A infância vivida e a infância desejada

This essay, descriptive and empirical in nature, aims to analyze the discourse of men from Zanzibar, a semi-autonomous archipelago located east of Tanzania, in East Africa, about their childhood experiences and their life desires for children in the present and future. The study was carried out in June 2024 (06/2024), in the city of Nungwi, through Oral History, including with interlocutors who are members of the Maasai ethnic group,1 originally from the territories that today coexist as Kenya and mainland Tanzania. Structurally, the work is organized into two parts: the first seeks to make a retrospective on the history of Tanzania and Zanzibar; and the second also discusses the concept of childhood concomitantly with the analysis of the interviewees' discourses. It is concluded that the interlocutors, looking at their childhoods, want different ways of life for the children of the present and the future, with education having a fundamental role in fostering social change.