Tanzania Blog July 27th

By the end of the school day on Tuesday, I had begun to observe some differences between LOAMO School and educational practices of the U.S.A. When thinking of a developing country like Tanzania, one would not first think about well-dressed people, but that is exactly what you get in Tanzania. I have to say, I was embarrassed of my outfit when I first saw the teachers and students. The male teachers wear nice pants with dress shirts underneath patterned sweaters. The female teachers wear long skirts, nice shirts, and cardigans/sweaters with colorful scarves. Meanwhile, there I was, with my khakis and plain old polo shirt. I wish to impress the teachers with my teaching, but I know that it must start with the way I present myself. As a side note, I must also mention that Mr. Geoffrey, a teacher, wore a bright blue and black suit that he actually rocked. The students all wear grey pants or skirts with grey button-down shirts and red ties, finally topped off with blue sweaters.

Obviously, the school mandates the student’s uniforms, but it’s not just the uniforms that amaze me. Every single student from kinder to class 7 hasn’t a speck of dirt on their pants. Not a single student has a messed up collar. To me this sends a loud, clear message. I hear the 316 students saying how proud they are to be getting an education. We cannot begin to comprehend how important school is to these students. I think back to school at home, and I realize how ungrateful my generation is. We show up to school in sweatpants, short-shorts, tank-tops, and other clothing that says “I don’t really care to be here.” It makes me sad that our society is this way, but the LOAMO school inspires me and fills me with the drive to be the change I wish to see in the world, as Mahatma Ghandi professed, even if it is just dressing proudly.

            In every one’s life, there are the epiphanies, the “a-ha” moment when the paradigm shifts. As is the purpose, my experiences with CGA have brought many of these moments, regarding the world, poverty, society, etc. On Tuesday, I had a very enlightening       “a-ha” moment. The way that the preparatory class schedule works is such that the last two and a half hours of the day are dedicated to games/songs/stories either outside or inside. Tuesday’s outside time began well enough, but when my teacher gave Finn and me the reigns to the sea of 70+ children, I panicked and had no idea what to do. Still scared, we made a weak attempt to teach them a song. I was embarrassed like most people would be standing in front of others singing about funky chicken, but this is when I made the breakthrough. I realized, and not without a thanks to Karlie, that it wasn’t working because we weren’t into it. I discovered how incredibly important the teacher’s energy is, not just for my class at LOAMO in Arusha, Tanzania, but for education as a whole. As a teacher, I have to be the most overly absurd, excessively energetic person in the room. I have to put aside any personal fears or humiliation and just go “full send.” My dad is a 5^th grade teacher at Red Hill Elementary School in Gypsum. Every Friday he dresses up in a tie-dye shirt, a Green Bay Packer cheese tie, and some kind of weird pants. It confused me a little bit until I had my breakthrough on Tuesday. Now, I completely get it. If he is not excited at school, how can he expect his students to be excited? If his students aren’t excited, how can anyone expect them to learn? With this new realization, I feel that I may be getting closer to achieving the goal I had set earlier this week.

At LOAMO, there is rarely a kid who does not smile or laugh all day. But behind these smiling faces are stories of hardship and struggling to survive in a country where the average income per day is $2.50 USD. On Wednesday afternoon, I went on a home visit to hear the unique and tragic story of two of LOAMO’s students. Enock and Ebenezer are brothers in class 3, Enock, 13 years old and Ebenezer, 14.  From what I hear, they are both exceptional students, but they are quiet and have nothing about them that implies a rough home life. However, when we walked into the twelve-by-twelve foot room that was their house, it was clear that they had it harder than most of us can even imagine. No running water, no electricity, no bathrooms. Only a bed, a couch a table, some dishes, and a small kerosene stove.

