Hello
Everyone,
Sorry it
has been soo long since I have last written, life has been so busy here and
somehow I find all my free time spent up trying to catch up, get ahead, or
enjoy the day to day experiences as they happen! At the original time of writing
this blog post, it was the end of July and I was in the midst of transitioning
to a new project, so I never did post it.. Therefore, I have revised the post
every so slightly to be more applicable to today (yes, way into September
already) to catch you up! So I am currently just over half way through my
internship (when this was written back at the end of July, 2011) in Tanzania
and thought I would try to catch you up on some of the highlights (in 3 blogs)!
Amidst the
chaos of being in a self managed internship position with a low budget but high
ambitions, constant research and cultural learning, and language barriers
(which is getting significantly better by the day) I have never learned so much
and could never ask for a better environment to learn in..
As the
world of development work in Tanzania continues to unfold, I continue to gain
insight into the complexities of every situation and both the barriers and a
few simple tasks that could be taken to see progress. However, more than
anything I have come to realize that in the end every social, environmental,
gender based, health based, humanitarian based, etc issue seems to stem from an
education problem. Whether that is a result of a lack of access to education,
mis-education, obtaining partial levels of education, a case where education
taught clashes with religious or other personal beliefs or values (which is
probably the most difficult system to change/infiltrate), or a process where
one chooses not to obtain education when it is available, it seems to remain at
the core of most issues people face in their lives here and abroad..
Throughout
this constant learning curve I have also developed new insight into my
passions, ambitions, and aspirations. Having worked in many positions where I
spent more time analyzing scientific experiments or data or writing reports
rather than interacting with other human beings, I have come to realize that I
could never go back to ‘pure science’. I have been joking throughout my time
here about how I most definitely think and analyze every situation from the
perspective of ‘scientist’, however I have also come to realize that I analyze
it from the perspective of a scientist looking at human well-being.. Although
this may not sound very different to some of you for me it is substantial! It
means that I have come up with an intricate balance as to what comes first in
priority of work.. if you want to see progress in the environmental field, one
must first understand all aspects of why humans are doing what they are doing and
learn how to work with this knowledge, and slowly, over time, mould it into the
change that one wants to see. Doing environmental work excluding human factors
is like trying to teach with no students...
Needless to
say, what exactly have I been up to all this time? Well now is probably a good
time to catch you up..
As of the
end of July, I had finally finished performing my community needs assessment
process, however had already implemented one project and was working on a
second! So below is a brief (comparatively speaking, those that know me well
know I hate leaving out details!) summary of what I was up to at that point in
my internship (without any modification of time, the next blog post will continue to tell this story as though it
was written in the end of July...)! Therefore, to make several shorter posts more than one long post, I decided to split up the updates into a few sections..
I hope you are all doing well and enjoy!
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