Tanzania

Mar 20 2023

Thursday March 16 & Friday March 17 We left Shirati on Thursday morning and made a quick run to the border so that our family could extend our visas for another 90 days…. the 30 minutes in Kenya was a...

Mar 15 2023

Tuesday – Wednesday March 14-15, 2023 After a short drive Tuesday morning from Nyayero to Shirati, we met the three students studying in Shirati, Annalise, Annika, and Tyson. The rains have begun which meant the drive was a bit slippery and our...

Mar 13 2023

Monday March 13, 2023 Today we drove from Musoma to Nyayero to visit Irving Matute who is teaching at Nyayero Secondary School. We arrived in time to see the remaining 20 minutes of his English teaching lesson. Wow, he is...

Mar 12 2023

Sunday March 12 Our silence on the blog has been noticeable perhaps! We have let the students settle into their service placements and now we are about to launch our service tour to visit each of them. We will leave...

Feb 28 2023

Monday Feb. 20 – Train from Dar to Arusha This will be a lifelong memory…. taking the train from Dar to Arusha took about 20 hours. The best part is that it included a night in bed being rocked to...

Feb 19 2023

Sunday Feb. 19, 2023 This week marks our last week in Dar es Salaam before we head through the Serengeti toward our service locations. On Monday Feb. 20th we will leave on the night train from Dar to go to...

Feb 15 2023

Thursday February 16, 2023 Our focus this week has been to continue to explore the challenges in mapping ecological communities on the complexity of social communities. As we learned last week studying mangrove and fisheries management, it takes creative resolve...

Feb 11 2023

Saturday Feb 11, 2023 Thursday and Friday were spectacular. We received an introductory lecture by Aquafarms Organization AFO on Thursday afternoon to learn of their work in marine biology conservation. We were impressed for multiple reasons. Firstly, this NGO was...

Feb 08 2023

Wed. February 8th, 2023 Sunday included attendance at church in the morning followed by a quick lunch so we could get to the national stadium for an international friendly between Simba – one of the premier TZ professional club teams...

Feb 04 2023

Saturday Feb. 4, 2023 This week we have continued to explore various components of life in Dar. Thursday afternoon we met with Dr. Shreya Shah from Regency Medical Center who gave a presentation linking healthcare challenges with environmental attributes. For...

Feb 01 2023

Wednesday Feb 1, 2023 The students just left our apartment in Upanga to head home after a good discussion of the week’s events. We have been exploring the colonial history of Tanzania and the independence movement championed by Tanzania’s first...

Jan 29 2023

Sunday Jan. 29, 2023 We spent this weekend in Bagamoyo, a town about a 90 minute drive north of Dar es Salaam also directly on the Indian Ocean. The town is much smaller than Dar, but was the setting of...

Jan 26 2023

Thursday Jan. 26th Wow, the last few days have been a flurry of activity! Tuesday and Thursday we visited the University of Dar es Salaam for our last two history lectures: the first on the Swahili Civilization and the second...

Jan 23 2023

Monday Jan 23, 2023 Swahili class continues each morning at the church in Upanga. Today started with singing then proceeded to focus on telling time in Swahili. Students practiced converting English time to Swahili time, as 7:00 a.m. in the...

Jan 19 2023

Thursday Jan. 19, 2023 Wednesday after Swahili class we walked to unit house for our weekly meal and reflection/sharing time. Naomi and Ethan shared their Cultural Story Journals – both were moving stories exploring cultural competencies, similarities and differences we...

Jan 17 2023

Tuesday Jan. 17, 2023 Monday morning the students trickled in to the church from their various homes for the first Swahili class. This was significant for several reasons. It was the first time they traveled from their home to town...

Jan 15 2023

Sunday Jan. 15th The pictures say it all – today was a big day for students and their host families, as they met one another for the first time and began a 5-week chapter in their lives that will never...

Jan 14 2023

Saturday Jan 14th, 2023 The last two days have been filled with various orientation activities and settling in, while  students stay at the YMCA in downtown Dar es Salaam. Friday morning was all business: exchanging money, getting SIM cards for...

Jan 12 2023

Thursday January 12, 2023 We were delighted to welcome the SST Tanzania 2023 team this afternoon at the airport and they arrived right on time! After a brief pause for hydration and a few snacks, we rode our daladala (bus)...

Jan 10 2023

Welcome to the Tanzania 2023 Study Service Term (SST) blog! We have been preparing for the students arrival since December 21 and it feels really good to be back. We led the SST-Tanzania units in 2011 and 2014, so it...

Dec 19 2022

Jan Bender Shetler, director of global engagement and professor of history at Goshen College, has spent the past 40 years of her life conducting and analyzing oral history research on cultural memory in Tanzania. This summer, her research entered a…

May 05 2021

Jan Bender Shetler, director of global engagement, received a grant this month from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a Goshen College-led collaboration with Michigan State University (MSU) to digitize an oral history collection from the Mara region of…

Mar 21 2020

Goshen College has been working around the clock to bring students home from study abroad in Tanzania and Ecuador after travel restrictions were precipitously announced due to the pandemic response.

Mar 20 2020

They have boarded the plane and left Tanzania.  Praise be to God!