Home from Zanzibar

After an almost 50-hour journey (including a stop in London to visit the incredible Tate Modern -- I highly recommend it!) from our beautiful flat in Mkunazini, Stone Town, I am finally home in Boulder and trying to piece together the fragments of thought and reflection I've haphazardly gathered through my experiences over the past five weeks.

I'll spare you the details until they're better organized, but I would like to let you all know how unbeliveably lucky and priviledged I feel to have represented S4Si as a summer delegate and to have been so warmly welcomed into such a tight-knit, vibrant, and loving community we found amongst our friends, neighbors, schools, and most of all, our S4Si scholars.

As I've written before and as you will learn in more detail from reading the profiles of the young women we selected which will be appearing here over the next few weeks, the scholars we support are bright and motivated, passionate and compassionate, and above all, dedicated to improving their lives and those of their families through hard work and education.

Completing secondary school in Zanzibar is not easy, even for those who have the means to afford tuition, fees, books, uniforms, and the widely-utilized outside tutoring schools. The national exams, which arrive every two years and cover nine or ten different subjects, are rigorous and must be written in English; I glanced at some copies of archived example tests and was shocked by how difficult they were.

But for those students whose families must make the constant trade-offs between education and food, clothing, and medicine, or between educating the young men or the young women, finishing school becomes much harder than simply passing these examinations. The S4Si scholars we chose this year face all of these challenges with grace, poise, dignity, and resolve, and I would bet on them to succeed even without our assistance. But Students for Students makes a huge difference in the lives of these empowered and inspirational young women, helping them and their families ensure their future achievements in secondary education and beyond. I am confident that, with our help, the scholars will become the future leaders, businesswomen, scientists, and doctors of Zanzibar and Tanzania. I am so excited to follow their progress in the years to come!