It’s only day 3 here at the camp and the 29 of us already feel like a family. Erica, our Student Affairs Manager, has told us that we are the most energetic group she has ever seen. When ever we have down time we are singing, playing instruments, playing soccer or a card game and laughing the whole time. We are always coming up with more things to do in our free time and utilize everyone’s talents. Every morning, we try to schedule a different physical activity to do. Yesterday, we ran on the dirt path that surrounds our camp. Today, I led a yoga class! Who knows what we will come up with tomorrow!
We had more orientation today. A lot of safety briefs and introductions to our classes. I am so excited for classes to start tomorrow! We have about 6 hours of class scattered through out the day with down time sprinkled in between. We are scheduled to go on our first game drive later this week too! We will see a lot of animals in Tanzania but most of our time here will be spent building the sustainability efforts of the camp, and interacting with the locals, learning their culture and language. I have already learned so much swahili! Everyone here is so happy to teach it to us. Most of the time they laugh at how we pronounce their words or what we try to say but they always help us out. The children absolutely love us. Today, we went into a large town nearby, Karatu, so Erica could point out places for us to visit and shop and then we went to a local pub called, Happy Days that serves American food (hamburgers, fries etc.) On the way, every child on the side of the road flashed all of their teeth and gave a huge wave shouting “jambo” or “mzungu” (hello or white person). Tonight, after dinner, we discussed different committees that everyone will be broken up into. One will be a Reading Club which organizes trips to a local primary school to read to the children in English. The program was started by a student last semester and the teachers said the students learned more English in those few weeks than in their entire careers as students. I’m really excited to get started with that. We are also working really hard on sustainability here at the camp. There is a water, electricity and gardening/composting/recycling committee. Water is the limiting resource in this region and locals have to walk hours up and down a very large hill with buckets of water if they want to drink, or bathe or cook. There is a water system associated with Lake Manyara nearby but all the water that runs from that system gets eaten up by Karatu. Once the lines reach Rotia and our camp, there is very little water left over. Because the locals have to suffer so much to get the water they need to survive, we do everything we can to use less water and harvest our own. All of the plants have used water bottles with the bottoms shaved off and the necks stuck in the ground attached to them. The open water bottles catch and rain water and funnel it straight to the roots of the plants. We also have 3, ten thousand liter water jugs with open tops that catch rain water for us to use through out the camp. It’s a very impressive operation that is constantly being refined and updated. I’m so proud to be a part of it! We will try to come up with programs to cut down water usage and electricity usage, increase the productivity of the garden and reduce waste. Once we find programs that are effective and efficient we can share them with the local community and improve everyone’s lives. That is what I am a part of and I couldn’t be happier!

Well tomorrow is a big day, with the start of classes and all. I should try and get some sleep!

kwa heri

Location: Karatu, Tanzania