Farewell for now, Tanzania

This will be my last newsletter about my recent trip to Tanzania on behalf of the Tanzania Nursing Scholarship Program (TNSP).

In my last letter, I described my visit to Rose’s mama, at a very rural home. From there, Rose, my travel companion, and I travelled to Dar es Salaam (Dar), located on the Indian Ocean. Dar was my final stop in Tanzania. From Dar, Rose went to Mbeya for her scheduled license examination on December 15 and I traveled to Boston via Amsterdam on the evening of December 15.

The purpose of our stay in Dar was to do some touristy things. Also, a few of the ladies sponsored by us are now in Dar and we planned to visit them.

While there, we visited Muhimbili University, the premier institution in Tanzania for health and related education. We were happy to meet Kissa there. She was my wonderful travel companion in 2018 and is now in the fourth year of her BSN studies.

On prior visits to Muhimbili University, I met the Dean of the nursing department and members of the staff. I was impressed with the university, the staff and the program. That evening, we had a very pleasant dinner with one of the staff members. Rose expressed a strong interest in continuing her education here.

For touristy activities, we visited the Village Museum, an open-air museum of traditional village houses.

We also visited the National Museum of Tanzania which contained various collections. The most interesting was a collection  historical artifacts ranging from pre-history to the recent period. It included artifacts from the Arab period, and the German and British colonial periods, to independence in 1961.

One of the highlights of our stay in Dar was a side trip to Zanzibar. Rose, Kissa and I took a speedboat to Zanzibar from Dar – about a 2.5-hour ferry ride. Our goal was to visit Stonetown, the old Arab section of Zanzibar City. The Zanzibar archipelago of islands is now part of Tanzania. Zanzibar has an interesting history of slavery and exploitation of the mainland. Following our arrival at Zanzibar City we spent the day exploring Stonetown and getting lost. We returned to Dar that evening.

This was pretty much the end of our travel in Tanzania. Rose went on to her nursing license examination and I had returned home the following day.

I very much enjoyed my five week visit in Tanzania this year. Highlights of my visit to Tanzania this year included:

• Providing sponsorship to eighteen new students
• Meeting current students, none pf whom I had met before because I did not travel in 2020 and 2021
• Catching up with some of the graduated students that were sponsored by TNSP some years back, and who are now working in the community.
• Traveling with Rose was a pleasure. I learned a lot more about her and her background during this trip.
• Meeting Rose’s mama and spending the night there was memorable and enjoyable.

Now a final note on my travel: I want you to know that my travel expenses, activities with students, etc. are my personal costs. All donations made to TNSP directly support students.

Now the going forward part. Several months ago, we released a letter by snail mail that we would be stopping the sponsorship program in the near future. There may be some that did not receive this letter. You will find it here. As you can see, there is a great deal of sadness on our part in doing this.

However, I plan to travel to Tanzania again in November. We have enough funds to sponsor another group of students. So, I am already looking forward to going. Linda may also join me.

On behalf of the Board of TNSP and all the students you have helped, thank you so much for your support for these many years.