Their father is living some 300 km way, leaving them only with their loving mother, Lillian. It is hard, though, to care for your children when you are 100% blind. Yes, Enock and Ebenezer’s mother is completely blind. Blinded by a disease at the age of two, she got a primary school education (up to class 7), and continued to live on the same street until she met the boys’ father. Soon after the boys were born, the father left them, only to come back to take them away ant the ages of three and four. He raised the boys as cow herders, with-holding them from an education, and beating them if they so much as mentioned school.  Seven years later, they returned to their mother and lost all contact with their father. As one might expect, their mother has not been able to get a job, and the boys are not old enough to work. Where do they get money? The only way they survive is by the generosity of the rare passerby or friends from their church. The boys are fed at school and their mother makes dinner when she can. For this family, having food is as uncertain as the weather. It crushes my heart to think about how hungry they must be for almost the entirety of their lives, but no one hears a peep out of them. So the next time you feel that the odds are stacked against you, think about Enock and Ebenezer and their silent fight against starvation while they continue their education.

In this past week at LOAMO school, I have seen my confidence soar, met new and interesting people, and been bought down to Earth by the horrible realities of the world. At the beginning of the week, I said I wanted to end each day with excited and happy students. With a new-found attitude, I find this easier to do, but I know I can still improve. I also said I wanted to make connection. In keeping with this, I’ve worked up the courage to listen, ask questions and listen to the stories of a few of the teachers, and I am still looking to start long-lasting friendships. This week, though I have been doing the teaching, I feel I have been the one learning.                                                                                                  

Tanzania Blog July 23rd

We are in the middle of Africa. Arusha, Tanzania is the middle of Africa. Or, at least, that’s what Rasta John told us during our tour on Saturday. He explained that the city is right underneath the equator, halfway between Cape Town and Cairo. I believe him, not because I trust that he is right, but because I feel it. It is not simply a geographic status to me, but a quality experienced only by being here. It is seen only by the eyes of someone gazing at the foothills of Kilimanjaro; it is heard only by the ears of someone joining in on a Maasai tribal dance as a song is sung in unity. Not meaning to take away from Toto, but words are simply insufficient.

            I believe we can all learn something from the people of Tanzania. First of all, I don’t know of another language with more ways to say “Hello, how are you?” And here, they want to hear you say “good”, because they actually care. As Nay, the “African Oprah” put it, Tanzanians have much more time, so there is always time to find out how someone is doing. As we walked through the buildings where disobedient slaves were killed on a daily basis, and stood where they were hung, I learned about an incredible part of Tanzanian society. They are forgetting their history of slavery. No, not forgetting in the sense of leaving it out history all together. The people are letting go of the anger and pain, while still honoring the events that took place. Tanzanians are proud to be who they are, and they are beginning to build a new, exciting future for themselves. This is what amazed me the most about the people in the first few days, and I have a growing admiration for them.

            Sunday was one of the most extraordinary days of my life. As we drove through the dust towards an actual Maasai village, I felt a jumble of feelings of in anticipation. When we arrived, those feelings were met with awe, wonder, curiosity, and everything of the sort. The houses were beautifully simple. The cattle, sheep, and goats were…well, disgusting, but intriguing. The people were different in many ways, but admirable in many more. The children were shy and did not make much eye contact. They had strange medicinal practices, like drinking warm cow’s blood, and men only become men after they are circumcised while being awake at the age of 18. Despite these things that would make many outsiders uncomfortable, I found things that impressed me, such as the fact that the children were given the responsibility of looking after the young animals at a very young age. I was also impressed by the cooperation of the people when catching a cow, making chapatti, or preparing a goat for dinner. Our visit ended with a dance with the warriors, which consisted of singing, dancing, and jumping. For some reason still unknown to me, I was really good at the jumping and became a favorite among the warriors. I think it will take me a long time to comprehend that day.    

            The first day at school was very intimidating. I walked into the Preparatory Class immediately feeling like an alien as the students and teachers stared at me. However, as the day went on, I got myself involved in the class, and I began to relax. The best parts of the day were when all 31 five-year-olds would stand up and sing at the top of their lungs about Chinese people and stomach pains. I have silently promised myself and the teachers that this week I will have the best games and songs for the kids. In the next two weeks, I’m hoping to grow personally to be able to have meaningful conversations with my new friends, and make many connections. In the classroom, I want to end most days with an excited and happy group of students.  I know and look forward to being challenged in order to grow through these goals.

