Age: 23 | Hometown: Tanga, Tanzania
Boniventura Mwapule used a computer for the first time at age 19. He learned English by watching American action films, earning money for tickets to those movies by selling empty beer bottles.
And now, he's double-majoring in economics and French studies at Duke.
Mwapule, a sophomore from Tanga, Tanzania, made his way to Duke after a lucky break that helped land him in a high school with International Baccalaureate courses. Duke seemed like the perfect way to gain an education, return to Africa with internationally recognized credentials and begin a career with an international organization.
But the transition, he says, was shocking in ways he never could have imagined.
"Now I see what it feels like to live in a country with racial blocks, where whiteness and blackness plays a very big part," he says. "This is something I've never seen before. This is something I would only expect in South Africa, and I would have never gone to South Africa for that same reason."
Mwapule says racism doesn't exist in Tanzania, in part due to the homogeneity of the population.
"The biggest group of foreigners we have there is Asians, and we pretty much recognize them as Tanzanians. And what separates them is economy-they are richer. We don't think they are better human beings, we just think they are richer than us."
America, conversely, is a "racially sensitive community, in that your color is something that people bring up and care about," he says.
"It's one of the things I do not like, when I see people writing about themselves and one of the things that comes up very quick is, 'Are you white, Hispanic, or black?' Racial sensitiveness is not the same thing as racism, but if you bring [race] up so repeatedly, so constantly, so strongly, then it gives the impression of racism."
Mwapule says such racialism naturally arises in any country where racial inequality is the norm. His solution? Love.
"If we hate we will disintegrate, but if we love we will live together and unite. My philosophy is that love works better than hate; unity works better than division. It's very hard but it is the most realistic approach, because it is where our hearts are meant to go. The reason why we are angry when we are hated or feeling discriminated against is because our hearts are calling for unity, and we are hurt when that does not happen."
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