Rebecca Sauder, a
summer institute participant 4 years ago, came to speak with this year’s group
yesterday during our lab class. She currently lives in Usa River here in
Tanzania working with a solar energy company to create more reliable power
distribution systems while also managing side projects for rainwater collection
with a local Rotary Club. She had a ton
of helpful tips for navigating Tanzanian culture as a “mzungu” (foreigner) as
well as tips for hospital work during month two. I’ll briefly summarize a few here:
1) Smiling,
laughing and being happy go a long way to being accepted in any community in
Tanzania (or most everywhere in fact, but especially here). This is definitely apparent in my homestay,
as my host parents Lughano and Neema laugh and smile an incredible amount
during the day. Their daughter Lulu is
one of the happiest children I’ve ever seen – she spends most of her time while
I am home laughing, making happy noises, exploring the house, and sharing
everything she finds with the people around her. Today, she persistently but unsuccessfully
offered everyone in the house her lollipop. When she plays with her little pink
ball, she makes sure that everyone in the room gets the ball an even
amount. It’s been truly fun and
insightful watching Lulu play and learn as she is so influenced by the culture
around her. A similarly strong
manifestation of the culture is the attitude of my host dad Lughano. Everywhere
I have gone with Lughano, from visiting his friends at the prison guard housing
to the gas station to the barber shop, he has found a way to make the people
around him laugh. It gives him a hugely
diverse and strong support group in his community which brings me to Rebecca’s
2nd major point.
2) Community
is everything here. I expected
Tanzanians to be much less individualistic than I was used to seeing in
American life, and this expectation has been surpassed. Last night, our TV at the homestay was having
some service troubles. If this happened
to me back home, I would have called the cable company directly to speak with
someone who might be able to help.
Lughano immediately starting calling friends – not even people who were
necessarily affiliated with cable at all.
After an hour of this, the cable still didn’t work but his approach was
telling of the community he has here.
During hospitals in month two, Mikkel and I will need to be sure to
spend time to build a community.
Throughout this program, I have been told that this is often even more important
than having advanced technical skills since building the trust and friendship
of hospital staff will make it so much easier to find equipment available to
fix and understand the equipment needs of the hospital.
3) The depth
and sustainability of Rebecca’s projects seemed intricately related to how
passionate she was about her causes but also the curiosity she had about the
world and especially the people and culture around her.
It’s been quite an exciting and reflective week here. I’m looking forward to going to Arusha
tomorrow night to celebrate 4th of July with the other program participants and
also working with students at St. Jude secondary school on Saturday. Sunday
will be the first experience in a Tanzanian church service for Mikkel and I, so
I’ll be sure to talk about that next time. Tutaonana baadaye!
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