Nanci Hartland and LifeTrack Adventures
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Nanci Hartland
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Submersed "in a river of love" is the way Nanci Hartland expresses her feelings for the first time she was welcomed into the community of Chome in Tanzania, Africa. After working with corporate America for 20 years as a trainer for Total Quality Management with her LifeTracks consulting firm, Nanci, a graduate of the University of Maine, with degrees in Psychology and Art, decided to follow her heart and turn her efforts toward helping others to experience Total Quality Life. She accomplishes this by taking small selected groups of people on photo safaris to a remote and pristine village in Tanzania near Mt. Kilimajaro in East Africa where they deliver medical supplies, textbooks, vegetable seeds and hope to approximately 4,000 people of the Pare Tribe.
The first journey to Tanzania and this isolated village took place five years ago and has been repeated each year with the program Nanci has designed growing exponentially. When she first began these tours, Nanci, says that she did not know the depth of the journey that she had begun and was to share with others, bringing two very diverse groups of people together to grow and learn from one another and to become extended family and friends.
Changing the Lives of Those in the Community and Those Who Visit
Since becoming involved with these people of ancient Tanzania, LifeTracks has been able to implement positive change into the community. The "Tree Pals Project" has provided for 350 fruit trees to be planted at schools throughout the area in the last five years. A $30.00 donation provides for a fruit tree and seeds with which to continue the self-sufficiency of the villagers. Each child goes to school with the family hoe and perpetuates the educational curriculum based on agricultural sciences created by Julius Nyere, first President of Tanzania. The children are fed initially from the produce grown; then whatever is left over is sold to raise money for additional supplies for the schools along with desks, chairs, and shutters to keep out the rain.
In 1994, the villagers installed a very simple gravity-fed water system to alleviate the need for the villagers to carry water nine miles up and down the mountain each day. Money was raised by Lifetracks and others to purchase the four and one-half miles of pipe to bring water from a spring located above the village to a faucet located at one of the schools.
Estimated by American engineers to cost nearly $2 million and take two years to build, the construction of the pipeline was taken on by the villagers themselves. Walking in a single line, carrying the 300-foot sections of pipe over their heads, followed by those with connectors and glue, the villagers completed the installation of the pipeline in one day. However, in order to reach the infirmary and provide water for the rest of the community an additional four miles of pipe is needed. And clean water is still a problem. In 1999, Nanci found a ceramic siphon water filter that cleans and purifies water to the tiniest micron known to humans. The size of a cell phone, the filters are being offered to LifeTracks at $8.00 each, below the cost of manufacturing them. If each family in the village could have a water filter, the spread of cholera, yellow fever and malaria would be greatly reduced.
The infirmary itself, constructed 35 years ago by the government which provided no plans to maintain it, had over 100 broken window panes which allowed wasps to come in and build nests in the ceiling above the treatment tables, the two beds used for labor and the waiting room. In 1996, LifeTracks was able to provide 100 panes of plexi-glass which the villagers installed. Clean new curtains, blankets, sheets and small pillows along with some medical supplies were also provided.
While the infirmary houses a small apartment size kerosene refrigerator which holds a few medicines, and which allows some of the children to be immunized, the most pressing need is for prenatal and maternal health care. The infant mortality rate in Tanzania is 102 per 1000 births. There is also critical need for more immunizations, anti-biotics, and a microscope to allow the Nurse, who heads up the infirmary, to look at blood samples.
ANCIENT VILLAGE PROVIDES BACKDROP FOR EXPLORATION OF WHO WE ARE TODAY
Delicately balanced on the edge of extinction as we rush headlong into the new millennium, the people of Africa, like others of Third World Countries, are an integral part of the eco-system. However, animals, plants and people are seldom considered together in the planning of their mutual future as the modern world intent on industrialization and growing economies seems intent more on "paving over paradise" than in preserving it. Sensing a need for intervention in this movement which frequently exploits people and severely disrupts the balance of ecosystems, Nanci made the decision to bring people together from both worlds to explore meaningful relationships and implement conservation measures using ecotravel coupled with education and fun.
Entitling these ecotravel tours, "vacations with a conscience" participants also become involved in The Global Leaders Program: LEADERSHIP AND PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. The journey to Chome, Tanzania offers an opportunity to explore the concepts of Leadership and Personal Responsibility in unusual settings, away from one’s everyday life. Here in a remote 600 year old self-contained, sustainable community where people still carry water 9 miles each way for cooking and cleaning, new perspectives are gained and we have a chance to explore how our lifestyles impact those of Third World Countries and millions of people.
