
{"id":7286,"date":"2009-10-02T09:07:40","date_gmt":"2009-10-02T17:07:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=7286"},"modified":"2009-10-02T09:07:40","modified_gmt":"2009-10-02T17:07:40","slug":"a-taste-of-carrboro-in-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2009\/10\/02\/a-taste-of-carrboro-in-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"A taste of Carrboro in Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Beth Mechum, Staff Writer<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Carrboro and Sakina are similar, and very different. <\/p>\n<p>Sakina is a small village on the outskirts of Arusha, Tanzania. Carrboro is a small town on the outskirts of Chapel Hill.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Children play outside barefoot in the heat and dust of Sakina with makeshift toys often fashioned from forgotten food parts, like a ball made of banana leaves. In Carrboro, kids sink their toes in the earth at Weaver St. Market while their parents look on from tables under shaded trees.<\/p>\n<p>Sakina doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have much wealth, and the people live in ways many people from Carrboro would not likely understand \u00e2\u20ac\u201c outhouses, a steadfast matriarchal society, children learning far too fast the rigors of household labor.<\/p>\n<p>And those in Sakina wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t recognize much of the life in Carrboro \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the bright-yellow school buses taking kids to and from public schools, residents toting yoga mats to studios throughout the town.<\/p>\n<p>While there are similarities, these differences are much more striking. But this summer, Carrboro and Sakina were brought together by an unlikely source \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a student from Ohio. And the bond was further strengthened by a group of women who run for fun.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Team Sakina<\/strong><br \/>\nTeam Sakina is an all-women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s running group sponsored by the Sustain Foundation in Carrboro. <\/p>\n<p>Team Sakina\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s objective is to supply women with the knowledge and skills to become healthier individuals in body, mind and spirit. Team members provide assistance to Sakina by donating their time and fundraising efforts to supporting programs within that community.<\/p>\n<p>To team member Ilona Jaspers, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just another way of saying, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s for fun.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The bottom line about Team Sakina is that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just a group of women who want to exercise together, want to have some fun together and really enjoy each other, and have a support system through each other,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Jaspers said.<\/p>\n<p>The Sustain Foundation\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mission is to create and implement specific sustainable solutions to health, educational and environmental issues by linking global and local community networks. The running group and the foundation are connected at every level, with team members running to improve themselves and the communities Sustain supports.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unique that this group has stayed together for such a long time,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Jaspers said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s empowering and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very motivating when you find women that share similar interests as yourself. I work full time, I have two children, so balancing all of this isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t always easy, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very important to have a support network. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve all become really good friends.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Formerly an avid tennis player, Jaspers said she can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t find enough time in her busy day to get to the courts as often as she would like, but throwing on a pair of running shoes and hitting the road keeps her active.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The intern<\/strong><br \/>\nAnneliese Gegenheimer is a student at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC, where she focuses on social entrepreneurship and how businesses are run in developing countries.<\/p>\n<p>Gegenheimer went to Sakina this summer and stayed until late August as a volunteer with the Sustain Foundation, which sponsors students in a scholars program  so that they can attend secondary school \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a luxury, not a guarantee, in Sakina. <\/p>\n<p>Her job includes teaching members of the Sakina community some basic business skills: how to keep a budget, start a business or manage a program.<br \/>\nGegenheimer is bringing new and different things to Sakina, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s likely she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the one who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s experienced more culture shock.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I was pretty well prepared for it,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I had been in Zanzabar for a month before this; I kind of knew what to expect once I got to Sakina.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>But she hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t previously gotten a sense of day-to-day life \u00e2\u20ac\u201c kitchen work, for example, which is all done outdoors, and bathroom duties, where buckets of water replace spiggots. <\/p>\n<p>But it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the outhouses or the lack of running water for which she was least prepared.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The role of women, I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t used to,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Gegenheimer, said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t expect it; the women do the housework, and the men don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Gegenheimer lived with a family in a compound and was thrilled with how quickly she was taken in. She worked hard at her internship, helping a community find better, more sustainable ways to conduct their business. But they taught her a lot as well.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The most important thing I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve learned is how to relate to people with different knowledge sets and explain a difficult concept to them using what they already know,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Gegenheimer said in an email in August. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think this will be really helpful in everything I do when I come back [to the U.S.] and will really help me be able to manage a diverse group of people while still encouraging collaboration.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p><strong>It comes together<\/strong><br \/>\nIt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not just money Team Sakina raises for the scholars program. Members of the running group have gone above and beyond what was first expected of them.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been sort of an evolution,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Jaspers said.<\/p>\n<p>In the beginning, they had T-shirts made, and the profits went to support the scholars.<\/p>\n<p> \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Over the summertime, it became more of a complete way of helping and supporting the scholars in Sakina, and getting more of a connection with those people over there,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Jaspers said.<\/p>\n<p>Members of the team got the names and information of the scholars and wrote them letters, sent them packages and Geiger distributed them throughout the town.<\/p>\n<p>Geiger is back at school, where her bathroom and kitchen are indoors, and the women are still running, trying to break last season\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s times.<\/p>\n<p>With Gegenheimer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s guidance, Sakina was left with skills in how to run the Sustain Foundation\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s scholar programs, and some lucky kids will be more educated than they ever imagined. <\/p>\n<p>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s safe to say Geiger left Africa with Sakina influences that might never leave her life, and the people of Sakina were left with a taste of Carrboro that will sustain them in a new, beneficial way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Beth Mechum, Staff Writer Carrboro and Sakina are similar, and very different. Sakina is a small village on the outskirts of Arusha, Tanzania. Carrboro is a small town on the outskirts of Chapel Hill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7286"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7287,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7286\/revisions\/7287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}