During my internship, my boss popped into my office one day and asked if I would like to join him to go to Moshi, Kilimanjaro, to attend a conference. Hell, yes of course!!! And finally, I really ended up in Moshi and could attend the Third National Conference in Open and Distance Learning of Tanzania. But I should not only participate, I should also make my contribution…with a scientific paper and its presentation 🙂 Thus, I spent the time before the conference with writing, writing, writing… But I managed to finish the first draft of the paper and could present my work, which was about the web-accessibility in developing countries, at the conference. Since I was the only Mzungu, it was really special to be there. I appreciated this offer a lot.
Well, being at this conference, at Moshi, means to explore a new place and get to know the African way of organizing a conference. But let’s start with the journey there…
It took a 10 hours drive by car to go to Moshi. Quite exhausting, but there was so much to see anyway. The landscape changed very quickly. It became more hilly, I saw two rivers (the driver pointed that out, they are very important here), we passed a loooong mountain chain (Lushoto area), saw some monkeys passing the street in front of us, got offered any kind of things to buy on the street, saw people living in their loam houses, saw a lot of Sisal growing and finally the Kilimanjaro. We were lucky, as normally the mountain is hidden behind the clouds, but this time we could see it quite well 🙂
Arriving in Moshi, I immediately recognized that this city is very clean! I mean, in comparison with Dar es Salaam, amazing! And apparently, you even have to pay when you throw your rubbish on the street… It was also a bit colder, still quite warm for us Austrian, but in the evening or when it rained, I wished to have some warmer clothes…
The conference itself was well organized. We started on Thursday around 9:00 am (supposed to start earlier, but you can’t get rid of the African time) and first listened to some welcoming speeches. During the next two days, we listened to about 30 different presentations, had the same amount of discussions, got free breakfast and lunch between and could buy pictures some people took of us (like at the wedding!). The presentations itself were quite interesting, also in their appearance: I just say GIFs. Anyway, everyone made a bigger or smaller contribution to innovations of open and distance learning in Tanzania. The theme, by the way, was Blended Learning.
After the conference, I could spent two more days in this region. My boss brought me a bit closer to the Kilimanjaro (there it was REALLY cold), where we visited his son in secondary school and a friend, who is owner of some tourist accommodations at the Kilimanjaro. So, if I decide one day to climb the Kili, I know where to go 🙂
In these two days, I could sleep at his family’s place, which was a simple house in a small village. Was also a good experience to see the way people were living there (about 7 people in 3 rooms, a lot of religious decoration, hot water from a bucket, cooking on the floor, but quite nice furnitures!).
For the way back we took public transport, which means 9 hours drive in a packed bus, sometimes off-road, with only 2 breaks (1 time 15 minutes, 1 just 5 min) and a sit on which you didn’t know which way of sitting was comfortable after a while… But this challenge only cost us 20000TSH (ca 10€)… So, “Augen zu und durch”!
PS: More pictures will be added soon