anitram said:
I thought LivLuv went as part of a class and not a volunteer mission? She had some really great stories and beautiful pics of her trip.
Correct, it was a month long 3-credit interdisciplinary course, mainly used because we have to have 3-credits worth of a cross-cultural engagement class to graduate and it's a third world development studies elective, which is my minor. We did not volunteer in the sense that we went with the Red Cross or Oxfam and stayed at one location, but we did visit several programs across the northern part of Tanzania. The title of the trip was the role of the church in development. They don't have seperation of church and state in Tanzania and since the government struggles to manage on it's own, they actually fund a lot of religious programs because the Lutheran and Catholic churches are much more effective at running these programs and distributing aid. We did get to visit places like orphanages, social services, cultural museums (Masaai and Sukuma villages), homes for unwanted street children, and tagged along for home visits of people with HIV/AIDS receiving aid through the church.
I LOVED it there and have been tossing around the idea of going back for a longer period of time (but it's hard to make that decision while planning a wedding, working 4 jobs, and finishing college!). I thought Tanzania was an amazing place because it really has it all. Some places are flat, hot and dusty, others have more rolling hills, red sand, and these great acacia trees. Other places are high in the mountains. We got to walk down Kilimanjaor and also spent a few days in a mountain village called Lushoto. This village has colonized by the Germans, who went there because the climate is the same as Bavaria. It was lovely up there, plenty of plants, and not too hot. The also have the Indian ocean coast and the island of Zanzibar. We stayed along Lake Victoria and I swam in Lake Victoria. Then they have the safari lands like Serengeti, Lake Manyara, Nogorongoro Crater, and the Oldupaai Gorge. There's really an entirely different landscape every hundred miles.
That was the first and only time I've traveled outside the States and still I'm convinced it's the greatest place on earth!
If you want to look through my pictures, I just made a new album with captions:
http://www.dutchbingo.net/TanzaniaJanuary2005/index.html