As a friend of the Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, he accepted an invitation to be an education advisor as well as a Swahili interpreter/translator, assisting the local police, courts and other government agencies. He lived in a remote part of Tanzania from 1977 to 1988. His wife Jill went back to New Zealand in 1979 and they later divorced. He then worked as a lecturer at a teachers' college before moving with his second wife, a fellow lecturer Odilia, to work a farm near her home village on the remote slopes of Mount Kilamanjaro (even climbing to the top himself). He made a living by operating a flour mill he built to serve local farmers and also grew bananas, avocados, pineapple, corn, and vegetables on the one hectare plot they owned. Amos said the period in his life as one of finding new challenges which met his personal philosophies