Prof Huster

2017-12-09 and 10 - Saturday & Sunday

The Purpose of Our Trip

It may seem that I have been on a complete holiday, but actually our group has been engaging in a constant discussion about how we can use what we are learning and seeing to teach our Duquesne students.
Michael Wright is the Director of European Programs, and the Africa Programs at Duquesne. He has lived in Rome directing the Duquesne program there for over 15 years (long enough to get an Italian passport). He has put together an amazing program, handles the logistics, and the finances. I have been on and led several teams of students on international trips, and I can say he has put together a great program for us for the Maymester. Crazy ideas are being discussed, considered, extended, modified, and discarded all the time we are together and Michael is in the middle of it all.

He is the great Enabler.

Many times Plaxedes or I will see or hear something, then toss out ideas about how we could use it for our students. The group discussion with Michael, Ryan, Rick, and Phil has been very rich and encouraging. I am often pulling out my little notebook and jotting ideas down.
Michael has also arranged several meetings with people we can use as resources. Several times we have been surprised when meetings took unexpected turns. For example on Saturday we were meeting with a Mponda Miaolo who has been active in using astronomy for teaching and outreach in Tanzania, and he was bringing a student along. It turned out the student, Gideon Kaweah, is a student at Marian University College (also known as MARUCO), the very college we are going to team with in May. I am sure we will be in contact with him in planning our Maymester. And Mponda also works in the Ministry of Agriculture and has contacts Plaxedes can use in her Environmental Justice course. Two unexpected turns at one meeting!

Sunday in Bagamoyo

We left Dar es Salaam early Sunday morning so we could be driven to Bagamoyo and make the 11:00 mass. As we were walking around the Hotel Stella Marie where the students will be staying in May, I met two women, one African and one Asian who were heading to the Assemblies of God church. More on them later.
The mass happened to be the Children’s Mass, so it was only an hour long instead of the usual two hour mass. The church is beautiful and the sound of children singing throughout the mass was a moving experience. Also the priest gave the reading of the day in English (just for us). It was Mark 1:1 - 10. It ends with “but he (referring to Jesus) will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” What a special message to us since we are from a Spiritan University (Duquesne) and teaming with another Spiritan college (Marian/MARUCO.)
We toured the Catholic Museum and the grounds of the Catholic property at Bagamoyo. It was great to hear of how the Spiritan fathers started their ministry here and fought against the slave trade.
This is a beautiful tropical beach town. The setting of the Hotel Stella Marie is fabulous. There are palm trees on all sides, the hotel runs right up to the beach, there is an amazing beachside pavilion and dining facility, the rooms have great views of the Indian Ocean, there is a breeze blowing off of the ocean, this is Africa! The students are going to be blown away that they get to take university courses in this venue. We are all excited for the coming May courses.
In the evening Plaxedes, Michael, Rick, and I walked down the beach to the fish market, then stopped in a couple of places on the road back to the hotel. Along the way we met the two women from earlier. One is the new Dean of Students at MARUCO, and the other, Wi-Nei, is Taiwanese. Wi-Nei is the new Physics and Chemistry lecturer at MARUCO! What and unexpected encounter and blessing.

Dinner

The Spiritan priests, who alway come together for a Sunday dinner in Bagamoyo, invited us to join them. There were about 17 of us all together. We dined outside in a yard next to the beach. Many conversations were happening all at once as we ate together in the semi-darkness. The stars were out and my heart was quieted with awe and worship as we all enjoyed this evening together.
As usual, dinner wasn’t over until late. Two more amazing days in Tanzania.
Tomorrow, we take the ferry to Zanzibar!