Lisa's African Adventures

Jason Begin Here and Research in Dodoma

2009-05-21T06:51:00.000-07:00

Jason Flew into Dar on Saturday afternoon, and from that point on we basically had a non-stop schedule for the whole ten days he was here. On Saturday night, Jason and I went to dinner and then out dancing to live music with Anna (the American Anna who I know through our family friend) and her friends from University of Dodoma. Her friends were off from school for the week and came to visit Anna for a few days, which was great timing because it meant that I actually got to meet them and make some new friends who live in Dodoma (since I’ll be there doing research for another three weeks and have none there!)

On Sunday I gave Jason a bit of a tour of campus, took him through the enjoyment of being hassled majorly buying bus tickets at Ubungo station, and then spent the rest of the day working on organizing our survey questions. The way we want to do the research is through a series of surveys in which we talk to all different people in varying villages about where they get their water from, how clean it is, do they have to pay for it, is there health education in their town, does their borehole/well have a water committee that runs it, etc. We spent the day writing up a new version of our survey and then I translated the whole ten pages of it into Swahili… which was unbelievably long and hard and not really worth it in the end since we had a translator who did it anyways, but oh well. That night was also Eunice’s birthday (Mary’s Tanzanian roommate) so there was a whole party going on upstairs that I missed out on. Although it is obvously sad to miss outon any birthday party haha, the reason that was especially sad was that Mary left this past week, while I was in Dodoma, to go to Uganda for the summer. That meant that Sunday was our last night together and I barely even got to hang out with her. We had a very sad/unreal goodbye in the middle of the party, which wasn't the way I had wanted to leave at all :(

We left Dar on a 7am bus Monday morning, which got us into Dodoma at around 2:30 pm. When we got in, I called one of the main contacts that I had been given (from one of the million people I had to meet with at the Open University of Tanzania while trying to get my approval letter). The contact, Mr. Mihale, was one of the head guys at the government’s Ministry of Water branch in Dodoma. I thought we would just be able to meet with him and get some info, but he ended up coming to pick us up at our hotel, bringing us to his office, and then basically offering to help us do everything for the week. It was honestly too good to be true.

On Tuesday morning, Mr. Mihale and another one of his colleagues from the Ministry of Water , Mr. Hoza, came to pick us up and took us all around town to the different government offices in the area. We went first to the District Officer for Dodoma district to get his approval, and then went on to the District Water Engineer for Dodoma Urban District. Visiting the district directors is really just a formality because you need to inform them of the research, but talking to the water engineer was actually extremely helpful. He gave us the first real insight into what the government does when they built the wells, how they work, how many projects they do, how they get their funding, etc. Next we went to visit the District Director for Chamwino district, which is a much more rural area of Dodoma Region. The water engineer for that district is located a lot further away from town, so I will have to go there at a later time one my own. Having Mr. Mihale and Mr. Hoza there to go around with us was a HUGE help though and made it much easier to get approval from all of the government sectors. Judging by how miserably I failed at doing exactly that on my last trip, I think that would have taken the whole week to get done without their help.

That night, we met up with and went out to dinner with Patrick and is brother Edson. Patrick is one of the friends of G and Dennis (Anna’s friends from University of Dodoma who I met the weekend before going to Dodoma). Patrick lives too far away from Dodoma to go home for the week break, and his brother actually lives and works in Dodoma, so Dennis gave me Patrick’s number before going to Dodoma. It was really nice to actually have some friends there and have someone to show us around the town a bit… especially because Dodoma isn’t really like any other town I’ve been to in Tanzania. Even though it is the capital, EVERYTHING closes at literally 7pm. I honestly don’t know how people in Dodoma eat, there aren’t even restaurants open; it’s really somewhat ridiculous. Jason and I had tried to go out and get some cookies/sodas or something sugary the night before to keep us awake so we could get some work done, but absolutely nothing was open at 7:30pm. They have stores that sell snacks and other random stuff on every single corner in Dar and nothing closes til at least 10pm... so needless to say I was very confused that first night. Anyways, it was nice to meet some people who live there and could tell us where to actually get food and what not haha.

On Wednesday, we went first to meet with the Regional Director of the Open University of Tanzania to discuss with her the plans for our research and inform her what we would be doing (since it was technically under her supervision). She didn’t have too much to tell us, but offered to help in any way possible next time I’m back, so that’s always good. Next, we met up with Patrick in town and went to an internet café so that he could help me fix my translated Kiswahili version of the survey. That was definitely necessary since Mr. Mihale had laughed when he saw it and said people in the villages would probably be confused by what I was saying if I read that… whoops, I tried. Next, we went to meet Mr. Mihale and Mr. Hoza at the Ministry of Water office and then headed out for the first of our village visits. We went to two villages (Mtumba and Ihumwa), which were both fairly close to the main road and not overly rural, but were a good start nonetheless.

On Thursday we started early and made it to three villages (Mahoma Makulu, Mahomanyika, and Nzuguni). We might have been able to make it to more than three, but unfortunately something in the Tanzanian diet didn’t settle well in Jason’s stomach and he wasn’t feeling good at all… which was just about the worst timing ever possible for such a situation to occur. Being sick while driving through rural Tanzania on the sketchiest “roads” of all time and going to multiple interviews in tiny villages with no real toilets = misery. He got better soon after getting back to town/the hotel and flat land though, so no worries. What a trooper.

On Friday, first thing in the morning we went to visit WaterAid, the main NGO in town which has been working in the district for over twenty years. All along we had thought that WaterAid had been doing all of this work separately and only in distant partnership with the local government, so whatever the government said they were doing community development-wise we assumed would at least be better on WaterAid’s projects. Oh boy, were we wrong. So it turns out that WaterAid literally does NOTHING. Al they do is directly fund the government on whatever projects they choose to do in the area. WaterAid has recently started to critique the gov's proposals of where to work and make the local government’s budget a little more equitable between villages in each district (some villages who already have wells get funding while ones with no systems at all continue to get no attention). Nonetheless, they said they almost never go to the villages unless someone specific needs to be convinced of something or talked to, they only have 6 people working in the office and most of them just do paperwork/office work, they say it isn’t their job to check up on the villages who they work with and that is the job of the government and the district water engineer (but the gov doesn’t actually do it), etc. Basically they fund projects and collect some data in the region... THAT’S IT! It’s ridiculous, the regional government has complete control over the entire budget and the entire water system implementation in the region. It’s never good to have the government be the sole provider of a good… there is just too much politics that gets in the way of truly doing what is best for the people. Long story short, our half hour meeting with WaterAid completely reaffirmed my idea that the region needs some serious help in improving its efforts at sustainability and its community development techniques. Good thing we made it to talk to them, because it completely changed all of my perceptions...

After that, we met up with Mr. Mihale and Mr. Hoza and set off to visit 4 more villages. We made it through two of them (Ng’ong’ona and Mapinduzi) when our tire went flat on the way to the third (Chololo). Not only did we get a flat in the middle of nowhere in the semi-desert that is central Tanzania, we also discovered at this time that men from the Ministry of Water are inherently motor vehicle knowledge handicapped. First off, the jack we had wasn’t big enough, so it lifted the car a little but not far enough to take the tire off. Then, they tried to dig out the tire but the ground was too hard so they proceeded to push it into the ditch on the side of the road where the sand was softer. This, however, made it so all of the weight of the whole car was resting right on the flat tire. When I tried to explain that we should put it in neutral and push it into the ditch on the other side so it was put up in the air (like the opposite back tire was at the moment) and we could take it off easily, they completely dismissed us. I could just see the “what does the little white girl know about cars” thought going through their heads haha. At one point, they all disappeared to go collect rocks to put under the jack to make it taller, at which time Jason and I concluded that that was most likely the time they would ditch us in the middle of the desert and we die of thirst or heat stroke. Anyways, after about and hour and a half, the tire being now fully off the rim and having the car resting on the rim alone for a while (which I again tried to explain would break the axel and was a bad call, but was obviously ignored), finally a huge truck passed us and stopped. About 6 Tanzanian guys hopped out of the back of the truck (while the other 30 still in the back stared at us thinking “look at the dumb wazungu!”) and brought a real jack. They fixed the whole thing in five minutes and hopped back in their truck and disappeared without being paid or anything. Gotta love Tanzania. So after all that, we basically were forced to call it a day (Mr. Mihale and Mr. Hoza were sick of us by then, I think). We stopped for one interview in Kikombo on the way back to Dodoma but it was just with a regular woman we found on the street, not with the village leader or anything.

