Back in Dar

First off, I apologize for not writing in a while… everything has been a bit hectic and busy since I got back home from Moshi. Here’s an update on how things are going back in Dar es Salaam:

Classes: Finally in full swing, but still ridiculously unorganized and nonchalant. We are supposed to have our classes in three hour blocks once a week, but only one of our teachers ever actually has three hours of class. Of course, that one class that does fill up the time is History of East Africa, the most boring class of all time with the most boring/miserable professor that has ever lived. Go figure. African Politics is the other fairly serious class, but that one’s great so I don’t mind it being serious. So far it has mainly been a lot of debating on development theories and other such IR based ideas… right up my alley. African Literature is a joke, we usually have one hour or less of class a week and have had no required reading thus far (kind of ironic for a literature class). Plus, the professor speaks fairly terrible English (also ironic because the literature we are supposed to focus on is all in English), so that makes the class pretty ridiculous and almost comical. He spends half of the class time spelling out English words because we can’t actually understand what he is saying… it’s interesting. Gender and Development is basically just a discussion class where the readings are “suggested but not required,” and is usually only an hour and a half or so per week. This past week it was cancelled because the professor had to give an exam (the other students are having their first semester final exams right now), and I doubt we will ever make that time up. Swahili has become close to that big of a joke too. This past week was the first time we have actually met since the intensive section ended, but I think it will get more serious again soon because we all want it to be more intense so we get better at speaking.

Woodcarvers: Still teaching a few times a week. A few of the other girls have stopped going so often it ends up with just one teacher there (meaning it’s impossible to split the group up into beginners and advanced). On those days, we have started doing debates where we divide the advanced and beginners into two even groups and have them argue with one another on certain topics while we (the teachers) usually play devil’s advocate for both sides. One of the best ones we did was on whether foreigners coming to Tanzania is good or bad… so we talked about everyone from NGO workers to students to tourists to UN/government groups (specifically WTO and World Bank), etc. Everyone got really heated up over it; it was a lot of fun.

Research planning for this summer: Met with the head of the Water Institute that is located right next to (but isn’t actually part of) the University of Dar. The institute educates people one how to survey land to build wells, how to drill the wells, water purification techniques, sanitation, etc. If it’s related to water, they teach/research it. Anyways, my meeting with the head of it went extremely well and he told me a whole lot about where to go from here in planning my summer research. Also, he said that all of the students at the institute have to do 10 weeks of field work each year and that some of the students should be doing their fieldwork in the Dodoma area in June and would very likely be able to help me out. That would be amazing if it does work out: a translator and well expert all in one? Bingo.

Last weekend: On Friday morning when I had no class I had to go to immigration to finally get my Temporary Residence Permit, which is basically just a scam for you to pay the government more money because technically my visa should last a full year. The immigration office is Tanzania at its worst: unorganized, inefficient, and lacking technology. You wait in one line for an hour just to be told to wait in another one, they lost my file multiple times while I was there, everything is written in notebooks, there is not one computer in the entire center, most people don’t speak English even though it is an office mainly for foreigners to go to, and when you pay they force you to write by hand the serial numbers of every American bill that you pay with into a notebook. Only in Africa.

Friday night, a few of the girls in my program, some Tanzania friends of ours, and I went to a live “bongo Flavor” concert of an artist called Juma Nature in downtown Dar. “Bongo flavor” is the Tanzanian (Kiswahili) equivalent of pop/hip hop music with some reggae thrown in there. The concert was awesome minus a few factors: the crowd was about 97% Tanzanian men, so being girls (especially wazungu girls) mean that we got hit on/talked to the whole time. The other problem was that Juma Nature didn’t actually come on stage until 3am! There were at least ten opening acts and by the time he finally came on we were so exhausted that we listened to about three songs and then headed home. On the whole the music was great though, so I’m glad we went.

