Anna – After getting a full night of sleep, we embarked on our first day of no travel. Meeting with a local NGO, we journeyed to a rural community outside of Dodoma to observe a health clinic which has recently undergone restructuring. My first experience with a community in the flesh and seeing an implemented water system was truly extraordinary. One can only understand so much about these communities and their needs, as well as what systems will work or how successful they will be, while sitting behind a computer screen and crunching numbers. This community experience was different in that support and education in the community for the health clinic is not something that is readily found as many communities have not been as exposed to NGOs and other sources of sustainable development. The community however was very welcoming and excited not only to meet us and show us the clinic, but also, to my surprise, eager for suggestions and insight from a group of students for improvements. This just showcased and the level of education the community leaders had in advancing the health and wellbeing of the community and how open they were in engaging in further education. I am very interesting to observe the contrasts that may exist between this communities and those we will be visiting up north next week.
Tyler – The one thing that continues to impress me with this journey is just how welcoming all the members of the community are. The community that we visited today was extremely welcoming and willing to give their time. We observed the water system put in place for the health care facility implemented for a community housing nearly 8,000. The health care facility welcomes people from near and far, whether they are a part of the same community or not. My favorite part was talking to the head nurse herself, she was very eager to hear our suggestions and helped us immensely by showing us the downstream effect of the water supplied by the implemented system. After observing the water system in the community, we visited the University of Dodoma, the facilities were breathtaking. Seeing the amount of infrastructure being thrown up in such a short amount of time was amazing (and I thought the construction at OSU was bad). All of the growth this university is experiencing just goes to show the bright future that is being provided here by the government funding. I am looking forward to keeping up with the university, it is obvious that great things are to come from this growing nation.
Jonathan Ogland-Hand – As Tyler mentioned the amount of development going into the University was insane. According to Beno (the director of the Health Clinic development project) the University is split into 5 colleges and total enrollment is projected to be 40,000 people. The construction is being funded by the Tanzanian government and Chinese companies have won all the bids for the work, which also includes all the road construction that is occurring. But, Richard (one of our drivers/interpreters) has made comments about the low quality of Chinese work in Tanzania, which we all found really interesting. Another interesting thing I noticed is the culture around cell phones. From the observations I saw tonight at dinner and driving around this afternoon it appears cell phones conversations take priority over face to face conversations in Tanzania. There were multiple times today that someone in our group was talking to a Tanzanian whose cell phone rang, which then temporarily stalled the conversation. Lastly, (and most interestingly to me) was the news on TV tonight at dinner. A restaurant named Dodoma Carnival was recommended to us and when we arrived there was soccer playing on the TV. About halfway through the first half of the (very close and exciting) game the channel was switched to the news. There is an important election coming up in Tanzania and all the politicians were being interviewed. Even more interesting than the fact that the sports channel was turned off for the news was that the Tanzanians stopped their conversations to listen. Even our Joseph and Richard (our two drivers/interpreters) stopped eating and left our table to move closer to listen. We Americans all found the choice to learn about important politics instead of eating food and watching sports very bizarre.