What we found out in the villages: Mainly just talked to the village leaders in each of the towns, which wasn’t exactly the original plan but it ended up being very productive. We had wanted to talk to random people on the streets and just ask them about where they got their water and what not, but turns out the village leaders are really the only ones who know anything about when their wells were built and by who, how they get fixed, how much everything costs, and other such important info. So not what we had intended to do, but it worked out well. Anyways, turns out that almost every village we went to (8 in total) had their wells built in the 1970s during the period of Ujamaa (the socialist policy of Tanzania’s first president, Mwalimu Nyrere). Some of them were broken now and some were still working, all had very different payment schemes and local government set ups, all of the towns had water committees to run the wells systems but those had only existed for about 10 years since the time the gov stopped paying for all of the repairs, almost all had full piping systems to go with the wells (to 6-8 different rural distribution points), and the government only came to check up on them if the village contacted the district water engineer first and said that they had a problem.

On Friday evening, 6 other girls that I’m friends with from the university came to Dodoma for the weekend because they had wanted to see these 30,000 year old rock paintings that are outside of Dodoma. We hung out that night and tried to figure out how to get to them, but it turned out they were 120km away in the middle of nowhere and we would have to stay over the next just to get a bus back to Dodoma at 4am the next morning… so we decided against that plan. Instead, on Saturday morning Patrick took us all to University of Dodoma and gave us a nice tour of the campus. Then he took us to climb the mountain behind the campus to see the beautiful view out of the Dodoma region. We spent the rest of the afternoon shopping and just hanging out in town, and then that night we went out dancing to the one club in town with Patrick and his friends.

On Sunday, we took the bus home from Dodoma and then I ditched Jason at the hotel for the night because I had a whole bunch of work to get done after missing a week of classes. On Monday morning I took Jason and Jessie, this girl who actually goes to University of Florida and is only here for a month doing research, to the Mwenge woodcarvers market to do some shopping. I had a test in Literature in the afternoon so I again ditched Jason for a while… I’m a terrible host. We then spent the rest of the afternoon updating our surveys and working on an outline for our paper. And On Tuesday morning Jason left! The time flew by (as I knew it would), and although we got a lot accomplished it still felt ridiculously short. Now it’s back to work for my last two weeks of classes and trying to fit everything I want to do in Dar into the neaxt week and a half or so!! Ahhh, I can’t believe I leave so soon…

Love you all,
Lisa

Beaches, Wood Carving, and Frantic Last-minute Planning

2009-05-20T00:12:00.001-07:00

(Written May 8th before jason got here, but I just haven't had a chance to post til now...)

Last Tuesday, the day after Adrienne flew out, Ibrah and Ryan came to Dar from Moshi because Ryan was flying home on Wednesday afternoon. Tacy and I went to meet them for dinner at Ibrah’s friends house where they were staying the night, which started off a little disastrous. When we left the university by dala at around 6, I told Ibrah that we were on our way and said that that was fine. I know Ibrah pretty well and know hes bad about being on time sometimes… but what I didn’t know was that right then he was still in downtown Dar, which is at least 45 minutes away from where we were headed even when there isn’t traffic… which there was. Anyways, to make a long story short, Tacy and I had to wait at the bus stop at Kimara Mwisho for over an hour waiting for them to get there to pick us up, most of which was night which made it a little sketchy for two little white girls to be hanging around alone. It was a safe area so it wasn’t a big deal, but still not exactly ideal. Nonetheless, when we finally met up with them we had a really great night. Not to mention that Ibrah happened to know a whole group of 5 girls from Tacy’s tiny little 800 person college in Florida because they had volunteered with CCS a few years ago! I feel like this always happens to me… what a small world.

In the past two weeks school has been a bit hectic because our teachers finally realized that we need some sort of work/graded assignments in order to actually give us grades at the end of the semester. Apparently this whole idea didn’t hit them until very recently, because I now officially have a test, presentation, or essay due in just about every class period that I have for the rest of the semester haha. I had heard that classes here were a joke at the beginning and then everything gets stuffed into the last few weeks… but I guess I didn’t really understand how ridiculous it actually is. In some classes we literally have a midterm (only test) one week and then the final exam the next week haha. It’s so bizarre. Although the projects and tests aren’t really that difficult, I’ve still been busy with school stuff fairly consistently recently, which was a big switch from the first ten weeks or so of the semester.

On top of all the work that we all the sudden have, I have been running all over Dar the past week and a half trying to get stuff organized for Jason to come (my research partner) and trying to get this **** research approval letter. I ended up getting the research clearance letter from the Open University of Tanzania (OUT) through the Vice Chancellor, Tolly Mbwette, who is Prof Senkoro’s relative that has been helping me. Although that did make life easier because I didn’t have to stalk down 15 or so people from the University of Dar es Salaam and instead got it directly approved by Prof Mbwette, it meant that I had to make about 5 trips to OUT (which is over a half hour and two daladalas away) and wait for hours while it got passed through all sorts of different departments. Nonetheless, I think it will be extremely helpful in starting my research so I guess it was worth all the waiting.
On last Friday, all of the remaining girls from the Florida program (me, Tacy, Mary, and Mac) went with a few of our Tanzanian friends to Kipepeo Beach. The beach is the same one we went to at the beginning of the semester which is about a 2 hour dala trip away, but it is absolutely worth the traveling. The beach is beautiful and much cleaner than most of the beaches in Dar. It had been raining on and off all week, but we totally lucked out and the weather was gorgeous all day.

On Saturday during the day, Tacy and I made a trip to Posta (downtown Dar) to go to this bookstore that we wanted to find and to visit the botanical gardens. Bookstore: worth the travel, bought some awesome books written by African authors. Botanical gardens: pathetic… basically just a tiny park that covered maybe one square block and had like ten flowers. At least we had 50% success though haha. At night, we were all invited to go to dinner with Professor Mbwette (the Vice Chancellor of the Open University) at the “Blue Gate Club.” Didn’t really know what that meant at the time, but it turns out to be an outdoor restaurant which sells mainly “kiti moto” (fried pork) and is owned by his family. Prof Mbwette’s son, Kennedy, is actually a first year student at UDSM which I hadn’t known before. Kennedy and two of his friends came to dinner as well, which was fun to meet some more students.

On Sunday, I went to the Mwenge woodcarvers market with Tacy (where I teach during the week) to start learning how to carve. Besti and Lyala, two of the woodcarvers who we are friends with, are teaching us how to carve. Tacy started going to learn a while ago with Adrienne so she’s a lot better than I am, but she’s been helping me out too. I’m carving a pipe right now, because that is apparently what they always teach people how to carve first since it is one of the more simple things you can make. Carving is so so so difficult though…. As with most artwork, I have so much more appreciation for any of the things I am buying after seeing how hard it is to actually do the carving. It’s funny because I probably do 90% of the time spent carving my pipe, yet maybe only 50% of the total work. I spend twenty minutes trying to cut out a small area and carve it into the correct shape, and then Lyala or Besti stops me and finishes the same amount in less than 2 minutes. Makes me feel a tad pathetic haha, but I’m really enjoying it nonetheless.

This week almost all of our classes got cancelled for some reason, the teachers didn’t show up, or we had a test to take in class. So our classes are just as much of a joke as ever, but oh well. It was actually nice to have a break this week because I was running around so hectically trying to get things organized for Jason’s arrival. I did finally get the research letter on Thursday afternoon, which was a bit of a close call before we were planning to leave for Dodoma, but oh well. Oh and one more exciting thing, we went to go eat antelope for lunch on Friday! It was a bit tough and a little bit odd flavored, but not bad on the whole… and definitely worth eating just for the sake of being able to say I ate antelope haha.

Sorryyy

2009-05-12T06:11:00.000-07:00

So I'm very sorry I haven't posted in forever... I was writing up a blog at the end of last week but I got interupted by having to pick up Jason, my research partner, at the airport. Anyways, we are in Dodoma now and I don't have any time to write but check up middle of next week after Jason leaves and I promise I'll write a long update on the last few weeks and all of my research this week! It's going great so far!

All my love and apologies for my laziness,
Lisa

Adrienne Leaving and Rwandan Genocide Seminar

2009-04-28T02:34:00.000-07:00

Since it was Adrienne’s last weekend in the country, we just hung out a lot and did some things that she wanted to do for her last days in the country. On Friday during the day, Adrienne and Tacy went to Kariakoo, the big market downtown, but I decided not to go because it’s like going to the most fun/inexpensive mall you can think of… and by that I mean I am always tempted to (and actually do) buy everything I see and spend money on things I absolutely don’t need. Like when I bought two new vitenge (the African fabrics) to get made into dresses which I don’t need any more of really at all. So anyways, I decided to be good and save myself from the urges by not going… but instead I went to the woodcarvers market and bought lots of gifts haha. I guess I failed at not spending money, but at least I got some great gifts for people! Be excited :)

On Friday night, we went to go see a movie at the mall and we ended up seeing “He’s Just Not That Into You.” It was SOO good! I mean a pretty cliché girly movie, but great nonetheless haha. Then we came back to the room and had dinner all together and helped Adrienne start to get her stuff packed up.

