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So Many Incredible Stories
Sleeping With Lions: A Year in Tanzania shares your experiences in East Africa and your personal journey to rediscover who you are. Why was this an important book for you to write?
I love a good story, and there were so many incredible stories that I experienced during the year I lived in Tanzania. I wanted to share these experiences for many reasons—for example, to dispel misconceptions back home about what a year in Tanzania was actually like for me. More than anything, this is a valentine to my friends and family in Tanzania, especially the four Tanzanian priests who invited me to live with them. It is a unique love story centered on brotherly love. It was also important to write this book to celebrate Tanzanian thought, philosophy, culture and language. It was such a joyful, contemplative, and rich experience filled with wonderful people. I wanted to acknowledge and honor an incredible year in a beautiful place where I was surrounded by love, profound thought, natural wonders, and the best friends anyone could ever have. I wanted to share something optimistic and positive.
I appreciated the candid nature with which you told your story. What was the hardest thing for you to write about?
First of all, thank you. When I first started writing about these experiences, it was as a diary, so that is probably why it is so candid. Writing about my personal journey was the easy part; trying to capture the beauty and atmosphere of Tanzania was probably the hardest part. It is like when people share photos and say “this photo does not do the subject justice.” There is a reason Tanzania is such a popular adventure travel destination with Zanzibar, Mount Kilimanjaro, and The Serengeti Desert, but it is also so much more than that. The hardest part of writing about my year in Tanzania was truly capturing the beauty of the landscape, the culture, the languages, and the history. As happy as I am with the book, I still know that my writing did not do the country, or my friends there, justice.
What is one piece of advice someone gave you that changed your life?
It is funny because the one piece of advice that changed my life came from my mom who is not one to generally offer advice, and I am not one who is generally inclined to take it. Many years ago, noticing how I was struggling as a young, first-time mom and trying to still pursue my own dreams, she said: “You can do all the things you want in life, just not all at the same time.” It was one of the few times I have taken advice from anyone, but I am glad I did. She encouraged me to recognize different seasons in life and to prioritize my time. She added that the school where I taught could always replace me but my daughters could not. Although the culture around me was telling me I could “do it all,” my mom modified that by adding “…just not all at once.” She also repeatedly emphasized how quickly children grow up, something that is hard to recognize in the exhausting early years. Because of this, I prioritized early motherhood and my daughters. My mom was right: these years flew by, and I was able to continue with a career I love and reconnect with my own dreams later on. I hope this book reflects the appreciation for the seasons of life and this loving advice from my mom.
What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your story?
The one takeaway I hope readers will take to heart is to reconsider the cultural stereotypes and misconceptions about places in Africa like Tanzania. I hope readers come away with an enhanced understanding about the culture, history, and wonder of Tanzania. More than anything, I hope the voices of my Tanzanian friends and colleagues that I have tried to capture here will be amplified and show readers that there is a lot to learn from the Tanzanian way of life.
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
Living with four priests in Bukoba, Tanzania on the western shores of Lake Victoria, the author teaches at a small college and works closely alongside her research partner, a Kenyan linguist and poet. Throughout her year in Tanzania, she establishes new friendships and also travels throughout the country, visiting places like Kilwa, the Serengeti Desert and Zanzibar.
In this true story, Lee Anne McIlroy celebrates the rich cultural, historical, natural, and linguistic landscapes of Tanzania while reflecting on her own life, exploring what it means to be a mother, a woman, and most importantly, a human being in the modern world.
Sleeping With Lions
Lee Anne McIlroy’s Sleeping With Lions: A Year in Tanzania documents her time spent as an English Language Fellow for a university in Bukoba, Tanzania. The author’s memoir is a poignant portrayal of the landscapes and people who shaped her journey as a woman following a difficult divorce.
Lee Anne describes the scenery in Bukoba with eyes of wonderment. Unlike some of her peers, who only see the economic poverty of Tanzania and greater Africa, she indulges in the cultural richness of local life. She sees her time in Tanzania as a way to rediscover herself in a land that has always felt dear to her heart. From the food to the sounds and sights she experiences, she uses vivid descriptors that give the landscape a magical feeling.
The people she meets are a formative part of her journey. She makes an active effort to do more than coexist with her colleagues and the locals around her; she strives to learn from them, even in the most minute ways. She gets to know the family of Ocham, the professor she partners with at the university, and even visits their family home. She has a particular affinity for the priests with whom she stays for the duration of the trip. The priests help her rediscover her womanhood; unlike her ex-husband, who never fully understood her, they respect her career and offer her a set of fresh perspectives.
Finally, as an educator and mom of daughters raised in California, she often considers the conditions in which her students learn and operate. Despite lacking the socioeconomic privilege that her daughters had throughout their childhoods, she describes her students as some of the brightest and hardest-working she has encountered. In contrast to her students in California, students frequented her office hours in droves to reinforce their commitment to their education. In the end, she discovers that it is not wealth that makes a person’s life rich; the richness of spirit and passion makes it so.
Sleeping With Lions: A Year in Tanzania is an emotional memoir that shares one woman’s journey discovering parts of herself while learning about a new culture. Her strength shines through her stories and is inspirational to those that read them.
Pages 291 | ASIN : B0BKYFTPC9
LITERARY TITAN 