BELLAIRE • MEMORIAL • RIVER OAKS • TANGLEWOOD • WEST UNIVERSITY

From Houston to Tanzania

By Emily Stone, age 17 | November 1, 2015

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Emily Stone, a senior at The Kinkaid School, volunteered in Tanzania for over a month this summer.

This summer, I embarked on a community-service trip to Tanzania through the company Putney Student Travel. I had never done a community-service trip, nor did I know a single person going on the trip with me, so I was a little nervous. I met my fellow trip-mates – 12 girls, 2 boys, 1 male leader and 1 female leader – three hours before getting on our plane.

We arrived at our house in the village of Maji Moto, Tanzania, around 4:30 in the morning after 34 hours of traveling, and spent two hours fumbling with bug nets, trying to figure out how to navigate in the dark using only lanterns as lights, as there was no electricity. Despite our slow, jet-lagged start, we quickly became comfortable with our lives in the village. We woke up each day around 7:30, ate breakfast, and made our five-minute walk to the worksite. There, we built a kitchen for the school so children wouldn’t have to walk miles home to eat. In addition to building the kitchen, we taught basic English in the school, which was my favorite part because I loved seeing how excited the children were to learn.

After working, we would go back to the house around 12:30 for lunch and naptime, and after that we would have Swahili lessons, play soccer with the village kids or continue working. After three and a half weeks there, we went on a six-day safari through Tarangire National Park and Ngorongoro Crater, which was so much fun. One night was a little scary, as there were lions near our campsite!

My experience in Tanzania was life-changing – I became close friends with everyone in the group, learned about Tanzanian culture, interacted with lots of kids (and got to hold lots of babies!), and contributed to building a kitchen that will benefit the 500 schoolchildren in Maji Moto. If you ever have the chance to take a trip like this, I highly recommend going for it.

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