Janeth Magiri’s devotion to service led her far from her hometown of Musoma, Tanzania.

She expects her devotion to education to prove beneficial when she returns.

Magiri is currently in her first semester of a two-year Master of Business Administration program at Bluffton (Ohio) University.

While Magiri may be new to Bluffton’s campus, she is not new to the peace church tradition embraced by the university. Growing up in Musoma, she was a member of Kanisa la Mennonite Tanzania, a Mennonite conference.

After graduating from high school in 2005, she applied to Mennonite Central Committee for a year of service in the United States, and was one of two people to be accepted from her area.

Magiri’s first act of service was working as a teaching assistant at Lancaster (Pa.) Mennonite School, where she discovered major differences—technology among them—from Tanzanian schools.

After serving for the academic year at Lancaster, Magiri was transferred to Camp Friedenswald in Cassopolis, Mich., to finish the remaining three months of her year of service as a summer camp counselor.

Not only was she unfamiliar with the Mennonite Church USA-affiliated camp, but she was also unfamiliar with the concept of camping.

“Back home, there’s nothing like camping, so it was my first experience. But I loved it,” she said.

Completing the program, Magiri returned to Tanzania to attend advanced secondary school, a two-year program in her country. Afterward, she enrolled at St. Augustine University in Mwanza, Tanzania, and earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration.

Unsure what to do next, Magiri remembered that some of the friends she made at Camp Friedenswald attended Bluffton. After getting married and having a daughter, she decided the time was right to further her education.

Today, Magiri is immersing herself in her studies, and she enjoys having professors who challenge her and encourage her to ask questions.

“They involve us in a way that I’ve never experienced,” she said. “If you don’t know something, you should ask. Back home, you don’t ask if the teacher is teaching, but here it is encouraged.”

After Magiri earns her MBA from Bluffton in 2016, she plans to return home to be with her husband and daughter. She also has aspirations to take the knowledge she gains at Bluffton to start a nonprofit organization in Tanzania for young men and women seeking to open their own businesses.

“We have a lot of young adults just coming from the university, and jobs are not there,” she said. “We would, God willing, assist them financially to help them start with something.”