalls are selling. “Maybe they are averting competition. If one sells apples, another will sell pears,” Hou said.
In Tanzania, he has seen the dark side of life too, witnessing people suffering from diseases and social turmoil. “After seeing all these things, I cherish more things in life and have become more optimistic,” he said.
As his stay in Tanzania lengthens, the more has he grown to love the local people and culture. Hou is now learning Swahili so that he can better communicate with the locals and learn more local stories. He has a tip: “Understanding each other’s culture is the basis of true friendship. As long as you have the willingness [to learn the Tanzanian culture and language], you will grow fond of the hospitable and easy-going African people. [Besides], smiling is always a universal language [understood by all].”
Now Hou’s schedule in Tanzania is enriched with a bigger agenda. Besides visiting all its beautiful landscapes, he wants to learn more about local customs and to make more Tanzanian friends.