On Saturday morning (which went well into the afternoon as well), I went to a lecture that was hosted by the University to commemorate the 15th Anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide and to honor its victims. There were a lot of opening presentations and the actual speakers didn’t start until almost 2 hours after the planned start time (a usual occurrence at the university). The two speakers were really interesting though, and they talked all about this year’s theme for the anniversary: Fighting Negation and Trivialization of the Genocide. In the middle, there was also a really cool song performed by a few young Tanzanian artists about how to unite as Africans and be proud of your heritage. After the original presentations (made by the Rwandan ambassador, some UDSM professors, and a few people from the UN Human Rights Association) and the speakers, they made the floor open for comments/questions. After the first few questions, however, one guy decided to speak in Swahili instead of English, which then opened the floodgates and everyone started speaking only Swahili. We stayed for the rest of the time and I understood most of what was being said, but it definitely gave me a bit of a headache after an hour of trying to translate haha. There were all sorts of interesting comments being made and people talked a lot about how to stop genocide from occurring in Tanzania, especially considering the recent wave of Albino killings (I don’t know if that is just in local news or if you had any idea that was occurring here… but it is). Also, one professor was talking all about how being an African just means that you care about the issues of Africa, that you want Africa to develop and be peaceful, that you love the people and culture of Africa, etc. Therefore, why do people keep saying that “wazungu” aren’t African? If they love it here and want to live here and care about African issues, then they are truly African regardless of skin color. I liked that… I would like to think of myself as African…

Anyways, overall the presentation was really interesting and fun to hear student perspectives, but I had one HUGE issue with the symposium. In an entire 3 hours or more of discussing the Rwandan genocide and people saying how they need to unite as Africans and “never let this happen again,” NOT ONE person even mentioned Sudan. I wanted to stand up and ask how people can keep saying “Never again, never again” when genocide is happening this very instant in Sudan. Not to mention the fact that the entire theme of this years commemoration was about the issues with denying and/or trivializing genocide, which was EXACTLY what was going on at the seminar by not mentioning/discussing Sudan! I was almost furious by the time we left, but still not daring enough to stand up and say something… not only was it in an auditorium filled with about 800 students/faculty and I’m a little afraid of public speaking, but more importantly I was one of only 3 white people in the entire room. Anyways, I was afraid of being judged by the students and having them think “look, here’s this little white girl who came here to tell us what to do and what to think”… so I ended up not saying anything. I retrospect I wish I had because I really wanted to see people’s reactions, but oh well. In the end it seemed like everyone was saying “unite as Africans” and “we are all the same, we are all Africans,” but they were all still thinking predominantly about Tanzania and its issues. It was definitely a learning experience.

On Saturday night, a bug group of us went out dancing to this bar called “Sweet Eazy” for Adrienne’s last night out (so sad!). We had never been to the place before, but Adrienne wanted to go somewhere with live music and we heard from our Tanzanian friends that that was a nice place. The group was me, Adrienne, Mary, Tacy, and Mac (which was all of the remaining UF program girls… minus the one we never hang out with because she’s crazy haha), Eunice (Mary’s roommate), Eunice’s boyfriend Frank and a few of his friends, Anna (the family friend of a family friend of mine) and some of her friends who are also UDSM students, and two of the woodcarvers from Mwenge who Adrienne is really close with. When we first got there, it turned out to be much fancier than we had expected it to be… and therefore a lot more expensive that we had planned for. Right when we walked in, there was no live music playing and there were just like 10 old white guys sitting at the bar… we all turned to each other and were like “uhhhh, this wasn’t quite what we had wanted.” We were a little bit bummed at the beginning, but the live music started pretty soon after we got there and the bands that played turned out to be awesome. They played a lot of their own music, as well as some covers of famous American songs and covers of popular Bongo Flavor music (the Tanzanian equivalent of pop/hip hop). The boys we were with were all so, so much fun and danced more than half of the girls even did… so different than American boys! We had almost left when we first saw the place, but ended up staying til almost 3 in the morning dancing. It was a great going away night for Adrienne.

On Sunday it rained all day, which ruined our plan to have a Frisbee game at Mwenge with all the woodcarvers. Instead, we basically just hung out inside all day and helped Adrienne get her stuff together. That’s the big problem with rainy season… the rain make you want to do nothing and sit inside all day… but you can’t really do that when it rains every day! Nonetheless, we had a really nice day, and then had a mini party in the dorm Sunday night with some wine and chocolate cake/candy. We intended on watching a movie… but we got wrapped up in talking (and eating haha) and never ended up putting it in.

Adrienne got the last of her stuff organized yesterday morning, we went out to lunch at Hill Park (one of the nicer restaurants on campus), and then said goodbye. She was headed back to the dorm and we had to go to class, so Mary and I had to say goodbye outside in the pouring rain, switching back and forth who would hold the umbrella so the other one could hug Adrienne. It was sad, but didn’t really seem like a real goodbye because of the circumstances…. Last night it really hit us though since her room was empty and all. I can’t believe both her and Laura are already gone… we’re dropping like flies! At least there are a bunch of European girls who moved in recently since the real semester is starting now, so we’re at least a little less outnumbered :)

Dodoma and Planning My Water Research

2009-04-23T05:12:00.001-07:00

First of all, on Thursday night I found out that one of the girls in my program, Laura was leaving to go home to the US on Saturday morning. Because of a whole bunch of health issues, she had to go home to go to a good hospital which meant that she decided to leave extremely quickly. By the time I found out she was leaving though, I had already made my plans to go to Dodoma for the weekend and had bought my bus ticket. It was really sad saying goodbye to her on Thursday night, and I have another goodbye this weekend when Adrienne goes home. It’s so sad that everyone is going home soon! Time has gone by so quickly, I can’t even believe it.

First thing on Friday morning, my friend Ivan and I left to go to Dodoma for the weekend to get my research for the summer figured out a little bit. Ivan is a friend from school who I have been going to the orphan center outside of Dar with the past few weekends, and he has some friends in Dodoma who he wanted to visit anyways so agreed to go with me for the weekend to help out. The bus takes about 6 hours, but it was a fun ride since I have never been out that direction (past Morogoro) so it was all new sights. Oh and I found my dream place along the way. There is one area, about an hour and a half before you get to Dodoma, which I absolutely fell in love with. It is just these beautiful fields/farms that stretch in every direction with mountains in the distance and I looooove it there. Not to mention that in the middle of it there is literally Pride Rock (like you the big rock/mountain from The Lion King!?). No joke, it looks exactly like it... I got very excited haha.

When we finally came into Dodoma, I practically laughed out loud at the central bus station. Dodoma was technically made the capital of Tanzania about 15 years ago and has all of the main parliament buildings, but Dar continues to be the true capital. From plenty of research and from talking to a lot of people about it, I knew that Dodoma was no Dar es Salaam... but I guess I didn't expect it to be quite as pathetic as it was. Don't get me wrong, I ended up really really liking Dodoma, but it's pretty wimpy for a capital city. It is only a little bitbigger than Moshi was, no more developed, and just about the only big/impressive building in the whole town in the Parliament Building. The bus station that we came into was so small and dusty and undeveloped that at first I didn't even believe we were there. Anyways, once I got over a little bit of intial shock, we met up with Ivan's family friend Beatrice and headed directly to the Regional Government office before it closed (it is only open on weekdays). Beatrice is my age but is only in her final year of secondary school (high school) because of the way the schooling system here works. Because students start school later and have more years of schooling before the university level, most people don't start university until they are 20 or 21... which is why every here thinks I'm crazy when I say I am already in my third year of school. Anyways, Beatrice ended up taking care of us the whole weekend: we stayed at her house, she cooked for us, she helped me out with my research, she showed me around town, etc. It was wonderful.

When we got to the Regional Government office it was about to close, but I managed to make it in just in time. I spoke with a guy there and explained to him that I wanted to do research on water access in rural villages in the Dodoma region and was hoping he could give me some information on the area. He ended up being a really big a-hole (excuse my language) and being very rude to me. He said that I needed a letter from the University of Dar es Salaam explaining that I am a student, I am interested in researching water, etc. He kept saying that if I didn’t have a letter “or anything else to offer,” there wasn’t any way he could take me to his boss to talk about getting information. After a while I just gave up since the whole letter thing made sense, but when we left Ivan was really mad and I didn’t really understand. He said that by not having “anything to offer” the guy basically meant “well if you don’t have a letter than you should have at least come with money.” I was so surprised… that thought had never even crossed my mind when I was in the office. I guess that’s how things work here, but I’m not about to get involved in that so I’m working on getting the letter now. After that, we went to the local municipal council to try to find out the information, and they started telling me the same thing about needing a letter; however, after lots of persistence and talking to about 3 bazillion different people (I think the whole building knew and hated me by the time I left haha), I finally got to speak with one guy who helped. He told me the names of the local NGOs (non-governmental organizations) who do work with water, a few villages that have been worked with in the past (which I am assuming means that they have functioning wells now), and a few villages in desperate need of water access. That was enough of a good start for me, so I finally agreed to go back to Beatrice’s house for the night (it was about 5 at this point and we were still carrying all of our luggage from when we got off the bus at 2). Beatrice lives with her family about 20 minutes outside of town in a really nice house, but her parents/aunt/uncle were out of town so they had lots of extra space. We just hung out at the house for the rest of the night and watched some movies, which was a nice break from all of the running around I had been doing the whole week before.

