Tanzania!

Home Safe and Sound

2008-07-27T09:52:00.000-07:00

Despite the fears of many family and friends, I made it home in one piece without any scars from large animal bites, any strange diseases, or extraordinary mental conditions. After traveling on 4 airplanes, taxis, subways, buses, and cars and spending several days re-entering American culture in New York City (where I visited one of my roommates who is living there for the summer), I am back in Minnesota enjoying warm lakes, bicycle rides, sweet corn, and sunshine with my family and friends. Everything that seems so familiar really has changed in the last 6 months- people have graduated, married, had children, gotten new jobs, or grown 3 inches taller; buildings have been erected, trees have been cut down, roads have been repaved and most of the flowers have already blossomed and died until next year. Neighbors have moved and new neighbors have come and all the birds are getting ready to migrate again. I never assumed that all things would stay the same while I traveled around the world for half of a year, but it is really interesting to return home to discover what actually changes in a period of 6 months to surprise you in a place that is mostly familiar.

I want to say thank you to all of you who have so faithfully read this blog. I hope that it was at times entertaining, at others educational, and that it was never frightening to those who wanted me to return home safely. I feel so lucky to have been able to see such a different part of the world and be welcomed by so many people into cultures that were very different from my own- and I hope that sharing these stories simultaneously satisfied and stimulated all of your wanderlust. I tried to share the best, most ridiculous, most humorous, most tragic, most overwhelming feelings that I had on this trip with you all on the blog, but I have many, many more that I would love to share with anyone who would like to hear more about this trip. On AUGUST 2 from about 6 until whenever I am planning on making a slide show of my favorite pictures and telling stories. Feel free to come join my family and friends to celebrate my brother’s graduation and my return (and birthday on the 3rd!) for a little potluck. Just send me an email anna.santo@oberlin.edu, give my house a call 651-714-8384, or put a comment here and I can send you directions.

For those of you who are in Minnesota this summer, I would absolutely love to see you and catch up on your lives. I will be here until late August, though during the week I will be living and working at a biological research station in Central Minnesota (near Bethel, MN). I plan to be in the twin cities on the weekends and would love to get together.

If this is your first time visiting this site, welcome and I hope you enjoy reading about my adventures. And if this is your last time visiting the site, thanks again and I cannot wait to start a new blog with new adventures!

Last, but definitely not least, I must publicly proclaim my most sincere gratitude towards all of the staff and students of SIT Study Abroad, the Wildlife Conservation Society, all of the wonderful people I met in Zanzibar, Tanzania, Malawi and Kenya, and to my best and at times only companion in East Africa, Mr. Christopher Rice. This experience was unbelievable and would not have been the same without you.

On the road again...

2008-07-14T00:07:00.000-07:00

Walking down the streets of Zanzibar again is so amazing. Most of our interactions with people go like this:

1. Make eye contact- we recognize a person.
2. Smile, give them the typical greetings.
3. They recognize us, their eyes get really wide.
4. They start shouting words of welcome and greetings into our faces at incredibly high volumes.

I’m actually really surprised at how many people recognize us. I know we were here for a long time, but we can hardly go anywhere without someone squaling with joy at the sight of us. It is overwhelmingly welcoming. 

Our trip to Kenya was incredible. The drive there took two days, after the bus stopped an hour preemptively in a different city than was the original destination. It was about 13 hours in a bus the first day and about 5 or 6 hours the next day. Nairobi is absolutely crazy--- it didn’t feel dangerous at all like the news makes it sound. People were reall friendly and left us alone more than any other place that we have been. Since the violence there calmed down about 6 months ago, it has been peaceful. I definitely had the wrong impression of the city when we arrived. The largest slum in Africa is just outside of the city, so I thought that there would be a lot of poverty and we would want to be really careful about walking around downtown, but it wasn’t like that at all. Some of the neighborhoods have a really Western feel and we did things like go to the mall to eat greasy pizza, perused the largest supermarket I have ever seen, and we even went to our first polo match with about 200 British people in one of the suburban areas (what a ridiculous, ridiculous sport).