Saturday during the day, Tacy and I went to a huge market downtown called Kariakoo, which really resembles China Town or Canal Street more than the average African market. We bought a lot of cheap, gorgeous fabric to get made into dresses/skirts/shirts/bags, so that was exciting. On Saturday night we went to a Tanzanian night club, which was enjoyable as always. While we were there though, the power actually went out for a half hour or so, so there was no light or music inside during that time. To my surprise, instead of leaving everyone just stayed and waited until it came on again because they're used to that kind of thing. Again… only in Africa.

One night during the week, all of the girls in my program went to Prof Senkoro's house for a nice homemade dinner since Laura's mom was here visiting. One of our Kiswahili TA's came along and so did another Kiswahili professor who had come with us to Morogoro. The power actually went out that night also, but thankfully the food was finished cooking by that time so we just had a nice dinner outside by candle light. You just get used to that kind of thing, it's no big deal (no electricity, no water, etc.). Laura and her mom has just gotten back from a 6 day safari and were headed out a day or two later to go to Zanzibar together. Her being here definitely made all of the rest of us very jealous... I wish my parents could come visit too :(

This past weekend: On Friday during the day I went to visit my friend George at Mabibo Hostel, a hostel for UDSM students which is about 20 minutes away from campus. I was expecting a dorm or two, but boy was I wrong. Mabibo is hugeee! It fits almost six thousand students, has its own market place and cafeteria, and is practically a quarter of the size of the main campus (which is massive because there is a lot of open land). Minus the fact that you have to take a dala dala just to get to campus for classes, it is a pretty awesome place to live; I kind wish we lived there instead of in Hall 3. On Friday night we went to see a Japanese film at a local theater as the final night of a week long Asian Film Festival. The film was called “Death Note” and was apparently based off of a popular anime series (Tacy knew because she had actually watched it before… we all made fun of her a lot for that haha). It actually ended up being an awesome movie though, much better than I had expected.

Saturday morning I went with a friend of mine from school, Ivan, to Bunju, a small rural village about 45 minutes north of here. Ivan goes there every Saturday to work at a center for orphans that him and an older friend of his, Innocent (the one who drove us there), opened themselves. The orphans who go there (usually 30-50 of them) are children of all ages that live with foster parents and come to the center just to spend time with one another and actually be happy. The center is less than a year old and is not even finished being built, so right now they only meet on Saturdays. Eventually, however, Ivan and Innocent intend to make it more of a full time school. While there, Ivan and I taught them theater/acting and singing for about two hours, which was great. The kids are so sweet, and you can tell they really love being there. On Saturday night, Adrienne, Tacy, a European girl who is here doing an internship nearby, and I went out to dinner at a nice Indian restaurant. The food was spectacular… half because it was actually that good and half because I haven’t had anything but rice and meat/peas/beans/whatever other yucky stuff is in the cafeteria in farrrrrr too long. It was a nice treat.

On Sunday morning I agreed to go to church with Ivan assuming that I would be going to a fun African church like most of the ones here. Well, it wasn’t that at all and it was miserable (sorry Grandma and Grandaddy and anyone else very religious who is going to read this). For some reason he goes to church not only in English (I enjoy it much more in Swahili because I don’t fully understand what they are saying), but with basically all southern wazungu (white people)! The church (a Baptist church) was about 90% wazungu and had maybe 10 Tanzanians there… and the pastor was from Alabama!! There wasn’t even any fun African gospel like you get at all of the churches here. It was a disaster. When I asked him afterward why he goes to that church and not to one in Kiswahili with other Tanzanians, he kind of got offended and asked me if I didn’t like his church, so I just said that wasn’t what I had meant and dropped the question. It just hadn’t been at all what I had expected, so the whole situation caught me off guard. Soon after though, I met up with Adrienne and Tacy at the mall to see “Revolutionary Road,” the extremely depressing but very good Leonardo DiCaprio/Kate Winslet movie. Seeing a good movie and eating some amazing caramel popcorn definitely did the trick to cheer me up!

Ok, sorry, this is long (again) so I’ll finish up. In general everything is very good and I finally feel like I’m on an at least a somewhat organized schedule, so that’s nice. Should be doing some more traveling in the next few weeks (to Dodoma and back to Moshi), so that should be fun as well. Love and miss you all.

