Hi everyone! We are Tangi and Anne-Hélène, a French couple of 29 and 30 years old. For several years, we wanted to discover Tanzania, and more specifically, the region of Arusha and Zanzibar. Tanzania is an attractive country for many tourists who are looking for superb landscapes. Of course, our goal was to discover natural wonders of the world, but without being cut off from the Tanzanians. We wanted to discover Tanzania and Tanzanians. This is how we came up with the idea of doing a Workaway.
What is Workaway?
For those who don't know it, Workaway is an international and online platform that connects people who need support in various fields (agriculture, tourism, education, etc.) with people who want to have a new experience in the field concerned. In exchange of this support, volunteers have food and accommodation. With this Workaway, our goal was also to share moments with a Tanzanian family. We were lucky enough to meet Martha's family, Daniel and Ryan, who welcomed us as if we were family members.
How to organize your Workaway?
Everything started one month before our arrival, at the beginning of August 2022. As a couple, we were looking for a project in Tanzania, with two different profiles. Anne-Hélène works in communications and social media while Tangi was more interested in discovering agricultural projects.
Martha's family has proposed two missions: support her for the online promotion of their tourism agency and organize a crowdfunding for the development of an agricultural project. Her needs suit with what we were looking for, but if you are looking for a Workaway and have other skills to offer Martha and her family, don't limit yourself and talk to them (on the Workaway platform) to know if you could offer them something relevant.
We also chose to contact Martha first because we saw that she had a lot of great feedbacks from other Workawayers, especially about the fact to feel "at home."
After introducing us and our profiles and telling her that we could only stay for ten days, she agreed to welcome us anyway.
How did our Workaway go?
One month after our first exchanges through the Workaway messaging platform, we arrived in Martha, Daniel and Ryan's family. As soon as we arrived, they welcomed us with open arms to make us feel "at home".
On a daily basis, we share meals (breakfast - lunch - dinner) with the whole family. Martha is a great cooker. We enjoy every meal. These moments are also an opportunity to understand how things are going in Tanzania and to share our points of view on a lot of things in all authenticity.
Martha and Daniel also have a son, Ryan. He is an adorable young boy who is always ready to play with us.
During the day, we organize our time as we want. We usually work in the morning and the afternoon was dedicated to visits and chill times. Martha and Daniel are always happy to help us discover the area or to give us good recommendations.
During our stay with Martha and Daniel, we took advantage of their experience as a tourist operator and asked them to organize two days of safari for us: one day in the Tarangire Park and the other one in the Ngorongoro Crater. This experience was wonderful and the two parks were complementary in terms of landscapes and animals. We are glad we followed their recommendations because like everyone else at the beginning, we didn't know which parks to visit.
Also, being in Workaway with them simplified the organization of our safari. We did it with peace of mind because we knew we could trust them.
You should know that in Tanzania, it is almost impossible to organize a safari by yourself. There are several reasons for this: you need to know the infrastructures well, for example to organize meals and nights on safari. It is also preferable to share the costs of the 4x4 entrance fees in each park with other visitors. For these reasons, it is important to be able to rely on an experienced tour operator. This is the case of Martha and Daniel who have been working in the area for several years.
Regarding the accommodation, we live 20 meters from their house in an outbuilding (bedroom and washroom). It's a good balance in order to be able to spend time with the family and to have time for yourself.
Martha and Daniel are very welcoming. The motto of this family could be "sharing is caring". When they organize touristic tours, before to go on safari, they offer the possibility to tourists to be hosted in the outbuilding where we stand. This is a good thing to know if you are a tourist and are looking for accommodation before to go on safari or to Kilimanjaro.
Do we recommend the Workaway with Martha and Daniel?
Yes, 100%. Thanks to them, we were able to discover the real Tanzanian life, far from the lodges where there are only tourists. For ten days, in exchange for working mornings, we shared meals and very good times. We were also able to discover the life in a small Tanzanian village while being close to the city of Arusha by dala-dala (minibuses very used in Tanzania which pass every 2 minutes).
We hope that our support, both for the crowdfunding and for the social media will be useful to them after we leave.
Martha and Daniel welcomed us as family members and are examples of kindness that should inspire us.
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