From the Classroom to Tanzania: IS Student Jack Baron Reflects on His International Studies Field School Experience

Written by Jack Baron

Throughout my life, the prospect of visiting distant lands was impossible to reconcile financially, which meant that I had spent nearly my entire life within the confines of the Lower Mainland. This changed with my acceptance into the Tanzania Field School: African Politics, Climate Change, and Development. Suddenly, I had the opportunity to see and apply what I’d learned in my International Studies classes without pausing my academic progress. It would prove to be an incredibly useful experience as both a scholar of international studies and a global citizen, showing how my careless decisions as a Canadian could reverberate all the way to places like Tanzania. During my time there, I visited three uniquely different cities. The people in all three displayed the same hope and underlying desire for change, which I was able to observe, research, and even participate in at times.

The first city I visited was Dar es Salaam—my personal favourite on the trip—a city of over 8 million people with lives and careers that often went on regardless of entitled tourists. Within Dar, we were able to visit several organizations, most of which were cooperatives working towards social change in one way or another. The first cooperative we visited was UWAWAMA, a spectacular organization made up entirely of women advocating for the rights of women and their protection from exploitation. This organization hosted every single one of our lectures in Dar and provided us with delicious food daily, creating a safe and familiar environment for 18 students far from home. Beyond UWAWAMA, we were privileged to experience several other organizations including a bus drivers cooperative, UMAMADARMS, a waste pickers collective, MTAWADA, and Haki Ardhi, a land rights organization. Each organization taught us about their struggles and successes often against conditions brought about by neoliberalism and the unequal world we live in. UWAWAMA contributes massively to community service and education projects, UMAMADARMS would purchase buses for the use of their members, and MTAWADA would help make waste pickers far more 7 International Studies 2026 Tanzania Field School Report protected and even respected in their line of work.

In the next city of Arusha, we had more time and opportunities to make personal connections with organizations and people related to our research. Almost every day, we had a new opportunity to explore and learn, not just on the spectacular Aga Khan University campus where we were hosted, but beyond in Arusha and the surrounding area. From a Maasai elder to an Australian coffee farmer, with such a diverse group of students, the learning opportunities were endless. My own research topic related to the commodification of Maasai culture, which I learned about in our group discussions at Ngorongoro National Park with Maasai elder Alais Morindat, and through my many visits to the Maasai Market of Curios and Crafts. With these visits and an additional visit to Arusha National Park, we were able to witness the effects of fortress conservationism, a practice where states expel residents of areas with natural beauty so they can be sold to tourists and keep conservationists happy. This method was grounded in colonial concepts of conservationism.