Successfully Climbing to the Highest Point in Africa!!

Pictures: (top) Me, Ryan, Fred, and Chops with the view from the top of the breakfast wall; (middle) view of Mawenzi, Kili's second peak, on the way down after the summit; (bottom) me at Uhuru Peak!!

Before I go into any details or anything, my climb on Kilimanjaro was one of the best things I’ve ever done… it was worth every penny and was absolutely worth skipping a week of classes for! Both Ryan and I made it successfully to the top without even the least bit of altitude sickness and loved the trip on the whole; although, trust me, it had its painful moments. We planned to hike the Machame Trail in a total of seven days, which leaves more time to acclimatize and therefore increases your chances of making it to the top, but ended up finishing it in six days with no problem. On the mountain everyone is assumed to be complete tourists (which most people are), so I also had some fun surprising the porters and other guides by actually knowing Swahili. Our guides were wonderful, the food was surprisingly good, the weather was generally agreeable… it honestly couldn’t have been better. So, with that said, here’s the not-so-short description of my week on Kili:

DAY ONE: Moshi to Machame Camp

After picking up and trying on all of the cold weather gear we still needed from EcoTours (the company we hiked with), we left Moshi in a rented daladala to head to the Machame gate. Our group included: Me, Ryan, Fred (head guide), Dixon aka “Chops” (assistant guide), six porters to carry all of our stuff (clothes, food, tents, etc.) up the mountain, and a cook… that’s nine other people in total just to help the two of us make it up the mountain. It seems pretty ridiculous to think that that many people were needed for us two, but if you saw how much stuff there is to go up and how much each porter actually carried, you would be astonished. After signing in at the gate and filling out all the paperwork/paying fees, we finally started our hike at around 11am. We hiked for about 5 hours total the first day, starting out on a road (which was about as terribly maintained as you could imagine) and then continuing on a well kept up trail through the rainforest. The hiking was pretty easy and we made it to Machame camp by around 4pm. The tents were already all set up when we got to camp (as they were every day after that as well) and we were served hot tea and dinner in our tent soon after we got there (which would also be the case every day after); pretty high class service in my opinion.

DAY TWO: Machame Camp to Shira Camp

We had a fairly short hike, but it was pretty continuously steep uphill for the whole 4 ½ hours of it. We left Machame Camp at around 9am and walked through the climate zone that is called the “Moorland.” We could have done the hike faster, but we took our time in order to let the porters get to camp before us and get set up. The trail started off in what was kind of like a normal forest, and then went to an area with all these weird trees with moss hanging off of them and some weird cactus-type plants. I can’t really explain it well without pictures, but it was a pretty bizarre area.

We got to Shira Camp fairly soon after lunch time, which was right before the rains started. Basically every day it was clear and nice during the morning and then rainy come late afternoon/early evening. The weather on the whole mountain, however, can change drastically in a matter of minutes… which gets rather irritating when you start taking off and re-putting on the same layers for the fourteenth time in an hour. We were supposed to do a short acclimatization hike from Shira Camp up to what is called the Shira Caves (they tell you to hike high during the day then sleep low to help you acclimatize best), but we didn’t end up doing the hike because the weather was bad. Shira Camp itself was pretty crazy; it had a great view out over these cliffs that were part of the base of Kili, and we could also see Mt. Meru (another big mountain which is near Arusha) in the distance. Shira Camp also had the first clear view of the top of the mountain that I had seen, which looked so much larger and more intimidating from there than it ever had from down in Moshi. In the middle of the night when I stumbled out of the tent to go to the bathroom (by far the worst part of camping on the mountain because you had to put on ten layers just to leave the tent to pee), I literally thought I was on the moon or something. The whole camp was dirt and rocks and there was the outline of the top of the mountain silhouetted by the full moon… very eerie.

