Global Partners 2003
East Africa Travel Grant Report

Robin Visel, Furman University
&
Bradley Nystrom, Centre College

Fax number: Visel: 1-864-294-2224
Nystrom: none

We spent ten days in residence at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Our main host was Peter Chonjo, a member of the Curriculum and Teaching Department in the Education faculty. Lillian Osaki was our main contact in the Literature Department and she organized our reception for the two departments. We also pursued contacts established by ACM program director and East Africa task force member Sonja Darlington and Mary Bruce, whose grant project overlapped with ours. Karen Gourd, a previous GP East Africa participant, joined us in Dar.

We held extensive discussions with Dar faculty and some graduate students about the issue of language of instruction in Tanzanian education (Kiswahili is used in primary school and English in secondary and postsecondary education) and the challenges of access (a minority of interested and qualified students are able to attend secondary school). We were at the university during the exam period; thus classes were not in session and we did not have the opportunity to interact very much with undergraduate students. Brad Nystrom and Karen Gourd were invited to deliver a presentation at the weekly seminar for Education faculty and graduate students. Their paper, "Balance in Educational Systems: can the U.S. learn from Tanzania and Tanzania learn from the U.S.?" addressed "Locus of Control in an Education System," "Curriculum: Ensuring Educational Opportunity and High Standards Through Culturally Sensitive Curriculum Pedagogy," and "Accountability, Especially High Stakes Accountability." The presentation sparked lively discussion, much of it in defense of the Tanzanian model as opposed to the American experience. We also took advantage of opportunities to visit local schools (which were just opening in mid-January), escorted by Peter Chonjo. Brad and Karen were able to interview administrators, visit a science lab, and talk to students preparing for their A-levels.

Our contacts in the Literature Department were less available than those in Education, but we hosted a very successful reception at Sonja Darlington’s on-campus residence, after which Robin Visel was able to meet with those members of the department whose teaching and research areas were of most interest to her. Eliah Mwaifuge shared his syllabus and knowledge of Tanzanian literature in English (writing in English being overshadowed by the dominance of Kiswahili). Lillian Osaki shared her work on African and African American women writers and Hamza Njozi his collection of Tanzanian orature (a student project). We also visited local publishing houses, one of which, E & D, is run by prominent author Elieshi Lema, whom we were able to meet. We learned about the state of publishing in Tanzania and were able to purchase novels, poetry, text books, children’s books, etc. not easily available in the United States.

While at the university, we taxied into Dar to see the city center, museum, and markets. We also spent a day in and around Bagamoyo, a coastal town which was the terminus of the slave and ivory caravans, the site of the first Catholic mission in East Africa, and the German colonial headquarters before the founding of Dar es Salaam.

After leaving Dar, we spent three days each at Sable Mountain Lodge outside Selous Game Reserve, Zanzibar’s Stone Town, and Chole Mjini, a hotel cum development project near Mafia Island. We chose the Selous in order to see more of the landscape and wildlife of southeastern Tanzania, learn about ecology and conservation issues, and to scout out possible sites for a study-abroad program based in Dar. Zanzibar is of course the historic heart of Swahili culture. Chole Mjini is a fascinating project: a group of rustic tree houses for guests within an isolated traditional village on a small island in a newly-created marine park. Like Sable Mountain, it too hosts student groups and runs educational programs. In Zanzibar and Chole we were able to visit schools and interview administrators. Throughout our time in Tanzania we took every opportunity to educate ourselves about the economic, political, and cultural issues facing the nation. We picked the brains of the many interesting people we met–government officials, expatriate aid workers, doctors, teachers, etc.

Hoped-for outcomes of our project include a visit by Peter Chonjo to Centre College, Furman, and other Global Partners consortium colleges, hosted by Brad Nystrom; a teaching and publishing project in Dar proposed by Mary Bruce and Sonja Darlington; and a possible new study-abroad program for Furman and/or ACS students being considered by Robin Visel. We all plan to include information about and/or literature from Tanzania in our future course offerings. For example, Robin will be teaching Elieshi Lema’s novel, Parched Earth, in a new East African Literature course. Brad will show videotapes of classroom dynamics and interviews with teachers in his Introduction to East Africa course and has invited Peter Chonjo to co-teach. We plan to pursue the faculty contacts we made at the University of Dar by collaborating on research in Tanzanian literature and orature as well as comparative educational systems. Now that we have expanded our East African contacts beyond the University of Nairobi, we hope to include these Tanzanian academics in the remaining Global Partners grant projects.

We were disappointed that we were unable to organize a more structured seminar with the Dar faculty. We did indeed try, but it was difficult to plan from a distance with people who had never met us, were unfamiliar with our organization, and were somewhat distrustful of us as Americans. Unlike in Nairobi, Global Partners has no real presence at Dar, where there are many competing NGOs and sensitivity about foreign--especially American-- interference. Our personal contacts have allayed these suspicions, we hope, and have laid the groundwork for future collaboration between American and Tanzanian global partners.

For additional information, please contact Matt Horstman at horstman@glca.org or 1-734-761-4833.