On Saturday morning I went back into town to try to find the water NGOs and any other organizations that may help. I made it to the WaterAid office (a big international NGO) and there was a secretary there to talk to, but the office itself was closed. She told me that the Team Leader for Dodoma was out of town anyways, so she gave me his contact information and I’m still working on emailing him for information. Next, I wandered around town trying to find the other two NGOs, but they either 1. Don’t exist, 2. Don’t do enough work to be well known by the people, or 3. Are hidden in some magical part of town that disappears whenever I walk by it haha. I don’t know where they are but I walked around aimlessly for almost 2 hours asking people where they were and NO ONE knew anything at all. I guess I’ll have to go back to the municipal office next time I’m there (and it is open) to ask where they are located. Walking aimlessly, however, was actually surprisingly productive. First, I made friends with a guy who has perfect English, works at the Central Development Authority in town (not exactly sure what they do but they sound like they could be useful), and did his graduate study research is rainwater catchment systems. Worst case scenario, if I can't find any well experts or anyone else to work with for my research, he seems like a pretty great option for a translator. Also, I found one private drilling company located in town, which will be helpful in getting some price estimates for building/repairing wells in the area. Lastly, I found a few NGOs dealing with rural development initiatives. I figure NGOs like that would at least know info about the towns they have worked with and which ones need water access, have water already, etc. All of the companies were closed since it was Saturday, but it was really helpful to learn what Dodoma has to offer NGO-wise, figure out my way around town, get the phone numbers/contact info for different places, etc.

In the afternoon, Beatrice, Ivan and I went to visit a local orphanage that Beatrice works with a lot. The orphanage has about 35 kids living there, between the ages of 5 and 15. When we got there, the director told us all about the orphanage and the NGO it is run by, which also runs about 5 other community development/youth education programs in the surrounding area. Then we spent an hour or two just hanging out with the kids, playing games with them, and listening to them sing for us. I love the children at orphanages in general, and these kids were even more loving and excited to have us there than the most. They weren’t shy at all either, which made it really fun.

We had a late lunch/early dinner in town and then bought our tickets home at the central bus station. I had originally planned to stay until Monday, but after walking around Saturday I realized that there was really no point since everything would be closed all day Sunday. I considered staying just so that I could spend an hour or two in town on Monday when things would be open, but I didn’t want to waste Sunday not doing anything in Dodoma when I had a lot of work to get done at home as well. Plus, I didn’t really know anyone in Dodoma and Ivan had to go home for class Monday, so I would have been really lonely in town all day Sunday. Anyways, we spent the night relaxing at Beatrice’s house once again and then left to come back to Dar on Sunday morning. As much as I laughed/made fun of Dodoma for being such a pathetic capital at first, I really ended up liking it there. It is completely un-touristy (because there is honestly nothing to see there) and all of the people there are extremely nice. I take that back, all of the people except the ******* who worked at the regional office haha. Nonetheless, I think it’s a great area and I really think I’ll enjoy spending a few weeks there.

It was a good thing that I decided to come back when I did because I ended up getting some sort of stomach bug/food poisoning on Sunday night and was sick all day Monday… which would have sucked even more than it already did if I had been in a hotel alone in Dodoma and/or on a bus back home. So, I’m glad everything worked out as it did.

Yesterday I had a history essay/presentation AND a history test on the same day (I’m the unlucky one who got stuck with my presentation on that date), so I was busy all day Tuesday working on that. Both went well, and I’m glad to have them over with so I can get started planning more for my research. The trip to Dodoma was really successful in the sense that now I have a long list of preparation stuff that I need to get done which I didn’t know about before. Jason, the kid from Lehigh who I worked with this water project on from the very beginning and who I won the grant with, is coming to Tanzania May 8th-19th help out with the beginning of the research. I’ll have to skip classes for a week then, which isn’t exactly great, but it was the only week he can come so oh well. Anyways, I have soooo much to get figured out before he comes… and it’s only a few weeks away! Ah!
Now I stressed myself out thinking about it all and need to get back to work haha. First step is figuring out how to get the Vice Chancellor of the University of Dar es Salaam to sign off on my research in less than three weeks (mind you that NOTHING in this country happens in less than three weeks… I’ve been here three and a half months and still don’t have an ID card from the university…). Wish me luck! Miss you all

Love,
Lisa

Life in Dar, Moshi Again, and Mwalimu Nyrere Week

2009-04-15T07:21:00.000-07:00

The last week or so was fairly uneventful, but here are a few highlights before I get to my trip to Moshi: The students finished their final exams from last semester and were on vacation from school last week, so the campus was pretty dead. The night when they finished (last Thursday), we had a little party in our dorm to celebrate them being finally done. Later, I ended up going to this local club with two of my Tanzanian friends (all of the other UF girls were tired and being party poopers), where I was absolutely the only mzungu there. Not sure the last time any mzungu ever went there, but they didn’t play one American rap song (like they usually do at the clubs here) and everything was in Kiswahili. I must say I was a little nervous at first, but Eunice and Maggie took care of me and I ended up having a blast.

That Saturday, Tacy, Adrienne, Mary, a European friend of ours Yaanita, and I went to a big party at Anna’s volunteer house. Not sure if I’ve explained this before, but Anna and Tacy grew up together in the US and the Anna moved backed to Finland where she is from, but they stayed in touch and decided to study abroad together. Anna just moved into the dorm a few days ago because she will start classes on the new UDSM class schedule, but before that she was living at a volunteer house about 30 minutes away by daladala. Anyways, we went to her volunteer house for a big music festival/party. I ended up having a dance off with a random Tanzanian guy… and I won. It was hilarious to say the least haha.

On Tuesday we didn’t have class because it was a Tanzanian holiday, Karume Day. That was the day when the first president of Zanzibar, Karume, was assassinated. Kinda depressing holiday… but we got off from classes so I’m not complaining haha. I went to Kariakoo for most of the day (the big market in town) with Ivan, my Tanzanian friend who took me to the orphan center a few times, and Mary and Tacy.
On Wednesday night I got sick with a fever, headaches, aching bones, etc… the sure signs of malaria. I went to the clinic first thing in the morning on Thursday (instead of going to class), and got tested for malaria. I did have it after all, so I got the medicine, started it right away, and felt almost completely better by the end of the day. Honestly, malaria isn’t that bad! I don’t know what all the fuss is about… as long as you catch it early and take the meds it’s completely fine. I’m just becoming truly African and building up my immunity to it, that’s all.

On Thursday I took the bus to Moshi for the weekend, regardless of my (minor) health issues. I actually almost got left at the rest stop in the middle of the trip since I wasn’t paying attention to the time and was chatting with a friend I made… but after freaking out and boarding 3 other wrong buses in search of mine, someone finally yelled “mzungu” (meaning “white person” if you forget) and pointed out to the exit of the stop. The bus was waiting for me on the road and the attendant was outside with her hands on her hips looking angry…. Oops haha. At least there was one Tanzanian girl who was even later than me, so that made me feel a little less stupid.

When I got into town in the evening, we all had dinner at Ibrah’s house and then Ryan and I went out to this bar in town. The bar is a fairly expensive, all wazungu bar (for the most part), which isn’t really my cup of tea but it was where Ryan wanted to go to meet his friends so I agreed. There I met four of the CCS volunteers that Ryan knows who are living right now in the house that I lived in this past summer. After talking for a little, I came to find out that me and one of the four volunteers, this girl Kate, are literally the same person. First we figured out that she lives right near me in Jersey and she knows a lot of people who went to private schools around Summit and others who now go to Lehigh. Then, I find out that she also has a lake house at the northern end of Lake George!! For those of you who know, she lives in Hague and is working at the Firehouse this summer and knows EVERYONE from the Hague crowd. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a tiny area in the middle of nowhere and everyone knows everyone and it’s such a bizarre coincidence. Then I find out she is also in DG (my sorority) AND wants to go into NGO work for clean water access in Africa. We are the same person. It’s ridiculous. Anyways, I had a great time just talking to Kate and we kind of hid in the corner half the night haha, but it was exciting. What a small world.

