After Marko Mwipopo applied to be a Fulbright Scholar in 2004, he thought his time had passed, as his peers from Tanzania had been notified months in advance of their spots in the prestigious exchange program. So he had already set his plans to be a teacher at a local secondary school, had rented an apartment and was on a bus from Dar es Salaam to his hometown of Mafinga, six hours to the southwest, when he got a phone call from the American Embassy.
“I was going somewhere, but I canceled and told them, ‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’” Mwipopo says.

Seven years later, Mwipopo reflects simply on the moment when he found out he had earned the prestigious fellowship.
“This whole thing changed my life,” Mwipopo says. “That’s what I would call being born again.”
Mwipopo is currently a graduate teaching fellow at the University who teaches Swahili, but a combination of determination and a continued string of good fortune has put him in that position. He helped grow the University’s Swahili program from one student doing a self-study program in 2005 to a three-year-long set of classes taught through the World Languages Academy within the Yamada Language Center.
“It wasn’t like we brought him with the notion that we would be able to employ him for a bunch of years,” says Jeff Magoto, the director of the Yamada Language Center. “He was interested in staying, and we were lucky enough to be able to offer him a GTF to come back to teach in the first year of what was to become the first year of the World Languages Academy.”
Mwipopo’s odyssey to Oregon started before he had ever left Tanzania. Fulbright Scholars get an opportunity to select what region of the country they wish to work in, but Mwipopo had never been to the United States and had no idea where he wanted to go. He stated his preference for the West Coast, entirely on the advice of friends who had seen the area and their descriptions of the climate and the people who live there.
“Finally, I was told I was going to Oregon, but I had no clue where I was going to go,” Mwipopo says. “I just knew that if selected, I would go to the U.S.”
Once he got his assignment, Mwipopo began to contact people at the University, including Magoto, to prepare himself for moving half a world away.
Mwipopo first arrived in Seattle for an Fulbright Scholars orientation session and found that he was one of three Africans in the program.
“You see, everybody in that group from orientation is white from Europe or at least you would see some Asians or from the Middle East,” Mwipopo says. “You look at yourself and you’re the person with the darkest skin in the whole group and everybody’s just like ‘Welcome,’ and you feel like, ‘Wow.’ You see, this culture of Americans being really, really warm and welcoming and you don’t even think of missing home … you start learning a lot of things at that time.”
He then explains the dialogue of the people with whom he traveled from Seattle to Eugene and gets nostalgic.
“Everybody was surprised,” he says. “‘You didn’t tell us, you have friends and family here. You knew people?’ I said I had never been to the U.S. ‘Why are you saying that?’ ‘Look over there,’ and I see her. It was just tears. I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t even feel like I’m missing home.”@@this quote does not make sense@@ @@I have to agree with Jonathan@@
When Mwipopo arrived in Eugene, he was greeted by his host-mother, former Peace Corps volunteer Beryl Brinkman, who had offered to take him in without ever first meeting him.
“At the airport, I see her with a big, big, huge sign, and she worked to translate things into Swahili, my language, a big sign that said ‘Karibo,’ which means ‘Welcome,’ and then with my name there,” Mwipopo says.
The second day he was in Eugene, Mwipopo went to Mass with Brinkman and a friend because he always tries to go to a religious center whenever he comes to a new city. After the celebration was over, he was introducing himself to the priest when he met Magoto by chance.
“I just felt so overwhelmed,” Mwipopo says. “I felt so connected.”
After his year as a Fulbright Scholar, Mwipopo enrolled at the University to get a graduate degree in linguistics to complement his degree in education from the University of Dar es Salaam@@http://www.udsm.ac.tz/@@.
“I really liked the campus and I knew maybe my dream would be to get more education because I thought it might be my opportunity, and I’d never be able to go to school further,” Mwipopo says.
Mwipopo’s enrollment as a graduate student coincided with the University’s decision to move Swahili under the umbrella of the World Languages Academy, and he was chosen to be the program’s initial instructor.
By the time he completed his master’s degree in 2007, the Swahili program had grown to add third-year classes, and the University was seeking a full-time professor with a doctorate degree to run the department. Through more fortuitous happenings, the man originally selected to run the program had visa issues and was unable to come to Eugene to teach. The University was unable to find another person with a doctorate on short notice and instead chose to have Mwipopo continue to lead the program.
“I was visiting back home and didn’t think I would be coming back,” Mwipopo says. “They called me to see if I was interested because the other guy didn’t come, and that’s how I became an instructor here.”
While Mwipopo was a full-time instructor at the University, he began to work, one class at a time, toward a doctoral degree in education — again, because he didn’t know if he would have the opportunity later. After two years as a faculty member, Mwipopo’s work visa came due again while he was home in Tanzania. He had complications getting his visa renewed as a worker, and both he and Magoto were worried Mwipopo would not get to return to Eugene as an employee.
“This past summer was the most tenuous it had ever been because it looked like he wasn’t coming back,” Magoto says. “If he hadn’t been a student as well as an instructor, he wouldn’t have been able to get a visa.”
The University was able to vouch for Mwipopo’s status as a student, and he came back to Eugene to take classes full-time while leading a sole 200-level Swahili class as a GTF each term. University instructor Happiness Bulugu@@http://directory.uoregon.edu/telecom/directory.jsp?p=findpeople%2Ffind_results&m=staff&d=person&b=name&s=Happiness+Bulugu@@ now leads the two 100-level classes and the advanced 300-level class.
“I’m not here to waste their resources and their investment,” Mwipopo says. “They invested in something, and I want to show them. By them helping me to go to school, I can work for them, or if they hire me, I want to see the program growing, and I believe I’m a part of that. Going from one student to what we have now is a big thing.”
Mwipopo has maintained an open view of what he wants to do for the rest of his life, saying he might want to go serve as a politician in his native Tanzania or stay in the United States as a teacher.
“I just knew I was becoming a teacher to immediately go and teach in the school and maybe get married to a nice, beautiful woman in one to two years, but it never happened,” Mwipopo says. “You may never see me going back. I don’t think I said a lie. I just think it’s controlled by other opportunities.”