Why am I here anyway? An intro to the Same Polytechnic College

Many years ago, I met Father Setonga at a church in Los Angeles. He was giving a talk and trying to raise funds for a mission. Once he said he was from Tanzania I couldn't wait to talk to him to practice my Kiswahili... That opportunity doesn't come around every day. I told him I was an architect and he instantly wanted to introduce me to David Lambert, a colleague of his who was a Structural Engineer at Arup.  The two of them had met in Kenya and were collaborating to develop a master plan for a technical college in Same, Tanzania (pronounced SAH-may). 

Same is in the outlined area between Tanga and Arusha

The Same Polytechnic College was meant to solve a problem in Same: the lack of options for post secondary education.  Currently students either leave the region for university (abroad or domestic) and rarely return, or they stay and do not pursue any further education.  A school that provides education in fields that will directly impact and improve the lives of the people in Same will also become a partnership with community spaces and events: a market, a soccer field, resources for the community.  

David had enlisted architecture and architectural engineering students from Cal Poly SLO (his alma mater) to help with the master plan, and the design blossomed into a very thorough master plan.  This was difficult for the students to envision, as before I travelled to Tanzania I had absolutely no idea what the culture, landscape, infrastructure, or resources were, so I think it was helpful to have David and me there to help them understand the intangibles and realities that were not easily communicated through online research and literature. Kevin Dong and Tom Fowler, professors at Cal Poly, have been instrumental in this effort.

Kevin, Tom, me, Nick Long, and David back in 2014

There were a few key concepts we had to drive home with our master plan.  Natural ventilation was a big one. Social and gathering spaces. Seismic design and vernacular. Water.  It was a fun project and we ended up with a great master plan on a sloping site on the Pare Mountains...

Our original site overlooking Same

Until 2014, when we learned that the land we thought was ours for the project was built upon; the president's bodyguard built a house on the land. So for political reasons, we were forced to relocate our project. The good news, we were able to get more land. The bad news, all of the gravity fed water systems throughout the site were now moot because the new site was flat. It was farther out of town.  We had little to no information about groundwater depth for wells. But TIA (This is Africa), and we had to make do. 

The bodyguards house has the blue roof.

So we travelled to Same back in 2014 to do some research on the sites and check out the new site.  We met with the planning department. We got a better grasp on the new location.  We revised the master plan.  We embraced it.  And then that site fell through as well.  Fast forward to our current site. It is in a similar location as site #2, a 100 acre site owned by Mr. Shegheri, purchased last year for $25,000. But of course, we still do not have our site property line fully figured out.  There is a discrepancy between the approved town plan, the survey, and our field verification.  That was a big to-do item for this trip and visit.  Also, some students came with us for this trip to work on the project. 

To weave the Same world with my Dar Es Salaam world, on this trip I invited Richard Besha, a dear friend who I met back in 2005, to join us in Same.  He is an architect and professor at Ardhi University, where I studied on my first trip to Tz. The architecture community here is a tight knit one, so we hope that this collaboration will help as well with our connections to Tanzania, and Same.

Our current site is adjacent to the Same airstrip which are the 2 perpendicular roads on the right side of the photo.

Local residents

Hiking up an adjacent mountain to see our very flat site.

So here is a video showing what we are all about https://vimeo.com/221822028, and how we have gotten this far.  It's been a slow moving process, but one that is receiving a lot of good feedback and interest.  Our next hurdle is to start building, and we have set up the master plan considering the phases we will need to use in order to build the school. We think the cost of phase 1 will be about $200,000 to $300,000 and we will be fundraising over the upcoming months.  Phase 1 is meant to include buildings required to build the school of Building Construction, so that we can use those resources to develop further at the college.  The remaining schools in the College are Agriculture, Hospitality and Tourism, Business, and Automotive Technology.  We have looked at precedent schools including Ardhi University in Dar Es Salaam, Arusha Technical College, Cal Poly, and others. It is so exciting to be a part of it and to share it through my journeys back to one of my favorite places on the planet.

Thanks for reading!