About Africa
Aid & relief logistics in Eastern Africa, 2006
left: my reliable company car in Tanzania, right: in Bukoba, waiting for a ship to go to Mwanza (both North Tanzania)
I first came to Africa in 2006, working for the summer with the aid & relief department of logistics company Kuehne + Nagel, based in Dar es Salaam (Tanzania). Together with my dear colleagues Steve, Ian, Kim and Nicolai, we worked as a subcontractor for United Nations, mostly UNICEF und UNHCR, mainly catering for projects and refugee camps in the neighboring countries of Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, Malawi and Uganda.
Amani Mbigili orphanage
It was also in 2005 that I first met Ursula Lettgen, a German who is active in social aid in the Iringa region in central Tanzania. She has been living there for almost ten years, building up two orphanages who are constructed and run after the idol of SOS Children’s Villages, which I got to know in Bulgaria. Together with Evarist Lyimo, she is doing a great job down there and I’m glad I was able to help some, together with the students’ initiative at my school, called WHU-Studenten helfen e.V.. More information about the orphanage in Iringa can be found here.
Since then, I have been in Africa every year for at least a couple of weeks, showing around German friends and meeting old African ones, accumulating some more knowledge, experience – and street smartness in busy towns like Dar es Salaam or Kampala.
I will also return to Eastern Africa in 2009, working there for three or four months with the German development organization Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit. The project will be about microfinance in Congo’s Maniema region and will also be the topic of my final thesis, with which I’ll finally conclude my studies.
Why Africa?
A lot of romantic phrases have been written about the African continent. None will be found here, not even the obligatory “African proverb“. Instead, a quote from Romeo Dallaire’s book Shaking Hands with the Devil which in turn cites UN bureaucrats on the Rwandan genocide and consequently underlines the moral obligations that we face:
“We will recommend to our government not to intervene as the risks are high and all that is here are humans.”
exhausted but happy, after some weeks in the bush, waiting for the flight back to Dar es Salaam
