Author: Jessie Neece

Meet the Tanzania 2019 Team

Samantha Dertinger – scdertin@mtu.edu

Samantha is a third year Biomedical Engineering Student at Michigan Technological University. She is from Harrison Township Michigan, which is approximately 30 minutes north of Detroit, with her parents and 6 younger siblings. She participates in the Pavlis Honors College, Mind Trekkers, and the Michigan Tech Open Sustainability Technology Research group. In her free time, Samantha enjoys playing piano, video games, and spending time with her friends.

Emily Rutledge – ecrutled@mtu.edu

Emily is a third year Environmental Engineering major at Michigan Technological University. Emily grew up in Holland, Michigan with her mom, dad, and two dogs. At Michigan Tech Emily is involved with the Ski and Snowboard club as a member of the executive board, is in the Pavlis Honors College, is a member of the Green Campus Enterprise, and volunteers with the YWLP mentoring program. Emily enjoys volunteering and is passionate about sustainability. In her free time Emily enjoys downhill skiing, running, hiking, camping, backpacking and spending time with friends and family.

Madi Vachon – mtparis@mtu.edu

Madi is a fourth year English major at Michigan Technological University.  She is from Brighton, MI and grew up with her five siblings, her dog (Wookie), and hedgehog (Humphrey).  She is involved in Pavlis Honors College as a peer mentor and ambassador. In her free time, she works as a food blogger and an entrepreneur at mildlymeandering.com and snacksandsips.com, spending most weekends developing recipes.  Additionally, she loves to travel around the globe and try different foods.

About the Trip

Departure Date:

Three weeks from today (6/4/2019), Team Tanzania 2019 departs for Mount Kilimanjaro.

Projects:

Each member leads their own projects including updating a handwashing station at Nkwamakuu Primary School, STEM activities at the primary school and Orkalili High School, and English education activities at the same schools. Proper sanitation is necessary in all schools in order for the schools to make long lasting impacts on the children it serves. As sanitation continues to improve in schools, it allows to children to be more present in school, missing less from preventable illnesses and other health reasons that may otherwise force them to stay home. This with sustainable growth in the STEM field of education will help the students prepare themselves for upcoming exams and higher levels of education. In turn, with high levels of education in the community, the standards of living will improve and the students will be able to give back to their own communities, using their education.  English education will help the students prepare for the English-based high schools that many will attend and to help them prepare to use English in the work force through hands-on, interactive activities that will help them learn the language.

About the Global Leadership Pathway:

The Global Leadership Pathway in the Pavlis Honor College, at Michigan Tech, inspires and prepares students to become leaders who challenge themselves, work effectively on diverse teams, and achieve their goals through life-changing courses, projects, mentorships, and international experiences. The highlight of the Global Leadership Pathway is a 5-week international experience from June 25th through July 31st, and this year we will be heading to Tanzania. While there we must use the skills we have developed to successfully complete meaningful projects that will have a positive effect on the Tanzania community. For our trip, we have three projects, which are outlined below.   We will be working on these at an elementary and high school in Boma N’Gombe and with Amani’s Children’s Home in Moshi.

