Day 1 in Mikumi

Jambo! (Hello!) from Mikumi, Tanzania.

Jim and I left at the Halifax airport on Friday, November 12th at 2pm and arrived in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania at 9pm on Saturday, November 13th. Dar es Salaam is 7 hours ahead of Halifax, so our travel time was about 24 hours. The flights and connections were smooth and all of our bags arrived with us.

We left Dar es Salaam on Sunday morning after some much needed sleep and a driver took us to the VETA (Vocational Education Training Authority) Campus in Mikumi where will be will working with our partners here all week. On our way to Mikumi, we were very lucky to see our colleagues from the Marine Institute, Bill Chislett, Glenn Blackwood and Carey Bonnell, and our ACCC Advisor in Tanzania, Nigel Allen, in the village of Chalinze. Our colleagues were heading back from Mikumi after a short visit and we were happy to catch up with them over lunch.

One of the perks of working next to beautiful Mikumi National Park is seeing impala, zebras, giraffe, buffalo, elephants and baboons on either side of the highway on the way to the campus. The dry season is just ending in Mikumi and many animals are coming closer to the highway to graze of grasses and tree leaves. The 'short' rains started in Mikumi last night and the farmers here are very grateful.

Sunday night Jim and Mr. Pasiens Nyoni (entrepreneurship and motor vechicle mechanics instructor) dove right into planning the last details for this week's entrpreneurship training. The training is a part of our CIDA/ACCC funded Education for Employment project, Building Capacity in Tourism and Hospitality Management where we collaborate with VETA Mikumi and along with the Marine Institute and World Jet Travel & Tours of Dar es Salaam to develop and deliever the project objectives. The entrepreneurship training is an important piece of vocational and technical education in Tanzania as many graduates wish to be self-employed.

The focus of this week's training is on small business plans. The instructors of VETA Mikumi are the students and we had a very keen and engaged group this morning. The training is open to all instructors in the college - not just tourism instructors - and we had about 24 participants. The original plan was to have all instructors attend on the first day and then a representative from each subject would attend for the rest of the week. But, after today's session, most of the instructors have committed to attend the rest of the sessions this week.

We are really looking forward to the rest of the week! There will be more posts coming as the internet allows us...stay tuned!

Tutaonana Baadaye (See you later!)