July 2019 | Pavlis Honors College Blog

Goats Say Goodbye to Babianiha and Sunyani

Published July 31, 2019

After relaxing at Mole, the team hit the ground running to begin the final push for projects in Ghana. After quite a few meetings early on in our week, the team met with Headmistress Janet at the UENR Basic School to discuss our potential involvement in the classrooms. Since the students were taking exams that week, we worked with the school to get 30 minutes of their time on Wednesday and Thursday. The teachers seemed to think this would be a good way to break up the exams for the students and engage them with a fun activity. The team returned to our hostel and brainstormed what activities we could do with the students. The students themselves were quite young- kindergarten through third grade- so we wanted them to learn creative problem solving without getting into the science behind it.

Lucinda with Form 1 students at UENR Basic School

We ultimately decided tinfoil boat would engage the students and could be done without much complex science being taught. This led to an intense tinfoil cutting session in our kitchen to prepare enough squares for roughly 8 full classrooms. The next day, the team headed to the schools with tinfoil, buckets, and weights in hand for the activities. Each member of the team was assigned a classroom to do the activity with, and we got to work. As soon as we finished with our first classrooms, we were each assigned a second classroom to work with. We ended our day after two classrooms each and headed back to the hostel to prepare for two more classrooms the following day. The two classrooms were both kindergarten age so we had to really think about how we wanted to present the activity to them. In the end, we stayed together as a team and worked with the students. The teachers at the school were a huge help both days in helping to explain the activity and distribute materials faster. Both days were a success to us- the children had a good time and learned about problem solving with a hands-on activity.

Tristan testing a KG student’s tin foil boat at UENR Basic School

With a day of rest and planning in between, the team headed back to Babianiha on Saturday to meet with Watuza (the headmaster of the schools there), Ebenezer (part of the family we were staying with and an important member of the community), and Kwame Amoah (an elder for the village) in order to identify the needs of the community for future projects. They insisted that their main focus was on education for the students because they would be the future of the village and Ghana. With that in mind, we talked with them on what could be done to help improve the education and experience of the students there. One place they especially wanted help was the community center. We had already brought them books earlier on the trip, but there were some serious flaws with the center. As we were talking, we realized that while we couldn’t assist with all of the issues they had mentioned in the short time we had left, we could help with one or two. The team worked with them to figure out estimates for two of the key issues, seating and work tables and getting electricity to the building, and the elders pledged to contribute towards the projects with us. Once we finished discussing, the team headed back to Sunyani for the night to not only figure out a plan for the community center needs but to also prepare for a women’s health workshop on Monday.

A meeting to determine future projects in Babianiha
From left to right: Evans Opuni, Lucinda Hall, Kwame Amoah, Becky Daniels, Ebenzer Opuni, and Watuza

The women’s health workshop was set-up with the assistance of Nana who knew Headmistress Theresa of St. James through church. While completing some errands with Nana, we met with the headmistress to talk about how many young women to expect and what we were planning on discussing with them. It was revealed that the workshop could be to as many as 300 young women and any information we could give the girls would be appreciated. Once we returned to the hostel that night, it became apparent that we didn’t have nearly enough supplies for that many young women and would not have enough time to lead a workshop with them on assembling the reusable sanitary napkins. As a team, we decided we would assemble as many napkins as we could by ourselves and distribute them to the women who really needed them after a quick discussion with them about women’s health. In order to complete this task, the team dedicated most of the night following Babianiha and Sunday towards creating them. We had acquired a manual sewing machine but it proved nearly impossible to work with our limited knowledge on them. We only completed a few of them by Monday morning- not nearly enough for the girls- but made a plan to make it work. We would go in and give the workshop and distribute the ones we had done. We would then spend the next few days hand sewing the rest of the napkins for the women and drop them off before we left Sunyani.

