I’d like to share recent social media posts by my colleagues/past students/friends — their perspectives on transcontinental collaboration are unique and valuable! Thanks to Mia Dukuly, Violet Maufuwe, Tarrah Beebee, and Shinya Takehara for taking the time to reflect, document, and publicly share your experiences.

Tanzania

The first three of these — Mia, Violet, and Tarrah — participated as students in a Fulbright-Hays Group Project Abroad that I led to Tanzania in 2005.

We spent five weeks in Dar es Salaam, studying alongside Tanzanian architecture students and teachers. Several of the students forged lifelong friendships (and some even marriages) with other members of our 63-person study group (25 students and teachers from the USA, 38 students and teachers from Tanzania).

I didn’t establish this blog (IrelandByChance.com) until 2012 (seven years after that trip, when I went on my own Fulbright fellowship to Ireland). Nevertheless, several of my past posts have mentioned aspects of that 2005 study abroad program:

• Fulbrights at “Work”
• Hello to Africa!
• Supporting African Cultures talk
• Also of interest is the post Trend Shifters and Hip Young Urbanites, featuring Donald Roman, a student of mine from Hampton University who participated in the 2005 Fulbright-Hays trip as well.

Mia and Tara are two USA-based Fulbright alumnae who keep returning to East Africa — and sharing their adventures with others.

Here’s a taste of what Mia and her architect friend Violet Mafuwe have gotten up to recently:

Violet was one of the Tanzanian students participating in the 2005 study abroad program, and the only female among dozens of males.

The sisterly bond between these architects, Mia and Violet, is truly heartwarming.

Tarrah, Mia, and Violet are all actively engaged in social missions, continually reaching out and helping others, particularly vulnerable people in East Africa.

Tarrah Beebe‘s recent blog post about work in Tanzania is well worth a read: https://rafikireturns2026.blogspot.com/2026/02/asante-same-couple-days-in-same-tanzania.html

In fact, it was Tarrah’s February 3rd blog post that inspired me to share the treasure trove below. Tara is an architect living in Los Angeles.

Tarrah mentioned me at the top of the blog, and it means a lot to me that I helped enable and inspire her to stay involved in Tanzania. She’s been helping build an educational complex for many years.

Japan

Like me, Tarrah also visited Japan. You can read all about her Japanese adventures here: https://tarrahinjapan.blogspot.com/

Which brings me to the other recent post I’d like to share. Shinya Takehara isn’t a Fulbright fellow (yet!), but I feel I wouldn’t have met him without the entry I got into engineering education research as a Fulbright Fellow in Ireland.

Shinya‘s recent LinkedIn post summarizes the visit Sarah Junaid and I made to Japan in January 2026 (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/building-international-dialogue-engineering-ethics-from-takehara-517vc/?trackingId=Ky2esIgHcl0VweGzp4rMTA%3D%3D). Because I don’t have a link for people outside LinkedIn to access the content, I’ll share screenshots of Shinya’s description below.

I am deeply indebted to each of these wonderful people — Shinya, Tarrah, Mia, and Violet — for making my life brighter and more meaningful, and for always reaching out to help others and spread the ethics of care.

I also thank Shinya, Tarrah, and Mia for giving me permission to share their posts here. Sending that request brought more good news, as Mia has recently secured a new job and will be relocating with her family to Germany soon. She reports good progress with her Architecture Registration Examination — a grueling multi-part test that takes most of us years to complete. I am so excited to learn of her progress!