SIT Study Abroad: Tanzania: Zanzibar Coastal Ecology and Natural Resource Management

This program introduced me to a wonderful community of people and a set of families whom I now share a deep bond with. In fact, I still stay in contact with my homestay mother. From an environmental perspective, living in Zanzibar is just about the best place you can go given the sheer amount of pristine beaches, forests, and wildlife. Living in and learning about its natural environment has deeply impacted my collegiate studies and views towards our current world environment. Learning to persist through the highs and the lows of the program has undoubtedly led to immense personal growth.

This program is extremely intense, not only the time commitment but it is long hours during the hot tropical days. Some will appreciate the academic rigor in this program, but if you're looking for a vacation (despite it being in one of the most beautiful vacation spots in the world!) this program might not be for you. That being said, anyone doing this program will get the absolute most out of it. The academics were interactive, field based, usually based on doing hands on research that you're physically doing, then writing reports, having discussions, presenting, and doing analysis with the data. You learn through field trips, snorkeling, learning swahili interactively, working with animals, people, doing interviews, and all the while you don't even know how much everything has built up piece by piece so that you can finally do a month long research project, speaking a language you didn't know when starting the program: A project that means something to the people of Zanzibar. And you can walk away knowing that you can ask better questions, you can know what its really like doing a field based research project and what's not included in every scientific methods section, how ingenuitive people in the developing world when managing resources with little economic means to do so can be, as well as doing it through an amazing cultural learning process in one of the most beautiful countries on Earth. And the combination of wildlife and sealife is the best in the world. Hands down.

As an Environmental Studies major, my abroad program relates directly to my activities in the classroom and gave me an opportunity to apply what I learned at my home institution to the real world. A key focus in the Environmental Studies major is integrating humanities and science. Throughout the entire SIT abroad program, I lived in local communities, worked with local community members and got to experience first-hand how individuals interact with their environment and how they view environmental issues I was studying. Through these interactions, I was able to ask questions and get their opinions about how environmental issues such as climate change, sustainability and tourism, impact their communities, then hear and see what they believe are the best solutions to address these challenging problems. I learned that through these experiences, local individuals are creating innovative ways to address different problems, using the locally available resources, and attempting to be sensitive to the cultural norms impacting the lives of people in their communities. Experiencing this first-hand gave me the opportunity to see these challenges through the eyes of local individuals, which really helped me understand and appreciate the importance of the interdisciplinary nature of my major.