Tanzania Blog #3

The current international poverty threshold is calculated at living off of $1.90 or below per day, which can be hard to understand for many of us. Unfortunately, too many people in the world know this first hand day after day. Poverty is a complicated concept that happens in a cycle, which makes it a very hard thing to end. Many different solutions have tried to combat poverty, some with no success, others making tremendous progress. From what I have learned, education at all costs is going to be the world’s key to ending the poverty cycle. First of all, knowledge is not a material object, meaning it can’t be built, bought, sold, or taken. Many have said that knowledge is power, and education is the pathway to it. Education isn’t just a house, food, or supplies, it gives someone the ability to understand and envision greater possibilities like jobs or important solutions. Also, the physical act of children, young females especially, being occupied in school blocks the paths that can lead them back into the poverty cycle. Therefore, to end the continuous circle of poverty throughout the globe, access to education needs to be a driving force.

Being part of a solution is a key part of proposing one. That is a major reason why I am so grateful to be part of these trips. I get to try to make my contribution to the world. Believing that education is key to ending poverty, I have to find ways to do my part of it. In Tanzania the group and I will be teaching classes as the major part of our volunteering, so, I will make sure that I am one of the most over prepared teachers on this trip. I will have lesson plans, games, and activities for each and every class. I know that I will have only so long at the school, which is why I want to do something in addition to just being a good teacher. I am going to find something to give the students to allow them to have lasting access to more education than they had before. I’m not sure what this will be yet, but I am making it a goal for myself to find it.

As I said before, there have been many initiatives with varying success to slow down poverty. One example of such initiatives in Tanzania is an organization there that works with farmers to help them transition from solely subsistence farmers to commercial farmers, making farming a developing and growing industry. They also work to allow both men and women to start their own businesses. This has been fairly successful, because it works to help people help themselves to create their own solutions. On the other hand, in the mid 1970s, the government of Tanzania tried several things to attempt to fight poverty. One of those was requiring every urban resident to work, or be sent back to the rural countryside. Policies like these had very minimal success in reducing poverty, but much can be learned from them. 

Hopefully, one day, there will be a time when few to no people have to wonder when their next meal will be or have to sell the last of their possessions only to lose it the next week.When that day comes, I hope I am around to see it.

Tanzania 2018 Blog #2

I can’t think of many better things to be doing in the summer before my sophomore year of high school than going to East Africa for the sole purpose of helping people. However, with the opportunity comes with the responsibility to be effective as possible. That’s why, for this year’s trip, my goal is to have nearly every class that I teach in Tanzania be able to say they had learned something from the lesson. This is important to me, because I was taught on my last trip that the most effective thing that disrupts the cycle of poverty is education. Knowing skills that can get someone out of poverty can help more than housing built by the government. I also know that I can still improve a lot on my teaching skills. This goal will ultimately motivate me to learn how to be a better leader and teacher.

The history of Tanzania goes back to the roots of humankind about 3 million years ago, but starting at about 5,000 years ago, several different peoples migrated and inhabited the land including the Khoisan, Cushitic, Bantu, and then Nilotic peoples. Trade with the Arabs and Indians made it economically strong. From there, many outside powers struggled over dominance of the land, and, at one point, it was the center of the Arab slave trade. Many European explorers set foot in the country as well. After 1886, most of Tanganyika was split between East German Africa and British-administered Tanganyika. It was later all given to Britain by the League of Nations in 1920 and gained independence in 1961. The unification of Tanganyika and the island of Zanzibar created the country of Tanzania.

The unification of the two governing parties did not actually come until 1977 when the TANU union was merged with the Afro-Shirazi party of Zanzibar. This formed the CCM Revolutionary party. The principles of this party were put into the constitution in 1982 and reaffirmed in 1984. However, the philosophy of Julius Nyerere, the president since independence, had allowed the government to become extremely corrupt. In 1979, Soviet-backed Ugandan forces invaded northern Tanzania, but they were quickly expelled after Tanzania declared war. Since 1990, there has been political unrest in Zanzibar, who have tried for independence. Thirty-five people were even killed in a protest in 2001. Protests have died down in most recent years, however.

