Volunteer, Intern and Gap year abroad
Maasai International Challenge Africa, a non-profit based in Tanzania, places volunteers and interns in schools, hospital, and orphanages in Africa, Asia and Latin America. You can even sign up for an adventure safari or teach English to school students.
MICATZ facilitates opportunities for individuals, students, groups and gap-year students. Adventure holidays, wildlife programs, language and cultural experience programs such as Swahili Language Study Abroad are just a few examples of the varied programs available.
Each year we place over 500 people into our programs in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa, Ghana, India, Nepal, Philippines, Malawi, Bolivia, Sri Lanka, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Peru – Cusco, Peru – Lima and Thailand.
FEE: Program fees include: personalized volunteer placement, project donation, language instruction, cultural education, meals, accommodation, and transportation to and from all MICATZ programs. Also included: pre-departure guidance from MICATZ headquarters staff and 24-hour access to in-country staff.
Dates: Flexible dates and durations of stay. Available throughout year, from 4 weeks-3 months+. You pick your start and finish dates.
Cost: Costs vary depending on length of stay. Starts at $500-750usd for 4 weeks including accommodation, food, transfer from the airport, full pre-departure support, local in-country team support and backup, 24-hour emergency support. Programs with MICATZ start on the 3rd and 15th of every month. Program costs tend to range from $200 (1 week) to $3,000(6 months.)
Contact MICATZ HQ via: Tel/Fax: +255272546233
Contact MICATZ Coordinator in Europe via; Tel; +4536987167 or Skype; micatz
Website: www.micatz.org and Email us via; info@micatz.org
Volunteer, Intern and Gap year abroad
Maasai International Challenge Africa, a non-profit based in Tanzania, places volunteers and interns in schools, hospital, and orphanages in Africa, Asia and Latin America. You can even sign up for an adventure safari or teach English to school students.
MICATZ facilitates opportunities for individuals, students, groups and gap-year students. Adventure holidays, wildlife programs, language and cultural experience programs such as Swahili Language Study Abroad are just a few examples of the varied programs available.
Each year we place over 500 people into our programs in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa, Ghana, India, Nepal, Philippines, Malawi, Bolivia, Sri Lanka, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Peru – Cusco, Peru – Lima and Thailand.
FEE: Program fees include: personalized volunteer placement, project donation, language instruction, cultural education, meals, accommodation, and transportation to and from all MICATZ programs. Also included: pre-departure guidance from MICATZ headquarters staff and 24-hour access to in-country staff.
Dates: Flexible dates and durations of stay. Available throughout year, from 4 weeks-3 months+. You pick your start and finish dates.
Cost: Costs vary depending on length of stay. Starts at $500-750usd for 4 weeks including accommodation, food, transfer from the airport, full pre-departure support, local in-country team support and backup, 24-hour emergency support. Programs with MICATZ start on the 3rd and 15th of every month. Program costs tend to range from $200 (1 week) to $3,000(6 months.)
Contact MICATZ HQ via: Tel/Fax: +255272546233
Contact MICATZ Coordinator in Europe via; Tel; +4536987167 or Skype; micatz
Website: www.micatz.org and Email us via; info@micatz.org
Maasai International Challenge Africa, a non-profit organization based in Tanzania, places volunteers on different schools, hospital, and orphanage and also organizes safaris adventure in Africa, Asia and in Latin America.
Maasai International Challenge Africa, a non-profit organization based in Tanzania, places volunteers on different schools, hospital, and orphanage and also organizes safaris adventure in Africa, Asia and in Latin America.
Maasai International Challenge Africa, a non-profit organization based in Tanzania, places volunteers on different schools, hospital, and orphanage and also organizes safaris adventure in Africa, Asia and in Latin America.
Maasai International Challenge Africa, a non-profit organization based in Tanzania, places volunteers on different schools, hospital, and orphanage and also organizes safaris adventure in Africa, Asia and in Latin America.
Greetings,
I'm glad to say that I arrived in Nairobi safely yesterday having left Arusha at 8am.
I am beyond grateful for the experiences I had in Arusha and they have changed me for the better. Although it took a while to adjust to the weather and atmosphere, I eventually got used to it.
The experiences at the orphanage will always stay with me. I was touched by the children’s' spirit since they are still very innocent about their circumstances. I was glad to have chosen to teach the youngest (2-5yr olds) children.
They truly inspired me to work harder in life and not take it for granted. The teachers were very dedicated and they allowed me to improve my work ethic and stay devoted under tough circumstances so I truly pray for them and thank them for their inspiration. I did talk to Faraja about setting clear boundaries between his authority and volunteers so in the future everyone knows what is asked of them and where to draw the line. He has truly inspired me with his work and I will forever thank him for his dedication to the children's welfare and their families. My student's families were very kind and inviting and I felt part of their families since they were very welcoming.
We tried helping the best we could with donations but I hope more people will come through. I will definitely get my peers in touch with MICATZ on volunteer opportunities.