It’s hard to believe how fast our time in Tanzania has gone! In some ways it feels like we just got here (our bartering skills have at least improved a little since our arrival, especially for Ian, who could only get better after that first day in Arusha), yet we are also all looking forward to what comes next (home for some, Europe for others). Our last week has definitely been bitter sweet. We hope you enjoy our last blog post and we thank you for following along on our journey!
We spent the majority of our last week working at Amani’s Children’s Home. On Monday, we all went to Amani’s in the morning. When we arrived, there was a large staff meeting going, which meant we got to spend the morning getting to know the children at the home more. The kids at the home are all so extremely sweet that would never guess some of the challenges they have encountered in their lives. We met many of the kids in the yard, where they were practicing their acrobatics skills. Although all of us tried our acrobatic skills, some had more success than others (aka Andrew, with his gymnastics background). While Andrew continued to show the kids new moves, Lauren and Ian joined in on another soccer game (and got out-played and out-ran), and Jennifer had fun talking with some of the girls.
After the staff meeting was over, we got to work on our project. As explained in our last post, the project we were working on was to create a data metrics display board, with the capability of displaying real time statistics of the organization (number of children rescued in a month or year, number of children reunified with their family, etc.). On Friday last week, we had come up with two potential methods of accomplishing this task. The first was to use Microsoft exclusively, however the problem with this was that Amani is currently transferring their database from Microsoft Excel to another software. Our intent with this plan was to bring the project back to Michigan Tech to get some help from some computer science students, but this would have taken more time and would have possibly led to more work required for the Amani staff. The second option was to use a software that has the compatibility to work with both excel and the database software they are working with. On Monday, we proposed both of these options to the Executive Director of Amani’s, Meindert Schapp. We also showed him a prototype PowerPoint in order to make sure that we were on the right track. After showing him the options, he decided that it would be best to use the more advanced software. Now that we knew how they wanted us to proceed, we were able to get to work on actually implementing the project. As Lauren and Ian got to work on that in the afternoon, Andrew and Jennifer went to the technical college (yes, we still had to be at two places at once again). Last week, we agreed with the principal that we would be assisting in a computer class. However, when we got to the college, we were informed that the computer teacher was not at the college that day, so the computer class was cancelled. Luckily, we were prepared for this outcome (after being in the schools in Boma for three weeks, we had picked up on a few things). We asked the principal which other class we could assist with, and he pointed us to the math class. However, when we got to that class, it turned out that the math teacher wasn’t there either (unfortunately, we were not as prepared for this second setback). We ended up just spending 15 minutes just asking the students questions on what math topics they knew so that we could better prepare for the physics lecture on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, we all headed to Amani’s and continued to work on the PowerPoint. We spent the morning getting more familiar with the software we would be using and working on a project proposal to keep Amani’s informed on the work we were doing. At this point, the main challenge was that we hadn’t yet received the statistics or data we needed to display on the PowerPoint (Amani’s was working on compiling this information for us). This meant that we had some extra downtime in the afternoon, so we got to spend some more time playing with the kids. Andrew continued to make new friends by impressing all the kids (and everyone else) with his backflip skills. He was also able to assist in the kids’ acrobatics class with a coach that comes in weekly. Lauren and Ian spent some time losing to the kids in arm and thumb wrestling (while also being laughed at for having small muscles). Ian also learned how to play tag (and was again outran). While everyone else was playing with the kids, Jennifer had the opportunity to talk with one of the counselors about cultural phycological differences between the US and Tanzania.

Wednesday was a busy for everyone. In the morning, Andrew and Lauren headed off to the technical college for the last time to lecture in an Engineering Science class. That day they taught physics, specifically the topic of work and energy. Physics proved to be a much easier subject to teach than technical drawing (if you ever find yourself teaching a college level class in Tanzania, stick to subjects that are math based). The kids even asked for homework at the end of class (we could learn something from their enthusiasm about receiving homework). While Andrew and Lauren were teaching, Jennifer and Ian went to Amani’s and continued to work on the project. Andrew and Lauren then joined them at Amani’s in the afternoon. That afternoon, Ian and Lauren went with an Amani IT employee to local shops to look at monitors for the project. They looked at two different types of monitors, one with a computer integrated into the monitor and one that was just basically a TV screen. They decided that the monitor with the computer would be the most cost-effective option while also best serving the needs of the project. Once back at Amani’s, they shared what they had found and made a plan to buy the monitor in the upcoming days.
On Thursday and Friday, we continued working on the PowerPoint while also testing our graphic design skills. Thursday morning, we received some of the statistics and we were able to start finalizing some of the slides. We quickly learned that designing PowerPoint slides that are visually appealing is a lot easier said than done (keep in mind 3 of the 4 of us are engineering students so we really have no idea what shapes and colors look good together). On Friday after tea, Ian and Lauren headed back to the shop to buy the monitor. This proved to be a much bigger challenge than we had anticipated (we had never missed set prices so much in our lives, except for maybe when Ian ended up with his elephant shirt. See blog 1). The story of the price of the monitor is one for another day, but it was not our favorite Tanzanian experience to say the least. We did get the monitor though and brought it back to Amani’s to get to work on setting it up. Unfortunately, the IT employee only works half days on Friday so we weren’t able to get the PowerPoint software on the monitor but we are excited to see pictures of the working monitor when it is all up and running. After finalizing the initial version of the PowerPoint, we had a short goodbye ceremony with the kids and the staff of Amani.

During our final weekend in Tanzania, we learned how to make Tanzanian Guacamole (apparently Mexico isn’t the only country with amazing Guac) and Chipati (a Tanzanian bread), which proved to be much more challenging than we anticipated, as it took us almost two hours to make. Although after tasting our food, we all agreed that it was definitely worth this amount of effort, as well as some minor skin burns. We also visited Msamaria children’s center, where we gave at least twenty piggy back rides—each. After this visit, we then made it to the airport (surprisingly without losing any luggage) and said our final goodbyes to this amazing country.