The most interesting thing I have learned while researching Tanzania was its history of an economic center. Between the 13th and 15th centuries, the islands and coastal cities were part of an economically flourishing time called the Sharazi Era. They traded gold, ivory, and other goods to places as far away as China. Kilwa, a major trading city, had even been declared one of the best cities in the world. The contrast to now is what makes this fact so interesting. How could a country that was once a major trading hot spot become a country with so many people living below the poverty line? I am very interested in the kind of effects that this has on the culture today.

Tanzania 2017 Blog #1

For the third year in a row, I am going on a service trip with Children’s Global Alliance; this time to I’m going to Tanzania. Growing up in Eagle, Colorado, I have had a very unique life at only fourteen years old. I have two older brothers, two awesome parents, and an even more awesome dog named Kayenta. I play football, lacrosse, and competitive karate, and I like to play piano, camp, and mountain bike. Starting my freshman year of high school has been a little scary, especially because both of my brothers are now out of the house, but so far I am doing pretty well. The part that makes my life really unique is that I have been on two service trips with CGA, once to Nicaragua in 2016 and once to Cambodia this past summer.

These trips have been like nothing else I’ve ever experienced; they’ve taught me so much. Since the spring of 2016 before I went to Nicaragua, I had no idea how fortunate I am, how much different life in developing countries is, and what it means to do something solely for the purpose of helping others. I feel that these trips have made me more grateful and more mature about certain things in life. I can remember at least one instance where one of my friends told me that they had a crack in their phone screen, and their parents would not replace it. The friend automatically jumped to the conclusion that they were so unlucky and their parents hated them, and all I could do was tell them how lucky they were that they had a phone and they had parents that were there for them.  I also think that these experiences have changed my work ethic and commitment skills greatly, having done a lot of physical labor in Cambodia. Who knew that I would get to live like I have lived before I even get my driver’s license.

I don’t think anything in our local lives really compares to the kind of impact CGA makes. It changes the lives of the people we go to help just as much as it changes our lives, if not more. CGA is not associated with any religious group, meaning we don’t go with the hope of changing people’s faith or building any religious foundations in an area where there are none. The organization’s main purpose is to help people who live in extreme poverty find a better life for themselves. This is why many of the service trips are centered around teaching at under-resourced, under-supported schools.While any help makes at least a little difference, teaching can make the biggest impact, because the best way to break the poverty cycle is through education. People can’t help themselves if they don’t know how or why. And even though we’re just a group of teenagers, we have the ability to teach kids in these countries at least a few things that they may never get to learn anywhere else. Specifically in Tanzania, students can only move on to high school if they know English, because at that point all classes are taught in English instead of Swahili, the language that classes are taught in through to the end of middle school. So, just by being there as native English speakers, we can already make an impact. I am very excited to, once again, be a part of a CGA trip to make a difference in the world.

July 9th Blog

The final days in Cambodia have been some of the most challenging that I’ve been through. I’ve faced challenges that have been physical, some have been mental, and some have been emotional. Teaching at the school, finishing some projects at the orphanage, and seeing the slums are just a few of those challenges. Leaving was definitely one of them as well. However, I feel that going through these things throughout the entire trip has helped me become more aware, responsible, and able to see the bigger picture. I can say that Cambodia has helped shaped me into someone that my family and others can be proud of.

                This trip has been a big part in strengthening my ability to accept my faults. In almost every aspect of my life, I struggle whenever I make mistakes, and they end up weighing me down. Over the course of these past two weeks, I can look back at several times when I made a mistake. At first, these mistakes hit me hard and I felt very unmotivated. In one of these instances, I was at the school and teaching the very first class of the day. I made the mistake of coming unprepared, and the second half of the class was a jumbled mess of boring activities. Afterwards, I had felt like I failed the kids, and I didn’t want to teach at all anymore. I realized, though, that a negative attitude would be less helpful than poorly teaching a lesson. So, for my second class that day, I came to the classroom as fired up as someone can be before teaching, but more importantly, I was fully prepared and then some. I had lessons for anything that the teacher wanted me to teach, and I had fun games that I was excited to play with the kids. I not only had a lot of fun, but I also feel that the students had fun and learned something.  Thanks to this trip, I believe that I’m beginning to learn how to make mistakes and use them to improve, which then helps me be more useful to others.

