Dar es Salaam is located on the coast of Tanzania in East Africa. I have been wanting to go there since holding my first IT Manager Institute in 2003. You see, one of the students in that very first class was from Dar.
Edward (Ted) Makwaia flew all the way to Nashville, Tennessee to attend my first Institute program. So did Kenneth Wakati who attended class #4 in 2004. It was Kenneth who worked for several years to bring the Institute to Tanzania so his Tanzania Revenue Authority management team could benefit from the program.
Tanzania was much like I thought it would be. The people are friendly, hospitable, polite, and warm, , , they made me feel very welcome. The weather is also very warm. By 7:30am it is already in the high 70’s or around 25 Celsius. The sun is bright and warms you up quickly. Not bad when it is 20 degrees or -6 Celsius in my home.
I stayed at the Sea Cliff Hotel sitting on the edge of the Indian Ocean. Breakfast was a special event every morning, , , it’s always one of my favorite meals when I travel.
One of the views from the Sea Cliff Hotel
I enjoyed this class and found everyone to be very attentive and focused, , , pretty serious you might say, , , but aren’t most people in IT? To say they fit the personality type of an IT employee is putting it mildly. When I covered the personality traits of typical IT employees on the first day, you could see many in the room were recognizing it in themselves and others.
IT Manager Institute #43 – Dar es Salaam, Tanzania – December 2010
Here are a few more photos as we panned around the classroom and asked them to give us a wave.
It was a fun class and I’ll always have fond memories of my first trip to Tanzania. This makes my 3rd trip to Africa this year having delivered Institute classes in Lagos, Nigeria and Johannesburg, South Africa earlier in the year.
I always think I’ll make several ITLever posts while on these trips, but the days simply rush by when I teach all day, , , and the old man of the sea is pretty tired when he gets back to the hotel at the end of the day.
This trip was a bit longer than planned as you will learn in my next post.
ITLever™ 