On Friday morning I went into town to meet up with Nie, the head of TAFCOM (the HIV/AIDS group that I sponsor a family through). Unfortunately, Asia and her children (the ones who I support) were out of town again so I didn’t get to see them… but that is kind of my fault for not planning my trip enough ahead of time and asking Nie if they were there. Nonetheless, I had a great lunch in town with Nie and got to hear all about the new children’s center that TAFCOM just opened. After lunch, I caught the daladala out of town to visit Kilimahewa, the school that I had taught at when I was in Moshi. The students weren’t around because it was Good Friday (all of the school are on break until the 20th or so), but Mussawe (the head teacher) and his wife Susan and all of their kids were around. They were so excited to see me, it was wonderful! Not only were they excited that I could now actually speak with them in Kiswahili, but they kept saying how rarely volunteers actually come back after they leave. They took out the log book of volunteers they have and looked up when I had signed it last year, took me to meet Mussawe’s older brother and his family, and spent the whole afternoon chatting with me. It was so exciting to see them again, Mussawe is a wonderful man (he basically runs the whole school out of his pocket and doesn’t charge the children anything since most are very poor and/or are orphans). After finally heading back to Ibrah’s house, I got changed quickly and met Ryan and all of the CCS people that I had met the night before for dinner at El Rancho, a nice Indian restaurant in town (yea I know, “El Rancho” should be Mexican… but people here are weird, I don’t know).

On Saturday morning I walked from Ibrah’s house to the CCS house where I lived last year. Being back at the house was a really fun blast from the past, and even better since everyone on the staff remembered me! All of the lady’s who clean and help cook, the head cook, Mama Fatuma (one of the heads of the program)… they all recognized me immediately. It was great to catch up with all of them, and especially Peter who had been the driver who took me around last time. We got to talk for a while, so that was great. I spent some more time hanging out with the CCS people that I had met the two days before, and then left them to finish packing because it was the last day in the country for most of them! So sad… I remember balling my eyes out on the day I left… I completely knew what they were going through. After leaving CCS, I just hung out in downtown Moshi for a while and did some shopping before heading back to Ibrah’s for the night.

Sunday was Easter… but I did nothing remotely Easter related. In the morning I went to town to buy my bus ticket for the next day, and when I was in town I got to visit and catch up with Reagan, one of my friends who sells art downtown, for a while. The rest of the afternoon I just hung out at the house with Ryan and Ibrah, and helped Ibrah out a lot on making the brochure for his new volunteer company, AfriShare Solutions.

On Monday I took the bus home from Moshi… very long and painful as always. Got into town at around 5 and then, after quickly throwing my stuff back in the dorm, went straight to the woodcarvers to teach; however, since it was Easter Monday, there was no one there! The market was basically empty and only about 5 carvers who I’m friends with were left there, so instead of teaching Mary and I just hung out with the guys and helped them inventory their shop.

This week is actually the first annual Julius Nyrere Intellectual Festival Week at the university, which is in honor of “Mwalimu Nyrere” (mwalimu means teacher) who was the first president of Tanzania and completely united the country. He’s a national hero and did a lot of great things for the country, so everyone is pretty excited about the week. There are speakers all week and most classes are cancelled because everyone is attending the special ceremonies. Yesterday, I went to the second part of a talk on New Imperialism by the week’s keynote speaker, Wole Soyinka (this crazy old guy who looks exactly like a black version of Einstein… he literally has crazy white hair that sticks up everywhere… google it if you doubt me haha). Then last night we went to see a really great documentary on Nyrere’s life and all of his work before and after being president. It had interviews with other previous president’s of Tanzania, his wife, his children, and some other amazing people… it was a pretty impressive compilation. Oh and just a fun fact: Mwalimu Nyrere’s father had 22 wives. 22!!!! They showed a family photo with all the wives and children, it was nuts.

Yesterday I also went out lunch with this girl Anna who is a family friend of a family friend (a different Anna than the Finnish one who is Tacy’s friend). Anyways, our family friend randomly put us in contact since we are both in Tanzania and she didn’t know where either of us was geographically… but it turns out that she literally lives less than five minutes outside of the university. Plus, now she’ll be coming to the university all the time to take Kiswahili lessons from a friend, so we’ll be able to meet up fairly often. Yet again, it really is a small world.
That’s all for now, but hope all is well at home. I’m headed to Dodoma this weekend to do some preliminary research for what I’ll be doing this summer (aka visit the town council, some private drilling companies, etc). I’ll write again next week with either stories of success from the weekend, or nervous twitches about where the hell to go next haha… so let’s hope for the latter. Love you all

-Lisa

Back in Dar

2009-03-30T22:20:00.000-07:00

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!!

2009-03-19T07:11:00.001-07:00

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

2009-03-07T01:35:00.000-08:00

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

2009-03-02T10:47:00.000-08:00

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

Zanzibar

2009-02-24T06:06:00.000-08:00

After getting back from the mountains, I had only about 12 hours to get my stuff together before we left for Zanzibar on Friday morning. We had to leave our dorm at 5:45am (yet another early start…) in order to get to the ferry in time, which then took two more hours to get us to Zanzibar. If you don’t know, Zanzibar is the main island off the coast of Tanzania which was the final port for slaves leaving from East Africa during the slave trade and was also a main trading point for spices and other goods. Zanzibar today is overwhelmingly Muslim and basically has its own government, although it is still technically a part of Tanzania (they even have their own immigration point when you get to the island). The island is now famous for its historical downtown, narrow “streets” (which are really more like alleyways and you constantly almost get run over by motorbikes), cool doors (made out of wood and intricately engraved), spices, and of course its beautiful beaches.

On Friday after arriving we had breakfast at our hotel and then walked to the beach to jump on a old wooden boat that would take us out to a small, privately owned island called Changuu. The island has a really expensive hotel on it, but you are allowed to go out for the day and spend some time there. The coolest part about the island was that they have a sanctuary for giant tortoises and there are about 50 or so in there! You can walk around right next to them and touch their shells and what not, it was really cool. The medium sized ones were about the size of me if I rolled up into child’s pose and then covered myself in a big shell (if that helps at all haha). Also, right now it is mating season for the tortoises, so we actually saw two pairs of them mating… a bizarre experience to say the least. After seeing the tortoises we basically just hung out on the beach for a while and then headed back to the main island to have lunch. After lunch we did some shopping and wandered around downtown, the area called “Stonetown” which is just a really cool maze of narrow winding alleyways to get yourself lost in. For dinner we went to a really cool local market-type place where a whole bunch of vendors set up tables and basically sell fish shish kabobs of all types.

Saturday morning we started off with a historical tour of Stonetown. First we visited the first Anglican Church on Zanzibar, which was the original place of the slave market and where the slaves were held on the few days before they were sold. The church also had a lot of information and memorials dedicated to Dr. Livingston, who is pretty famous in this area for his work to end the legality of the slave trade in East Africa. Next we went to the “House of Wonders,” which is located in the mansion which was once the home of the sultan who ruled Zanzibar, and is now a huge museum dedicated to all aspects of Zanzibarian history and culture. Walking to the museum we passed through a lot of cool smaller areas historical areas of town and through a few different local markets. Unfortunately, we were running a bit late (because we all got distracted shopping on the walk there) and didn’t get nearly as much time to spend at the museum as I would have hoped, but I guess I’ll just have to go back and visit again.

After the museums and a quick lunch, we left downtown and drove out to a more rural area of Zanzibar to go on a spice tour. Our tour guide took us through two different forest areas and showed us all sorts of plants that are used for spices, medicines, food coloring, etc. We saw the plants that produce cinnamon, jasmine, vanilla, hibiscus, pepper, coffee, henna, quinine, lemongrass, ylang ylang (used to make perfumes), colorings that were used for traditional lipstick/facial makeup, curry, menthol, aloe, and many more. We also got to try a whole bunch of fruits that they picked right off the tree for us, including some regulars (coconut, oranges, mangos, pineapple) and some bizarre ones (jackfruit, breadfruit, a weird type of grapefruit, lychee, and these little spiky circular fruits that I can’t remember the name of). At the end of the tour, our guide took us to a little shop where we could buy all sorts of different regular spices and pre-mixed spice packages… so I will have lots of cooking to do with my new spices when I get home!

After the spice tour ended, we drove two hours outside of town to get to our hotel, which was right on the beach and was beautiful (but completely in the middle of nowhere). We didn’t realized until we got there that it was so isolated and that there was nowhere else to go eat, which proved a significant problem since the meals at the hotel were about $20 per plate! Obviously we are all students and cheap to begin with, but living in Tanzania for a few months makes you even cheaper, trust me. But we let Prof. Senkoro work his magic and chat up the managers until they agreed to make us simpler meals for only $5 per plate… thanks god we had him there. We spend the rest of the afternoon/night relaxing at the hotel, on the beach, and next to the beautifully lit up beachside pool. What a hard life.

On Sunday we woke up early and went snorkeling for most of the morning. The coral reef that we went snorkeling to was amazing and there were so many types of really cool, unbelievably brightly colored, huge fish. Plus the coral itself was also pretty amazing. I have done a fair amount of snorkeling in my life, and this definitely was one of the cooler places I have ever gone. Minor detail though: swimming for a few hours in the mid-day summer African sun does not go over well on untan skin. Regardless of the copious amounts of sunscreen that we applied to ourselves prior to snorkeling, all of us are thoroughly fried on our backs and are still in a significant amount of pain… but it was worth it. After snorkeling and lunch, we once again spend the afternoon just hanging out on the beach and I went on a really nice walk down the beach at sunset. There is a lot of rock/coral next to the beach, and on my way back right as the sun was setting, there were a ridiculous amount of crabs scurrying all around in the rocks. I saw at least 6 or 7 different types of them and all different sizes, it was pretty cool.