Luckily for us, one of the teachers assisting us with the discussion taught sewing felt confident that she could help the girls assemble them if we brought in what we couldn’t sew as kits. We completed the discussion with the young women and helped to answer any questions they had but might have been too uncomfortable to ask in the past. Overall, the workshop was a success to us, and the Headmistress Theresa expressed interest in seeing some of our STEM activities next year too. The next couple of days the team sewed several more napkins and assembled kits with the rest of the materials. It was frustratingly slow at times, but we powered through and had many kits and pads for the young women by the time the team left Wednesday morning.

Becky and Lucinda with young women from St. James JHS and Headmistress Theresa

In between sewing, the team made another trip out to Babianiha on Tuesday. We had worked out that we could help provide the community center with 30 desks and benches so that students could have classes in the building and easy access to the materials there. In return, the elders would contribute the funds necessary to get electricity to the building so that laptops and other resources could be used within the building. As we got to Babianiha, the elders had all gathered at a local funeral and we were given the opportunity to join them for a but before we went and had a meeting with them. A Ghanaian funeral more resembles a party with great music than an American funeral, so it was really interesting to be there.. After a few minutes, the elders invited us to a separate place to have a discussion on the next steps. The carpenter was called and we provided the funding for the desks and benches to be ordered. In return, the elders promised they would ensure that the desks and benches would be completed and kept in good condition so that students for many years could benefit from the community center. The team returned back to Sunyani for the last night there with the blessings of the community.

Becky, Lucinda, and Tristan with the elders of Babianiha

Being our last few days in Sunyani, the team worked hard to wrap up all other projects and say goodbye to our contacts. On Monday night, Nana and Emmanuel Opuni hosted us for dinner as a send off to our next adventures. During the day, we met with Jay from UENR several times to tie up our project with him. Jay is the president of their equivalent of student council and is extremely interested in working with us to make STEM education in Ghana more interactive and sustainable. With him, we set up the structure for an organization that would work with local schools to create interactive STEM activities once a month for the students. The team and Jay wrote an outline for a constitution for the group and identified the needs of the organization starting out. We also agreed to share our resources and contacts with him to help get the organization into the local schools we had already worked with. We were sad to say goodbye to Jay, but we look forward to continuing to work with Jay and the organization once we return back to the United States. A major goal for the team this year was to find a way to make our projects sustainable and the organization presents a unique opportunity for us to have a lasting impact long after we have gone.

With our project work wrapped up, we had our sights set on a part of Ghana previously unexplored by Pavlis students: the Volta region!

Stay tuned to see what we got up to there!

–Lucinda, Tristan, and Becky

Peru Week 3: English Class

Published July 30, 2019

By Jessie Neece

During our third week in Peru, we got the chance to teach an English class to the rambunctious kids in the Huntapausqa organization. Before going in we did a little bit of prep work and made flashcards of for all the children. Going into it we weren’t sure what level of English skills the kids had so we ranged from the most basic skills(counting numbers) to a little bit harder skills(formal questions). Most of the children new numbers up to ten and some basic greetings like HELLO and BYE, but besides that, they weren’t too confident. We started off our lessons by writing the translations from Spanish to English on the board and then going through each phrase. Next, we went through the room and had each individual kid pronounce each word. Some children were more eager to learn English than others and were even taking notes. Something we could work on in the future is adding more actions or games. We didn’t really account for the fact that some kids couldn’t read yet. It was a great experience and has a lot of potential for the future.

We also helped Huntapasqa prepare their water tank for a Pollada (They sold cooked chicken for donations). Since they live on a hill, if you want some kind of running water, you put a water tank at the top of the hill and run a hose down. Then some workers come around and you pay them to fill up your tank with clean water. They had the water tank in place, but it hadn’t been covered, so it was coated in dirt on the inside and filled with rainwater. Nic ended up hopping inside the tank to make sure it was sparkling clean!

At the end of the week, we took a little trip to explore the north of Peru to a place called Huaraz! It was beautiful. The altitude was about 10,000 feet and we went on a hike up to 18,000 feet. We were definitely not prepared, but it was worth it.

