There are a few American students that we have made friends with who are left over from the U of Florida and other programs from last semester. We have made pretty good friends with three of them—Julie , Amanda, and Joe—but unfortunately none of them are staying the whole program this semester because of the messed up schedule. Joe and Amanda are just hanging out in Dar es Salaam for a while longer and then travelling around, but Julie is headed to Uganda for next semester instead. Thursday night was our last night to see Julie, so we threw her a mini party on the roof of our dorm. The roof is basically a finished floor that they just decided not to put a roof on, so it’s really nice up there… and we even splurged to buy cheese for the occasion haha. Julie has showed us around Dar a lot since we got here and been really great to hang out with, so it was sad to see her go.
On Friday morning we left for our trip to Arusha. As soon as we left Dar I talked to Prof Senkoro and convinced him to let me stop off in Moshi for part of the weekend before meeting up with the group in Arusha (Moshi is on the same bus route, about an hour closer to Dar than Arusha). For those of you who don’t know specific names, Moshi was the town that I lived in this summer when I volunteered, so there were lots of people and places that I wanted to visit. The bus ride there was a bit painful and long—about 8 hours to Moshi—but it is a beautiful drive, so that makes it at least a bit better. Half of the time is spend driving through the Usambara Mountain range, which is a spectacular area of the country… don’t worry I have plenty of pictures like always.
I arrived in Moshi at about 5:30 pm (after leaving Dar at 9:00 am) and walked to the Kinderoko, the main hotel in town. There were multiple people that said I would be able to stay with them when I came to visit, but I didn’t find out until really late that I would be coming to town and I felt bad throwing myself at someone on that short of notice. The first thing I did when I got to the hotel was to walk up to the rooftop restaurant/bar to see the view of Mt. Kilimanjaro that there always is up there. The view was even better than it had been last time I was here because it is much clearer this time of year. Soon after, Ibrah came to pick me up at the hotel to go to dinner. Ibrah was the program director of the volunteer program that I did in Moshi. Seeing Ibrah was really, really fun and it was great to catch up. I got to hear all about what he’s doing now (no longer working at CCS and in the process of starting his own volunteer company). The plans for his new company may be a little overambitious… but I hope they work out for him. And for those of you who know Ibrah, would you really expect anything else? Haha
Saturday morning, I had breakfast on the roof of the Kinderoko (you really can’t get enough of the view) and then went to the TAFCOM office to meet up with Nie and her husband, the founders of the NGO. TAFCOM (Tanzania Action for Community Development) is a local NGO that does mainly HIV/AIDS support in the Moshi area. At the end of my time in Moshi in June, I had gone on home visits with TAFCOM and ended up informally adopting a family that was made up of a woman and her three children, all of whom suffer from HIV/AIDS. Since June, I have been sending a little bit of money every month in order to help Asia, the mother, start up her own small business selling tomatoes, and to pay for the oldest son, Abubakari, to go to primary school. A few months ago the youngest of Asia’s three children passed away from and AIDS related disease, but the others are doing well. It was great to see Nie again and to meet her husband (who hadn’t been in town when I was here last), and they told me all about how the organization is going and their plans for future expansion. Nie also thanked me profusely for deciding to “adopt” Asia and her children, because I was the first in what is now a fairly long string of volunteers to do the same. Unfortunately, Asia and the children were out of town visiting their family for the holidays, so I could not see them this trip. When I return to Moshi next, Nie said she will make sure to arrange to take me there.
After Leaving TAFCOM, I checked out of my hotel and got picked up once again by Ibrah. I had really wanted to see Peter, the driver from my volunteer program who I was very good friends with (he took me to the hospital twice while I was in Moshi and always took care of me… he was basically my Tanzanian Dad), but I wasn’t sure if he was working that day. By complete coincidence, Ibrah and I ran into Peter driving around a current CCS volunteer, and I surprised him. When he saw me, Peter ran out of his car and gave me the biggest bear hug ever. He had such a huge grin and was so so so excited to see me, it was wonderful. I had always told him that I would be back within the year, but I hadn’t really given him much warning. We only had a few minutes to talk because he was on work, but it was so great to see him and I promised to call when I was coming to town next.
Ibrah then took me to see the new house that he is building, which will eventually include a fairly large house for himself and two back apartments to be rented out/used for his company’s volunteers. Right now, however, only one of the back apartments is finished (where he is living), and the rest is basically just the structure and some rubble. The picture at the top is of me and Ibrah at his house. Afterwards, we went to get a late lunch together and he took me to the bus station to catch a daladala to Arusha. There are so many other places I would have liked to visit, but unfortunately I just didn’t have time, so I guess I’ll just have to go back again sometime soon! It completely felt like home being back there though, I miss Moshi a lot.
On Sunday morning, we left the hotel in Arusha to go on a one day safari to Taragire National Park, which is about 2 hours outside of Arusha. I wasn’t too excited at first because I have already been on a few safaris and this park didn’t seem as nice as the others had been, but I ended up having a wonderful time. We actually got to see 8 lions (!!!), which was very exciting for me because lions were the one thing I hadn’t seen last time I was here. We also saw a bunch of cool birds that I haven’t seen before… including one crazy one that I’m going to post a picture of and someone will have to try to figure out what it is for me! Also, while on the safari we were parked next to a group of women and I saw that one of them had a CCS t-shirt on. We started talking, and it turned out that they were all from the CCS Karanga house (the one that I lived in this summer) and one of them was even teaching at Kilimahewa, the school where I worked! Overall, the safari turned out to be a much bigger success than I had expected, and it was a great closing to an amazing weekend... the only thing that could have made it better would have been to magically transport home and not have had to take another 8 hour bus ride home haha.
Sorry for such a long blog this time! Oh and I promise to post more pictures when the internet is faster and it doesnt take 20 minutes per picture.
Love,
Lisa
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