Yesterday mid-morning we drove back to Stonetown and spent the rest of the morning/afternoon shopping and wandering around. Senkoro ended up booking us on a flight home instead of taking the ferry again because, oddly enough, once you have a residence permit it is actually cheaper to fly than it is to take the boat (this country is extremely weird, I don’t get it at all). Anyways, our plane was almost an hour late so we had to wait in the airport for a while, but it was definitely worth the wait because the plane was awesome. It only fit about ten people (and by that I mean ten very, very cramped people) and was about a twenty minute flight. Not only could we see out over all of Zanzibar and its beautiful beaches, but we were also flying out right at sunset, which made it even more pretty. I’ve never been in a plane that small or flown over such pretty sights, so it was really fun.

Today we were supposed to start classes, but (like usual) things weren’t organized enough to start. We did, however, get our semi-final schedule for the semester, which is beyond amazing. Here’s what it looks like:

Monday: NO CLASSES

Tuesday: 9am-12pm -- Kiswahili

2-5pm African -- Literature

Wednesday: 9am-12pm -- History of East Africa

2-5pm -- Family and Gender Relations

Thursday: 9am-12pm -- African Politics

Friday: NO CLASSES

So Todd (the director from UF) worked it out for us that we have four day weekends every week! I mean having six hours of class two days a week will probably be a little bit painful and having three hours at a time of each class isn’t always the most fun… but I’d still say it’s a pretty great schedule. This schedule will also give me plenty of opportunities to go visit friends in Moshi and travel to Dodoma to figure out my research, which is perfect. I’ll give more of an update about my classes in a few days (assuming they actually start tomorrow like they should). Talk to you all soon

Love,

Lisa

Backpacking in the Usambaras

2009-02-22T04:15:00.000-08:00

Let me start off by saying that this was honestly one of my favorite trips that I have ever done. Laura, Tacy and I took the bus to Lushoto (the central town in the Usambara Mountain range) on last Sunday and organized a three day hike through the mountains. We basically had no idea what to expect, but it definitely ended up being better than I copuld have even imagined.

DAY ONE: Lushoto to Lukozi

We left Lushoto first thing in the morning and walked stright up the mountain behind town so that we got a great view overlooking the downtown and surrounding areas. After a little while, we all of the sudden entered an actual rainforest. There wasn't even really an existing trail through half of it, we were just kind of trudging through the rainforest, which was awesome. We saw a bizarre red squirrel with a bright yellow tail and a two horned chameleon (which we got to hold). There were also a lot of colibus monkeys in the forest, but the forest was too dense and we could only hear them most of the time. About halfway through our walk in the rainforest it actually started pouring rain, but it almost made the forest even more exciting to be in. I guess we wouldn't have felt that way if we all didn't have nice rainjackets, but it worked out fine for us. When we finally came out of the forest, we stopped to have lunch right next to someone's house, so the kids all came out and ate lunch with us.

After lunch, we walked past the main university in the area (which was pretty tiny) and then through a beautiful valley. At the end of the valley we came to a village where they were making the traditional beer of the area, which is made from sugar cane. We didn't try any but we did get to see them crushing the sugar cane to make it, which was a very weird/cool process. After that, our guide gave us the option of taking the bus the next part of the way or walking the last two hours of the trip... we had already been walking for about six hours and hadn't slept at all the night before (Laura had been up all night getting sick) so we opted for taking the bus. I know, we took the lazy route, but it was definitely a good call at the time because we were all dying a little bit haha.

When we got to Lukozi, we brought our stuff to the hotel (if you could even call it a hotel...) and then went back to town to explore the market a bit. Lukozi is a much smaller town that Lushoto, but it's very busy because it has a big downtown market with a lot of fresh fruit. The fruit here in Tanzania is so so so much better at home to begin with, but it was even more fun up there because they have fruits that we don't get in Dar (like peachs, pears, apples, and berries). Unfortunately, I got very sick to my stomach that night and didn't really get to sleep at all, which was probably a result of some of that delicious fruit that I guess I didn't wash quite well enough. I was fine by the morning though, so I kept going with the trip and it wasn't a huge problem.

DAY TWO: Lukozi to Rangwi

Started off immediately uphill and again climbed the mountain right beside town. Then, followed the back side of the mountain down, through a small village (where the kids followed us the whole way) and then back up the mountain on the other side of the village. We actually met a group of three women carrying buckets on their head who were also walking to Rangwi, so we all started off the walk together. They, however, lost us fairly quickly since we kept stopping to take pictures of the beautiful view of the mountains around us! We then went on to climb to the top of the higher mountain beside the one we had just finished, which ended up having an even more amazing view. At few points, the trail that we were on would end up on a small cliff and have only about ten feet in either direction, so you could look out to both sides and see the wonderful view of endless valleys and mountains. The mountains are all covered by terrace farming as well as little villages and homes. I asked our tour guide if this was the longer/more scenic route to Rangwi since it seemed pretty out of the way, but he said that it is actually the only walking path there is between the two towns and is the fastest route.

After reaching the top of the third mountain (which was a bit painful), we finally started the downhill section of the day. We walked down the back of the mountain and then started through the farmlands. We were literally walking right throuhg peoples' crops and their backyards. We picked pears directly from the trees to eat while we walked, kids would run after us, adults would stop farming to talk to us; it was wonderful. The walk from the bottowm of the mountain to Rangwi took another 2 hours or so, but it felt so much shorter because there were so many people and it was so exciting to walk through. We finally arrived in Rangwi around 3pm, but we never actually went to the town of Ragwi (which I'm not sure really exists). We stayed at a beautiful nunnery in the middle of nowhere where the nuns farm for a living and keep a guest house for anyone passing through. They made us a wonderful home-cooked meal and even heated up water for us to use to bathe (the first hot shower I've had in a month)! It was a great place to spend the rest of the afternoon/night relaxing.

DAY THREE: Rangwi to Mtae

After leaving the nunnery we walked again through some villages and farmlands before reaching a HUGE man-made pinew forest. The forest had been planted by the Germans for timber when it was their colony, and is still running as a lumber business today. The pine forests are beautiful, but look extremely unnatural next to the rest of the countryside because of their extreme uniformity. We walked through the pine forests for an hour or two and even got to see some men cutting down the wood for lumber. Because they obviously don't have big machines here, the men had made a contraption to hold the giant logs up, and then two of them at a time were using a saw the size of my body to cut apart the logs. It was pretty amazing, but a job that definitely never want to have!

After leaving the pine forest, we walked along a main road for a little while and through a few small towns. We stopped in one of the villages to buy pottery from an old lady who makes it to sell in the market. We literally showed up at her house and she just spread out her stuff all around her backyard... it was some pretty beautiful pottery. After leaving her house and walking further along the main road though, I was starting to think that the third day maybe hadn't been worth it and we should have just done two days (because my back hurt from my backpack and I didn't think we would get to see anymore). Right as I was thinking that though, we randomly turned a corner and all of a sudden came upon the most spectacular view we had yet to see. We had reached the end of the Usambara Mountains and they suddenly fell off into plains for as far as we could see. We could also see a large lake to one side (which I can't remember the name of), which separates the Usambaras from the Parre mountains which are the next range. We stopped to eat lunch with that view in front of us, and then continued along that main road the rest of the way to Mtae, which was on a cliff at the end of the last mountain.

Coming into Mtae, the road was like the mountaintop had been the day before where you could see out in both directions, excpet this time it was even more gorgeous. Our hotel was this little shack right in town (which was just one tiny strip of stores) and looked out over the rest of the town and the plains in the distance. We hung out at the hotel for a little and rested, and then walked through town to do some looking around for a while. It is a beautiful quaint little town with even more amazing views... I could definitely move there! Our guide then took us to a secret little lookout behind the town dispensary where we watched the sun set over the end of the mounatins and the plains in the distance. I can't even begin to describe how spectacular it was, we never wanted to leave!

After the sun set we went to dinner in town and then right back to the hotel to go to bed at around 8:30pm. We hadn't really realized it at the beginning of the trip, but it turned out that there were no buses that leave from Mtae in the afternoon and they only leave first thing in the morning. The buses that start in Mtae are the same daily buses that run from Lushoto to Arusha or to Dar each day, so they have to be in Lushoto to pick up their passengers by 7:00 am. The problem with that is that Mtae is about 3 hours from Lushoto.... so we had to get on the bus at 4am in order to get to Lushoto, where we had just enough time to get breakfast before gtting on our bus home to Dar. It was a bit unnerving being on the bus at 4am and driving along frighteningly twisty mountainside roads in the pitch black, but it was an experience nonetheless.

