The Plan for this Trip

We're at the airport in San Francisco facing our first flight delay (just an hour and fifteen minutes, which will cut our otherwise too-long layover in Seattle) so we will give a quick overview of what we plan to do this trip.  We won't get to our final destination until the equivalent of the wee hours of the morning in California on Thursday.  The time difference between Tanzania and Saint Mary's is 11 hours, so we need to reverse our systems as quickly as we can to get on track.

Once we arrive, we will reconnect with our dear friend Simon Mtuy, who is our main liaison with the communities of Kilimanjaro.  Simon is a wonder who is a trail runner beyond anything you have probably ever seen.  He literally holds the world record for the fastest unassisted ascent and descent of Kilimanjaro, having run all the way up and down in just over nine hours.  Most people take six days.

Simon is a member of the Chagga tribe, so he is very much in his element on the mountain and in the various villages all around.  With him, our primary projects will center around a community called Mweka.  We will work at a school there to help them build/extend their kitchen and construct a large composting toilet.  Additionally, through the generosity of the Beutner family (who have two DIRT vets among them), we will install three solar powered water purification systems.  And, in support of one of Simon's primary initiatives, we will work on reforestation of some areas that have been cleared.  Finally, we are going to help with some ecotourism projects that the communities are just beginning to develop, with an eye to preserve the integrity of their culture while still inviting outsiders in.

All of these projects match up well with the general impulses of DIRT, which is our affectionate name for our ongoing projects that began in post-Katrina New Orleans and have visited the Brazilian Amazon, post-earthquake Haiti, the Carib Territory of Dominica, and probably a few other places that we are currently forgetting.  DIRT stands for Dismantle, Immerse, Reflect, Transform.  We take this progression to be our method of undertaking our journeys and the projects that they entail.

We begin by taking apart some of our own preconceptions about ourselves, our destinations, and our hosts; this work is the "Dismantle" part.  (Of course, in some sites, we literally dismantle things, as demolition is one of our strong suits!)  From there we Immerse in our communities as much as we possibly can by living like the locals live, eating what the locals eat, traveling in the way that the locals travel (usually a LOT of walking), and working side by side with our hosts on projects that they choose.  Throughout the experience, we Reflect in a number of ways: in our individual journals, in pairs, as a group, and through our multimedia work in our blogs and final projects.  Finally, we seek to Transform: not just the communities we visit (in ways that they welcome/want), but also ourselves, as we learn new capacities, make new friends, and experience the power of true unity with each other and our hosts.

We have held three overnight retreats and two days of book reports to prepare for our trip.  We have gotten to know each other pretty well already so we are really excited to get on with it!  We will travel for about 25.5 hours once we leave San Francisco, going through Seattle and Amsterdam on our way to Moshi, in the foothills of Kilimanjaro.  We will stay in tents on the mountain in the community of Mweka.  Please keep checking the blog and when we get wifi access, we will post text, photos, and videos whenever we can.

Thanks for checking us out already!  More to come . . .