Final Blooper Reel (and other humorous and slightly painful events)
1. It was fitting that our very last interaction with the kids at Amani was them pointing at our hand sanitizer bottles attached to our backpacks and asking, “What’s this?” (We got asked this question by anyone, of any age, and at anytime during this trip)
2. Ian died again, although this time it was Lauren’s fault (since she introduced all of us to a flu, which Ian couldn’t shake for the last two weeks of the trip)
3. When some of the children would try to talk to us in English, they would ask us, “My name is?”. It was very cute. Although to be fair, we probably made that exact same mistake when we tried to talk to them in Swahili.
4. We (intentionally) forgot to mention in the second blog that Lauren, Andrew, and their translator, Sadick, all technically hitch-hiked back to downtown Boma from Nkwamakuu Primary School during one of the days when busses weren’t running. (We chose to wait to disclose this blooper to not scare our parents. Sorry Mom and Dad.)
5. Apparently contact lenses are not only uncommon, but completely unheard of here. We learned this the hard way when Andrew started touching his eyeball to take out his contacts one day, which immediately caused mass confusion and concern from everyone at Nkwamakuu.
6. People in Tanzania still haven’t gotten painstakingly sick of those late 90’s boybands by now like the U.S. has, which is something we learned after listening to “Queen of my Heart” by Westlife for four entire hours on repeat while waiting at our favorite restaurant (and source of free wifi) in Boma.
7. The children LOVE touching the hair of wazungu (white foreigners), and will even rub their faces against our arms to feel our arm hair.

Finally, we would like to thank you all for taking the time to attempt to comprehend our incoherent blog posts each week. Our trip has been overall amazing and we feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to spend 5 weeks in Tanzania. We hope you enjoyed reading about our (mis)adventures and welcome you to make any comments you would like to share with us!
Asante sana na kwa heri!
(Thank you very much and goodbye!)

Mambo vipi! Over the past week, the Tanzamaniacs had a mixture of good-byes and hellos.

The week started off well with a trip to the Chemka hot springs. Our favorite bajaji driver (and our favorite person in general), George, drove us part of the way to the springs. Halfway to the springs, on some very sketchy roads, George pulled over and asked Andrew if he wanted to drive. Andrew half jokingly-half nervously said yes, which then prompted George to get out of the vehicle and switch seats with Andrew. After four or five jump starts, and the direct quote from George: “I value my life, mon,” Andrew was finally able to get the bajaji going. After driving for about 5 minutes, George asked if anyone else wanted to drive, which prompted Ian to excitedly yell, “Ummmm YES!” (since his dream is now to become a Bijaji driver). So then Ian drove the bajaji (much better than Andrew did), followed by Lauren (who was as bad as Andrew, if not worse), then Jennifer (who drove the best out of the group). Also, it might be noteworthy to mention that the bajaji was a manual transmission, so all group members can now say that they drove a stick-shift bajaji before they ever drove a stick-shift car. The hot springs turned out to be more like lukewarm springs, but the group did not mind since it was the first warm water they had felt in three weeks (since bucket showers apparently only comes in the cold setting).  Upon entering the springs, the group was swarmed by hordes of flesh-eating fish, making them very uncomfortable (except for Jennifer who seemed to enjoy the madness and insists on calling them merely “kiss nibbles” (we’re not sure how she hasn’t been voted off the island yet)). Ian almost died jumping off a 30 ft tree, while Andrew nearly broke his leg after attempting a double backflip off of the rope swing.  Lauren and Jennifer exercised basic common sense and didn’t come close to dying (in reality, no one actually almost died and the team enjoyed the day swimming in the springs, relaxing, and jumping off of trees).

The work week began much like the ones before, with Lauren and Andrew traveling to Orkolili Secondary School and Ian and Jennifer attempting to travel to Nkwamakuu Primary School. On Monday, Lauren and Andrew taught English to the Form 2 and 3 classes. Due to a minor accident (check out Jennifer’s bloopers), Ian and Jennifer did not make it to Nkwamakuu on Monday, meaning they had to finish up some teaching on Tuesday.

