Area native volunteers year in Africa –by Amanda Polaski
Most people, when looking for a change in their life, take up a new hobby, but Melanie Haske, originally of Hawks, took a higher route when it came to creating lasting change in her life. She took a route that led her directly to Tanzania, spending 12 months working as a volunteer among Tanzanian farmers. This Sunday, Haske will share her experience with a presentation at St. Dominic Centennial Hall in Metz, from 5 to 7 p.m. All ages are welcome to attend. Haske?s adventure was set in motion while working in Virginia for a computer re-selling company. One of Haske?s customers asked her to work for a company in England, and she jumped at the opportunity. She worked and lived there for three years before she again felt the need for something new.
?IT WAS a time for something different in my life,? said Haske. ?I needed a change from the nine to five. I had a couple of priests as friends who were serving in Tanzania on a mission, which led me to go there myself.? Haske became a volunteer with a non-governmental organization called Traditional Irrigation Programme (TIP), which works with smallholder farmers in the Mount Kilimanjaro region. ?My skills matched with what they needed,? said Haske. ?I was able to help organize NGO (non-governmental organization) seminars that taught leadership, AIDS education, and gender mainstreaming issues. It was a ?train the trainer? kind of program ? an initiative to get all trainers up to the same level.? Haske shared a house with three other volunteers in Moshi, which is a town about the size of Rogers City, but set in a very rural area. Each volunteer in Haske?s house worked in a different area ? from a teacher to a communications specialist. Haske continued her work with the training program, and also helped redesign the TIP website and newsletter.
In her scheduled presentation Sunday, Haske plans to discuss the aspects of her daily life experience in Tanzania. For instance, she will touch on her living conditions and how being a white person affected the experience. ?White people in an African community are much more prone to theft,? said Haske. ?We had care persons who watched our house when we were gone, and we had a night watchman. He had a machete, and it was out and ready to use. All of our windows were barred. Tanzanian people couldn?t imagine not having bars on their windows?because of such poverty.?
THE HO– USE where Haske lived did have electricity and water, which was very fortunate. She said at times when there wasn?t electricity, she would use candles and kerosene lamps. The noises of Tanzania were also another aspect she would remember. ?In the morning, I would wake up to singing ? there was a church nearby and the women would sing every morning,? said Haske. ?The chickens also made noise ? they are not penned up in Tanzania, they just run around loose. They made noises all night long.? Haske said typical daily chores took much longer to accomplish, such as laundry. ?It is all done by hand there,? said Haske. ?We were always told to iron our clothes because of a fly that would lay its eggs in clothing. The larva would embed itself under your skin? so I would iron everything ? from sheets to underwear. The heat would kill any eggs that might be there.? One of Haske?s favorite things to do in Tanzania was to shop at the local markets. She said everything was sold in bulk by the pound, and she became good at bartering.
?As soon as they would see the color of my skin, the price would jump up,? said Haske. ?You get to know the price of things, because they always try to double it. If you say a couple of Swahili words, they realize you aren?t a tourist.?
HASKE BELIEVES that although the Tanzanian culture lacks greatly in areas such as healthcare, there are many ways in which Americans could learn from them. ?When it comes to the community and people taking care of each other ? we have a lot to learn from their culture,? said Haske. ?Patience is something we can learn from them as well ? time is a different concept. It?s not all now, now, now ? if it doesn?t get done right now, it?s okay.? Haske lived the entire year in Tanzania at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, and said the experience was beautiful. ?To have that as your backyard ? it was awesome living there,? said Haske. ?The children would always follow me around and gigg
Haske returned to her life in England about a year ago, and she said the transition back was not as difficult for her there as it would have been if she were still living in America. ?I was surrounded by this family that had also traveled to Tanzania before,? said Haske. ?It was like a support group. It?s hard coming back to America because it?s hard to see such waste ? all of the consumerism and big cars. Not too many people owned cars in Tanzania ? it was a luxury and gas was about $4 a gallon. When you compare that to the median income ? it is so out of reach.?
Haske said her experience volunteering with TIP is something she will not forget any time soon. She was able to help show farmers how to best use their land. She helped Tanzanian people to learn how to conserve water, which is treated like gold in that region. She also saw a difference in how husbands and wives were able to learn to work as partners in order to be more profitable as a team. She plans to visit the area again in the future.