Photo courtesy Dustin Long
JANE LEE
News Editor
Tanzania is one of the poorest countries in the world. The average life span of the population barely exceeds 50 years. The death rate stands at an unimaginable number, as does the number representing those suffering from AIDS. Yet for 2007 Pepperdine graduate Dustin Long, this Eastern Africa country is what he calls his “home away from home.”
It’s a home that’s roughly twice the size of his other home, the state of California. It’s a home that’s not defined by monetary or material gain, but simply by community and happiness. And, with the help of three friends, it’s a home where Long is trying to make a difference in the lives of people who know Tanzania as their one and only home.
This past summer, Long and fellow Seaver graduates Paul Clark, Brent Schackmann and Kevin Mills made the 10,000-mile journey to Tanzania to make their own mark on the AIDS effort.
“This was my third time to Tanzania,” Long said. “I wanted to do something other than just be there as a tourist, and I had always been interested in AIDS work.”
Long, Clark, Schackmann and Mills were anything but tourists during their five-week stay, a time period in which they worked to set up a text messaging system to allow the Tanzanian community to relay questions about HIV and AIDS to the United States.
“Finding information about AIDS is a basic need, but it’s just not met,” Long said. “People aren’t willing to talk about it openly. There are hotlines and clinics, but people don’t use them because they are afraid of talking about it.”
Text messaging, however, allows for quiet and anonymous concerns to be expressed. Most Americans relate text messaging with acronyms such as BFF and LOL, but the group’s hope is that it can serve the African community as an information tool for those surrounded by more serious acronyms — HIV and AIDS.
“People can get basic, confidential information this way,” Long said. “You know it’s going straight out of the country rather than somewhere in Tanzania, where people can easily get information about you.”
The software devised by the group is hosted on a Web site that can receive messages from more than 180 countries. If someone in Tanzania has a question about AIDS, their text message goes to a Swahili translator before making its way to a student volunteer, who uses a question and answer database to respond and then send it back.
“If the translation was working and a student volunteer was online when the message was sent and all goes right, that text could go from anywhere in Tanzania to the U.S. and back with an answer in three minutes,” Long said.
While the program’s carrier service is active, Long said he is in search of a host site to get it officially up and running. At the moment, he is sending the software to Acting on AIDS clubs at different universities in hopes one can begin the service.
“The program is not in effect right now,” Long said. “We didn’t do full-blown advertising while we were in Africa because we didn’t want people thinking they could text right away.”
The start of an adventure
Beginning such a service, however, did not happen with the wave of a magic wand. The work of all four men, each helping the cause in varied roles, was required to make their goal a reality.
During their senior year, Long’s vision of the project sparked interest in Clark and Schackmann, who both traveled with Long during their sophomore year abroad.
“Dustin knew I was interested in service with AIDS, so he came to me and asked if I would be interested in going, and of course I said yes,” Schackmann said.
The three received full funding from Pepperdine for the trip during the final days of the spring semester, around the same time Mills “caught their bug of how excited they were.”
“Dustin was my roommate junior and senior year so I always heard him talking about it, and I didn’t know my summer plans,” Mills said. “I wanted to do something worthwhile but kind of adventuresome before I started a full-time job, so it just worked out.
“I didn’t get the same funding, but I got the same satisfaction.”
The adventure, which started in the beginning of June, involved a never-ending task of brainstorming, interaction with the villages and several sleepless nights for Clark.
“[Long, Schackmann and Mills] would go out during the day to get feedback from the communities, and I would take what they got and program it all night,” Clark said. “It was really satisfying getting the feedback and finding out in what ways we were capable of helping them and encouraging them.”
Mills said such feedback included what kind of questions the Tanzanian people would be interested in asking, the percentage of people who own cell phones and make use of text messaging, and any other ideas that hadn’t been thought about. Much of this information helped them create the question-and-answer database for the Web site that hosts the service.
“We made trips out to smaller villages to make contacts with more people to connect with them and get an idea of how the project would help them,” Schackmann said. “On a large scale, people were incredibly positive, and usually they asked for the number to send text messages right away.
