Valerie Female San Diego, CA United States: Share

Blog Posts
Discussions
Events
Groups (2)
Photos
Photo Albums
Videos

Valerie's Apps

Valerie's Friends

View All

Valerie's Groups

Kilimanjaro

171 members
Tanzania

201 members

View All

Valerie's Page

Latest Activity

Ann K left a comment for Valerie

April 29

Valerie left a comment for Megan Long

April 29

Valerie left a comment for Ann K

April 29

Valerie left a comment for Allie Cozzone

April 29

Valerie and Allie Cozzone are now friends

April 28

Valerie left a comment for Kelly Rusnak

April 26

Kelly Rusnak left a comment for Valerie

April 26

Valerie left a comment for Kelly Rusnak

April 25

Profile Information

CCS Volunteer Status:: Enrolled Volunteer

Length of Volunteer Program Stay:: 3-4 weeks

Date I Volunteered or Will Be Volunteering: June 6, 2009

Region/s of Interest: Tanzania (Kilimanjaro)

Volunteer Interests:: Caring for Infants & Children, Teaching Children, Caring for People with Disabilities, Assisting Teachers of Special Education

Occupation:: Speech Language Pathologist

School or University Attended:: Ohio State University

Comment Wall (5 comments)

You need to be a member of CCS Community to add comments!

Join this social network

At 6:26pm on April 29, 2009, Ann K said…: I look forward to meeting you too! I am getting so excited for this trip.

At 2:43pm on April 26, 2009, Kelly Rusnak said…: Hello I am glad You enjoyed the pictures. I am happy to answer questions. You are ok to bring skirts knee length or longer. the shoes that people wore with skirts were a closed in sandal, flip flops(depending on the placement) or mary jane style flats. the best I saw was one girl had mary janes made by crocs (if they get muddy you can run it under water and clean them). Some girls wore sneakers/hike boots. i personally switched from a sporty mary jane to flip flops. shirts at placement shouldn't have writing on it or symbols. I stuck with plain black/ grey/pink/blue/etc. The darker colors are better because you won't see the dirt as easily. I wore a white shirt slip in the mud and was not able to get rid of the mud stain. I also wore button up blouses sometimes at placement to look more professional. it'll prob be good to have at least one or two because ccs will be taking you to arusha to see the rwanda genocide trials (ie you'll be in a court room). at homebase its ok to wear tank tops. i wouldnt wear them around town unless you want to be stared at. short sleeves are fine everywhere. A tip: if you have military camo pants don't bring them. they are frowned upon in TZ. There wasn't anything that i wish i had that I didn't have. I took the hakuna matata approach...no worries...if i didn't have it ...o well. although extra washcloths, towels, or loufas would be good because mine got nasty, and a water bottle cleaner would have been good too but i still survived and managed to clean my bottle without it.
I washed my clothes 3 times myself. They do have a laundry service but it was more expensive than i thought so i decided to save my money and do it on my own. washing your clothes can be time consuming because once you wash you have to line dry and it always rained on my clothes making it even longer to dry. then you have to iron your clothes to kill any bugs and eggs that may be in them (ccs has an iron at homebase). you could do laundry everyday if you wanted to. most people do it around lunchtime. hope this helps. any more questions please ask.

At 3:30pm on April 13, 2009, Theresa Taylor said…: You will have so much fun!!! Tanzania is the best. The Karanga village homebase is so nice and the people are amazing. Good luck! Message me if you have any questions

At 9:51pm on April 4, 2009, Carol White said…: Hi Valerie, I know you will love your experience in Karanga. We found the laptop useful mostly for writing our blog (which we sent to our friends as emails while we were there). I would type up my email on the laptop and download it to a thumb drive. Then, when the single computer in the homebase was free, I'd upload and send. The computer is shared by everyone and has a slow modem connection (and the power went out often) so it was difficult to sit and type on line. Some people went to the internet cafes in Moshi rather than depend on the homebase computer. I also took the laptop to my classroom and used the camera to record the students conversing in English. This was a huge hit with the kids. We also took the laptop to my husband's school to let the teachers there learn about computers (although we had no internet connectivity there). In general the classrooms have no electricity. We charged the laptop in our room. For that you'll need a three-prong adaptor. Assuming your ipod and computer takes 220V, that's all you'll need. We did spend a lot of time learning Swahili and it was worth all the time we spent. A few months before we went, Libby Stanton sent us flashcards. We also got a book/CD called Teach Yourself Swahili. We searched the internet for other useful "teacher" phrases (sit down, stop hitting, be quiet ;-)). While we were there, we had about 5 Swahili lessons which were useful for those who hadn't studied anything ahead of time. Although many people speak some English, it made it more fun to be able to interject some Swahili into the conversation. The Tanzanians are so wonderful and welcoming and they loved to hear us mangle the language. Don't hesitate to ask anything else; I love sharing stories of our trip.

At 11:21pm on December 22, 2008, Elyse Caudill said…: Hey Valerie, I'm going to Kilimanjaro on June 27th. Do you know what Homebase you'll be staying in? I'm at the Karanga homebase, maybe we'll cross paths :)

No comments yet!

Welcome to
CCS Community

Sign Up
or Sign In

CCS Community Tools

Meet or Find: members
Interact: discussions, groups
View or Add: photos, videos
Read: blogs, experiences
Spread the word: invite others

Bookmark this page:

Find CCS Community Members

Example Searches: Ghana, Vassar, "New York", Andrea

Latest Activity

Faye Funk and Grace Laroza are now friends

2 hours ago

Heidi Siefkas-Cassemiro and Jennifer Shipman joined CCS Community

3 hours ago

Daniel commented on Emily Michelle's blog post 'a note on photographs'

Many , many thanks for this blog of yours Emily. Taking photos in another cultural environment does require a lot of sensability, and respect of the individuals which you want in your shot. To often over the years, I have seen volunteers taking ph...

4 hours ago