I am freshly returned from Africa, and do I have lots to say about it.
Luckily, I have lots of time to write.
And write I shall.
First, to those of you reading (I am aware no one is reading this) I have just spent the last month (July 15 - August 22) in or traveling to Tanzania, as a volunteer with a non-profit called One Heart Source. OHS owns and operates an AIDS orphanage in Mateves village near Arusha in the north of the country. Currently 20 children ranging in age from 1.5 to 18 years are living in the orphanage, and to my knowledge, only two or three of them are HIV positive. The main objective of OHS, however, is education, and OHS volunteers spend much of their time traveling to primary and secondary schools throughout the region as teachers. Though we primarily teach an AIDS/HIV based curriculum, we are teachers of all knowledge - math, science, English, history and geography - we teach whatever students demand to know. At one point, I was teaching an after-school club of 80 or so students how to reduce algebraic expressions.
Working and being in Tanzania for that brief amount of time, I learned so much about the people, their traditions and culture, their language and their food. (Especially their food.) I learned about the history of the country and how and why it has become the way it is. Tanzania is a beautiful country with beautiful people; but it is a country plagued by many problems, which I hope to discuss here. However, it is also a country where youth - and youthful optimism - are abundant.
So, with the next blog post, I will retrace my steps through Africa and tell the story from the beginning, when my plane touched down on July 17th at Kilimanjaro International Airport.
Welcome to Matunda.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Sunday, June 14, 2009
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