A guest post by Border Jumpers was featured on STA TravelBuzz’s regular series, Travel Tuesday. Check it out below!
This Travel Tuesday brings you a guest post from Border Jumpers, Bernard Pollack and Danielle Nierenberg, who believe studying abroad in Africa may very well change your life…
Africa is not a destination that most college students choose for their study abroad programs. Lots of misconceptions exist that make some people cross it from their list — too dangerous, too difficult, and too different.
Yet, having just traveled through seventeen African countries (and to all the places suggested below), we found that all to be untrue.
The advantage to embarking on a journey like this is to pull you totally out of your comfort zone, where you immerse yourself in a community, interact with different cultures, and share new experiences. Not only do we feel safe as we travel here but precisely because we are visitors people welcome us into their homes, share their dinner tables, and introduce us to their families.
It’s probably too cliché to say that Africa will change you life — celebrities from Bono, Alicia Keys, Michelle Wright, Simon Cowell, and Selena Gomez beat us to that sentiment. Yet the truth is, it really will.
The most important things we learn and that connect us to the world won’t come via a classroom — but by kicking a soccer ball in a Rwandan village, holding a HIV/AIDS orphan at a school in Zimbabwe, volunteering at an over-crowded hospital in Senegal, or working as a volunteer journalist for a newspaper in Ghana.
Here are some programmes that might further peak your interest (and be sure to check online for hundreds more)
Madagascar, Biodiversity and Natural Resource Management, SIT study Abroad
We loved traveling in Madagascar with such unique biodiversity. This program allows you conduct field studies around environmental issues ranging from rain forests, coral reefs, mangroves, alpine forests, and so much more. You will stay with a local family in a village and immerse yourself in French and Malagasy
Cameroon, Social Pluralism and Development, SIT Study Abroad
The program is based in Cameroon’s political capital, Yaoundé.You will stay with a family for five weeks and spend a couple of weeks living in a northern village, with additional visits to western and coastal Cameroon. With more than 200 ethnic groups, local languages and dialects in the country, the program explores development theories, gender, art and cultural expression, and history.
East Africa (Uganda and Tanzania), Carpe Diem Education
This program integrates travel, volunteer work, and academic studies. In Uganda, you will live in the village of Junja working with an NGO that is building school houses in Uganda and then move to another village working with an interfaith coffee cooperative learning to grow and pick fair trade coffee. In Tanzania you will work with a health clinic as a volunteer with a medical NGO, while studying Swahili. Afterwards you head on a four day safari in through Tarangire National Park.
West Africa, the Rhythm of West Africa Semester, Where There Be Dragons
This semester program begins in Thies, Senegal, where you spend five weeks in a town about an hour from the capital city of Dakar. Students will meet with various NGO, taken intensive French lessons, attend guest lectures, and volunteer with local schools. The program continues as students hike overland into Guinea, visiting villages and integrating themselves in rural life and concludes with a three week home stay and volunteer project in rural areas of Senegal.
East Africa, Doane College
They offer a really neat program for those looking to really jet-set across Africa — seeing, studying, and volunteering in Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania, Swaziland, South Africa and Lesotho.
These are just five cool examples – but with so many programs out there – you can pretty much take your pick based on your areas of interest and the countries you want to visit!
So Akwaaba! Karibu! Jambo!
Welcome to Africa!
A big thanks from STA travlebuzz to Bernard and Danielle for putting this together for us. The couple are currently traveling to nearly every country in Africa and blogging everyday on Border Jumpers so be sure to make a point of visiting and checking in on what they’re up to.
This Travel Tuesday brings you a guest post from Border Jumpers, Bernard Pollack…
Original at borderjumpers1.blogspot.com
Bernard Pollack, an expert on local labor movements and communications, is currently traveling across the continent of Africa with his partner Danielle Nierenberg BorderJumpers.org, meeting with farmers, community organizers, labor activists/leaders, non-governmental organization (NGOs), the funding and donor communities, and others.
His travel writing from Africa has recently been featured in the Montreal Gazette, the NC News Observer, the Omaha World-Herald, and the Des Moines Register.
He holds an M.A. in Political Management from The George Washington University School of Political Management and a B.A. from the Elliot School of International Affairs at George Washington University.