I really enjoyed Christopher's company and he really went out of his way to help me settle and get around. It was understandable that we had to make changes when we moved to Usa although it wasn't easy staying there since it was too far. I'm glad we moved back to Sanawari
since it was much more convenient to get around town from there. I really enjoyed the food so give many thanks to Stephan since he is a very talented chef.
I really enjoyed my stay and hope to visit Tanzania again since I have now learned so much about it. I will be glad to answer any questions you may have so feel free to keep in touch any time. Once again, I am very thankful for everything you have helped us with.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Muyia
Canada.
How to plan your safaris and when to go to Tanzania
There are two ways to plan your safari on the Northern Circuit. You can do it ahead of time, finding a company through guidebooks, recommendations, and the internet, or you can just turn up at Arusha and look around there. Each of these techniques has advantages and drawbacks. Planning ahead makes it more likely that you’ll get bookings at the lodges you want (they fill up during high season), but can be scary, since it involves a certain leap of faith in the company’s honesty and competence.
We had a very limited amount of time for our safari, so we decided to make arrangements before arriving in Arusha. We started by deciding what kind of safari we wanted; we made a list of the parks we wanted to visit; and we decided on staying in lodges rather than tents.
We wanted lodges for two reasons: the more comfortable beds and air conditioning. The beds were fine, but in early August, air conditioning turned out to be both unavailable and unnecessary; from that point of view, camping would have been no problem. Otherwise, the decision rests on your budget and your preference in ambience.
The price difference between the two is about $35 per person per day, $125 in lodges versus $90 camping. The lodges are, for the most part, large, luxury, or semi-luxury hotels, with grand buffet meals in cavernous restaurants and fleets of servants to carry your luggage for you.
The campsites are campsites, with very basic plumbing facilities and no fences around them, so that, in principle, lions can wander into your camp at night. If I had it to do over again and all my travelling companions were up for it, I’d go for camping, which is a much more immersive experience.
Whether you go lodges or camping, food is provided. Vegetarian food is no problem in the lodges (there was once nothing on the buffet, but I asked and they brought me a curry, which was better than anything my carnivorous companions had). Kosher food should be OK too, depending on how strict you are; you can go veggie if you want to be on the safe side, but Tanzania’s a Muslim country, and the Muslim dietary restrictions on meat resemble the Jewish ones. (I’m assuming that the locally available meat is all halal. If anyone knows I’m wrong, please tell me!)
Once we’d decided what we wanted, choosing a safari company turned out to be surprisingly easy. We checked some guide books for listings of companies in the low- to mid-range budget, and checked out their web pages. I emailed the companies with descriptions of what we wanted, and sorted them out based on how they responded. Some never answered or the email bounced, and some offered only set itineraries or tours with larger groups; these we threw out. Some were fully booked (we were doing the planning three weeks before the trip). Only one actually responded to everything I’d asked about in my email and offered complete information on pricing and itineraries. So that was the one for us: MICATZ, which you can contact throughhttp://www.micatz.com we found them to be very professional and reliable on safaris programs and volunteering programs; they answered our e-mails promptly and our questions completely.
Whatever you choose, you’ll absolutely have to have a four-wheel vehicle, and a guide is required to enter Ngorongoro and Serengeti National Parks. Prices may be negotiable, but only up to a point, as there’s a large park entry fee (up to $50 per person per day).
So that’s the practical order of how you choose your safari. But the other thing that matters most, the thing that provides you with the questions to ask your safari company, is the choice of itinerary. There are a number of parks in the area of Arusha, each with a different character. In the course of a five-day safari, we went to Tarangire, Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater, and Lake Manyara; this was a pretty intense travel schedule, as the distances between the parks take a while to cover. Most tour companies will suggest that you do something similar, a sort of tasting menu of the parks, but if you want a more leisurely pace, it’s perfectly possible, and I thought it could be really nice to build in a few longer stopovers, which would allow you to spend one morning looking at the vista in a lodge or several hours watching the same group of animals (lions hunting, for example).
Each park has its own specialty. Tarangire is a plains ecosystem around a permanent river, and is supposed to be good for elephants. The Serengeti is a vast, vast plain teeming with pretty much every kind of wildlife. To get there from Tarangire takes most of the day, as the road passes through Ngorongoro Park, so it’s important to spend two nights in Serengeti if you want to make the trip worthwhile. Ngorongoro Crater is spectacularly beautiful and has one of the densest populations of animals; it’s also the only park in which it’s possible to see rhinoceros (we didn’t, but people do). It’s also the touristiest of the parks; if you’re bothered by seeing other jeeps, make your stay there a shorter one.
Lake Manyara is known for its tree-climbing lions (we didn’t see them there, but we did, surprisingly, in Tarangire) and one of the best bird-watching spots I’ve ever seen. There’s also Arusha National Park, which we did not go to; I’m told that it’s less touristy than most (as proven by the fact that we didn’t go?), which sounds appealing.
By John Schneider