Global Technology Academy WWU

Hello GTA-WWU members & friends!

The meeting this evening was very productive, and we have a couple of things we would like to update on.

We will be trying a new format for our meetings for at least the next couple of weeks. Planning meetings will take place at the usual time, 6PM on Tuesdays. We will discuss topics such as grants and communications with other organizations we work with. At 7PM, we will switch gears and focus on upcoming fundraisers and other events, as well as assigning tasks to specific people. If you prefer to attend only one section of the meeting or the other, you are welcome to do so.

We are making this change because some of the newer members were frustrated with the length of the meetings and the amount of information presented at meetings that was not relevant to everyone in the group.

Anyone and everyone is welcome to attend the 6PM planning meetings, the 7PM action meetings, or both, even if it is your first meeting. We encourage you to share your ideas of where GTA-WWU should go in the future. We are changing the meeting format so that you have the choice to be as involved as you want to be. We understand that an hour and a half is a long time to sit in a meeting, and we hope that this change will make GTA-WWU more open and accessible to new members.

We are still in the process of planning our upcoming auction fundraiser. We are looking at the last weekend in March, but this date is not yet set in stone. In addition, we will be holding carwashes again this spring. Our tentative dates as of this evening are the weekends of April 17, May 1, and May 5. Both the auction and the carwashes are great ways for new members to get involved with GTA-WWU.

Once again, we appreciate any and all feedback, advice, comments, or questions you may have. Feel free to send us an e-mail!

You can now become an official fan of GTA-WWU on facebook. Our page is here:

We are trying to get the word out to as many people as possible about who we are and what we do, so please invite your friends and family!

If anyone has been wondering what GTA has been up to over the past few weeks, we have been up to a lot. The biggest news is a dinner/auction fundraiser that we are planning for the end of March. We are still in the early stages of planning this, but what we do know is that it is going to be a fun night for everyone to come out and enjoy some good food while supporting education and digital literacy in Tanzania. We will keep you posted when we have more details. If you have any suggestions for this or other fundraisers, or anything at all, we would love to hear your input. Send us an e-mail.

Thank you to everyone who has been supportive of our mission. We can’t do this without you!

In spirit with WWU’s special 50¢ coffee deals during Dead Week this quarter, GTA-WWU volunteers endured freezing temperatures to sell Krispy Kreme doughnuts outside on Vendor’s Row.

Krispy Kreme fundraiser on Vendor's Row

The hot doughnuts were a hit with hungry passers-by, and at the end of three days we’d sold close to 900 doughnuts! Proceeds from this fundraiser will allow us to provide more effective brochures during presentations and in fundraising letters.

Since the start of this school year, GTA-WWU has been picking up speed. We have several enthusiastic new members, and we are very excited to have them on board!

Currently we are in the planning stages of several fundraising events. Although we still have a long time to go until our next project, we are all very excited for it.

On a related note, we have a new logo, which we will be unveiling shortly. Stay tuned!

We arrived yesterday in Seattle safe and sound after a long 26 hour journey from Tanzania. Our last few days in Tanzania were both amazing and a lot of work. On Wednesday we went out into the “Bush” and saw Sululu’s project Masai village which he supports. As we arrived all of the Masai women sang us a welcome song. We then had some traditional bean and corn dish with masai tea made from a special tree. We then went to a sacred place where we were fed a goat which they had roasted for us and some special soup with four different plants stewed in it. After eating we were shown around the village. Sululu has been working with them to help grow some traditional trees and plants in an eco-friendly and sustainable way and has also taught the women how to made beaded gifts to sell instead of cutting trees down for charcol. We learned all about the different plants which were grown there including a tree with leaves that they use as sandpaper!  We also walked down towards the river which was in this huge canyon which they must walk down to get water once a day. Afterwards, the men and women split up and we got a chance to ask the Masai people questions about their culutre and their way of life which was a great learning experience. At the end of our visit we were able to buy some of their beaded gifts to help support their village and send their kids to school. This was such a great culutral experience and it was also nice to see all of the hard work that Sululu has put into helping these people. On Thursday we did a lot of work on the lab at Mianzini. We spent pretty much the entire day working at the Terrawatu lab and St. Thomas before going to lunch with Mr. Makongoro (the director of both schools where we installed computers) at a very nice hotel. After lunch we worked some more before going to Sululu’s house for our last dinner in Tanzania. Once again, mama Jenny prepared us a wonderful meal. We were able to talk about how much we enjoyed our stay in the country and were presented with some kind gifts from Terrawatu where the boys recieved Masai cloths and the girls recieved some kanga cloths. After dinner Chris and Carl went back to St. Thomas to finish working on the lab and Kelsey and Linnea stayed the night at Sululu’s house. On our last day, Kelsey and Linnea went out to visit one of the old computer lab sites from a previous GTA trip. It was nice to see that everything was for the most part still working and it was nice to see how well they took care ofthe lab. During this time the boys were finishing up the last of the work at the Mianzini lab and we are so proud of them for all of the hard work they put in during our last few days. We are proud to say that when we left we completely finished all of the computer labs! After the work was finished, we went to Mr. Mokongoro’s house for a delicious lunch where we could say goodbye to him and thank him for all of his hospitality. After lunch we had to rush back to St. Thomas to pack and say goodbye to everyone at St. Thomas before rushing to the airport. At the airport it was hard to say goodbye to Frank and Adam which had become our good friends during our stay. As the plane took off that night, we waved goodbye to the beautiful country which had been our home for two weeks. Who knows, maybe we will be back someday…

