CHIARA ARTIOLI
Volunteering Experience in Tanzanya
FIRST WEEK
Hi everyone! My name is Chiara, I’m 26 years old, and I’m from Italy. I’ve been in Kizimkazi, a village in Zanzibar, Tanzania, for a few days now. I arrived here as a volunteer with the ESC Humanitarian program for the AHH (Aid for the Heart of Humanity) project, hosted by the Assalam Community Foundation.
My first week has just come to an end, and I already feel that this experience will change me in ways I can’t quite imagine yet. This first week was dedicated to orientation, a precious time to get our bearings, understand where we are, what we’ll be doing and who the people are with whom we’ll be sharing these two months. And perhaps also to the heat and humidity typical of Tanzania :) We also spoke with the program coordinators about mutual expectations and the community rules.
The thing that impressed me most from day one is the atmosphere within the community. The people who are part of the community are extraordinarily friendly, and right from the start they made clear that here everyone feels like part of a family. And that’s exactly the atmosphere I feel! Warmth, open doors, genuine smiles, a true “karibuni”atmosphere.
Among our first activities, we participated in a workshop on how to make papaya oil. It was really interesting! But the moment that will stay with me the longest is definitely the distribution of food packages to the families in the village. It was my very first time participating in an activity like that in the field, in a Tanzanian village, with genuine interaction with the local people. It was very touching, and in that moment I realized why I came all the way here.
SECOND WEEK
The second week was very busy, and the days flew by. We started our morning routine by going to school, rotating each day between different classes and teachers. It was interesting to observe everyone’s different teaching methods! Our permaculture course also began. This first week focused mainly on theory and observing the nature around us. I had never really understood what permaculture was, and it was very interesting to discover it and observe the patterns that exist in nature. From a humanitarian perspective, we participated in distributing chickens to families as part of an economic empowerment program. The idea behind it is simple: don’t just give food, but also tools to produce it independently and earn an income from it.
Also, community life in Assalam is never boring. This week we organized an Italian cooking night! Finding the ingredients and cooking for 35 people was an adventure, but it all worked out in the end. We also played volleyball all together!
We also worked on the weekend: on Saturday, we distributed food packages and hosted a camp for children from an orphanage. I participated in a workshop on computers and AI, and in the afternoon we organized games with the children. It was an intense but wonderful week, I am very grateful for being here.
THIRD WEEK
This week I continued going to school and working with the same class as the last weeks. Spending more time with the same students is helping me build stronger relationships with them! I am slowly starting to remember more names and they are also becoming more comfortable around me. We also started a new permaculture project. We worked on preparing the land by manually removing many stones and leveling the ground. After cleaning the area, we added layers of material to prepare the soil for future cultivation. We continued our Swahili lessons and we also participated in the night food packaging activity. Unfortunately, I had to miss one day because my roommate got sick and I went with her to the hospital.. also an experience!
FOURTH WEEK
This week we focused a lot on school activities because it was Safety School Week. I worked with my class to teach them the main road signs. One day we also went for a school trip. We went to a kind of station where people go to get their driving licence. There, the students watched a video about road safety and learned why it is important to follow traffic rules and stay safe on the road. We also visited a place similar to a car workshop, where the children saw how cars are checked to make sure everything is working safely. It was a very nice day :) It was very very hot, but on the way back, we stopped to get ice cream together, we were all happy!! Our main activity as volunteers has been to create a driver licence for every child in the school. We prepared each licence with their photo and date of birth. It took a lot of time, but it was very nice to see the final result!!! At the end, we gave the licences personally to the children after they passed a small licence exam… It was a very nice week!!
FIFTH WEEK
This week we focused a lot on humanitarian aid. In particular, we distributed numerous food packages, including ones containing meat, because the Qurban period is about to begin (next week). In school, it was math week, and my class created geometric shapes out of paper, which they presented to the entire school. We also worked over the weekend! We went to Tumbatu Island to distribute packages of children’s clothing to an orphanage serving two villages. It was a very interesting and challenging project, as we were tasked with managing the distribution.
CHIARA ARTIOLI
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