The first Mennonite missionaries to Tanzania came to the market town of Shirati, on Lake Victoria, near the Kenyan border, in 1934. Kevin, Kayla, and Sadie are doing their service terms here in Shirati. Sadie is working at the Shirati hospital, which has an impressive array of services including…
We took Lydia and Ben along with us to Mugumu where we played games and ate together with the students in Mugumu as well as Laura from Nata. Jenae and Jennifer are assisting Neema at the Mugumu Safe House. It’s a ministry of the Anglican Church set up to provide…
We are starting our visits to students on service! Ben and Lydia are in one of the remotest villages: Kemgesi is largely settled by Ngoreme people. It lies on a broad plain between distant hills. Ben is teaching Physics and Math at the secondary school. One of Mw. Nyerere’s strategies…
Finally we reached the Mara region! Mara lies between Lake Victoria (west), and the Serengeti (east) and is where students will spend their service time for (most) of the remainder of the SST term. Here on the western side of the Serengeti there is a profusion of tribal groups. The…
Each year wildebeest (gnus) give birth in February in the south-eastern Serengeti. As the rains end around May they start moving, almost 2 million, northwest towards the Maasai Mara region (in Kenya). They return in November. Along with the wildebeest, several hundred thousand zebra, as well as gazelles, buffalo…
At the heart of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) is the Ngorongoro “crater”. It is a crater-like depression left by the collapse of the top of an ancient volcano cone, and home to an amazing variety of large animals. Panorama of the Ngorongoro crater We had the…
[Students have just started the service portion of SST. We’re looking back at our journey from Dar es Salaam to the Mara Region, via Arusha, Ngorongoro, Serengeti, and the Ikoma cultural center.] Rising early Monday, we took the 7 AM bus from Dar to Arusha–a trip of about 12 hours.
We finished our week long journey across the Serengeti. We had a great time! We will write more soon about that. Our trip together ended at the Anglican guest house in Musoma, a city on the shore of Lake Victoria. We stayed for two nights, with orientation and preparations for…
It’s hard to believe our time in Dar es Salaam is coming to a close! Students have learned so much: Learned to know their Tanzania families, learned to make their way around the city, learned a *lot* of Swahili! We will be leaving Dar tomorrow for a bit more than…
We made a visit to Nyantira Mennonite Academy, a new primary school started by folks at the Mennonite church there. Nyantira is a relatively new community on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam. They are in the process of finishing up an expansion project and applying for full accreditation…
