Tanzania: Laurel Sutherland

Program: UW Health, Education, and Tanzanian Culture, Winter Intersession

Laurel’s Major: Biology

What is your most memorable experience from your program?

I was blown away by our visit to the Amani Center for Street Children, which functions like a boarding school for children living on the streets who want to live a better life. Many of the children that we met were very young, elementary school-aged, and we had the opportunity to play against them in a soccer match (which we lost). The center is run with donations and provides children with a home, food, healthcare services, and pays for all of their educational fees, which can be quite expensive in Tanzania. This includes education after basic primary and secondary schooling, such as paying for university or vocational school and helping them find job placement and housing once they are adults. There was such a sense of family and community there, and love for the children and who they become, many of them quite successful. I was just blown away by how much the center can do for children who have essentially nothing with very few resources by our American standards, and it put some things in perspective.

How did your identities impact your experience? What advice would you give to students with similar identities who are considering a similar experience?

As a white woman in a country where the only other white people are foreign aid workers or tourists, my race carried an extreme amount of privilege that I’ve never experienced so blatantly before. It was sometimes even somewhat uncomfortable or awkward being picked out as a “mzungu” or “white traveler” because people went out of their way to be kind to us when there was really nothing extraordinary about us. However, this wasn’t always the case for others in our group who don’t share the same racial background, and it made me think a lot about the history of colonialism in countries like Tanzania and the importance of being an ally to your group members, as well as trying to understand where the locals are coming from and why they hold certain beliefs.

How were your program academics similar or different from taking classes at UW-Madison?

I absolutely loved my time in this program because of how hands-on it was. There was no classroom learning while we were in Tanzania. Everything we did required us to talk to real people and learn about their lived experiences, which really allowed me to apply some of the principles I have learned about in other global health courses to real life in such a meaningful way. The opportunity to lean about the complex factors that play into people’s lives goes so far beyond reading a case report and it was a truly invaluable experience.