CUHAS Life

The pace at work has significantly picked up in the past few weeks. Whereas the first period centered around the ins and outs of the issue and getting to know the people and other staff working with us, now we have more concrete deadlines and deliverables to complete. 

Earlier this week we went into town with Dr. Ngallaba to meet with a local newspaper. There we gathered valuable information that would be used to determine how much of our desired budget to be allocated to advertising (specifically through the newspaper), relevant for our proposal. The newspaper system is quite different here, as there never used to be a local producer in the area. Although there is localized news and information, it was always produced in Dar es Salaam until very recently. Now the companies that print in Mwanza have a huge advantage as newspapers are much more popular here than in Canada, and attract buyers at dawn, especially now due to the upcoming election. A few days after our meeting some of our friends notified us about how were we actually featured in a Mtanzania paper on the front page of one of the internal sections.

 

The caption loosely translates to: These people from Canada are talking to the Mtanzania representative in the Mwanza office. Not a particularly interesting story, but nonetheless we made it into the paper (without being asked for our consent one may add)!

This week, back at our CUHAS office, production has been focused on working on several presentations. The first will take place next week to the head of local police here in Mwanza. It will be a coordinated effort between several local organizations such as the Tanzanian Home Economics Association (TAHEA) and several transportation organizations, which we will be spearheading. The main goal is to inform the head branch of police of the entire project’s goals and plans to get the go ahead on implementation. Assuming this is achieved, the next steps would include pilot programs that include, but are not limited to: various promotional campaigns, educational programs focused on the younger generation and job creating projects such as introducing full and part crossing guards to specific high risk areas (school zones, busy roundabouts and dangerous intersections). 

So needless to say this presentation will be a crucial stepping-stone to further steps, as without the blessing of the police, this project will have a tough time moving forward.

English Club

Coming on this trip I knew I wanted to get involved in some local initiatives. I imagined it would likely stem from the mutual interest in football (soccer) between Tanzania and myself since I had done some research prior to leaving and found a local academy that welcomed visitors. However, our first interactions with such initiatives came completely out of the blue.

While Gavin and I were exploring Mwanza within the first week of being here, we made a friend by the name of Matthew. He happened to be going to a local musical performance, which we asked if we could come along for. We imagined a small live performance in a restaurant. Turned out it was at the nation’s second largest stadium for the artist Diamond Platinum, who is extremely popular. Shortly afterwards, when approaching the stadium, Matthew politely suggested it might not be a completely safe for us to go with him. We quickly agreed as we had little to no local knowledge at this point and got each other’s contact info. 

Later on during the week we were able to visit Matthew at the English Club, essentially a school to teach English to the public. It wasn’t an NGO or philanthropic venture, it was a business that local entrepreneurs created to fill a void in the market allowing people of any age or education to supplement any English they may or may not already know. However, as soon as we had spent a few minutes in the company of the teachers and some lingering students we could feel that it was more of a community than a business.

Luckily we had arrived in the short intermission between classes. We talked with the leaders and teachers of the club. Dixon, or Mr. English as everyone referred to him, was the charisma of the group. He told us all about their mission and business. There are four classes scheduled a day based on skill levels. Generally the younger students and lower levels were through the morning and daytime, with the older and more experienced speakers in the afternoon and evening. This fit well with our group as this allowed us to join in on the later sessions after work where we were able to better communicate with the participants.

So far we’ve attended a few sessions where each has been incredibly diverse. There have been regular classes, debate nights, and question and answer periods. Although the classes are interesting, the times where we hear the classes’ opinion are the most intriguing for myself. Our first time at the club we sat outside in a big circle, did introductions and then jumped straight into rapid-fire questions for us to answer. To put it mildly, I learned a lot about local customs, beliefs and especially views on the outside world. This was not just from the questions they asked us or we were able to ask them, but observing the debates and classroom opinions was an amazingly interesting experience.

We have plans to visit again later this week, so a sequel to this post will be sure to follow!

A General Introduction

 

To introduce myself a little, I have just completed my second year of mechanical engineering. I plan on completing a dual degree between business and engineering, where next year will be the next step in that process. I was born in Canada, however my family has quite an interesting history, where each one of my immediate family members was born in a separate country.

