DMI Field Trips: Cultural Arts Center
Today's blog post is by fourth-year volunteer, Roselyn Hobbs, who writes about her favorite yearly field trip experience.
One of my favorite DMI field trips is our yearly visit to the Cultural Arts Center at Tumaini University Makumira. It’s one of the few trips that we can take all 90 of our students on, and they love it. It’s a 90 minute coaster ride, but it’s an easy journey when the driver has a playlist of Bongo Flava songs and the students sing along!
Students and volunteers on a coaster for a Saturday fieldtrip
This year I was especially excited for the trip because I hadn’t seen the Cultural Arts Center since they completed the construction of an open air concert hall, music building, and dance studio. I was blown away when we got there- they have created such an amazing campus and I hear there is more to come! There was a lot of excitement when we arrived and we were greeted by many CAC members who were eager to get started.
We split into groups and began ion some workshops they had planned for us. The first workshop our group attended was for drumming. We were led to the performance space where more than 30 drums and percussion instruments were laid out for us to explore. Each person grabbed an instrument and then we got down to work. The students were a little nervous but really excited. With some instruction and guidance from the CAC staffing expert drummers, the kids sounded great! When we left our drumming workshop I was thrilled to learn our next stop was the dance studio. We took our shoes off, shuffled into the studio, and met our dance instructors. After a few rounds of a game that got everyone feeling silly and thinking on their toes, we started dancing! One of the best parts of the dance workshop was that there was a percussionist in the room drumming along with us. After all, what’s dancing without music?
After a delicious lunch break, we still had more to explore. We got a tour CAC’s “Maasai Village,” complete with Maasai homes. We learned all about who stays in which house, where the different groups are from, and how each structure is built. Once our village tour was over, we headed to the main music building. In this building, CAC houses the largest collection of traditional Tanzanian instruments in the country. On our tour of the public collection, our guides not only told us about the instruments, they also played every single one! We got to see and hear a zeze, marimba, multiple kalimbas, and many more instruments.
The Cultural Arts Center staff show their instrument collection to DMI students
DMI students on a tour of the Maasai Village structures
After an amazing visit to Makumira, it was time to head home. Exhausted and satisfied from another great field trip, we loaded up the coasters and headed home.