On the whole, the trip was so amazing because it was so far from being a touristy trip. We were walking through villages on roads that the locals use and taking all sorts of back routes... it never felt like we were just there to be tourists and we always felt welcome. The culture and the views were both simply wonderful. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Anyways, sorry for this being so long but I thought the details were necessary... I am actually in Zanzibar right now so back to the beach for me! I'll write about Zanzibar too when I get home in a few days. Miss you all

Love,
Lisa

Change of Plans

2009-02-13T02:24:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday night I went to teach at the woodcarvers again, and this time we taught a real lesson. We were teaching the different between either/or and neither/nor, when one of the carvers made the sentence "I don't know either I can go or not." We corrected him and said it should be "whether I can go or not," but when asked why, neither Mary nor I could explain it. You never realized how much you don't know about the English language and how weird it is until you get stuck with questions like that...

Because this was our last week of intensive Kiswahili, we had an oral exam yesterday and a written final exam today. Both parts were kind of terrible. First, they didn't tell us about the oral exam until the morning of so we had no time to prepare or study for it at all. Then, it wasn't even with our professor or our TA's, it was each of us alone with three other Kiswahili professors who we have never met before. Not to mention that these professors don't teach beginner Kiswahili, they teach our equivalent of English major classes (i.e. Kiswahili literature and other such classes). They asked questions so quickly and with vocab that we hadn't really learned so it was a challenge to even understand what they were asking, let alone answer the questions. I studied a lot an figured the written exam today would be a lot easier, but it turned out to almost be worse. I am not sure why they decided to put on it what they did since it didn't represent what we have learned at all, but oh well.

Just like I had predicted, it turns out that our classes and professors are not yet fully organized to start classes on Monday, so we will have a week off before our classes start (supposedly now on the 23rd). We already have a group trip to Zanzibar with Professor Senkoro planned for next weekend, so we only have until Thursday to do some travelling on our own. A few of us decided we want to go do some hiking in the Usambara Mountains (the really gorgeous mountain range that I saw from the Dar-Moshi bus ride), so we are going to leave Sunday morning to go to Lushoto, the central city of the Usambara Mts, and play it by ear once we get there. I even ran up and down the 8 flights of stairs in my dorm bunch of times last night to get my hiking boots worn in and ready... I can't wait!

Love,
Lisa

Weekend at the University

2009-02-09T02:29:00.001-08:00

First of all, I finally got to post pictures and these were requested by my mom... so here is a bit from my room. One of the distance pictures on the left is the view from my balcony, and I know it is small but if you look closely you can see the Indian Ocean in the distance. The other is a picture out the end of the hallway looking out over campus at a few of the dorms nearby (yes our hallway does just open up to the outside at the end of it). You can kinda see from these pictures what I meant about the campus being half in the middle of a forest... its very weird, but beautiful nonetheless. The two pictures on the right are my room from two angles (the matching posters were already there when I got here). The side with the plain green sheets and the bigger net is my side, the other side is my rommate Ashengai's side. To the right of her bed is where first the door out to the balcony is and then further over to the right is her desk and then her closet. On the picture of my side, the two doors in the middle is my whole closet, which is literally bigger than my closet at Lehigh (it's pretty nice)!

So this weekend was the first weekend since students have been on campus that we have not gone away for a trip. Although the trips are always fun and we still have a few left, it was nice to have a weekend to relax around campus and get some stuff done in Dar. On Saturday morning I went by daladala to the Open University of Tanzania (OUT) to meet with one of Professor Senkoro's family members, Prof Mbwette, who is going to help me with my research over the summer. For those of you who don't know, I guess I should give a (very) brief synopsis of what I mean by my research. My partner from school and I won a social entrepreneurship award from Lehigh to do research in Tanzania in order to possibly start up our own NGO (non-governmental orgnization). The idea for the organization is to promote sustainable water acces in rural areas of Tanzania by adding a heavy education aspect to the basic idea of building of wells. In order to start up the NGO (which I hope to do after graduating next year), Jason and I will be doing research this summer of wells that have been broken down (why they broke, why they haven't been fixed, other probelms with the wells, etc.) and with wells that are still functioning and why they are. That is a very very basic rundown... so I guess if you want any more details you can email me and ask. Anyways, Prof Mbwette is now the Vice-Chancellor of the Open University of Tanzania, but in school he had studied engineering and water purification. After graduating he did a lot of work with water companies and eventually has worked with the national water board as well. It was coincidence that we met when Prof Senkoro took us all out to dinner, but he is an amazing contact for me to have. We talked all about my proposal, how to register an NGO most efficiently, where I should do my work, etc. He also gave me the information for the head of University of Dar es Salaam's Water Insititute, who is a former student of his. I know exactly where the institute is and have been wanted to visit it but did not know who to speak to when I went there... so now I have the president's cell phone number! I can't even believe how much I lucked out. This seems to be a great start so far, so I'm very excited.

After leaving the OUT, I took the daladala back part of the way and then decided to walk home because it was a nice day. I stopped on the way back at one of the big markets because I really wanted to buy a khanga (the patterned fabrics that people use as aprons basically) that has Obama's face on it because I think they are pretty funny. When I asked how much it was, however, the seller told me it was Tsh 20,000 just because I'm white and she thought I was a tourist! (Tsh is the equivalent of like $18 and a khanga should cost no more than Tsh 5,000). It was ridiculous! I obviously didn't buy it, but it was funny to see how much some people try to jack up the prices just because they think they can.

On Saturday night a few of us went to the mall to go see a movie. There are only 4 theaters in the mall, but they are actually really really nice. We saw Bolt (the cartoon about the dog) which turned out to be really cute. When the lights turned on at the end we were all talking for a few minutes and finally one person said "Oh wow, I completely forgot we are in Africa right now." It was so true. Although it was really touristy of us to go to the movie, I must admit it was pretty nice to just be Americans again for one night.

Sunday midday I went to visit Mussa's family again (the professor who is studying at Lehigh right now). I ended up spending the whole day there, and it's starting to feel like my own little Tanzanian family. Mussa's wife taught me how to make pilau (spiced rice with meat and vegetables) and we cooked for much of the morning. We had a huge lunch all together and then watched Mrs. Doubtfire, which Ibu (the older son who is about my age) had borrowed from one of his friends. I really love spending time with the family because Ibu is the only one who speaks any English and he is pretty shy, so almost the whole time I try to speak in Swahili. Because Mama Ibu (Mussa's wife) doesn't know any English, she never looks at me like I'm dumb when I speak really slowly and in not always correct Swahili. It's quite the challenge, but I really like it and it's so helpful. I think I am going to go back again next weekend and Mama Ibu prmised to teach me how to cook chapati (a type of bread that is eaten here all the time).

This week is our last week of intensive Kiswahili, and starting on Monday we should have all of our five classes; however, who knows if that will ever actually happen on time. I don't think I have seen anything happen on schedule since I got here a month ago, so I would be surprised if this did! Either way though, we have class all week and then a big final exam on Friday. I can't believe I have already been here 5 weeks, time goes by so quickly. Miss you all lots.

Love,
Lisa

More Malaria Drama and the Woodcarvers Market

2009-02-07T02:38:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday I went to the clinic to get tested for malaria once again just to make sure that the last medicine I had taken worked properly. After getting the test done, I went in to speak to the doctor and he said that now I had 3 malaria parasites (that's one more than I had before)! I obviously started berating him with questions about how that could be possible and why the medicine would have not worked AGAIN even though I feel completely fine. He wasn't answering my questions very thoroughly and I was starting to freak out a little, for good reason if you ask me. After literally a full five minutes of me throwing questions at him, the doctor said "Oh I'm just kidding, they didn't see any malaria parasites. You're fine, I just wanted to see how you'd react." I was completely dumbstruck. I mean I know that I am in Africa and the hotpitals here aren't great, but still... I don't think I've ever met a doctor who joked (and especially for that long) about a somehwat life threathening disease. It was ridiculous. I walked out of the office half relieved and half about to scream at him. Anyways, the good news is that I am finally clear and don't have malria anymore... I just wish the doctor hadn't tried to be funny about it.

The past two nights (Thursday and Friday) I have gone to the woodcarvers market at Mwenge to teach English and I'm really starting to like it a lot. The first few days of the week are usually lessons, and at the end of the week we do discussions. The past two days we did discussions on politics and corruption and Kikwete's goverment (the current president). Even though the woodecarvers' English is by no means perfect, it's really interesting to here what they have to say on topics like that (when you can understand the point they are making).

