VSO Annual Volunteer Conference

---

Having just finished the Femina workshop, I was to head off to another one - the annual VSO volunteer conference: A three day event for which all VSO volunteers from all parts of Tanzania and the VSO in-country staff come together. While some of the other volunteers had a whole day’s journey to get to the conference, so many of them arrived at least the evening the day before (or like Sandra and Kev before the weekend to inhale some city life), for us Dar vols it was just a half hour drive to reach Beachcomber Hotel on the North Beach. I was quite excited, as there were quite a few people I hadn’t met before - all the vols that arrived before our intake and who weren’t based in Dar. So it was great timing, that we had this event in the first quarter of our placement.
But first of all it was saying hello again to the people I spent my first three weeks with and telling each other how we all have fared since (and lots of questions, if I got my car and how it all had worked out).
Beachcomber Hotel looked alright, nowhere near as stylish as Kunduchi - the rooms are quite garish orange with the furniture in a clashing blue and the hallways were a bit dingy, but classes better than the Econolodge. There was also a large pool and the food tasty, what more can you ask for (after all we’re volunteers and not on a business trip).
The actual conference felt like a strange mixture between a big wedding and a UN meeting - with close to 100 people we filled the large conference room. The wedding analogy was down to the table clothes and curtains.
After the obligatory icebreaker to gently get us to also engage with the people we didn’t know yet, there were group exercises, talks by the country director and the deputy head of DfiD Tanzania (the British development agency) and presentations from vols about their placement. I volunteered to hold one as well. Not to get any brownie points, but as this event was all about networking, you might as well maximise it! I wanted to make the other vols aware of Femina’s publications, most of their organisations received them or could make use of them, if they hadn’t yet, on the other hand we wanted to cooperate with other organisations on various topics, so a fellow VSO could be a good starting point. It went quite okay and I got lots of positive feedback, how people loved our products and how often they are the only things out there (school often lack books, but then they get at least Fema Magazine, which they can use not just to learn about HIV, but other issues as well).
It was really motivating to meet all these people and hear about their varied lives and projects - from the IT teacher at a teacher’s training college, who’s living in a little village and half an hour from the next non-Tanzanian person to the one setting up a project for local women in one of the poorest areas of Zanzibar to farm mud crabs or the doctor and nurse couple at a mission hospital near Lake Victoria. Despite coming from very different walks of life, different ends of the world (there were vols from the UK, the Netherlands, Hungary, Canada, Kenya, Uganda, the Philippines, India), from age 25 to late 60ies, there is something strangely uniting, I felt already at the training weekends back in the UK. Shame some of the people I got on best with, were placed so far away, but this also meant another excuse to hopefully go and visit them at some point!

---