Wiki Nne – More Fun at Orkolili

Published July 29, 2019

By Jessie Neece

Hujambo from Tanzania! This week, the Tanzania Tree Huggers continued our work at Orkolili secondary school! On Thursday, we were planning on attending day two at the Nelson Mandela Institute but unfortunately, the school decided not to return so instead, we spent the day observing classes such as form I English and English literature (approximately eighth grade), form IV mathematics, and form IV biology. These observations at least gave us a basic understanding of how classes at Orkolili function and what kinds of methods are being used there.

Friday was a shorter day for us since Friday afternoons are dedicated to religious studies in Swahili which they sent us home before but it was also our first day teaching there. We were popped into form I English again for the 80 minute block where we had the students create and present dialogues focusing on going to the market, read a part of the book that they had been reading the previous day (Hawa the Bus Driver), and played two rounds of “Simon Says” to practice both English and commands, something they had also been discussing the previous day.

On Saturday, we went back to Arusha one final time to explore a bit more and meet up with Brenda, a contact who had previously gotten her PhD at Michigan Tech before moving to Tanzania to work. We met up with her at a coffee shop and discussed both her experiences and ours. Afterwards, we did a bit more shopping for souvenirs before heading back to Boma where we spent the rest of the weekend relaxing.

For the remainder of the week, we pretty much repeated the same routine of going to school, teaching a class English, and then observing some classes. It was great getting to chat with the students after class about both our lives in the U.S. and their lives here in Tanzania. Learning what we can from the students is one of our favorite parts of being in the schools.

Week four turned out pretty good! On to the final week in Tanzania!

Peru Week 2: Design Thinking

Published July 22, 2019

By Jessie Neece

As many of you probably don’t know, the Peru football team (*cough cough* soccer) hasn’t been to the American Cup Finals in 44 years, but they made it this year, and Lima was insane. We have never seen so many people watching a soccer game in our lives. Even during the semifinals, we were walking down the streets and there was nobody out that wasn’t watching the game. People were crowded around every TV there was. If you had a TV, it was turned on to the game. Every store had people circled around it, watching intently. We went to a cafe 15 minutes before the game was over, and we watched the shootout between Peru and Chile! It was super intense. When Peru made it to the final, Miraflores (a district in Lima, and where Nic and I live) closed a street and set up a screen so everyone could watch the game together. Peru didn’t win, but they did score a point against Brazil, and I’m pretty sure the whole city shook.

This week, Nic and I held two design thinking workshops. One for the “Promotores” (Nataly, Rocio, and Eveli), so they could take part in it, and one for the mothers in their community in Pamplona Alta (30 women showed up!). It started off shaky because even though I can speak a decent amount of Spanish, It was very hard for me to answer questions off of the “script”. I could give them a very vague answer, but sometimes I didn’t even know what their question was. No one there knew English, so I couldn’t even use my Spanglish skills. After a while, we got into a better swing of things, but they struggled to come up with solutions, and with my limited Spanish vocabulary, I struggled to help them. In the future, when we have Design Thinking workshops, I think I’ll get a translator because I could give an okay description on how to accomplish the task, but I think they missed the huge point of the workshop. I couldn’t get them to realize they can start a program to fix some of these issues they have. For example, one of the problems they have is that a lot of people just throw their dirty water in the street because they don’t have plumbing, and since they live in the hills where nothing grows, it makes everything really gross and mucky and hard for “cars” to go up. One of their solutions was to tell people “don’t throw your water in the street”, but when they do that they aren’t really fixing a problem. Some other problems they talked about was the trash being thrown in the street, the stray dogs, fathers not being there for their kids, not having plumbing or electricity, not being able to get a house in your name, and not having many plants. In the end, we don’t think they understood that they could be the ones to be the change, and that was the whole part of the workshop. We have another design thinking workshop in the future, so we plan on updating the process and using Carlos as a translator.

Wiki Tatu – Finishing up at Nkwamakuu and Nelson Mandela Week

Published July 19, 2019

By Jessie Neece

Hujambo from Tanzania! This week, the Tanzania Tree Huggers finished up our time at Nkwamakuu primary school and attended a STEM conference. On Thursday and Friday, we continued to work in classrooms on English and math activities that seemed to be real hits along with observing classes in order to continue to learn about the methods of teaching that are currently in use at Nkwamakuu.

