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Vanakkam, minna-san!

This means “Hello, everyone!”  Actually, that’s a combination of Tamil, a language spoken here in India, as well as Japanese, both of which I (sort of) speak.  My name is Brendan Nadeau, a junior political science major at Gustavus Adolphus college.  This week, the SPJD group was in Andhra Pradesh, near Zaheerabad, Medak district.  Earlier, we were in [...]

A Week in Orissa

Namaste! This past week we began our third course, “Environment Ecology and Livelihood,” with a morning flight and a 4-hour jeep ride to our destination in Orissa, a state on India’s east coast. We stayed with an NGO called WIDA whose mission is to aid in the development of the surrounding villages. They welcomed [...]

Cork, Cork, and All Hallows Eve

The last two weekends I’ve spend in Cork.  Which is a lively city about two and half hours away from Ballyvaughan.  The first weekend Kathren and me visited with IFSA for the Guinness Jazz Festival.  There was a ton of music, and people.  We stayed in a very nice hotel near one of the two [...]

Got Water?

In the land of 10,000 lakes, we tend to take water for granted. We swim in it in the summer, it always comes out of the faucet and we water our lawns with it in the middle of the day. In Tanzania things are a little different. Water is a commodity. In a developed nation with [...]

Um, what happened this week?

Wow, So I am straining my brain trying to remember what happened the week that I am supposed to write about.  We are now all back from our mid-semester breaks, I think everyone had a wonderful time (I know that I did).  But anyway I am supposed to write about the week before we left [...]

And for everything else, there’s $10

The prices of food and other commodities in Tanzania continues to astound me. The other day I bought five tomatoes, two cucumbers and an eggplant for 38¢. On top of that, the quality of the vegetables is much better and fresher than any you would find in the states. Sending a text message will cost [...]

A lesson for Kermit the frog

This year I will dare to be green.  I vow to reduce my energy consumption, conserve water and eat locally.  A year ago, I had to drive twenty minutes to get to school and back home, at least five times a week.  Now because I have vowed to go green, I will walk.  It takes 30 [...]

Partly Cloudy With a Chance of Rain

The weather here is annoyingly unpredictable.  The mornings when you wake up to a clear blue sky always seem to be the ones that end in a shower, and the days that start off gloomy, end up cheerfully sunny.  Yesterday, I awoke to a clear sky.  By nine, it was dark and dreary.  It cleared [...]

Can you hear me now?

One thing I’ve noticed here is the surprising regularity of cell phones.  In a developing nation one thing you would not expect to see is phones.  But they are everywhere here.  At the college most people seem to have them as do many in the city.  And, as I’ve been told, the coverage is very [...]

Close Enough

Tanzania is the land of approximation.  The lifestyles, products and mindsets of Tanzania are all very approximate.  What I mean is Tanzania proscribes a different set of ideals and protocol to its people and products. For example, if you happen down to the lumber store in Tanzania you’re bound to find irregular boards and sheets of [...]


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