East Africa certainly influenced my childhood and family culture growing up. My father was born in Uganda and grew up in Kenya, where later on he met and married my mother who left England for Kenya to teach. There my brother was born, and my uncle and grandparents still live. As a kid I was fortunate enough to visit on two separate occasions, both of which were for nearly six weeks. Since I missed a fair portion of school each time we visited I took up an independent studies project which centered around endangered sea turtles and environmental conservation which I continued with for several years afterwards.

So returning to East Africa excited me greatly. I have been intrigued by the differences between my memories of Kenya and my experiences so far in Tanzania. Although my reasons for being in each country vary greatly hopefully something I will be able to comment more on as time passes.

As for my work in Tanzania, along with Sarah Krasniuk and Shabnam Medhizadah, we will be working under Dr. Ngallaba who is the head of the Public Health Department at Bugando Hospital. Together we will be continuing the research and efforts put forth from Dr. Ngallaba’s team on the topic of Road Traffic Incidents (or RTIs).

Tanzania recorded over 10,000 deaths in traffic related events in 2010. In reading previous to this internship, statistics showed that Bugando received at least 5 incidents per day. Dr. Ngallaba has recently amended this statistic to over 10 a day. To put Mwanza’s size into perspective, it has roughly the same population as London (Ontario), however has a much higher population density due to its smaller size. The city has only one set of traffic lights and the rules of the road are followed infrequently by large vehicle and rarely, if at all, by motorcycles. Through our experiences here over the past few weeks, it is safe to say that our efforts here as interns will be just one part in a massive effort to increase road safety.

What we have learned here in Mwanza, especially about the proportion of the endeavour, has only given us more incentive to create a positive impact during our time here. Although we realize that our three months here will definitely not even come close to solving the extremely complex issue of road safety, we do have tangible goals that will successfully forward the project. Some of these are: to create proposals for various pilot programs (e.g. a joint GPS/GIS venture) and secure funding alongside Dr. Ngallaba through the Government or private sponsors. There is also a national convention in October on this topic that Dr. Ngallaba would love to present a paper, so completing this is also a goal for the future.

 

Thanks for reading!

Late to the Party

Jambo kila mtu!

(Hello everyone in my broken Swahili)

I have been in Mwanza for about two and a half weeks, and I can honestly say that I feel I am starting to 'live' here, not just be a tourist or traveller. Although I am starting to feel fairly comfortable in this new environment, I am still apprehensive for blogging about this personal journey. I've no qualms about sharing experiences and engaging in discussions regarding topics ranging from sports to politics to, but I’d definitely classify myself as a blogging newbie.

As you may have noticed in other blogs, while partaking in pre-departure meetings there was a large focus on voluntourism and Western aid to developing countries. Some of the articles we read had an extremely critical viewpoint on the topic of students such as ourselves, or even recent graduates, spending time in completely foreign nations to support local projects. They stated that since these students were not experts in their respective field achieved the complete opposite outcome than what was intended. This caused some concern in my eyes, especially as the articles were very well articulated. I think this was intended to make the interns really consider our actions and ensure a culturally sensitive environment.

This clearly succeeded, as comments about cultural pictures uploaded to social media of the visitor with, for example a group of children who they may or may not know, for attention, resonated within me. I’m sure we've all seen similar travel experience photos that, while not intended to be so, are culturally insensitive, and frankly could be taken as arrogant.

However at the same time, I don't want a meaningful shared experience from our internship to be reduced to a media photo op by the outside world. Overall these feelings caused me to question and double think my own previous experiences to see if I had been part of this problematic culture, and to carefully consider how I would act and portray myself most importantly here, and online. 

I apologize to anyone who might have been looking forward to reading all our experiences as we experienced them, I just wasn’t completely sure on how I wanted to organize my blog and sometimes I think some time to digest your thoughts can be extremely helpful.

 

All in all, my digestion has found that I don’t think it matters how my blog is organized as long as I can continue to grow here in Mwanza, while keeping those who are interested informed, updated and hopefully a little entertained, maybe learning a thing or two about life in Mwanza.