On Saturday, we hit the town and took a bus to Arusha to do some shopping and have lunch. We met up with Charles from Asante Africa and he showed us their offices before we headed to a Maasai market. After we picked up a few things, we wandered around downtown before stopping for lunch at a local restaurant. It was cool getting to experience such a big city after having been living in tiny Boma Ng’ombe for so long at this point.

We spent Sunday resting up while Sam was recovering from being sick before heading into school on Monday and Tuesday to finish up teaching, observing, and handing over information that Andrew from the 2018 Tanzamaniacs team had worked on during the year to go with his tippy-tap hand washing stations. The posters he made were in both Swahili and English with instructions on how best to wash your hands and the reasons to do so.

It was so hard to say good-bye to everyone at Nkwamakuu that last day. We were given about 3 rounds of hugs and a million rounds of patty cake before we took off for the final time. It was an incredible experience getting to be at their school and we appreciated the hospitality we were given each and every day.

Wednesday was a special day for us because we were able to go with Orkolili secondary school to the Nelson Mandela Institute near Arusha for their annual STEM conference and science fair during Nelson Mandela week. The event was focused on encouraging girls to go into STEM fields as a career and to make it seem more approachable to them. We listened to a variety of speakers such as the ambassador to Tanzania from South Africa, current graduate students doing research and pursuing their degrees as the Nelson Mandela Institute, and faculty there sharing everything from their stories to tips and tricks for doing well in STEM classes. While the girls were all working on the final activity, we got the chance to tour some of their labs with a current masters student. We were able to meet others doing research into reusing charcoal, trying to produce disease resistant bananas, removing fluoride from water, using artificial intelligence to tell whether tomato plants were suffering from diseases, and more.

Week three was another great one! We can’t wait to see what will be in store for us week four!

Goats, Elephants, and Monkeys, Oh My!

Published July 16, 2019

By Jessie Neece

You’re not Ghana believe all that the Ghana Goats did during our second full week! It was jam-packed with new people, new experiences, and new places. We really kicked off the week by heading to Babianiha via trotro and taxi to stay at the house of a long time contact in country. Once there, we were greeted with a delicious traditional Ghanaian meal and were shown to the house we would be occupying. It was nice to get to know Ebenezer, a member of the Opuni family, and he told us the origins of Babianiha, which actually means “Everywhere is here,” in the local language. He says it means that everybody should feel at home in Babianiha because their home is here. After getting settled in, we reconvened with the family and talked about how we were going to complete the projects we had planned on. That night was spent lesson planning and brainstorming how to engage with the students with a limited time frame.

The next morning, we were introduced to the headmaster of the local schools, Watuza, and he went over the school’s needs and wants from us and helped direct us in our activity planning. From there, we were introduced to the teachers at the Junior High, the main students we would be interacting with. We immediately dove into activities and did a lesson bridges with the students. After teaching them four basic structures, we gave the students some basic building materials and tasked them with building their own bridges in small groups. Once the students had made a final product, we used weights to test the strength of them. Throughout the activity, the laughs of students and staff alike could be heard around the room. At the end, we presented a large suitcase full of donated educational books to the teachers to be used in the community center. We used the rest of the day to continue to explore project opportunities for future teams and plan for our women’s health workshop during the next morning.

Presenting the books we brought for the Babianiha Community Center to staff at the Babianiha JHS

Students watching to see if their bridge will hold the weight that Tristan is adding

When morning came, we got up extra early to meet with the elders of the village. After we had a conversation with them, they were glad to hear of our success and offered any assistance we may need to complete any of our projects. From there, we ate a quick breakfast and headed over to the school to work with the young women there. During this, Tristan broke off to continue talking with the headmaster and explore what projects they might need help with now or in the future. During the workshop, we worked with the women to help them sew and create reusable menstrual pads. We also talked with them on the importance of practicing good hygiene and other suitable topics for a group of young women.

