New book recounts service-learning trip to Tanzania

Students, staff and faculty at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar (WCM-Q) worked together to produce and publish a book titled ‘A Student Doctor’s Guide to Tanzania’ after a service-learning trip to the east African nation.

The 134-page book features a wealth of photographs of Tanzania’s people, landscapes, and wildlife, plus chapters written by students recounting their experiences of the ten-day trip and discussing the country’s culture, history, and healthcare system.

The editor and photographer of the book is WCM-Q’s Dr. Dietrich Büsselberg, associate dean for admissions and professor of physiology and biophysics. During the trip, which was sponsored by WCM-Q’s Division of Student Affairs, the students provided basic health checks for local people, visited an orphanage, attended lessons at a primary school, met with members of the Maasai tribe at a cultural village, and learned traditional batik arts and crafts.

The book recounts the group’s visits to Tarangire National Park, Arusha National Park and the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, home of the famed Ngorongoro Crater, where they had the chance to view spectacular landscapes and wildlife, including elephants, zebra, lions, giraffes, cheetah, baboons, rhinoceros, wildebeest, antelopes, and many other creatures.

Dr. Büsselberg said: “Tanzania is a place of outstanding natural beauty with a vibrant and distinctive culture and fantastically welcoming people. This book shows the beauty of the country, but also provides useful information about the challenges involved in delivering healthcare in Tanzania for student doctors who are interested in visiting on a service-learning trip.”

The book was published and printed in Doha and is hosted online on Hamad Bin Khalifa University Press’ academic platform, QScience.com, an open access, peer-reviewed, online publishing platform that offers a unique and collaborative research environment for academics and scientists in Qatar and the rest of the world. The co-editor for text of the book was Christine Gaskell, senior teaching specialist at WCM-Q, and the graphic design was by Benjamin Gaskell.