It has been a week since we landed in Dar es Salaam, and Matthew and I are rested, settled and ready to begin our internship! After long and hectic journeys, we arrived in Dar last Monday afternoon. We checked in at our home for the next two months, the Sophia House Hotel and Apartment. Our spacious fifth-floor room, located on the terrace of the hotel, has two bedrooms, a shared bathroom, common space, and a kitchen. The staff at the hotel have been incredibly kind and helpful and made us feel welcome. From helping us get our stove fixed so that we could cook homemade meals, to helping us carry our (very heavy) luggage up five flights of stairs, they have made every effort to make us very comfortable.
On the day after we arrived, we met Dr. John Msumba, our boss for the next two months. We also met Joel and Anicia, two of the four interns from Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology, who will be working with us during this internship! Joel, Anicia and Dr. Msumba helped us carry all the design space supplies (5 suitcases, approximately 250 lb!) all the way from our room to DIT. After a short meeting with Dr. Msumba in his office, we got a tour of the room designated to become the design space. Airy and naturally lit, the seventh-floor room has large windows along one wall and is furnished with tall wooden tables and stools. It is a lovely place to work, and if we let the windows open, a cool breeze fills the room. As I mentioned before, one of our tasks for this internship is to convert this room into a design studio for DIT, one analogous to the OEDK at Rice. Not only will this studio be used by us during the internship, it will also serve as an interdisciplinary, creative, engineering design space for the students of DIT. As soon as we saw the room, I could envision the fully functional design studio. Matthew and I planned to spend the first week of our internship setting up the studio: rearranging the furniture, unpacking the supplies we carried from Rice, and conceptualizing what the space should look like.
The beautiful view from the window of the DIT design studio
We soon learnt that Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were holidays because of Eid-al-Fitr, and our internship would only officially begin on 10th June. We would have five free days to get acclimatized and get over jetlag. Although this prospect seemed exciting at the time, by Friday I was bored and missing work. Luckily, Dr. Msumba invited us to meet him on Saturday, and we began work on the studio. We rearranged all the desks, came up with a schematic for the use of the space, and began setting up one 3D printer. On Sunday, we met with Julia, the new manager of the DIT design space, and spoke to her about our tasks and plans for the internship.
The redesigned design space with the building of a 3D printer in progress
With enough time to rest and get systems in order, I now feel primed to make the most out of this internship. We have a routine set- we walk to DIT in the morning, eat traditional Tanzanian fare for lunch in the DIT canteen with the interns, and buy groceries for dinner on the way home. I already feel so inspired by the people we have met so far. Anicia is one of five girls in her seventy-person mechanical engineering major, Joel has been untiringly teaching us Swahili, and Dr. Msumba’s incredible vision and passion for the design studio and the future of engineering education at DIT is infectious. I am so excited for what the next two months will bring. We’re learning some Swahili, eating our vegetables, meeting new people and learning new things every day!