Young women sewing together reusable sani-pads in Babianiha

One of our favorite parts about visiting Babianiha was visiting the local monkey sanctuary. It was beautiful to see the enormous groves of bamboo, and slightly unsettling to hear rustling from above us until eventually monkeys seemed to materialize from thin air. The fact that we brought bananas to bribe them, excuse us, feed them, helped. They would snatch the bananas and corn right out of our hands, and some of them definitely seemed to be posing for their pictures. It is local belief that these monkeys contain the spirits of the ancestors, so they are treated very well, and it is considered disgraceful to harm them.

Group picture at the monkey sanctuary courtesy of Evans

During the course of the few days we were in Babianiha, we befriended a good portion of the younger school children which resulted in a lot of them following us around town hoping to hold our hands or eerie chanting coming from the occasional hut where the children were trying to welcome us. (Lucinda was their favorite) After our projects finished up, we got ready to head back to Sunyani with Evans, a university student, our local guide, and a part of the family we were staying with.

Babianiha children making funny faces at Lucinda

On Saturday morning, we woke up bright and early to pack into a car for our first mini-vacation of our experience here. We were taking a trip up to Mole National Park for some much needed R&R and a safari. The trip started off rocky- flat tires, potential speeding tickets, and lost reservations- but everything turned out great and we had the privilege of experiencing the natural beauty of the Savannah and Ghana.

Getting ready to go on our safari ft. Evans!

We were probably too close to the elephants, but our guide didn’t seem to be concerned

A gorgeous view of the reservoir from the Mole Motel

I guess you could say we succumb to peer pressure

Another early morning for a safari was just the adventure the team needed to start the day and we were blessed with tons of elephants to see. A few baboons and deer also made an appearance and made the experience all the more memorable. We checked out of our lodge and headed back to Sunyani that night, celebrating our successful vacation and planning our next steps with a renewed passion after our much needed break. Monday morning saw the departure of our new friend Evans and the team settled in for another bout of meetings and planning to finalize the plans for our last few weeks in Ghana.

It is crazy to think that as we are writing this we are over halfway done with our journey here in Ghana. Stay tuned for updates on our next round of adventures back in Sunyani.

–Becky, Lucinda, and Tristan

Wiki Mbili – The Tanzania Tree Huggers Get to Boma

Published July 12, 2019

By Jessie Neece

Hujambo from Tanzania! This week, the Tanzania Tree Huggers moved to Boma Ng’ombe where we will be staying for the remainder of the trip. On Friday, we said our good-byes at Old Moshi Hostel and Tesha picked us up. We would be staying at John’s house, a friendly man with a passion for gardening, for the next 3.5 weeks. It was exciting getting to start this leg of the trip because we knew that we were going to have a great time working at both Nkwamakuu primary school and Orkolili secondary school.

On saturday, we got to go on one of the most exciting parts of the trip – a safari! We headed to Snowview Hotel to meet the tour guide before dawn before heading to Arusha (about an hour away) to pick up Mary who had just come in from Kenya the night before. Our guide picked up our lunchboxes and we were off to Tarangire National Park. It was about 2 hours further but along the way, we got to see Maasai herding their cows and a lot of the more rural parts of Tanzania. On the safari, we saw wildebeests, ostriches, antelope, elephants, giraffes, cheetah, a whole bunch of zebras, and nine lions! A monkey even managed to steal Madi’s sandwich!

After such an eventful day, we mostly used Sunday to rest up before starting in the schools that week. Monday was dedicated to going to the district office for the schools and talking to the folks over at Nkwamakuu and Orkolili about what their expectations and goals were for our time with them. Nkwamakuu encouraged us to pursue a project of our choice and to teach everyday while Orkolili invited us to attend a science fair with them in Moshi, teach, and help teach a class on PowerPoint to teachers the following day.

Tuesday was our first real day in the school and it was a whirlwind. We started the day by giving lessons in mathematics and science to the standard seven class at Nkwamakuu before jumping in a bajaji and heading to Orkolili. We spent 3.5 hours working with the teachers on their PowerPoint skills and then they created a slideshow to present to the group about the topic they normally teach. There was a lot of enthusiasm from some of the teachers who did not have much prior experience with PowerPoint but saw how it could be beneficial to their arsenal of teaching methods.