Tuesday was a crazy day for both set of school teams. The day started with Ian and Jennifer teaching Standard 7 at Nkwamakuu. They led the class in multi-subject Jeopardy (covering the subjects of English, Swahili, Math, and Science) and followed that game up with a round of Math Bingo. They said their goodbyes at Nkwamakuu at the end of this class, which ran late, and hurried off to their next destination that day, Orkolili. There, they were meeting up with Andrew and Lauren to help teach a final lesson of English to Form 1 students followed by leading an HCD workshop with Form 4. Lauren and Jennifer led the workshop for the Form 4 girls and Ian and Andrew led the workshop for the Form 4 boys. Each group tackled different problems as they worked through the 5 Phases of HCD. After the classes, the team said their goodbyes at Orkolili.

Wednesday was the start of a new adventure for the Tanzamaniacs as they left their home of 3 weeks (Boma Ng’ombe) to go to their new home (Old Moshi Hostel) for their remaining 2 weeks in Moshi. Surprisingly, none of them lost their luggage during the travel and they were even able to fit (barely) all their luggage in one car. It was a good thing that three of the team members are fun-sized (Thanks for the leg-room, Ian). They were all excited to have a day of rest on Wednesday, arriving around 10:30 am. Eva welcomed them to her Hostel and they were instructed to tell Gideon (who also works at the hostel) when they were ready for a tour of the town. They left around 1:30 pm to walk to downtown Moshi, about a half hour walk from the Hostel. Gideon showed them the way to downtown and pointed out a couple of the restaurants that they might enjoy, but there was only one thing that the entire team was looking for… Pizza. It had been 3 weeks since anyone had gotten to eat any cheese and the team had started googling the nearest pizza place during week 2. Lauren asked Gideon if he knew of any good places and he led the way to a restaurant by the name of Indo-Italiano. To say the the team was  excited when they saw that the menu listed about 26 different pizzas would be an understatement. They ended up settling for a four-cheese pizza and cheesy bread (and swearing to come back for more). After pizza, Gideon showed the team where the market place was and then where to go to catch a bus back to the Hostel. Once on the bus, it was the team’s responsibility to make sure that the bus stopped where they needed it to (Gideon had a laugh at the team’s confusion. Very funny, Gideon). This may or may not have caused some flashbacks to being abandoned on day two by their professor. (Very funny, Mary). The team also learned that just like the busses in Boma, people were crammed together like sardines. Good to see some things never change.

After the restful day of Wednesday, the Tanzamaniacs were thrown back into work on Thursday. They started their day traveling to a local Technical College, where they met the principal and introduced themselves. Upon hearing that three out of the four students were studying engineering, the principal proceeded to ask them which classes they would be teaching. Feeling a little overwhelmed and unsure how to say no, they felt as though their plates got loaded with things to do. Initially, they were going to be lecturing two classes a day (we weren’t sure when we had been granted the honor of being a professor but we all agreed we probably were deserving of a pay raise). Lauren and Ian landed on only teaching Technical Drawing for Level 2 on Friday and then discussed with the principal that it would be better to only have them teach two classes the next week. Their second location for the day was at Amani Children’s Home, a refuge for street children found in the area. They got a tour of the facility and a run down of what the home does before enjoying lunch with the students. After lunch, they sat down with Rebecca, Communication Manager, for Amani, and discussed the projects that Amani’s hoped the team could complete while here. One project was to work on creating a welcome display board for the front entrance. They wanted the board to show a slideshow, on a automatic loop, that gave statistics, photos, and videos of things happening at the home. Some of the features they wanted was for it to be automatically updated when they updated their own database. Amani’s hope is to have it up by October 2018, but the team was unsure if this was doable in the short amount of time they are spending there. They expressed that they could get Amani’s a prototype to test and then take back the information to get help from some students at Michigan Tech. After the meeting, everyone got to go meet the children currently at the home. Andrew wowed a group of kids by doing flips in the yard, Ian and Lauren joined in on a small football match, and Jennifer sat to watch, allowing kids to come to her to talk.

On Friday, Lauren and Ian set off to teach Technical Drawing for Level 2 at the Technical College in the morning and Andrew and Jennifer set off to start working on the project at Amani’s. Teaching at the college was definitely the most challenging teaching assignment the team had encountered, especially since they were teaching technical drawing, a topic they had not thought about in two or three years. The lesson went just as well as you would expect a college-level class taught by two (barely) college-age students to go (so much for that pay raise).  By the end of the lecture, the only thing more incomplete than the students notebooks was their understanding of the topic. By the time Ian and Lauren joined Andrew and Jennifer, Andrew had discovered how to PowerPoint to update whenever he updated a spreadsheet on Excel. By the end of the day, the team had figured out how to start up the Raspberry Pi and had created a very simple prototype of a looping PowerPoint presentation with database compatibility.