DAY THREE: Shira Camp to Barranco Camp

The hike this day was a lot longer than the previous day, about 7 hours, but more of a gradual uphill. Most of the hike was through what I would describe as a miniature boulder-field. It was just a huge uphill slope covered in rocks that we had to make our way through… but the best part was that almost the entire hike through that section sported a fantastic and clear view of the top part of the mountain (when I say the top part I mean the snow-capped section that we would climb on summit day). Mid-morning, the trail splits in two: the trail for the porters, which stays low on the mountain and is shorter, and the trail we took, which goes up to the “Lava Tower” and is a fair amount longer. The Lava Tower is a huge rock area that was somehow a result of past volcanic activity, but is now just a high altitude point which is used on the hike as an early test of altitude sickness since it is at about the same altitude as the final base camp before the summit. According to Fred and Chops (our guides), the Lava Tower is usually one of the coldest points on the mountain and if people show signs of minor altitude sickness there, that’s a bad sign for the rest of the trip. Fortunately, we were lucky on both accounts considering that neither Ryan nor I got sick at all, and the weather was surprisingly warm when we got up there. We had our packed lunches there and then started off back down to Barranco Camp, the first real downhill section of our trip. Although altitude sickness wasn’t seemingly an issue, I could tell after less than a half hour that coming down the mountain would not be good on my knees at all. The hour and a half down to Barranco from the Lava Tower was pretty bad, but I was just trying not to think of anything past the summit… I figured I would just deal with my knees when the time came.

When we got to Barranco, the camp was beautiful and right in between all of these huge cliffs. At this point we had gotten into the area called the “Alpine Desert,” so there were all sorts of bizarre cactus-like plants around the camp. The weirdest of these types is called the Giant Groundsel and resembles a really short and fat combo of a palm tree and a cactus which has multiple tops. Anyways, while admiring the view around us at dinner, Chops came over to tell us two interesting little surprises. The first of the two was that they suggested a slight change of plans. Instead of cutting the 4th day into two different days (like we would have done for a 7 day hike), they suggested that we go all the way to Barafu Camp (the base for the summit) the next day because we had no problems with altitude at the Lava Tower. Also, the only thing, other than altitude sickness of course, that would stop people from making it to the top is bad weather on summit day. Therefore, if we got to Barafu Camp a day earlier than expected and the weather happened to be bad the first night, we would have another shot at the summit the next night. Both Ryan and I agreed that that sounded like a good plan… so in other words we were basically shortening the trip to 6 days instead of 7, but the seventh day would still be an option if necessary. The second little surprise was that the “Breakfast Wall,” which I had vaguely heard of from a friend who had climbed the mountain before, was not the 50 or so foot wall that we had been previously imagining. Instead, it was actually the 450ft cliff that we were staring at out of our tent! We didn’t believe Chops the first few times he said it, until he actually pointed out where the trail went along the cliff. I think if most of you could have seen that wall in person it might have made you want to cry… it basically had that affect on me haha.

DAY FOUR: Barranco Camp to Barafu Camp

We started off the day with the infamous Breakfast Wall, which was fairly painful but honestly not as bad as it looked from afar. After over an hour so of hiking straight up/rock climbing a bit, we finally reached the top of the wall and were rewarded with yet another amazing view of the summit. The walk the rest of the way to Karanga Camp (where we had originally planned to stay the night) was pretty easy, light hiking… although when I did finally spot the camp in the distance at eye level, I was a little too excited and failed to notice the large valley in between us and the camp. If only that could have been a straight shot to the camp it would have been a lot nicer, but why would Kili ever be easy on you?

At Karanga, we had a hot lunch cooked for us before we started off on the second half of the day. Unfortunately, right after we finished eating and began hiking again, it started raining. The hike the rest of the way to Barafu Base Camp (Barafu means snow is Kiswahili) was pretty easy and only about 2 ½ hours long, but a bit on the miserable side nonetheless because of the cold rain. When we got close to the base camp, there were pieces of small rock debris all over the place; it looked almost like a rock quarry of some sort. When we actually arrived at the camp it was around 4:30 in the afternoon and there was a beautiful view looking out over Moshi and Machame in the distance. We basically went to sleep right when we got there, were woken up for dinner from 6-7, and then went immediately back to sleep. We had a rough night ahead of us up to Uhuru Peak…

