We ended our visit to Dar es Salaam and took a group photo with the group that hosted us including Tanzanian Ambassador to the UN, Daudi Mwakawago (left), the Dean of the Dental School, Dr. Kikwili (center with yellow shirt) and several other members of the Health Sciences faculty.

This is on of the new dental chairs and cubicle with equipment donated to the Dental School by various philanthropic groups -- all facilitated by Miracle Corners of the World.

How true! This is a photo of a small shop in Dar es Salaam.

Top photo: Tanzanian Ambassador to the UN, Daudi Mwakawago (left) and Dental School Dean Kikwili. Bottom photo: We were hosted by the Ambassador Mwakawago and his wife at their home in Dar es Salaam. Shown here are their son and his wife with their daughter and triplets. They were all so gracious and we had a lot of fun. Ambassador Mwakawago was with us a lot during this trip since he is eager to see that efforts to fortify the Dental School and many other parts of the Health Sciences Campus are successful.

Lisa and Dr. David Ngassapa, Deputy Vice Chancellor of Muhimbili University Health and Allied Sciences. Dr. Ngassapa is said to be the fellow who "makes things happen" here so it was important that we introduced ourselves to let him know that RC and LC also make things happen. He was very gracious and enthusiastic about our mission. Think we can make things happen working together? Just watch us!

Brainstorming how to help bring much-needed resources to the Tanzanian Health Sciences Campus

While our primary mission is to figure out a way to implement a "train the trainers" program with Temple's Kornberg School of Dentistry faculty training the Dar es Salaam faculty, we are exploring other avenues of help. Surely, Temple can do more to help the students here. Books are scarce due to their high, sometimes prohibitive costs to students so why not launch a used dental and medical books for Tanzania program? Temple students are good citizens and global advocates so we are confident that with the help of Miracle Corners of the World we can implement this program after we return.

Lisa and Dr. Marion Bergman from Miracle Corners of the World based in New York. Miracle Corners of the World is an NGO and has helped build a new teaching facility for the Dar es Salaam School of Dentistry. We will be touring that facility tomorrow. Dr. Bergman is helping to host us as we visit Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences.

One of the labs at the medical school.

Housing for Students

Not the Ritz but student housing is available right on campus and for nearly all of the students.

Here is a photo of the School of Dentistry. It's also a clinic and they see LOTS of patients each day. The dental school admits about 30-40 students each year.

Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS), established in 1991, includes Schools of Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Nursing, Midwifery, Medical Laboratory Sciences in Microbiology and Immunology (YES! -- editorial by RC), and 7 other degree-granting entities. It evolved as a University from the Dar es Salaam School of Medicine established in 1963. The MUCHS web site can be found at www. muhas.ac.tz.

Shown in the photo below are Dr. Emil Kikwilu, Dean of the School of Dentistry (right of RC), Dr. Muhsin Aboud, Dean of the School of Medicine (left of RC), and several members of the MUHAS faculty. We gave each of them a Temple paperweight as a gift.

Visiting the Muhimbili School of Dentistry in Dar es Salaam

We arrived in Dar es Salaam last evening after the 30+ hour trip. We had breakfast with Dr. Bergman. As noted in the screen above, this photograph includes the Deans of the School of Dentistry and Medicine.

Why are we traveling to Africa?

During this trip, we will be combining business with pleasure crossing the African continent as we visit three countries. Our Temple University-related mission is to cultivate an emerging partnership with the Tanzanian School of Dentistry to develop a new training paradigm that will enable Temple faculty at the Kornberg School of Dentistry to train the trainers" in Dar es Salaam. Similarly, the goal of our visit to Cairo, Egypt, is to initiate a dialogue regarding joint research and student education opportunities between Temple's School of Medicine and a new private School of Medicine in Cairo. In Cairo, we will sign a collaborative agreement between Temple University School of Pharmacy, College of Engineering, the Kornberg School of Dentistry and their counterpart colleges at the Future University in Egypt. This will establish the initital phase of the collaboration and we hope to extend this to other mutual schools and colleges. These two legs of the journey are really bookends. We travel to Ghana between our trips to Tanzania and Egypt and will spend about two weeks volunteering approximately 100 miles east of Accra to help establish a new medical school for Ghana that will educationally allign allopathic and traditional medicine.

THIS is Africa! Photo taken by Richard in 2006 when we visited the Serengeti Plain in Tanzania.

Hope it doesn't come down to this for me on this trip to Tanzania. The last time I visited, I was a magnet for Tsetse flies. Even being covered-up this way didn't keep them from finding me. Bug spray anyone?

One week before we leave...

We still haven't received our passports from the Visa office. Hopefully, they will arrive with the Visas before we depart on July 20th. First stop, Tanzania, followed by Ghana and finally Egypt. We are very excited about our itinerary -- especially our volunteer work in Ghana organized by Village Volunteers.