Preparing to leave...

I'm SO excited that I'll be leaving tomorrow! I'm not looking forward to the day and a half flight though... flying from Chicago to London, London down to S. Africa, then S. Africa back up to Tanzania. I leave Wednesday night and get there Friday afternoon. (There's an 8 hour time difference between the east coast and Tanzania, so it'll be like I'm getting there early Friday morning.) I'll be well equipped for my flight: loaded MP3 player (thanks so much Mr. Reehl:), magazines, books and plenty of snacks (although I'm not sure I can take the food on an internat'l flight... I really hope my Raisinettes make it)!

Getting all of the supplies, clothes and necessary paperwork for the trip took a LOT of work and planning... not to mention learning about Tanzanian customs and culture and learning basic Swahili. Luckily the org I'm volunteering through assisted with much of the pre-planning and provided a list of resources to help prepare. I will arrive in Bagamoyo just in time for the long rainy season (begins in March), so in addition to all of the below-the-knee skirts I'm packing (the community is more traditional in terms of dress so my wardrobe now includes several long skirts... which were a lot harder to find than I would have thought!) I'm also packing rain gear and rain boots... that should be a cute look for me, LOL...

Me and the other volunteers beginning on March 1st had a conference call to learn more about the community, what we would each be doing, general expectations, and our accommodations while in Bagamoyo. We'll all live and have our meals together at the base (pictured) which will be my home for the next 2 months. Since each volunteer decides their own length of stay, we'll all end at different times over the next few months. The base consists of 2 buildings with living quarters/bathrooms and a kitchen, and a small common/recreational building.

We will work Monday-Friday in the mornings and have cultural learning activities each afternoon--this could be a Swahili class, a drum or dance lesson, a tour of historical sites in Tanzania, etc.--to learn about Tanzanian culture. Our weekends will be free-time, so I'm hoping to do some traveling in Tanzania too... definitely Zanzibar Island... maybe Serengeti National Park or some other park for a safari... and maybe even Mount Kilimanjaro... if I don't chicken out!

Anyway, I'm off to finish packing. I'm hoping to get everything down to one checked bag under 50 lbs and two small carry-ons... Please keep me in your prayers for a safe flight tomorrow... my next post will be from Tanzania!

What I'll be doing--about my volunteer assignment

Just got my specific volunteer assignment and I got my 1st choice--working toward women's empowerment initiatives. I'll be volunteering at an organization called Bawodene, which is in the town of Bagamoyo (it's on the coast of the Indian Ocean, above Dar Es Salaam).

The organization I'm volunteering through has been placing volunteers in this town since last summer, I believe. There will also be ~19 other volunteers from the U.S., Canada and Australia living in the house who will have other assignments (i.e. working in an elementary school, hospital, etc, etc).

Bawodene was founded by six Tanzanian women to help women and out-of-school girls utilize their skills to generate income. Some of the skills of the women in the community are making batiks, mats, bedsheets, handcrafts, embroidery, sculpturing, drying fish, processing cashew nuts, and tailoring. Bawodene is implementing a micro-credit lending project to fund these activities. (I started reading Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty which explains micro-credit lending and where the idea came from... it's been really helpful.) The ultimate goal is to help women in this community utilize the resources in their community to become self-employed and ultimately self-sufficient.

Bawodene needs assistance with the daily functions of the office, i.e. managing meetings, learning computer skills, and helping to identify (more) efficient ways of doing things. Me and another young woman from Houston will start on the same day and will be placed at this site together. We'll also teach basic English and help with marketing, finance, management, and grant writing.

...count-down: 2-weeks!

Why am I going to Tanzania?

That's a very good question! Especially since I quit my job and basically put my career in higher ed on hold to do this! I'll try to help you understand where this came from... it's not completely out of the blue...!

Since learning about Africa and its history & culture from Ms. Dickerson & Ms. Noble (elementary & high school teachers), I've wanted to visit Africa. As I learned more as an African American studies major at WashU, I felt an obligation to give back in some way instead of just being a tourist. Much of Africa remains in distress and so much of the world is doing nothing about it...

I decided that I would do volunteer-work there someday. I wanted to do Peace Corps after undergrad, but really couldn't stomach the 2-year commitment but the desire to do that type of service work never went away. Over the past few months, I've been getting signs that if I didn't do this now, I would be kicking myself HARD later on: tons of support and encouragement from loved ones, increasing frustration at work that would inevitably continue to increase over the next few months, and me giving advice to a student of mine to follow her dreams and that life is too short to not pursue what you really want to do...

I strongly believe that we MUST step outside of our comfort zones and get to know people who have life experiences different than our own in order to begin to have a true understanding of how to live with each other peacefully. And not just on a global level. We have to do a better job of doing this in our daily lives: as students in college, as adults in the work world, as parents, as educators, but most importantly just as people living life who have influence on how others view the world. Until we all step outside of our comfort zones and educate ourselves about SOMEthing or someone who's different--whether that difference is race, religion, ethnicity, whatever--the world we live in will continue to be unjust for many people. Those of us making decisions that affect other people's lives make those decisions based on what we know... we have an obligation to try to know more. What we get in the classroom is not enough... the experiences of so many people are excluded, and often I've felt that my experience and the experience of my ancestors was excluded... that's a whole other conversation though...

I decided for myself that I would try to make my world a little smaller. This will help me educate myself about the continent where my forefathers came from (it saddens me to know that I will never know their true story), and it will help me educate people I come in contact with about the realities of another culture.

So... I started doing some research and came across an organization that seemed to be a perfect match for what I wanted to do. I was deciding between South Africa, Tanzania, and Ghana.... and Tanzania won.

Once I decided to volunteer, the signs that I was taking the right "next step" just kept coming: I raised over $2,000 from friends and family to cover the cost (I would not have been able to do this without that assistance, so thank you!), I had just accumulated enough air miles to have a free round-trip ticket, and my parents even agreed to "baby-sit" Raji for me (see below:)

My students, colleagues at work, and family have all been overwhelmingly supportive. I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders since deciding that I wasn't going to wait any longer to start doing some of the things I wanted to do "someday"... In a few years I may get too caught up in life, my career, or a family of my own, and "someday" would just never come... the time had to be now...

Ok, so believe it or not, this is the short version of why I decided to do this... Don't worry, all of my posts won't be this long! :)

This is Raji