She got over her culture shock and helped bring solar power to Tanzania

Erin Burba acknowledges that she initially felt anxious about her first global co-op, working for a company that brings solar power to Tanzania, a country where 70 percent of the population has no electricity.

In Arusha, the gateway city to Mount Kilimanjaro and Tanzania’s safari destinations, Burba encountered stark differences from daily life in the United States. Her evening commute home involved walking up a dirt road accompanied by a herd of cows and goats. She found it disconcerting when bystanders would call out “mzungu”—an East African term for white tourists. Negotiating prices for taxis and groceries was unfamiliar to someone who had grown up in Kentucky and studied in Boston, even as she picked up the language Kiswahili and could stand her ground better.