Monarchs vs. Anarchists

BAILEY: Today was another exciting day in Africa. Although lack of sleep is getting to some of us, and we are still wishing our alarms were not set for 7:15AM, we all made it to breakfast at some point or another and prepared ourselves as best we could for everything we had in store for the day.

We spent the first two hours of the day focusing on our group project. J-Nash (Jennifer Littlefield for all you readers not in ILAD), Dr. Dale, and Dr. Houston provided us with the scope of the project and handed over the reigns to us as we then discussed vital issues we want to cover in our project and narrow down a time frame in which we would hope to complete it. In brief, our project is through an organization called the Global Text Project in which we are to write a chapter of a textbook. Our chapter will focus on how to start a business in a foreign country, especially a third world country, where we will use our experience in Tanzania as our template for our project.

After our meeting, we had a nice tea break which turned into “catch up on reading time” for most of us. We joined the rest of the group for another lesson of Swahili where we have now made it to the point where we can say very basic sentences.

After lunch, we had the opportunity to listen to a speaker who is the founder of an NGO (Non-Govenmental Organization) in Arusha. Her name was Mackrine Shao Rumanyika and she founded an NGO called Health Integrated Multisectoral Services (HIMS) in 2005. HIMS focuses on issues such as HIV/AIDS Awareness, gender mainstreaming, and environmental conservation, and their vision is to create, “A healthy society physically, psychologically, mentally, and socio-economically.” She was extremely knowledgeable about NGO’s and HIV/AIDS Awareness and problems concerning the horrific epidemic. We learned a lot about the Tanzanian culture from listening to her, and I think I speak on behalf of the group when saying we learned a lot about NGO’s because many of us did not really know much about them before listening to her.

Our day of classes and speakers was over at this point around 4:30 in the afternoon, so we all split up until dinner where some read, others played volleyball, and Will and Scotty hibernated for 2-3 hours. Around 6:00, volleyball was interrupted by a deluge which is still continuing as I write at 11:45PM. However that did not stop most of us from playing in the rain. What began as a game of freeze tag turned into about six or seven games of “Monarchs vs. Anarchists.” I am not going to explain the game except I will say that it is an advanced form of dodgeball with only one ball that the ’08 Leonard Scholars came to love on the retreat last semester.

Dinner filled us up and then we all proceeded to watch Blood Diamond, a movie I had never seen before, but really enjoyed. If you haven’t seen it yet, head to your nearest Blockbuster (or Vision Video if you are in Athens cause it’s cheaper) and watch Leonardo DiCaprio dominate the “blood diamond” market in Africa. Now after a full day, our eyes are once again heavy, and we are winding down for a sufficient 5-6 hours of sleep. If you are still reading, I thank you. I did not intend for this blog to be quite as long, but hey, we had an eventful, exciting day.