One month to work, learn in Tanzania Wartburg College students see the impact of AIDS firsthand During a monthlong course in Tanzania, students at Wartburg College, an ELCA school in Waverly, Iowa, realized the full impact of the adage “It takes a village to raise a child.” At their first Sunday worship in that African country, students in the “Tanzania and the Global AIDS Crisis” class watched a woman bring her niece forward for baptism. The 1-year-old’s parents died of AIDS, so her aunt is raising her. After worship an “elder took the child from her aunt and walked around the circle of congregational members, who stuffed Tanzanian shilling notes into the child’s pockets to help pay the expenses” for her upbringing, said Fred Strickert, a professor of religion at Wartburg.
Study blends with volunteering Many Wartburg students spend at least one May term traveling in the U.S. or abroad. Students in the Tanzania course witness the effects of AIDS firsthand and study social, religious and human rights issues. They also volunteer—from caring for AIDS orphans in an orphanage to helping build a church for an Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania congregation. Due to high interest, the course is offered every year. Christy Hansen, a member of Christ Lutheran Church, Lake Elmo, Wis., took the course in 2005. Describing it as “life-changing,” she said it “helped me in evaluating my life and my faith and my reaction to the world.” Hansen, a 2006 graduate with a degree in social work and religion, said, “Seeing the faith of the Tanzanian people I met, experiencing the Spirit’s work in the activities we were part of—especially in the Masaai villages—[and] seeing a hundred baptisms, really made my faith in Christ come alive.” Strickert, a former missionary to Papua New Guinea, began the HIV/AIDS class in 2005. He also has led numerous archeological courses in Egypt, Israel, Palestine and Jordan and service-oriented classes in Honduras. In general, his topics center on conflict and poverty. “The model has been accompaniment of people in times of difficulty,” he said. Throughout the Tanzania course, students maintain a rigorous schedule, Strickert said. They begin with five full days of Kishwahili lessons. “Certainly no one becomes fluent, but even minimal attempts at speaking Kiswahili acknowledge the value of African culture and [the people’s] worth as individuals,” he said. “The first step in breaking cultural barriers is to greet another person in their own language and ... share a few details about yourself and why you’ve come. Since students interact a good deal with children, they’re willing to risk linguistic mistakes.” Hansen recalled speaking with some Masaai women. “We cooked with them, made jewelry, danced and learned about them, all with only our small shared Kishwahili vocabulary,” she said. “We spent a lot of time laughing together as we tried to understand.” Such visits are “good opportunities to see the work of the church,” Strickert said. “Often we coordinate visits with services where there are baptisms. [It’s] not unusual for 20 to 60 to be baptized at a single service.” Students also visited the Faraja Trust, which works to resocialize 250 commercial sex workers, offering medical help, counseling, education and self-help loans. The group met with Faraja’s founder, Lucy Nyke. Psychology major Jessica Wilke, a member of Zion Lutheran Church, Elkader, Iowa, wrote in a May 2005 blog: “It was startling to hear that she herself has more than 700 patients, and in some regions of Tanzania, the doctor to patient ratio is 1 to 300,000.” |
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| Lameck S Kayira - 6/22/2007 |
mine is not a comment but a request for your prospectusfor am interested to study with you ,am currently working with a psychiatry hospital in the northern part of Malawi and my adress is P.O Box 744,Mzuzu,Malawi. thanks in advance ,Lameck |
| Amber Leberman, Web Manager - 6/25/2007 |
| We're a magazine. The institution you should contact is Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa. |
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