The last two days have been both stressful and relaxing as we wait for things to get done in the Terrawatu computer lab. Yesterday was supposed to be dedicated to working on the Terrawatu computer lab but because the internet was not going to be set up until Tuesday, we decided to make it into a shopping day. We first went to lunch at Masai Café again to enjoy some delicious pizza (I think we’ve eaten more pizza here than in the states!). We then headed to the local craft market where we could buy Masai weapons and jewelry, beautiful paintings, wood carvings and everything else you’d expect at an African market. We spent some time haggling and buying gifts before stopping by the Terrawatu office on our way back to St. Thomas. At St. Thomas we were supposed to give a tutorial to the teachers on how to use various programs on the computer but because of a mix up the teacher’s thought we were not going to do it that day. However, this meant we were able to dedicate some more time in fixing up the existing computer lab here at the school. Then this morning we went to the Terrawatu computer lab expecting that the internet would be there but of course it was not! Instead of taking another relaxation day, we began some of the work we could do without the internet which really wasn’t much. So we spent some of our time waiting around at the computer lab before heading over to Sululu’s house for lunch. His wife prepared a wonderful and filling meal with lots of traditional Tanzanian food. We also got to see his amazing home, which he built himself, and hear about his times as a porter on Kilimanjaro as well as the time he went through the Masai initiation of killing a lion. Although he showed us the Masai technique of killing a lion and told us it is “not so bad really,” I think we all agreed we hope we would never have to fight a lion! After our lunch we made a quick stop at the school where Terrawatu is building a couple of classrooms. The students at this school are often packed in a room no bigger than an average U.S. classroom but instead of 25 students in a room there can be up to 200. We were so happy to see the good work Terrawatu is doing in their community and we know those new classrooms will help this school tremendously. After this visit we returned to the Terrawatu computer lab hoping to find internet. Once again, we found no internet but at least this time there was a new cable that suggested that had started installing the internet. We had a few things to work on at St. Thomas so we came back here for an hour of work before heading back again to Sululu’s house for dinner. As with lunch, the food was delicious and we sure saw the hospitality of Tanzanian people. Although we have been practicing the Tanzanian way of “hakuna matata” (no worries) the pressure of finishing the Terrawatu lab is growing as our time here shortens. We are keeping our fingers crossed for internet tomorrow!

