Reporting Words: Assignment 5

 Powell, Austin

It’s almost midnight at the Arusha International Airport when an airplane en route from Dallas lands onto the tarmac.  The plane taxis away from the runway until it finally comes to a stop.  The door to the plane is opened and the passengers file out like zombies into the heavy, humid Tanzanian landscape.  The smell of campfire smoke was felt equally as much as the sweltering heat.

            University of Texas student Tara Boggaram had no idea what awaited her when she embarked on a study abroad program in the spring semester of 2012.

            “Tanzania was the opportunity to take what I learned in the classroom and have it fleshed out into color in real life,” Boggaram says. 

            Her program in Tanzania focused on wildlife conservation ecology.  This gave her the opportunity to work with local farmers and learn about Tanzanian methods of farming.

            “I got to see firsthand how local farmers were being forced to adapt their traditional farming methods to western customs, but I also saw how it wasn’t practical for a Tanzanian farmer to work this way if they’re only going to make less than $1 a day,” she says.

            Learning a new language in a new culture is one of the most difficult parts during a student’s study abroad experience.  But for some this is only part of being abroad because depending on the area their views and experiences can vary drastically depending on the environment.

            For instance, most students don’t expect to contract typhoid fever, brucellosis (a disease caused by the eating or drinking of unsterilized food from infected animals) and get mugged while studying abroad.  But then again most students don’t go to Tanzania.  A country with a GDP of $23.3 million and women are expected to have children by 16.

            “I had just gotten over typhoid fever and brucellosis when I was mugged and it was during the time my 60 page thesis was due,” she says.  “Thankfully I was on my period so the only things they got from my backpack were tampons, chocolate and Tylenol.  It was a reality check because even after being there for a while it showed that I wasn’t Tanzanian.”

            Since being home Boggaram has taken her study abroad experience and implemented it on campus by working on the Study Abroad Mentor Program (StAMP) within the International Office.   She is among ten other peer advisors who advise students about studying abroad.

            Samantha Fanelli is one of those ten advisors whom work with Boggaram.

“I was drawn to her personality.  She has a way of making people proactive and experience new things.  Tara never lets stress bog her down or hold her back,” StAMP peer advisor, Samantha Fanelli said.

Fanelli admits that every time she talks to Tara she sees how passionate she is about her experience in Tanzania.  It’s for this very reason that she hopes to return to her newfound love in the Fulbright Scholar program, a government-sponsored exchange program that sends students abroad to conduct research in that country.

She hopes to study knowledge transfer in humans and attitudes toward words, and conservation techniques.

“I’d studied abroad before in Wurzburg, Germany, but being in Tanzania pushed my limits in a way that forced me to ask myself where my place was in the world as an educated person, a Westerner, and an educated woman,” she says.