BECATravels: Sunset on Lake Eyasi

Sunday, June 19, 2016

Sunset on Lake Eyasi

Late in the afternoon, we drove over to the lake for which the town is named. You don’t see the lake from the school, and I don’t believe we were able to see the lake when we were here in 2013. At any rate, the lake is beautiful!

There are quite a few baobab trees in the area next to the lake. In the rainy season, the trees have leaves, but during the dry season, the top of the tree looks like upside-down tree roots sticking up into the air. The diameter of the trunk of the tree is quite large. There are a lot of baobab trees in Tarangire National Park, which is known for its elephants. The reason is that elephants eat the bark of the tree. When they chew it, they get water from the bark. It appears that these same trees are so wide that some families live inside the trunk of the tree during the rainy season. And poachers sometimes conceal themselves inside baobab trees to avoid being caught.

We drove from the Lake Eyasi Lodge, which overlooks the lake from a distance, down toward the lake. The area is very dry, with lots of aloe and cactus plants, in addition to the baobab trees. We made it in time to watch a perfect sunset.

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BECA International Video Project

The BECA International Video Project began in 2001 when Dr. Betsy Blosser and then BECA graduate student Gabriela Martínez applied for a grant jointly offered by the San Francisco State Offices of International Programs and Community Service Learning. The purpose of the grant was to design and offer a service learning course that was international in nature. Blosser and Martínez proposed a class in which students would travel to Cusco, Peru, to produce PSAs for Huchuy Runa, an organization that works with street children in Cusco. Winning that grant led the two to offer a two-course sequence entitled, "Media and Community Service" in which students prepared for the trip during a class in the spring semester and traveled to Peru in June to produce the PSAs.

Since that time, the course has been offered 12 times, and students have traveled to Brazil, El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Tanzania and Thailand, in addition to Peru. The title of the course has changed; it is now, "Electronic Media and Social Justice I & II." And students do two sets of productions: one, for a local, not-for-profit organization in the spring semester, and one for an NGO in the country they have studied in the summer.

In each case, it is important that students remember that they are "in service" to the respective organization. In part, this means that students produce the video(s) the organization wants or needs for its purposes. Students offer their media skills and, if requested, their advice, but the nature of the production is up to the organization. The organizations receive the videos free of charge, with the knowledge that they are receiving student-produced videos.

It is the intent of this project that students become exposed to social justice issues in the local Bay Area, where San Francisco State is located, and to social justice issues in the country to which they travel. In addition, they have the experience of practicing their craft in a low-resourced environment in the Global South. Usually, this is a transformational experience for the BECA students.