Wednesday was the first day that we got to spend entirely at Nkwamakuu. We planned to go back to the standard seven class and work on english and mathematics. The activity that we had planned to make teaching english more engaging was to play a form of charades where the students got to act out things written on the board like animals, activities, and responsibilities. One of our favorites was the group of students acting out elephant turned their school sweaters into trunks. After our lessons, we enjoyed breakfast before going and observing standard four, the class we were planning on teaching next. We wanted to get a feel for what they were learning and what methods the teachers used so we sat in on mathematics and swahili. Before heading out, we had some lunch and played a million rounds of patty cake with the kids!

Week two was an exciting one! We can’t wait to see what will be in store for us week three!

Peru Week 1: Making a Plan

Published July 10, 2019

By Jessie Neece

Throughout our first week in Peru, we met a lot of people and saw a lot of sights (and tried Picarones for the first time! A fried sweet potato delicacy). In the first few days, we got familiar with the area and met with two possible project sites: Huntapasqa and Casa de Panchita.

CASA DE PANCHITA

Casa de Panchita is an organization with a well-established structure in the district of Lince in the city of Lima. This organization does a lot of things that involve teaching children. This includes English classes and a variety of different workshops that go over important topics that aren’t necessarily taught in their schools. Things like proper diet, cleaning, and sexual education. This week we helped them transition into a new office space and organize donations into gift bags for kids. We hope to have a design thinking workshop put together for them, but first, we will help them prepare and celebrate their 3oth anniversary on Sunday, July 15th!

HUNTAPASQA

Huntapasqa is an NGO in the lower-income area of Pamplona (Pamplona Alta). This organization has built a safe area for the local children to come to after school to get help on their homework. They also try to incorporate educational activities that are fun for the kids. A lot of the children in the area don’t have ideal home lives and live with single mothers. Huntapasqa brings the children together and creates a community where they can always reach out to for help. So far, we have had several meetings with the leaders of Huntapasqa to see what their organization is about and how we can benefit them the most. The first concern they already knew they needed help with is designing a website where people can reach out to them to sign up their kids in the program, options for volunteering, and a way to accept donations online. Over this next week, we will be hosting a design thinking workshop with the Huntapasqa leaders and other adults in the community to dig deeper and learn the best ways we can help them and make this a site for Pavlis projects for years to come. In the following pictures, you can see (from left to right) Nic and I were in Eveli’s house with our site coordinator, Carlos Amador, and the three women that started Huntapasqa, Nataly, Rocio, and Eveli. The next two pictures show the outside of their site in Pamplona Alta (in San Juan of Miraflores) and the last picture is of all the kids that participate in the afterschool session.

Goats on the Go!

Published July 3, 2019

By Jessie Neece

The Ghana Goats made the final leg of our journey into Sunyani on Saturday. We will be staying on the campus of the University of Energy and Natural Resources for the rest of our time in Ghana, with small excursions into other areas of the country. As soon as we moved into the dorms, we hit the ground running with meetings with contacts and visiting key areas like the market. At first, we were all a little overwhelmed by the new area, but we managed to survive on our own in the market to get supplies for dinner- even if it was just plain rice with fried vegetables on top.

The next morning, we got up early and made the trip to Babianeha with Dr. Opuni, a key contact for the program here in Ghana, who drove us and even introduced us to some great bread on the way. Once in Babianeha, we met with the Opuni family and exchanged contact information. For a quick excursion, we hiked out to the egg farm and met with some more of the family. After that, we walked over to where the schools and community center are, the two main locations where we will be working. With Dr. Opuni as our guide, we ventured into the border town separating Ghana and Ivory Coast to meet some more people who will help us be successful during our time there. After a quick lunch back at the Opuni house, the team traveled back to Sunyani for some more exploration of useful locations.

Becky, Lucinda, and Tristan in Babianeha.