                I know that everyone will say that leaving the orphanage was the hardest part of the trip, and I would agree on some levels. It was a time to say goodbyes as well as a time to reflect on the trip. I felt a nagging sense that I could have done more, that I didn’t give 110% all the time. I also felt sad like most people would, because we had met such amazing people and saying goodbye two weeks later. As expected, the goodbye party on Thursday was gloomy and sad. When a girl named Srey Neath took my hat for the - wait let me count - millionth time, I was in no mood to play around. Again, a new feeling swept over me and I realized that it didn’t all have to be sad. Yes, there was more I could have done (and there always will be), but what I did do had been important. Yes, I was sad to leave my new friends, but I felt that they appreciated that I had been there in the first place. Knowing this, I felt good enough to play one last game of keep-away. Running around the stage and zig-zagging through the crowd, I felt truly happy and free, and I felt comfort in the knowing that the kids were happy, too.

                Everyone has to go through hard times in their lives. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t have the easy and fun times. It’s being able to appreciate the challenges and find ways to overcome them that make us better people. Seeing the way other people have to struggle just to live, and saying final goodbyes to people so impactful has brought me down, but given me the tools to get back up. Cambodia has taught me so much, but the thing that will stick with me the most will be learning about and developing myself.

July 4th Blog

Sometimes, back at home, I get so used to the way things are. I forget that there are places that are nothing like home. I have discovered that places like Cambodia don’t just look different. Places like Cambodia sound exciting, they taste exotic, they feel exhilarating, and they smell… interesting. The most exciting thing that I’ve observed is the influence of Buddhism in the city and village, as it is the most common religion in the region. Everyday, I see more interesting shrines, temples, and of course, monks. Another thing I’ve noticed is the general independence that the Khmer people have. It makes me think about how different it is back home, with all of our social networks and reliance on things like restaurants, cleaning services, and so on. Here, though there is an interactive economy, most people have learned to do everything by themselves. These differences that I have seen have helped me think back to the way I live in Colorado.

                One of my favorite parts of this trip has been seeing the ancient traditions of Cambodia along with the practices and beliefs of Theravada Buddhism. On many of our tuk-tuk rides, we have driven past several Buddhist temples. Seeing the intricate drawings and writings on the walls, the decorative pagodas, and the wise, orange-cloaked monks, engages a childish curiosity inside me. I wonder about how old some of these traditions and buildings must be, and what the detailed writings and engravings mean to the people who worship them. The temples also remind me of places back home, like the churches and cathedrals you can visit in large cities. I am very glad to have this opportunity to see such an interesting way of life.

                One thing that has me both intrigued and saddened is how the children at the orphanage, have adapted to living where they do. I also see some of the same things when driving through the city and village.  On one of the days at the orphanage, I was starting to hand wash a big load of the children’s clothes. Almost immediately after I started, an eleven year old boy named Poa jumped into action. He collected brushes, buckets, and soap, and he showed me how to hand wash clothes like a master. He showed me techniques and tricks that I never would have thought of. Soon, there were three other nine-year-olds washing, rinsing, and drying their clothes alongside me. The same boy, Poa, helped me complete several other chores that day with extreme efficiency. Compared to the children I know in Colorado, it seemed that these kids were almost completely independent. I also realized, sadly, that they didn’t do everything by themselves because they wanted to , it was because they had to. If they didn’t care for themselves, there is no one that will. It makes me upset that while kids at home can have everything done for them, the children here have to be almost completely independent.  It shouldn’t have to be this way, and knowing this fills me with guilt, but it also encourages me to want to make their lives easier.

                As I take in my surroundings, I compare it to life in the United States, and I have fun noticing the little or big differences in life. I love seeing a place so different, because I have never seen any place so different in religion, traditions, and practices. It is also important for me to see the way that people live their everyday lives. Though things may be different, at the end of the day, people are just people. And these people deserve help just as much as anyone else.