Recent Trip Posts
Pole, Pole
STEVE CHISNELL — And then through the too-seldom-parted clouds of this late rainy season, Kili’s silhouette drew itself against the horizon. Tanzania is a country marked by moments like this one, something iconic or mesmerizing,
Tanzania’s History and Togetherness
HENRY SMITH — Modern Tanzanian society cannot be understood without understanding its postcolonial history, which was defined by its experiment in socialism, ujamaa, which is the Swahili word for “collective economics.”
The Common Sense
LANI CHISNELL — For a first-time traveler to the “developing world,” I’ve struggled not to impose my own values around the definition of the quality of life, but to listen–carefully–and to learn the lessons perhaps I haven’t even considered. But…
Use Everything
JENNIFER CROTTY — Here in front of us was the logging industry of Tanzania. We could see hundreds of logged trees, ready for transport to the mill nearby. Men worked together to load logs onto the bed of a well-weathered pickup truck, far down the mountain.
A Modern Babel
HENRY SMITH — Tanzanian secondary school and beyond is taught exclusively in English, to the point where students are punished for speaking other languages.
The End of Our Trek
TAMMY RISTAU — This is not like hiking in Michigan, we were walking up and down steep trails in the Usambara mountains. I slipped and fell 3 times one day, but got up, laughed at myself, and continued trekking.
A Sense of Belonging
COLLIN SHARPE — As the days passed, it became clearer that funerals in rural Tanzania are a product of something far more profound in Tanzanian culture: an emphasis on recognizing, respecting, and caring for each individual.
America, Have Respect!
ABBY VAN HAITSMA –…For the next two hours, we watched (and tried to help), mesmerized at all the work that was being done just to prepare a local meal for us. This is just one example of the respect and thought that locals here have for food.
Where We’re Going
STEVE CHISNELL — There have been numerous efforts to forge a unity inside that nation-state status, to either describe the common traits they share (among 120+ tribes/ethnicities and equal number of languages spoken) or to legally bind policy claims to that identity.
Trips to be added:
| 1999: Ireland | 2000: Scotland | 2001: Italy/Greece | 2002: Japan | 2003: Alaska, Canada | 2003: Hungary | 2004: Costa Rica | 2005: India and Ladakh | 2006: Scandinavia |
| 2007: Dominica | 2008: China | 2008: Iceland | 2009: Northern Ireland | 2009: Nepal | 2009: American Road Trip I | 2010: Peru | 2011: Cuba & Belize | 2012: Turkey |
| 2013: Guatemala | 2013: American Road Trip 2 | 2014: Hawaii | 2015: Costa Rica | 2016: Cuba | 2016: Italy | 2017: Peru | 2018: Tanzania | 2019: Bigfoot Hunt (Pacific NW) |
| 2020: Eastern Europe |