Standing at the border of Ghana and the Ivory Coast with Emmanuel and Kwajo Opuni.

The next morning, the team spent our last day with Andrew, our advisor, by meeting Nana’s mother who runs a pharmacy, meeting the headmaster of the Ridge Experimental Schools, and locating the trotro station that will eventually allow us to travel back to Babianeha at a later date. While we had prepared some ideas for activities for the schools, we didn’t want to do something with the students if it was ultimately irrelevant to their studies, so we asked the headmaster what they would like us to teach while we are there. There was some exchange on what we could feasibly teach them without going outside of our abilities and it was decided we would teach basic electronics to two classes on Wednesday (today) and math to one class on Thursday (tomorrow). Armed with only some photos of a textbook, a science kit, and a general idea of a syllabus, the team headed out.

The trotro station that will take us from Sunyani to Dormaa on our way to Babianeha.

Yesterday, the team spent the entire day researching activities for basic circuits and using the kits to build engaging projects for the students. After several hours of Google, trial and error, and a nap break, the team had a lesson plan for both levels we would be teaching. We had an early night last night to allow us enough sleep to get to the schools by 7:30AM to meet the teachers again and be introduced to the classes.

Becky and Tristan designing circuits to be used with Ridge Experimental School students

The first class we taught had a little bit of a rough start, but, with some good communication, we settled into a rhythm. Soon, the students were building little circuits of their own and engaging with us on the activity. The second form was a little bit older and had a bit more knowledge about the circuits we were building, though they had not worked with the science kits from the school before. Our activity got off to a rough start, but we made our way around the room to help the students and everyone, including us, seemed to have learned a bit from it. Our final activity revolved around the difference between parallel and series connections in circuits- figuring out how to get a buzzer and an LED to work at the same time in the small circuit. It took the students a second to figure out how to connect elements in parallel, but soon the room was filled with the high pitched buzz from the speakers signaling success. Tonight, we will finish developing our lesson plan for the math lesson tomorrow and then we will head to the school in the morning.

Catch you next time!

–Lucinda, Becky, and Tristan

Wiki Moja – The Tanzania Tree Huggers Get to Moshi

Published July 3, 2019

By Jessie Neece

Hujambo from Tanzania! This week, the Tanzania Tree Huggers got to Tanzania and spent the week in Moshi. After getting off of our plane at about 9:30 PM Wednesday night, Ewald Tesha from Asante Africa picked us up and brought us to stay at Snowview Hotel in Boma N’gombe for one night before we continued onward to Moshi. We got up the next morning and after having a delicious first meal in Tanzania, we headed to tour the two schools we would be working with later on in the trip – Orkolili and Nkwamakuu. First up, we stopped at Orkolili where Mama M’cha gave us a tour of their facilities. They are a secondary school that offers vocational programs such as welding and masonry to help prepare their students for the workforce. We then headed over to Nkwamakuu where we had chai (morning tea and snacks such as fresh fruit) with the headmaster before getting a tour of their school. Both schools were not in session so we did not get a chance to meet more than just a few students at each school.

After finishing up at the school, we drove over to Moshi to get situated at the hostel we would be staying at for the next week, Old Moshi Hostel. We got to meet Eva, our wonderful host who would be helping us organize projects, excursions, and showing us the city. She is the best! After settling in to our room a bit, we went to visit Msamaria Children’s Home. Having not heard anything from Amani’s Children’s Home (one of the sites past teams had worked with), we were exploring new options for future teams. Msamaria Children’s Home was home to about 80 children who come from the streets, are orphans, or are from destructive homes who haven’t been able to be re-united with their extended families. The kids were mostly around 7-12 years old and were excited to dance with us or use Madi’s hand sanitizer. We identified a possible future project for teams to do as preparing some lessons on things such as sanitation to teach the students, a need that was expressed by the man who runs Msamaria.