Surrounded by beautiful faces and the colorful dress of new friends, open spaces and abundant wildlife; using interactive group activities such as tree planting, hiking, cooking building and journal writing, the group explores what it is to be a leader among leaders today and in the future. This setting provides the opportunity to ask Tribal Elders how they make decisions for their village in the face of the rapidly changing environment of today. Faced with the fact that by the Year 2008, with emerging satellite communications technology, even the most remote villages like this one in Chome, will become linked with the outside world and forever changed as the seductive modern life as Hollywood presents it, enters their vision. Yet it would take three worlds the size of Earth to support all of the people if all live as we do in the United States and other industrialized countries. How to persuade emerging Third World Countries to retain their self-supporting sustainable life-styles as ones of higher value than that of the consumer-oriented society is the question of the day, yet one we must surely deal with if we are to survive as the human race and the population explodes beyond six billion persons.
As the group continues on safari into the sacred lands of the Serengeti, sitting around a campfire amid the sounds of roaring lions, laughing hyenas, shuffling elephants, crickets and birds, eating bountiful gourmet meals, prepared by native chefs who accompany the safari, the group continues individually to explore their own personal needs and behaviors, enabling each one to choose their own definition of leadership and personal responsibility. Encouraged by Nanci to contemplate and answer Buckminster Fullers’ timeless question: "If the success or failure of this planet and of my species, depends on ‘Who I am, and What I do’, then who am I going to be and what am I going to do? this journey into self while amid this setting in a timeless world, provides the opportunity for lifestyle changes and a deeper commitment to making a difference.
Included in the course is a copy of Nanci’s book: "It’s a Jungle Out There: 101 Questions to Ask of Your Life". A deep jounaling experience it leads one to ask hard questions. "Is my life working?" "Am I doing what I want to do with my resources, talent, and time?" "What are my challenges?" "My sweet rewards?" "Am I just living my life or designing my future?" "What do I want the future of the world to look like?"
"How can I make a difference?"
TURTLE ISLAND INSTITUTE JOINS WITH LIFETRACKS TO PROVIDE FOR A SUSTAINBLE FUTURE
Recently, LifeTracks founder, Nanci Hartland, and Turtle Island Institute, founder, Marguerite Hampton met to explore possibilities in associating together as the two organizations missions closely paralleled one another and pieces of the puzzle associated with how to grow fell into place.
The Turtle Island Institute, a virtual university designed to bring information/education to indigenous communities via the Internet and through establishing satellite campuses in outlying regions in the form of ecolodges which would also serve not only as places of lodging for the ecotraveler but as community meeting centers where villagers could come together to plan for and implement regional conservation programs, was looking for a means to identify indigenous communities which wanted to participate in ecotravel development as a means for economic development and through which to develop regional conservation programs.
Nanci had for some time been searching out indigenous communities internationally which were demographically right for participation in the LifeTracks program. It didn’t take long for these two visionaries to realize that their programs were complementary and working in unison could serve to further the goals of each. LifeTracks, having already developed one model program in Tanzania was already identifying other communities internationally which would serve as ecotravel destinations for participants in LifeTracks programs.
Turtle Island Institute had begun to assemble department chairpersons for the Institute and was geared to take on the work of designing the educational programs which would become a part of each communities development phase and serve to lure ecotravelers as each community/satellite campus would offer a unique interpretive and educational experience for the ecotraveler. LifeTracks was already to help villagers in Tanzania develop an ecotravel lodge in their community and the Turtle Island Institute had assembled both information and consultants knowledgeable in developing responsible ecotravel lodges in Third World Countries.
Turtle Island Institute was preparing to launch its web-based Archive1, "Kokopelli Spirit" with which to provide ecotourism news to both the ecotraveler and the indigenous community, and is as well exploring the possibilities of establishing a distance learning network along with HispanicVista.com an already well established online Archive1.
So the time seemed opportune for the two organizations to join together in a joint-venture to promote ecotravel adventures to remote villages based on the LifeTracks program and that of the Turtle Island Institute.
However, to make these programs truly successful we need your help. For further information on how to take a ecotravel photo safari, make a donation, or help in other ways, contact: Nanci Hartland
For further information on how to become involved with the Turtle Island Institute, either as an educator or helping with administration or satellite campus development, contact: Marguerite Hampton