Here is an update on the last four days! On Thursday we had a kind of unexpected relaxation day. We were supposed to finish up the Terrawatu computer lab but because the builders needed to finish some wood structures, we were unable to work there. Instead we spent some time fixing the computers at the Terrawatu office and then spent the rest of the afternoon and evening playing with the children at St. Thomas. On Friday we went to the teacher training college to finish the lab and to provide some lessons for the students on how to use the computers. Only one or two out of twenty students had ever used a computer before, so we spent three hours showing them how to open and use the programs on the laptops as well as how to save, retrieve and delete files. We spent another delicious lunch with the students where we had more wonderfully deep conversations. After lunch we returned to St. Thomas for some down time before we headed to dinner with our Tanzanian family; Sululu and his daughter, Angella, and Adam. We had some great pizza at the Masai Café which is Sululu’s favorite restaurant in town! After dinner we went straight to bed so that we could be ready to leave for our safari at 6:30AM. The drive that Saturday morning was beautiful as we got to enjoy four hours of the Tanzanian country side. We are right in the heart of Masai land so we saw many Masai villages, people and cattle on our journey. We arrived at Ngorogoro crater (the 8^th wonder of the world they say) early in the day. The national park begins high up in the jungle but we soon found ourselves descending on a very steep road down into the crater. On our safari we saw almost every animal including lots of zebra, elephants, hippos, wildebeests, buffalo, gazelles, and 12 lions! We took off the roof so we had an awesome panorama view of the area while driving. We also had the best guides in the world (Frank and Adam)! We were the second to last car to leave the park that evening as we continued on our way to a nearby town for the night. We were lucky to stay in a beautiful little town in a cute locally owned hotel. I think local places like this often get overlooked by safari tourists but I will say it was so much better to be staying in the friendly town than in those huge foreign owned hotels in the park. People were so friendly in this town we even got invited to dinner by some woman on the street, but had to decline because we already had dinner arrangements made by the hotel owner. The restaurant she picked out for us was great and they sure know how to feed us well here! Once again, we made it an early night after an exciting day. Sunday morning we woke up to a nice hotel breakfast before embarking on our final safari. This time we headed to Manyara national park which has more of a jungle feel. We saw a giraffes, hippos, elephants, impala, monkeys and a whole bunch of baboons! Both safaris were so incredible and it was amazing to see all of these animals so close and in the wild. We have now returned “home” to St. Thomas safe and sound after a long journey.

It has been a busy few  days with setting up the computer labs. On Monday we continued working on the old computers and St. Thomas and also began installing the laptops we brought on this trip. Our long day of hard work was rewarded with lots of playing with the students at the school. We learned some new games and taught them some games of our own. By dinner time we each had swarms of kids surrounding us, asking us questions and playing with our hair. It was fun but also exhausting and after dinner we all fell quickly asleep! On Tuesday we began the installation of laptop computers at the teacher training college here in Arusha. It is a small school with only 20 students but they have only been open a year and they plan on expanding in the near future. We met with the principal, some teachers and ate lunch with the students. It was fun to exchange ideas on life and teaching with these wonderful students. We also had two or three helpers when installing the lab who were able to learn all about setting up and maintaining a lab. After we leave, they will be the ones in charge of the lab so they were paying very close attention to our every move! That evening our friends Adam and Frank took us on a long walk towards the countryside. After about an hour of walking we came to an opening where we were lucky enough to see Mount Kilimanjaro! It was a beautiful site and very clear because of the sunny weather. After another restful night of sleep, we awoke today and began our work on the last lab for Terrawatu, which will help them support their local medical clinics. This was the biggest lab but we were able to work hard and get most of it done. It is now evening and after another delicious Tanzanian dinner, we are working hard to finish the lab at St. Thomas.  Our goal is to finish all of the labs this week so that we can spend more time training and relaxing next week. We will let you know how this goes!

We have received a wonderful welcome here in Tanzania with kind people, good food and nice living quarters. We are staying in two rooms at St. Thomas primary school where we are setting up one of the labs. Although the students live at the school, most of the children went home with their parents over the weekend. There were still a few students who live here full time that we were able to play with. They are so friendly and have been great about teaching us some Swahili words! On Saturday we were able to take a look at the location for the computer labs at St. Thomas and at the Terrawatu internet café. We were given a tour by Sululu of the site for the Terrawatu café which will also have a snack area and living quarters on top. There has been lots of hard work put into fixing up the building and it looks great! It is located next to a Terrawatu clinic where there is a doctor and many different types of traditional Masaai medicine. That afternoon we were able to start fixing some of the computers that were installed at St. Thomas two years ago with the first GTA trip. It was nice to see that so many of the computers were still working and there were only a few that were unfixable. After a long day, we spent the evening playing with some of the children who were still at the school with a game of volleyball, some hopscotch and playing with the balloons we brought. On Sunday we were taken around Arusha by our friends Adam and Frank. We went to the food market where many Masaai walk long distances starting at 4:00am to sell there livestock at the market. There are also many other vendors selling  food, like the huge avocados we purchased! After the market we had lunch at a great pizza place in Arusha and enjoyed the sunshine that seems to appear around 2:00pm every day. Again that evening we worked on fixing up the computer lab at St. Thomas and ended the day hanging out with some of the kids. Today we will be installing the laptops that we brought at St. Thomas. Everything has been going wonderfully and we are really enjoying our time here in Tanzania!

Just a quick update while we have a second, everybody and all the laptops made their way safely to St. Thomas last night. We are currently working at the Terrawatu office in Arusha with much planned over the next few days. Stay tuned, we will try to update later with a more detailed post and hopefully some pictures, but we just wanted to let everybody know we are safe and sound.