The next day, Eva organized for us to head over to the Kiviwama Conservation Center to work on their tree planting project. It was a beautiful slice of the rainforest just seconds from the city center of Moshi that had a lovely river cutting through it. This project involved us being given a huge pile of native seeds and planting them in soil to start growing. Another future project for teams would be to take part in their weekly tree transport and planting at schools around Moshi as an attempt to create natural shade using local plants. It was a really cool project that we wished that we could work on more, but we lacked the necessary funds and time. After planting all of our seeds and getting an overview of the different trees and plants that they raise there, we headed back to Msamaria’s to take part in a birthday party being thrown there for one of our fellow hostel-mates. We all danced with the kids to fun renditions of “Happy Birthday” that we had never heard before, had a lunch of chicken and potatoes, and a celebratory chocolate cake. It was so fun seeing all of the kids having a such a great time!

We were off the next two days since it was the weekend and we got to enjoy a few excursions! All three of us went with the hostel to the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro and hiked the 8 km up to Mandara Hut and then headed back. It was incredible getting to experience such a iconic part of Tanzania. The next day, Emily joined the hostel in a trip to hot springs where she got to see lots of monkeys and fish that nibble on your toes.

On Monday, we met up with our professor Mary Raber to discuss our time here so far and our upcoming plans for the next few weeks. After hanging out for a bit, we went to lunch with Tesha and Eva at a local restaurant where we all tried some different Tanzanian dishes such as chips mayai (omelette with french fries) and maandazi (fried donuts).

We dropped Mary at her hotel and then headed over to check out our final site here in Moshi, the Children of Destiny Foundation children’s home. It was conveniently located just two streets away from Old Moshi Hostel and it consisted of an orphanage that took care of about 20 kids that went to Kenya for boarding school much of the year and also a daycare for local children. The orphanage had been running for about 12 years with the same group of kids growing up there as a family. The children attended boarding school in Kenya through sponsorships by people around the world because they were able to get better educations that would prepare them to go to college or enter the workforce for about half the price ($720 USD) of what it would cost to get the same type of education in Tanzania. The first of the kids to go off to college was Gideon who we had gotten to know at our hostel. The day we had arrived had been a tumultuous one, there had been a complaint about their sewage leaking so they had received fines and due to a lack of communication from some of their sponsors, the kids had missed the first week of school because they lacked the funds to attend. Spirits were overall down but Margaret, the woman who had lead the operation since the beginning, was optimistic that things would turn around as she explained some of their plans to work towards being less reliant on donations by opening a store and selling crops such as coriander, lettuce, and kale from their garden. The daycare had been created in order to help generate more money to fund the orphanage and it currently has about 15-20 kids in it, many being away during our visit because school was still out for the season so some of the parents that are teachers at the nearby school were around.

We discussed the ways in which we could work with them and it was established that we could be the most helpful by helping update their website so that it had current information in order to make it easier for potential sponsors to get involved. It was agreed between us and Margaret that the site was the most beneficial help we could give during our short time with them. In our extra time, we would help out around the preschool doing things like teaching lessons or helping with feeding them.

When we went back to Margaret’s the next day, we heard the exciting news. The students were going back to school! The Spaniards that had been staying at our hostel had given enough money to get them back into school in Kenya and all of the kids looked overjoyed. With most of the focus being needed on getting the kids ready to head out, we helped out in the daycare until lunch. For lunch, we tried out IndoItaliano, a great restaurant in downtown Moshi that lots of tourists visit for their great Indian and Italian food. Emily and Madi tried tawa chicken and butter naan while Sam and Eva had margherita pizza. We then headed to check out some of the stores and pick up some souvenirs.

The other project that we have been working on was updating Old Moshi Hostel’s website. When Madi mentioned that she was going to be working on Margaret’s site, Eva asked if we could help her on her website too as it was out of date and in need of new pictures. Wednesday morning while Sam and Emily headed back to Margaret’s, Madi worked with Eva to figure out what should be changed on the website. Overall, it gave off a better impression of what the values and goals of the hostel were and the different projects that could be done by visitors. In the future, teams could check back up with Eva and see if there is anything else she needs changed on the website.

Overall, it was a great start to our time in Tanzania! We are looking forward to everything that wiki mbili brings!

Month: July 2019