Trusting Strangers in an Age of Suspicion

🕊️Impact #9: Living a life in a spirit of 'Hakuna Matata'

Exactly two years ago, I departed for my field projects across Africa.

At the time, I was running youth mindful leadership trainings under the theme Inner Peace to World Peace—moving across cities, organizations, schools, and communities with one persistent question in mind:

How do we build safer, more peaceful societies?

Not theoretically.
Not politically.
But humanly.

And strangely, one of the deepest lessons about peace did not come from a conference hall or leadership workshop.

It came from owing money to a Maasai man on a beach in Zanzibar, near the end of my trip.

Maybe I’ve overused the word paradise while traveling.

But if Zanzibar is not paradise, then what is?

This magnetic island—where African, Arab, Indian, and European histories intertwine—felt almost unreal when I finally arrived after two exhausting days of transit through Ethiopia and Kilimanjaro.

Zanzibar is heavenlike in beauty, and hellish in history.

An island once shaped by the spice trade and slave trade.
A place carrying both breathtaking turquoise waters and memories of human cruelty.

After nearly two and a half months of nonstop projects across Europe and Africa, my body and mind were completely spent. I headed east toward Paje, where wind meets sea and time seems to slow down on purpose.

From the airport, still dazed, I got straight into a car. As we moved through narrow roads lined with palms and unfinished buildings, flashes of emerald ocean began appearing between them.

Then suddenly—

The beach opened.

And my breath almost stopped.

White sand stretched endlessly.
Kitesurfing sails floated like moving paintings against the blue sky.
The late-afternoon sun glittered across the water.

I remember thinking:

If heaven exists somewhere on earth, maybe it looks like this.

At a small local restaurant, sitting at a rough wooden table, I ate hot curry heavy with Swahili spices.

For the first time in weeks, I felt my nervous system soften.

“This air… this view… this taste… healing itself.”

Then I heard tapping.

Wood against sand.

A group of young men approached carrying long sticks.

“Karibu Zanzibar! Where are you from? What’s your name?”

They were Maasai.

Tall, lean, wrapped in red shukas with beaded jewelry layered around their wrists and necks. One wore blue sunglasses tilted on his head. Another carried handmade leather goods bundled under his arm.

Their energy completely interrupted my romantic peaceful evening.

Questions came rapidly. Smiles too.

One of them stepped forward.

“I’m Thomas. From Kilimanjaro. We made these ourselves.”

Suddenly my table filled with colorful bead bracelets, shells, leather crafts—bright and textured like Zanzibar itself.

I told him honestly I didn’t have much cash left and could only buy a few things.

He shrugged casually.

“Hakuna matata. Pay later.”

Then he handed me the goods anyway.

No contract.
No suspicion.
No guarantee I would ever come back.

Just trust.

We exchanged WhatsApp numbers, and somehow I walked away owing a Maasai man 25,000 Tanzanian shillings—around thirteen dollars.

That night, the tide rolled inward until seawater nearly touched the restaurant floor.

I sat there thinking: This is absurd.

A stranger had trusted me more easily than many people in modern cities trust their own neighbors.

And yet, we live in an age built increasingly on distrust. Today, people receive AI-generated scam calls mimicking their children’s voices asking for urgent money. Deepfake videos can fabricate public figures saying things they never said. AI companions are increasingly replacing real human intimacy for some people struggling with loneliness.

Even dating apps are flooded with fake identities, emotional manipulation, and performative personas carefully optimized for attention. We are entering a time where seeing, hearing, and even emotionally connecting no longer automatically means something is real.

Scams.
Frauds.
Manipulation engineered through algorithms.

Basic human interaction carries suspicion.

Was that review fake?
Is that person real?
Did this image actually happen?
Can this voice be trusted?
Is this message written by a human or AI?

Trust—one of the most fundamental invisible structures holding society together—is quietly eroding.

And once trust collapses, communities collapse after it.

Because civilization does not survive on technology alone.

It survives because people still believe:

• the doctor is trying to help,

• the food is safe,

• the bridge won’t collapse,

• the message is honest,

• the person in front of them means what they say.

Trust is social oxygen.

And lately, humanity feels slightly oxygen-deprived.

Days passed in Paje.

I took kitesurfing lessons, walked endlessly along the beach, watched sunsets melt into the Indian Ocean.

Everywhere, people repeated the same phrases:

Hakuna matata.
Pole pole.

No problem.
Slowly, slowly.

Not as tourism slogans—but as philosophy.

The Maasai I met did not seem obsessed with optimizing life into perfection. They carried ease differently.

Sales were uncertain.
The heat was exhausting.
Most walked kilometers daily carrying goods under the sun.

And yet, there was softness in their eyes.

Thomas disappeared for several days.

No message.

No sign of him anywhere on the beach.

Meanwhile, the debt sat in my mind strangely heavily. I was leaving Zanzibar soon.

I began wondering if I would ever see him again.

Maybe this was simply how things went here.

Then on my final evening, as the sky turned orange and gold, I spotted a familiar silhouette walking toward me.

Blue sunglasses. Red cloth.

Thomas.

“Thomas!” I shouted instinctively.

He grinned.

“You were gone for a while,” I said. “I leave tomorrow.”

“Busy,” he shrugged. “Working in another town.”

I ran back to my room, grabbed the money I owed him—and a chocolate bar.

When I handed him the cash, I joked: “Could we do 20,000 instead?”

“No,” he said immediately. “25,000.”

Exact amount remembered.

Sharp.

We both laughed.

Then, hungrily, he devoured the chocolate bar in minutes.

We took a selfie together like old friends from two completely different worlds.

And then we simply said goodbye.

No grand ending.
No dramatic lesson.

Just: “Stay well.”

Hakuna matata was not denial.

It was not pretending life had no suffering.

It was a way of holding suffering lightly enough so that life could still breathe.

And perhaps trust works similarly.

Trust does not mean believing humans are perfect.
It means refusing to let fear completely close the heart.

The Buddha once said in the Dhammapada:

“Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased.”

I think the same applies to distrust.

A society cannot heal distrust through deeper paranoia alone.

At some point, someone still has to choose sincerity.
Someone still has to risk kindness.
Someone still has to remain human first.

The people I met in Zanzibar were not living flawless lives.

But they knew how to live fully inside imperfection.

Sunsets.
Sea breeze.
Debt.
Laughter.
Business.
Exhaustion.
Chocolate shared between strangers.

Life completed not by perfection, but by openness.

So maybe the real question today is not:

“How do we protect ourselves from humanity?”

But also:

“How do we preserve humanity while protecting ourselves?”

Because if fear becomes our default relationship to one another, then even the safest society becomes emotionally unlivable.

And perhaps peace begins exactly there:

Still being able to trust carefully.
Still being able to smile openly.
Still being able to believe sincerity exists.

Even now.

Hakuna matata.

For today, this is enough.

If you want to watch my vlogs from this journey (impact trips), you can watch them on YouTube here.