By Isabell Majewsky Anderson, Head of Go Abroad, Director of Summer School Office
Later this summer, ten students from a range of backgrounds will have the opportunity to attend a Widening Horizons programme in Tanzania.
The trip will be an intensive cultural and language acquisition in a Swahili course, mainly delivered in Butiama in Tanzania but with a number of exciting excursions.
The students will be based in the residence of the first President of independent Tanzania, President Julius Nyerere, and will actually take classes in his library.
The students are from a range of schools including Biological Sciences, Literature, Languages and Culture, Law, Business and Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences.
Over the last few years we’ve run a number of programmes under the Widening Horizons Programme, the first to the University of Virginia in 2013, and the second to the University of British Columbia in 2014.
The programmes we’re running this year are by far the most exciting yet, as well as the group heading to Tanzania we’ll also be sending another group of ten students to the University of Madras in Chennai.
The Widening Horizons Programme is targeted at students in their first three years of study who have entered the University of Edinburgh through a number of different widening access routes.
The trip was organised by ourselves at the University’s Summer School Abroad programme and the School of Social and Political Science.
We’re really looking forward to hearing about the student’s experiences.
Second-year biology student Josie talks a little about her expectations of the trip:
“I heard about the Widening Horizons Tanzania programme through an email to eligible applicants and attended the information session.
I have never left Europe and, apart from half-hatched hopes of travelling the world one day, had never really expected to visit Africa. I am so glad I went along to that session. A month in Tanzania- learning Swahili, about local culture and people, history, how to prepare local dishes, visiting the famous Serengeti National Park and Lake Victoria, even just travelling in itself will be a new experience for me.
At the moment it still feels a bit surreal- flying into an airport named after a man whose family will be our hosts and whose legacy, I imagine, is everywhere. I don’t exactly know what to expect but I feel unbelievably privileged and grateful that I’m going to see a part of the world that probably would have otherwise passed me by. I’m hoping to gain new skills, experiences and confidence that will (fingers crossed) lead to even more opportunities like this one.”