DAY FIVE: Summit Day

After only a few hours of rest/sleep, we were woken up at 11:30pm and then began our hike to the summit at a little after midnight. When we woke up it was snowing fairly hard outside, which I took as a bad sign, but I was soon corrected because apparently snow means it will be warmer at the summit. Uhuru means “Freedom” in Kiswahili, and the top of the mountain was renamed that after independence when Tanzanians brought the new flag and the “flame of independence” up to the summit to celebrate (it had previously been named after the first white guy to climb the mountain… big surprise). The hike to Uhuru Peak is supposed to take about 6 ½ hours, so generally you get to the top a little after sunrise. Out of complete luck, this past week ended up being almost a full moon which meant that it was fairly light out for the entire hike up, a nice edition to our headlamps. The majority of the hike was basically the same as walking back and forth in zig-zags up a black diamond ski slope, or (for you non-skiers) the steepest snowy hill you can think of. At around 2:30am I remember stopping for a quick break and I looked at my watch only to find out that it was much, much earlier than I had thought it was. I couldn’t believe that we weren’t even halfway through the hike but I already couldn’t feel my toes and was half dying!

It is supposed to take around 6 hours or a little less to make it up to Stella Point, the final destination before you get to before Uhuru. Stella point is only about a 45 minute walk from Uhuru and the last section between the two is much less steep, so if you make it to Stella Point you have basically made it to the top. We started off as one of the last groups to leave Barafu Camp (out of around 10 or so groups), but we booked it up the mountain and ended up making it to Stella Point at the front of the pack. I honestly think that we stopped maybe four times in the whole first 5 hours up. We both just wanted it to get to the top and get the whole thing over with as quickly and as painlessly as possible. When we finally did make it to Stella Point, I was ecstatic because I thought it would be smooth sailing from then on… oh boy was I wrong. The last 45 minutes were by far the worst part for me of the whole summit hike. We were so close and yet so far away at the same time, and the mountain/fog just kept getting my hopes up over nothing. Every time I saw a new peak I’d be like “Oh thank God, that has to be Uhuru,” but it wasn’t. And neither were the next twenty or so peaks I said that about haha. When Chops said that we had less than 15 minutes to go, I honestly didn’t know if I had 15 minutes left in my body. Soon after, he also pointed out the gorgeousss view out over the glaciers to our side and the lights of Moshi in the distance beyond the glacier (since it was still dark at that time). It was amazing, but I barely even stopped to take it in because I was afraid that if I stopped at all I’d probably collapse haha.

FINALLY, we made it to Uhuru Peak!! The top is fairly anti-climactic to say the least… not only does it not really seem like it’s any higher than the last five hills you passed, but all there really is there is a sign that says “CONGRATULATIONS, YOU ARE NOW AT UHURU PEAK, TANZANIA 5895 M. – Africa’s Highest Point, The World’s Highest Free Standing Mountain.” Nonetheless, making it there and touching the sign was one of the most rewarding things I have ever done. I can’t even explain how quickly that moment rejuvenates all of your lost energy and gets rid of all the pain/cold. We actually were the very first people to make it to Uhuru at a few minutes before 6am; we got there (and got the hell out of there) before the sun even rose. We didn’t even stay at the summit for more than 10 minutes because, trust me, at that point all you can think is “get me off this freaking mountain right now!” Although my pictures at the summit are unfortunately all in the dark and arent too great, us getting there early was great because it meant that I actually got to see the glaciers (which will be gone in ten or so years because of global warming). When we passed the glaciers again on our descent, the sun had rose and the fog had gotten even worse so you could barely see them at all.
In the middle of our hike up I had asked Fred and Chops about why we do the summit hike in the middle of the night and if the weather was really that much better at the top at sunrise. They had said that part of the reason was better weather at the top and that sometimes the sunrise can be very beautiful if it is clear, but the main reason is for mental purposes. They said that if you saw what you were hiking up in the daytime, there is no way you would actually make it to the top. I didn’t believe them at the time, but when we started down after sunrise I realized just how right they were. What we climbed was sooo ridiculously steep and crazy that if I had ever been able to see what was ahead of me I would have quit hours ahead of time. I felt so bad for all of the people we passed on the way down who were still coming up and could see what they had ahead of them… they looked like they were in a lot more pain than we had ever been in. After that, we spent the next two and half hours walking/sliding/sledding down the mountain back to Barafu Camp. On the way down, we also managed to come at just the right time to catch a spectacular view of Mawenzi, Kilimanjaro’s second and smaller peak off to the east. The sun happened to be rising behind the peak and it was perfectly clear; it was pretty amazing. We finally made it back to camp at around 8:30am (long before most of the other groups), at which point my knees were already doing pretty terribly. We collapsed in the tent for a short 1 ½ hour nap, woke up for lunch, and then started right back downhill again.

