Oh, the Places You'll Go!

I often think about freshman year orientation and how nervous I was about leaving Frankfort. Before moving to Furman I received an email with the schedule for orientation and the theme of it was "Oh, the Places You'll Go!" and I immediately felt so excited for college. At the time I knew Furman had an impressive study away program, but I had no idea that it would be able to take me to Africa. I'm finally home from 7 inspiring weeks in Tanzania. I can't even begin to express how grateful I am to have had the opportunity to see and experience a different culture, meet wonderful people, and learn a little bit about myself as well.

After the three week May Experience came to a close, Grant, John Michael, Kylie, and I headed back to Zanzibar to start our research. We all spent a few days in Stone Town, Zanzibar before venturing out to our home stays in a village. Kylie and I spent our two weeks in a village by the name of Bweleo that is at the southern tip of a peninsula on the eastern side of Zanzibar. After spending those two weeks living in a village I can't begin to describe to you the effect it had on me. I realized how many simple things I take for granted at home. It was an incredible experience that, while being very difficult, was not one I would take back for anything. It was so important for me to see how other people live and how incredibly happy they are. In my last post I talked a lot about culture shock after visiting a Maasai village, but that was nothing compared to what I experienced while living in Bweleo.

My home stay mama was named Safia Hashim Makame. She is easily one of the most welcoming and warm-hearted people I have ever met. Although she spoke very little English and Kylie and I spoke even less Swahili, she made every effort to make us feel comfortable in her home. Safia has six children-four daughters and two sons-and then she took Kylie and me in without hesitation. Living in Bweleo with Safia and her children was a huge growing experience for me. I learned to always be appreciative for what you have. I also learned that I could probably live with WAY less stuff than what I have. It was unbelievable to see how creative Safia and her friends were. There were no stoves or ovens so they would make a little fire and cook all of their food overtop of it while sitting the pots and pans on rocks they have found. It worked perfectly. They made do without any ovens by baking their homemade break outside with the hot coals and somehow the bread came out perfect every time.

          This is a picture from our last day with Safia. Safia is the woman to my left in the green kanga.

                                       

During our down time Kylie and I would read books, watch Sofia cook, play around with henna with some other women from the village, teach some of the children card games, or just sit around with the family while they watched tv. Everyday at Sofia's was a chance for me to learn something new about another culture and also something new about myself. Before coming to the village I was quite nervous. At home I adapt to change pretty well, but this time the unknown really frightened me. Luckily, I had an awesome host family who taught me very much and hopefully I was able to teach them a few things as well.

Safia's youngest daughter, Ghania (pronounced Rania).

I have been home for almost a week now and honestly I'm so thrilled to be home. My first night back I slept like a rock (which probably had to do with the 43 hours of travelling before getting home) and anything I ate tasted like heaven (especially the club sandwich from Chili's in the Detroit airport). It's so nice being able to have consistently warm showers, air conditioning, and being able to eat any raw vegetable I want to, but I have to admit that part of me does already miss Tanzania. The people there were so entertaining and there was never a boring day. From people harassing me trying to persuade me to buy a souvenir to the babies crying right when they saw me because they had probably never seen an mzungu (Swahili word for white person; pronounced m-zoon-goo) before to getting lost in all of the tiny, identical alleyways, I never had a dull moment in Zanzibar.

So if you're reading this and you are either in high school, preparing to start your freshman year of college, or already in college, I strongly recommend that you take advantage of every opportunity in college you have to study abroad in another country or to study away in the United States. You never really have another opportunity to drop everything you're doing and go away to Africa, France, Washington, D.C. or anywhere else you might want to go once you graduate from college. There is so much more to the world than just Frankfort, KY, Greenville, SC or wherever your hometown might be and the more you travel the more you will come to appreciate where you started out. I know that travelling to Africa for seven weeks has really made me appreciate Frankfort so much more than before.

Safia on the left with her oldest daughter, mother, sister-in-law, and her sister-in-law's son.

Now only about 2 months separate me from my next study abroad adventure: Versailles, France!

À bientôt!

A Learning Experience

Prior to coming to Africa for this trip I had no idea what to expect as far as the trips we would take, what we would learn, or the type of people we would have the opportunity to meet. I knew this trip was going to be incredibly educational but I had no idea the amount of information I would be presented with over the span of one week that seemed to fly by. 

We've been on multiple informational and also entertaining trips to a spice farm, Jozani National Park, a mangrove forest, a local village, snorkeling, and a number of other visits. Even during the time we haven't been on trips we have had lectures on the history of Tanzania and Zanzibar and on the coastal ecology of East Africa from Dr. Ian Bryceson and also a guest talk with Dr. Saidi Salhina on what it is like to be a doctor on Zanzibar. 

Dr. Saidi Salhina started off by telling us the three most common diseases within local villages, which are digestion problems (to put it kindly), malaria, and under-nutrition (different from malnutrition) mainly among children. The main reasons for these diseases are a lack of medical doctors on the island, the fact that the medical doctors are primarily concentrated in towns and not villages, and a shortage of medicines that are not the traditional medicines in villages. If someone falls ill in a village they will most likely try traditional medicine before consulting a doctor, which they usually do when the problem becomes worse. It's very unfortunate to think that the three common diseases in villages could be prevented if only there were more doctors closer to villages as well as more access to medicine in villages. It is also a big problem in Tanzania as well as on Zanzibar that many students who go to medical school and become doctors decide to move abroad to find better work and more pay. 

When asked why he decided to become a doctor Dr. Salhina laughed a bit and then paused to think about his response. His primary reason was because his father was a doctor so he grew up surrounded by medicine. He added onto that saying he really enjoyed helping the people in the villages since they are so underprivileged. I found this amazing because he could probably move abroad and find a job that would easily pay more than what he is making now traveling from village to village. 

I believe Dr. Salhina is the perfect example of the majority of people of Zanzibar-they really prize helping others and I have been lucky enough to have experienced that firsthand during the scavenger hunt. We met taxi drivers and vendors who took time out of their day to help us when they could have easily turned the other way or said no to helping us. Since we encountered so many people constantly trying to sell us gifts during the first couple of days, it was hard to see another side of them, but the scavenger hunt was definitely an eye opening experience. It taught me a lot about being more accepting of new experiences. 

Since I am a political science major it is easy for me to relate my time here observing the people of Zanzibar to participant observation. I had never heard a whole lot about Zanzibar before coming so I don't have any prior expectations to relate my observations to. Because of what I have learned through this participant observation I am so excited to have the opportunity to stay for an extra month doing research. Hopefully I will have the opportunity to meet more warm hearted and kind people in the village where I will be staying. What an amazing learning experience this has been thus far.