Week 4
I can't believe it's already been a month! A lot has happened and I'm still adjusting to life here. The best part about living here is seeing the lake every day. I don't think I'll ever get tired of eating fresh tilapia and going to the beach every weekend.
I've finally gotten a grip on my role here at Seed Change. I'll admit the first few days I was a bit lost on how I can contribute to this organization, but day after day my work piles up and I'm finding more purpose in my internship. Some things I've been doing are maintaining social media platforms, communicating with donors, writing case studies and administrative work (which I really don't mind). Something really cool that happened last week is we went to the village to visit palm oil farmers. Our driver (Malilo) gave us a mini tour around Mahembe Village in Kigoma. It was really cool to meet local farmers and see how they process the oil palm. The picture above is FFB (fresh fruit bunches) harvested from local oil palm trees.
I'm slowly picking up more Swahili but I am considering getting a tutor or signing up for online lessons. I am also going to start driving lessons with Malilo- something I should have done years ago and now is the perfect opportunity! I have a lot of spare time here which I'm not used too, back home my days would be filled with attending lectures, doing readings/assignments, work, rehearsal, performances and spending time with family and friends. I never really had much time to work on personal goals, and now with all this time on my hands, I hope I can do all the things I always told myself I never had time for.
I'm really looking forward to the next couple weeks because we are preparing the greenhouses for 33,000 seedlings imported from Costa Rica. I have not yet seen the seed nursery in full operations so I'm eager to get out of the office and get my hands dirty with these trees!
So far it's been a good month, with a few ups and downs but I'm optimistic it'll only get better from here.