After Barafu Camp you take a different route down, called the Mweka Route, which is steeper and is not allowed for uphill hikers. We hiked 1 ½ hours down to the first camp, Millennium Camp, which is usually for people who stay on the mountain 8 or 9 days and camp up even higher than Barafu Camp, but was where I had wanted to stay the night to spare my knees; however, while we were there everyone convinced me (aka peer pressured me) that we should just keep going the rest of the way to Mweka Camp like most people do. I reluctantly agreed, which was in retrospect a miserable and terrible decision, but what can I do about that now? Not only where my knees already in a lot of pain at that point, but it started raining almost immediately after we left Millennium Camp. The trail from Millenium to Mweka was literally a river that we were wading through, and by the time I got to Mweka Camp two hours later I was soaking wet, freezing, and could barely walk. Chops was extremely nice though and stayed back and waited for me the whole way while I slowly hobbled down the mountain. When I finally made it to Mweka camp though (quite a while after Ryan and Fred had), I did have dry clothes, some hot tea, and a nice Kilimanjaro beer waiting for me… so that made up for a lot of the pain haha. Following a mini-celebration, Ryan and I proceeded to pass out at around 7pm. Pretty pathetic.

DAY SIX: Mweka Camp back to Moshi

From Mweka Camp we only had another three hours downhill to the gate, but when I woke up I was honestly not sure I would be able to walk down that long because my knees were so bad. Fred and Chops called an “ambulance” to come meet us part way up the path (and by that I just mean a jeep that could actually make it up the road at the bottom of the mountain) so that I wouldn’t have to walk the last hour or so. Unfortunately, when we eventually made it to the road section at the base of the mountain, the ambulance was nowhere in sight. I kept on going (because I really had no other choice) and the car finally met up with us less than five minutes from the final gates. Glad I wasn’t really dying or anything, because that was by far the worst “ambulance” system I’ve ever seen!

After getting back to flat ground and back into Moshi, the whole thing felt like a crazy dream. We relaxed the rest of the day at Ibrah’s house and then went out with Ibrah, Fred, Chops, and some other friends to celebrate that night. Being back in Moshi and seeing Kili from afar, it was hard to believe that we were at the summit only a day before. The whole thing was such a crazy experience and, looking back on it, I think I’m crazy for ever wanting to do it… but it was wonderful nevertheless. I am so happy that I even attempted it to begin with, and even happier that everything worked out so well regardless of the absolute last minute planning. Even after the painful knee experience and the slightly miserable sections, I would absolutely suggest the trip to anyone else willing to make the effort. After my awesome trip in the Usambaras and my success on Kili, I think I officially have a new found obsession with hiking. Anyone want to join me on my next adventure??!

