Transcontinental Connection

In 2017, on her second trip to Africa, law school student Paeten Denning was sitting at a foldout table with the other Tanzania Women Lawyers Association interns when she suddenly broke out in a sweat. Stumbling outside to the bathroom, she fainted.

At the nearby clinic, healthcare practitioners ran tests and administered fluids before announcing she had a fever of 104. And typhoid.

Noting Denning’s dismay at the prospect of being hospitalized, alone, in a foreign country, a TAWLA volunteer named Neema spoke up: “You can come stay with me, and my mom and I will take care of you. We’ve got you.”

Denning, now a personal injury plaintiff’s attorney who practices with her father, William, in Overland Park, still feels an unbreakable bond with the people of Africa. Her interest surfaced as a child; she was fascinated by the news stories her grandmother read aloud and the tales that visiting African priests told at her Catholic school. “Most of those stories were so service-focused, and even as a little kid, that was something that was very important to me,” she says.

At college orientation, anticipating Peace Corps work, Denning stopped by a Swahili language booth and signed up. While she’d always wanted to follow in her dad’s legal footsteps, at the University of Kansas she declared a major in social welfare with a minor in African studies, yearning to work for a nongovernmental organization.

Her first trip to Tanzania came in 2013, on a Fulbright-Hays scholarship to study language, history and culture, as well as to write about women’s and children’s rights. Barely 19, she was the youngest in the group, and the first two weeks were challenging. “I was culture-shocked,” she says. “That was when I called my mom and told her, ‘I don’t know if I can do this.’”

Despite her college Swahili lessons, the language barrier was steep. At a domestic violence shelter for women facing HIV and AIDS, Denning struggled to remember the word for blood. “I just sat there and froze. It was very motivating to me to make my language a lot better, because I never wanted to have that experience again, where I made someone feel uncomfortable or confused.”

Luckily, her Tanzanian host, who happened to be the cook at the school where she was studying, was willing to coach Denning in Swahili on lunch breaks and in the evenings. Three months later, preparing to return to the States, she says, “I didn’t want to leave. It was honestly the most peace I’d ever found in my life. … I came in with, by far, the worst language skills, and by the time we tested out, I was actually one of the most fluent out of our group.”

Denning made her second visit while earning her J.D. at the University of Kansas School of Law. Working with TAWLA, Tanzania’s largest legal aid organization for women and children, she handled custody matters, land disputes and domestic violence issues; proofread English-language briefs for the high courts; and coordinated events aimed at getting female leaders elected. Denning also helped find new homes for girls who were kicked out of schools for becoming pregnant—which is customary in Tanzania, even if they are raped.

Initially, some clients were wary of the mzungu, or “white dummies,” Denning says. “There were times where people walked in, and they got scared. They would say ‘witch’ in Swahili.” Eventually, she made headway with the women, and the following year, while clerking for a plaintiff’s firm, she returned to Tanzania on a humanities grant to research access to pre- and postnatal care. 

Her time in Africa has made her more resilient, both personally and professionally. Denning still stays in touch with Tanzanian friends, and hopes to go back in 2027 to deliver legal supplies to TAWLA and introduce her 4-year-old twin boys to her “second family.” 

“Being out of my element, and thrown to the wolves, has given me a lot of patience,” she says. “I have been in that situation where I’m struggling to communicate, and I see other people doing that. … It made me connect with people differently than I ever had before.”

But her biggest takeaway from her trips to Tanzania? “How big of an impact one person can make. When they are really passionate about something, when they really care, they really can make a difference.”