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
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