Last Minute Planning at its Finest

We finally started classes this week, but everything is still a bit messed up. Our teacher for Africa Literature met us briefly on Tuesday to explain that Tuesdays don't work for him so he will have to teach us on Monday nights instead. Then on Wednesday we actually started and had History of East Africa and Family/Gender Relations. History of East Africa seems interesting but a tad on the dull side... possibly because the teacher is about as old as East Africa itself haha. Gender/Family Relations sounds like it has the potential to be interesting but we haven't actually met the real teacher yet. She was out of town this week for a conference in Sweden so she had one of her colleagues teach us an intro lecture. I guess I'll let you know how it is once she is there and the class gets more serious. On Thursday we had African Politics, which seems like its going to be great. Granted right now we are learning all about IR theories and things I study in school, so maybe that's why I like it. The teacher is also really fun and politically active and what not, so I think that will make it more interesting as well.

Ok so the big news I have is that I'm climbing Kilimanjaro next week!! I literallty decided to do it on Tuesday afternoon, got my stuff together Wed and Thurs, took the bus to Moshi yesterday, and am now in Moshi figuring out all the last minute details. Everything happened so last minute because I have been overwhelmed with classes/travelling and not thinking about it, but rainy season starts very soon and its kind of a now or never deal. Also, I found someone to climb with me now, which will make it a lot more enjoyable. I am climbing with this kid Ryan, a friend of a friend of a friend, who is volunteering right now with Ibrah's new organization in Moshi (Ibrah is the former program head of my volunteer group in Moshi). So, we leave Monday morning to do a seven day hike up the Machame Route, which is the harder and longer of the two most popular routes. I don't have much time to write now because I am headed to the used clothing market in town to buy some winter clothes and then to the duka la dawa (pharmacy) to get some high altitude sickness medicine. I can't believe I'm really doing this in two days... it still hasn't really sunk in but I'm really, really excited. Wish me luck! I'll write again in a week when I get back to Moshi (lets hope its not less time than that because that means I didn't make it to Uhuru Peak)!

Love,
Lis

Morogoro and Still Waiting for Classes

Last week we didn't actually end up having class until Thursday morning (our last class of the week), but even then we only had it for about a half hour instead of three hours. It turns out that even though our schedule is now set, we don't have rooms to have the classes in so the teachers can't really start. The one class we did have, African Politics, seems really great though, I'm excited for that to start. Anyways, since we had no class for most of the week I just hung out on campus and taught at the woodcarvers a few nights. Tacy, Laura, and I went one night to see Bride Wars at the movie theater in the mall... pretty terrible movie, but we could have expected that. It was still a nice little taste of American culture.

Starting Friday morning, Professor Senkoro took us all on our last group trip to Morogoro (not to be confused with Ngorongoro, like the crater). Morogoro is a beautiful, fairly small town in central Tanzania (about 3 hours west of here on the way to Dodoma). The town reminded me of a slightly smaller, more peaceful, and less touristy Moshi; I really liked it there. We got into Morogoro at around lunch time on Friday and spent the afternoon walking around mjini (town) and doing some shopping. Prof Senkoro and another male professor from the Swahili department had gone with us on the trip, but they figured we wanted a girl to take us shopping instead of some "old men," as they called themselves. So, they made some calls and used their connections to get the name of a girl who had just graduated from the university in Morogoro named Flavia. She was an absolute sweetheart and took us all around town and to a local "waterfall" (which turned out to be more of a stream than an actual waterfall, but whatever). That night we splurged a little and went to a fancier Indian restaurant in town for dinner (and by that I mean about $7 per meal instead of $2 haha), which proved to be a disaster. Not only was it expensive, but it literally took us 3 hours to get our food. We didn't end up leaving the restaurant until around 10pm, which wouldn't have been such a terrible thing if we didn't have to wake up at 4:30 the next morning to go on safari. To give you a bit of an idea how much of grandmas we all are here, about 3 of the 6 of us were asleep on the table before the food even came haha. Pathetic.

We left for our safari so early on Saturday morning because first thing in the morning is the best time to see certain types of animals, especially simba (lions). As we were driving to Mikumi National Park, not even to the gates yet and still a few towns away from the real entrance, we saw an entire pride of lions on the side of the road about 15 feet from our car!! Unfortunately, my camera chose that exact second to have a panic attack on me and say CAR ERROR and stop taking pictures... which I still have not found a logical reason behind. Regardless of the major technical difficulty at the time (which lasted the whole rest of the trip so I have no pictures of the safari or the rest of the weekend), seeing the lions was unbelievably lucky and awesome. The rest of the safari was equally as fun, with lots of up close encounters of all sorts: tembo (elephants), twiga (giraffes), punda milile (zebras), kongoni (wildebeest), nyati (buffalo), etc. I'll just have to steal everyone else's pictures... no big deal.

