Two Indigenous youth from Regina are having the experience of a lifetime volunteering in Tanzania.
Every year, the University of Saskatchewan sends two young Indigenous people, who don’t attend the school, to work with a group of nursing students with the Green Hope Organization — an NGO fighting to address poverty, malnutrition, disease and illiteracy for disadvantaged women and children.
Reyes and Hayden help fix broken desks for a Tanzania school. (Submitted by Christel Gee)
When 18-year-old Patience Hayden was asked, soon after her high school graduation, ‘Do you want to go to Africa?’ she said she thought it was a joke.
“But I was like, ‘Of course I do. I’ve always wanted to travel.'”
The opportunity came as a big surprise to 21-year-old Tyler Reyes as well, who had never stepped foot on a plane before embarking to Arusha, Tanzania, this past November.
“When I stepped off the plane I was thinking, ‘I’m in a country I’ve never been before. It looks very different, and the people are very welcoming and very friendly,” Reyes recalled.
Reyes’ positive first impressions have only increased over the past few months, as the duo spend time volunteering at the Green Hope Medical Clinic, orphanages around the city, as well as at local schools.
‘This experience has changed me’
Reyes said, “This experience has changed me by making me more independent, taking interest in learning about different cultures, and also about trying new things.”
Reyes hopes to one day become an emergency medical technician and is taking some time in Arusha to “look in an EMT vehicle and learn a few things.”
Hayden also credited the trip with “expanding [her] world view,” as well as helping her “gain a lot more independence and life skills.”
She’s less sure than Reyes about her future goals, but said the experience of being in Tanzania is making her a better person.
“The values feel very different here,” she said. “People put others before they put themselves and I think that’s really something to see.”
Hayden hopes to bring that value system back to Canada and “spread it as much as I can.”
The pair will return to Regina later this month.