electricity, plumbing, heat and air conditioning for granted? Not to mention the luxuries like televisions, mobile telephones, microwaves, fax machines and computers with e-mail and internet access which have helped to make life so much more convenient in a fast-changing, faster paced world.

Bermudian teenager Erica Fulton won't have any of those when she travels to Tanzania in the first week in January to live for nine months in a village with the natives.

It's all part of a youth development programme put on by Students Partnership Worldwide (SPW) which brings together groups of 18 to 28 year-olds to take part in educational and environmental programmes to address urgent problems facing rural children.

Miss Fulton, 19, learned of the programme while in boarding school in Worcester, England. She recently graduated from Malvern College after five years and has taken a year off before starting at Manchester University next September. When class begins she will be doing European studies with French, a four-year-programme which will involve spending a year in France.

In the meantime her focus is on the trip to the east African country and the lessons to be learned living in a village with the native people. A total of 19 people from Europe will make the trip, each living in a different village with a Tanzanian from the town of Iringa, who, like them, will be experiencing life for the first time in a village.

"There will be 19 Tanzanian people, all our age and from similiar backgrounds, and we'll meet with them in Iringa where we will train together for six weeks,'' explained Miss Fulton.

"For the European people we're going to be having intensive Swahili lessons.

A lot of the programme is non-formal education, so it's not about going in there and building wells and pumps that might break two years after we have left and be completely useless.

"It's about us going in and helping them to realise their situation, by having discussions about AIDS. A lot of our discussion will be about AIDS awareness and because we're young the local children will feel they can confide in us and we can confide in them. It's not so much a teacher talking at them.'' Miss Fulton comes from a medical family, with her father Ian following in the footsteps of his own father and becoming a doctor. Her brother Richard is also studying in England to become a doctor, though she is taking a different career path, with a dream to pursue journalism.

SWP send students to the rural parts of African countries like Uganda, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Tanzania as well as in Asian countries like India and Nepal. The India programme is distinctive as the volunteers work in institutions catering for a variety of disadvantaged children.

That programme lasts four months, does not involve local counterparts, and the training is shorter.

Miss Fulton is excited about what lies ahead for her, though she knows there will be plenty of major adjustments to be made.

"I won't have electricity or running water...most likely,'' she says.

"In Iringa, where we'll have our training, we will have all the normal luxuries, but not once we are placed in the villages. The interesting thing about this programme is it will be me and just the Tanzanian person that I'm training with, so I won't be with an English person.

"There will be one European and one Tanzanian in each village, so I'll be speaking in Swahili the whole time apart from when I'm teaching.

"That's also why I wanted to do this programme, it's not just going in and building stuff. We'll learn just as much from them as they are going to learn from us, hopefully.'' Miss Fulton will leave Bermuda on January 2 to travel to England, from where she and the others in the programme will depart four days later for Tanzania.

She will only have about two weeks at the end of the programme back in Bermuda next September before she begins college in England.

`It'll be interesting to see how I cope,'' she says. "I'm not too concerned, though it's easy for me to say now, being here at home with all the luxuries I need.

"I have had two orientation weekends so I have met the Europeans I will be going with and I've met people who have already done it, so I am quite informed.'' SPW is an organisation based in England which relies completely on charity.

They send off a group in November and a group in January and will have seven staff members based in Tanzania who will train the youngsters during the initial six weeks.

"I found out about it from my school, who have sponsored me for some of the money,'' said the young Bermudian who revealed the cost is 2,637 per person for the programme. She has also been working at a local restaurant to raise funds.

"We are also being paid by SPW while we are teaching, just so that we can get by. We've been told to take very few things with us and buy them in Iringa because it's so cheap.'' The villages are about an hour from Iringa so the visitors will used that city for correspondence through either mail, computers or telephones, which they won't have in the villages. Ms Fulton understands e-mail and telephone calls are very expensive.

"It's something like $6 a minute for an e-mail so even though it's there I probably won't be using it that much,'' she says, noting that she will rely on mail and the occasional phone call to keep in touch with her family.

The group will be able to travel to other parts of the country by bus on the weekends and during school breaks.

"A big part of the six-week programme will be cross culture awareness training so that we don't go in and offend the people,'' she explained. "The initial six weeks will be important for that.'' The students will be expected to respect the widely practice Muslim religion which requires that women not show their knees.

"In the village I also won't be allowed to wear sleeveless tops,'' Miss Fulton stated. "For teaching I will need to wear long skirts so I don't offend people.''