The other day I actually walked around the woodcarvers market for the first time during the day when it is open. By the time we get there to teach at night, around 7pm, the whole martket is shut down. It was pretty cool to walk around during the day since it is a lot bigger than I had expected, but I also ran into a little bit of trouble while I was there. While walking around the market, a bunch of the men there were calling me Mwalimu (teacher) and talking to me, so everyone there kind of knew I had taught there recently. A group of men on the far side of the market approached me and started begging me to come teach them instead of the other group because they have 30 students and no actual teachers. When I asked about why they couldn't just join our class, the men said they didn't feel comfortable working with the men we teach because they are from a different tribe. In the market there is one big sqaure with stores on all sides, but what I hadn't realized is that there are two very different tribes that work at the market. Apparently the tribes don't really get along with one another, which is unusual anywhere in Tanzania so I was even more surprised to hear of it in the middle of a city. I didn't really know what to tell them because I feel bad that they don't have teachers but I wouldn't ditch the other men to teach them either... I didn't really know what to do. Hopefully eventually we can get them to combine their classes, but who knows.

This weekend we aren't going anywhere, just hanging out around the university istead, which will be nice for a change. We will go to Zanzibar on our next trip in two weeks, but until then just lots more studying Kiswahili and relaxing on campus. I'll write again soon.

Love,
Lisa

Home Sweet Home Moshi and Finally Seeing Lions!

2009-02-03T07:09:00.001-08:00

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

Malaria Update

2009-01-29T04:15:00.000-08:00

So this week has been fairly uneventful/not so greatsince I last wrote. On Monday afternoon I got retested for Malaria because I had taken drugs from the US that I found out later may not be the best option (considering we don't actually have malaria in the US and doctors there aren't experts). The doctor said that I still had the two parasites (what I originally had) but that if I didn't have the syptoms of malaria I should be fine because apparently everyone who has had it before would show up having the parasites if you looked closely. I didn't exactly believe that analysis and was starting to doubt the clinic's reputation, so I was planning to get tested yet again at a different hospital the next day. Unfortunately, before I even had the chance to do that, I got really sick again Monday night... so obviously the parasites weren't gone. Anyways, I ended up going back to a different clinic and getting medicine specific for the malaria parasites that exist here, so now I am feeling a lot better. Nothing to worry about!

The past few days I havem't been doing much because I have been tired and worn out from the malaria, but I did go to the woodcarvers market again last night to teach English. The men there (and one or two women) are soo wonderful and eager to learn, its great. We mostly do discussions instead of formal lessons because that is better practice and is more conducive to the relaxed teaching style there (since all the different levels are usually put together and not everyone comes every day that there is class).

Today we had our second Kswahili test, which marks us finishing 4 of the 6 weeks of intensive Swahili training. Although 4 hours a day can get pretty rough and painful at times, I'm actually sad it's going by this quickly because it is so unbelievably helpful.

We leave tomorrow morning to go to Arusha on one of our group trips. We actually pass by Moshi (where I was this summer) on the 8 or 9 hopur bus there, so hopefully I can convince Prof Senkoro to let me stop off there by myself and stay for at least one of the two days. I'm sure going to Arusha with the group would be fun, but I think I've done most of the stuff there already and I would really love to go visit people in Moshi. We'll see...

Miss you all,
-Lisa

My first few weeks in a nutshell...

2009-01-25T08:29:00.001-08:00

Here's a brief synopsis of a few things I've done so far and my life in general here in Dar es Salaam... most of this is from letters and such so I apologize if any of this sounds repetative. Here it goes:

The University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) campus is gorgeoussss, it literally looks like im living in the middle of a rainforest. I'm in living in a double dorm room on the 7th floor, which is a surprisingly nice room with a common bathroom for about 10 of us (I think they put all of the foreigners in this dorm because it is the nicest). Being up this high is nice because there is a great breeze, less mosquitoes, and a wonderful view of the ocean... but the walk up 8 flights is pretty miserable in an African summer haha. The weather in Dar is pretty hot, but definitely nicer than winter in the states so im not complaining too much. We are about an hour long dala dala ride out of downtown Dar... and if I haven't explained this to you already, being on a dala dala (the public transportation) basically means smushing as many people into a tiny van as physically possible and sweating yourself to death, but getting just about anywhere on about 30 cents. I'd say you get what you pay for.

All of the people on campus are just as nice and great as they were in Moshi last summer, and I love getting to know the other students. Because of protests and random stuff from last semester (I dont know how much I told all of you about but its kind of a long story) up until now only the grad students were on campus. This week/this weekend though, the rest of the students are finally moving back in. A few days ago I finally got a tanzanian roommate... her name is Ashengai and she seems to be really sweet. She doesnt speak english all that well, but hopefully that will help me improve my Kiswahili. Right now, we have 4 hours of swahili class every morning, which is a bit hard and overwhelming at times, but I've learned more in two weeks than I ever thought possible. The rest of my classes start in mid-Feb, and I'll be taking Kiswahili, African literature, gender and development, History of East Africa, and Politics of Sub-saharan Africa. I'm pretty excited to start all of them, although unfortunately I'll be in classes with only foreign students since the regular university semester schedule is all messed up as a result of the protests.

The first weekend I was here, we spent one wonderful day on the beach the (when I got to swim in the Indian Ocean for the first time!) and had a great dinner by the ocean with our Swahili professor and his family. Todd, our program director from University of Florida was still here at that point, so he showed us around town and taught us all about campus life/food/dorms/etc.

Last weekend, on Friday afternoon, a few of us went downtown (which takes a full hour or so on multiple different daladalas) to go to the Tanzanian national museum. A few local Tanzanian
students who live in the dorm next to us (which holds the only students that weren't affected by the strikes and are on the correct schedule) took us thewre and it was a lot of fun. Dad, you would have loved it. It is a great museum that combines history (from the very beginning through colonialism, the world wars, and independence up until present) of both the mainland and Zanzibar, a lot about plants and animals of the country, and also has some tanzanian art/sculptures. On Friday night, we all tagged along with Julie (the girl from the Brown program who had been here 6 months already) to go to a mini circus by the beach that was hosted by one of the phone companies here. Julie was taking one of the girls (about 12 years old) from a
local orphanage she goes to to see the show, so we all joined them and it was a lot of fun. There were no animals, it was just acrobats and contortionists and what not, but 95% of the cast was from Tanzania which made it fun. Oh and on the way home, our "Bijaji" (a small 3 wheeler taxi type thing) broke down twice... it was an interesting experience haha.

Then on Saturday night, we went to a semi-tradtional Tanzanian wedding of the newphew of our swahili professor. They are definitely very well off because it was a beautiful wedding with around 500 people at the reception! It was fun for the most part... but quite possibly the longest wedding ever in the history of mankind haha. They continued all of these tradtions and ceremonies during the reception part of it, so the reception was probably 80% talking and other things and very little dancing. Not to mention that when the dancing actually was going on, the bride and groom usually sat at the front on a stage rather than joining in... I would hate that if it was my wedding! Also we got there at 6 and we didn't even eat dinner until 10:30! It was a bit bizarre, and fairly boring at times (considering it was almost all in Swahili and we didnt understand a lot of the talking parts), but fun on the whole.

On a regular day, I am eating all of my meals on campus, having Kiswahili class all mornings, and then just hanging out around campus in the afternoons making friends with the local students. Sometimes we also take the dala dala to or walk to the market that is closer than town (called Mwenge), which is fun too. I started teaching English to a group of older men who are woodcarvers from a local craft market (I will probably do that once or twice a week), but have only had the chance to go once so far because I've been sick this week.

This past week things haven't been so great because I unfortunately already managed to get malaria... I was the first one out of our group to buy a mosquito net, I've been extremely careful with my bug spray, and this is what I get haha. Just my luck. I'm really fine (of course my parents dont seem to think so, but I know I am) because I caught it very early and started taking medication right away. I already feel a lot better and other than that minor detail, I really love it here so far.

This past weekend we went on a group trip to Bagamoyo with our Swahili Professor, Prof Senkoro, which was great. Bagamoyo is a small town on the coast about an hour north of Dar. It was the first big port in tanzania and was the main on for a while until, after mangroves took over the harbor at bagamoyo, the center or trade was moved to the then smaller Dar es Salaam. Bagamoyo has a lot of history because it was the place of the first church in all of east africa, the place when people came from the middle east and first introducted Islam, the last place where slaves were funneled through before heading to Zanzibar and then being sent overseas, etc. Both days we went to different museums/historical sites covering all of the different things there. (You would have looooved it Dad.) It was a lot of fun, as well as relaxing because we got to sleep at a nice hotel by the beach and all. Oh and on Saturday night we all went out to dinner together and then danced the night away to lots of Tanzanian music... which is always fun in my mind.

I'm back at the dorm now and we actually don't have class tomorrow, which is exciting (Prof Senkoro had to stay the night in Bagamoyo to do something so we got the day off tomorrow). That's all for now, but hopefully that will get everyone at least a bit up to speed on what I've done so far and I'll try to write more soon. When I do so depends entirely on when the internet in our dorm decides it likes us next and stays on for more than 10 minutes, so who knows when that will be. (What can you expect, I am in Africa...)

Miss and love you all,

Lisa