“It wasn’t up and running, but you could just see the potential for help, and you sensed that through communication with them.”
While Schackmann and Mills were largely responsible for forming the Q&A database, Long also journeyed into the villages on a daily basis to do other surveys that involved information about people feeling comfortable with the text messaging service and if they felt they would use it.
“Their main concern was that it’s not accessible to all because everyone doesn’t have cell phones,” Long said. “That’s an understandable concern, so it was good to get as much feedback as possible.”
When he wasn’t interviewing and getting feedback from people, Mills used his “spare time” to become involved with TanEDU, a nonprofit Tanzanian education foundation.
“The foundation features the top students in Tanzania who are really smart and motivated, but they might just not have the money to afford a top U.S. education,” he said. “So I put on a few lessons for them, whether it was talking about university research techniques or showing them how Americans write papers.”
‘I was pinching myself … ’
Such opportunities made the trip a treasured experience for all four of them, even if near-death experiences that involved sea snakes, motorcycles and fire accompanied their stay. A trip to Zanzibar and a journey up Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest free-standing mountain in the world, completed their surreal experience.
“A lot of different elements made it memorable,” Long said. “The work, in itself, was rewarding, but the most memorable moment for me came when the guys and two of my Tanzania friends went to Zanzibar.”
It was there where Long and company set up a bonfire on the beaches of the Indian Ocean, in which they swam in during the early hours of the morning.
“Kids from the village came out, and we stayed up until two or three in the morning just talking about life,” Long said. “The stars were out like you’ve never seen them before, and we were all just honest and able to express our feelings. Not everyone spoke English, but it didn’t even matter.”
Mills felt the same sense of satisfaction when three of them went into a remote village, where “everyone came out when they heard that American college students had come to see them.”
“We gave them an HIV-AIDS presentation, and even the little kids were sitting there attentively,” he said. “The chairman of their village, this elderly man, was even sitting on the ground just so we could have chairs. They just put us at this high place and treated us so well when we didn’t really feel worthy.”
At the end of the day, though, Mills and the two others found a way to thank the community.
“We pulled all the money we had and gave it to them,” he said. “For us it wasn’t much because it came out to about 40 U.S. dollars, but to them they had been saving in their village bank for over a year and had gotten around 20 or 30 U.S. dollars, so we had doubled that with just our pocket change.”
Mills said it was incredible to see how such a small token of their time, effort and money equaled something so meaningful to others.
“Just to see their faces, it was as if they had won the lottery,” he said. “I was pinching myself thinking of how I’m in this African village being treated like honored guests and actually helping people.”
Surreal moments became everyday occurrences for the bunch, who said they experienced the biggest thrill when reaching the summit at Kilimanjaro.
“It was the most difficult and rewarding thing I’ve ever done in my life,” said Clark, who carried a cake in his backpack during the five-day trek to have for Mills on his birthday when they reached the top.
Four’s company
All agreed, though, that the climb, the work and every other moment of the trip would not have been the same without the company surrounding them.
“Having that core group of friends and being able to share that experience with them was awesome,” Long said. “It was also great being able to bring my American life and friends to my Tanzanian friends.”
Schackmann shared the same sentiments as his travel companion.
“I honestly wouldn’t trade the experience for anything,” he said. “Those guys are all phenomenal people, and I can’t even begin to describe how much that time with them has impacted me personally.”
While old friends made the trip enjoyable, new friends enriched it even more.
“I loved playing with the kids in the village,” Clark said. “They were so open and loving. It’s like you’re their best friend the moment you meet them.”
In the process of making a difference in the Tanzanian communities, the four men also found themselves being impacted by those they were helping.
“We were recognized as American white kids,” Clark said. “I was shocked to be in a place surrounded by people with dark skin who have no consciousness of there ever being a civil rights struggle. It was refreshing.”
The working world awaited the four upon their return, but getting the SMS system running is still a top priority for Long, who is also in the process of applying to more than two dozen medical schools.
And while the other three are working in the Southern California area, all can see themselves someday returning to the villages of Tanzania.
After all, there’s no place like home.
10-05-2007