Saturday was a day of adventure for everyone. Upon asking Eva, she set up a trip to the base of Mount Kilimanjaro that involved visiting the entrance to the Kilimanjaro National Park, a waterfall, a Chagga (tribal) cave, and learning how to make coffee. Their first stop was the starting point for hiking up Kilimanjaro, where they got to learn some history about the mountain and take photos. Since they did not have permits, they were not allowed to go on any of the trails. From there, they headed to Kilasiya waterfalls, where they got a guided tour down to the falls. After climbing down into a ravine, they reached a river where they could view the waterfall from a distance. Thinking this was the end of the hike, they took pictures and got ready to head back up. However, instead of the hike being over, it was really just beginning. They all took off their shoes and were lead one by one across the river with the guide as an anchor (in the US it would be breaking probably at least about 100 safety rules). After making it across the river, they climbed barefoot over boulders to reach the bottom of the waterfall, which pictures just don’t do justice.

After the waterfalls, the group was taken to a Chagga cave, where they also learned how to make coffee from raw coffee beans. The cave was a guided tour, starting with a brief history of why the caves were created. Since Mount Kilimanjaro produces an atmosphere great for growing many crops, many nomadic tribes tried to claim the area. The Chagga Tribe and Masai Tribe often competed for the land, so the Chagga Tribe created caves to protect themselves from the Masai. The caves had three main parts: the opening, where the Chagga would defend themselves against the Masai, the mortuary, where they would discard of the Masai’s bodies, and the living quarters, where the families would go when the Masai came. The cave was a series of tunnels, dug out using rocks, wood, and mammal bones. The entrance went down into the earth and led to a small indent where the Chagga guard would wait for the Masai to enter. The Masai would usually enter in two groups, the first group would be large and often would hit their heads on the low ceilings of the tunnel and the second group would be small and often crawled through the tunnel. The Chagga, using a weapon appropriately called the skull crusher, would hit the invading Masai over the head. Those bodies would then be taken to the mortuary, where the Chagga would dismember the bodies at nights, throwing the pieces into the river below to be washed away in the darkness so civilians wouldn’t see (we’re not sure why after explaining this they handed us the weapons they used to use to perform these actions). When it was a small group invading, the Chagga would use another weapon to capture the Masai and would keep the group as slaves. Our guide led us through the tunnels, explaining what would happen in each area before leading us back up. Once out of the tunnels, the guide took the tour group to a Chagga hut and explained how it was set up, with the husband having his own bed and the wife sleeping next to the children. Half of the hut had a place for goats or other livestock to stay and they also built overhead storage areas, much like an loft in a barn. After finishing with the history of the Chagga, the tour guided led a lesson in the process of coffee making, starting with how the beans were de-shelled, roasted, pounded into powder, and boiled. The team got to taste some of the coffee in the end.

Week 4 (Nne, not Quatro, Lauren) Bloopers

Andrew

-At the hot springs, Andrew, a water resource engineering student, asked where the water came from.

-Couldn’t tell the difference between coffee and chocolate, and ingested way more caffeine than he had intended (as if Andrew needs even more energy).

Lauren

-Wanted to impress our bajaji driver by driving no-handed (she was actually stressed by the whole stick shift thing).  He was not impressed.

-Apparently thinks dogs and pigs are the same animals

-Forgot the first rule of Tanzania and contaminated her toothbrush (in her defense there was running water that day, an exciting moment for all)

Jennifer

-Sunday: While getting her bajaji driving lesson, thought running over some goats would give her a speed boost (she missed, so I guess we will never know)

-Monday morning: Deciding that the week hadn’t been difficult enough already (yet) proceeded to impale her knee on a fence post. Scaring Ian by almost passing out several times (*pole sana*).

Ian

-At the Chagga cave tour on Saturday, the tour guide asked where bananas came from, which Ian gave a very proud of answers “trees!”… not exactly the answer they were looking for.

Group

– Got hungry so they went to a pub.  There wasn’t any food there so they tried a restaurant.  Apparently restaurants in Tanzania only serve beer. Next week they’ll try a hotel. Stay tuned to find out if they will be able to successfully order a meal at a restaurant in the coming week.