We also stopped at a snake park after leaving the Mikumi, which was pretty crazy. The place had about 20 different types of (mainly deadly) poisonous snakes, including one black mamba and eight green mambas. Black mambas are the most feared snake in Africa, possibly the world as well, and can kill you in less than an hour. When you get bit by a black mamba, the venom apparently makes your blood immediately begin to clot up, your system goes into severe shock, and it kills you too quickly for there to be any anti-venom. The green mambas are slightly less dangerous only because they aren't as belligerent and are less likely to bite you, but they are still unbelievably deadly. Even though all the snakes were safely enclosed in their little habitats and behind glass, it was still pretty frightening to be that close to them. When I asked how the heck they caught the snakes to bring them there, the guy said that 'local people' know how to and its not a big deal. Well, in my opinion those 'local people' are nuts and should find new jobs, but that's just me haha. Oh and the only anti-venom they had at the whole place in case one of their workers got bit was a tiny glass bottle filled with powder that looked like it could have been sitting on that shelf since 1775... not exactly the safety precautions we would have in the states, but I guess it works fine for here.

On the way home from Mikumi, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant that happend to be conveniently located next to a zahanati (dispensary). A few of the other girls and Professor Senkoro all weren't feeling well, so we waited at the restaurant a while for them to get tested. It turned out that 3 of the girls AND Senkoro all have malaria. We're droppin like flies over here. Needless to say, no one did much of anything Staurday night other than sleep and watch bad soap operas on TV (terribly dubbed over in English from Spanish and just about the only option other than music videos or soccer). Yet again, we're a lively bunch. Senkoro keeps making fun of us for being so boring and trying to get us to go dancing, but we all keep getting sick and basically no one can make it past 10pm! Haha we'll have to work on that.

Yesterday morning, before leaving Morogoro, we were supposed to go on a short hike in the Uluguru Mountains which surround the town; however, since half of the group was sick and Adrienne had to go back to the hospital in town to get medicine (the others wanted to wait til they got back to Dar to pick up meds), we ended up not being able to go. Instead we walked around town again, made some local friends at the market who were amused/excited by the wazungu (white people) knowing Swahili, and just relaxed for the morning. We caught the bus home at 1 (which we had to half run to because we were all late) and got back to Dar late afternoon.

Today we didn't have class (we never will on Mondays), so I spent most of the day getting my life back in order on campus and visiting friends that I haven't seen in a while. I feel like I haven't been here for more than a day or so since we ended or intensive Swahili... it's nice to be done with all this constant traveling and finally just relax. On my way back from lunch I actually bought a few children's/middle school level books in Swahili from the bookstore on campus so I can work on my vocab and what not, I'm excited to start them. Tonight I went to the woodcarvers again to teach, which I'm beginning to love more and more. Mary and I went alone tonight, so we split the group in two (advanced and beginner) and ended up each teaching our lessons alone. This was the first time I have taught alone since I started going there and it was definitely a challenge, but I really enjoyed it anyways.

Tomorrow we were supposed to finally start our classes, but I just heard there are yet again problems with that. Our Kiswahili class for tomorrow morning is cancelled because people need to go back to the clinic to get retests for Malaria and get new medicines and so on and so forth. Our class scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, African Literature, also may be off since we apparently still don't have a classroom for it to be in. It's times like this when I just have to sit back and laugh at how unorganized people are here... if I don't laugh at it, I may kill someone instead haha. I remember something funny that Senkoro said to us the first week of classes that proves to be very appropriate in this situation: "Africans aren't late because they're wasting time, they're just making time... for themselves." All too true.

Love,
Lisa