Ihambo - Mwendo

Hey Everyone!

I'm finally getting this blog up for my trip to Cape Town this spring and hopefully Tanzania this summer. I called it ihambo and mwendo because those mean "journey" in Xhosa and Swahili. The next few months are going to be just that - a journey. My trip takes me to Cape Town, South Africa until June where I will be studying with a group of Stanford students at the University of Cape Town. While I'm there I will be taking a few courses, but what I'm particularly excited about is my chance to help a non-profit through service-learning. I will learn which non-profit I will be working with hopefully in the next week or so and I will let you all know!

For the summer, I'm hoping to head north to Tanzania to do qualitative research on mothers' perceptions of disease. I will be joined there by Marlene Kennedy who spent last summer there (her blog is at http://katika-imani.blogspot.com) and also happens to be my girlfriend of two and a half years. Our project is trying to discover why mothers don't practice hand hygiene even if they know that there is bacteria on their hands and know that washing their hands can remove that bacteria. We will be conducting surveys and focus groups around the area of Bagamoyo Town on the eastern coast of Tanzania. Unfortunately we haven't received the funding for this summer's work yet, but we have several grant proposals still in the pipeline, so hopefully this will work itself out. We would really appreciate your prayers for summer plans.

Well, I have to get back to packing and getting last minute things done. I leave tonight at 11 PM EST from JFK and will be in Cape Town on Saturday. I don't know if I'll get a chance to update between now and then, but I will try to write something up on the plane and post it as soon as I get a chance. Thanks for all of your prayers and support and feel free to send this to anyone who you think might enjoy reading it!

Tim