After spending a day in Nairobi, we left to go on a 3-day safari in Masai Mara, the park that is the Kenyan side of the Serengeti plains. It was really amazing. We shared a safari VAN with a young French guy and a Japanese guy (who said, “oooooh greeeeaaat!” whenever we saw wildlife). Our driver was a maniac- cruising the Serengeti plains after ostriches and lions and cheetahs. It was really fun- and fun to meet all the other people (they were all really young) who had made it out to the bush for budget safaris.

The highlights of the trip to Kenya for me, though, were our trips to the elephant orphanage and giraffe sanctuary just outside of Nairobi. At the elephant orphanage, there were at least a dozen very young, very uncoordinated orphan elephants rolling around playing that you could watch and touch, and two rhinos hanging out that you could touch. Warthogs just wandered around everywhere and young schoolchildren came to see the animals. It was really cool. And on our walk out the founder of the orphanage picked us up and gave us a ride.

The elephant orphanage was cool, but the giraffe sanctuary was a transformational moment for me. I finally discovered my favorite animal. Giraffes. I think it might have to do with the fact that my long neck and legs make me feel a deep connection with them, but I definitely think that giraffes are the coolest animal I have ever seen. At the sanctuary, they gave you food pellets of grass and you could feed the giraffes. Their long, slimy, spotted, gray tongues would smother your face if you held the food in your mouth, and they would just eat right from your hands or wherever. So cool.

The trip back was terrifying. I have traveled the same route on another occasion- and on that occasion it took us 10 hours to go from Dar to Arusha, and it takes about 5 hours to go from Arusha to Nairobi. So when they told us it was only 12 hours on the bus from Nairobi to Dar VIA Arusha, I was skeptical and thought that that was just their way of trying to sell us tickets. Wow, was I wrong. After sitting on the bus, listening to Tracy Chapman’s song “Revolution” as the bus left at 6 in the morning, we arrived in Dar Es Salaam 12 hours later. The driver was a complete maniac. He had anywhere from 0-1 hands on the streering wheel at any time, and the other hand was gesticulating wildly to his frien in the front seat. Rather than waiting in line at the weigh stations, he would zoom past the line, throw the bus in reverse and reverse backwards to the front of the line. If traffic stopped, he would get out of the bus to give the other drivers a piece of his mind. I covered my face for at least the last 2 hours of the drive, when we were averaging at least 130 km/h and never hesitated to pass cars despite oncoming traffic. When the driver left about half the bus along the Tanzania-Kenya border, he slammed the bus into reverse and at full speed, backwards, we recrossed the border to retrieve the passengers. The choices of entertainment were interesting as well- at 6 in the morning, we were listening to the all 80s all-the-time station, by the afternoon we watched two movies called Sweet Love I and Sweet Love II. And at the scariest part of the trip, when the driver really went crazy, we watched one of the most violent movies I have ever seen called “Blood Diamond”, about the diamond trade in Sierra Leone (Good movie, bad time for it). We made it safely to Dar Es Salaam, though, and the next morning took the ferry to Zanzibar and feel like we’re back at home again.

Chris leaves tomorrow and I leave 3 days later. I can’t believe we’re almost on our way home! I can’t wait to see you all.

Kenya!

2008-07-09T07:17:00.000-07:00

After quite the journey we made it to Kenya AND to the Serengeti plains where we saw, among other things, a Cheetah eating a gazelle and a black rhino (this morning). I don't have time to write now, I just wanted to let everyone know that all is well. No need to send any more worried emails, though I kind of enjoy knowing that people notice if I'm MIA. :)

What do you mean they released the prisoners??

2008-07-02T05:02:00.000-07:00

At one point while staying in Iringa, Chris and I came to the realization that we didn’t really have any friends. We definitely didn’t really see this as a problem, or even a negative thing, because we thoroughly enjoy each other’s company and we spent four months on Zanzibar unable to escape acquaintances. Over the past several days, however, we have realized that we do know quite a lot of people here in Iringa, and that perhaps we know too many people. It has really been kind of a snowball effect of beginning to know too many people throughout East Africa, starting with too many people in Stone Town, then too many in Zanzibar, then the whole archipelago, then along the coast, all the way to Arusha (near the Kenya border), Iringa, and now even when we travelled to Malawi we inevitably ran into people that we knew. When we are walking down the street, people frequently stop us, ask us if we remember them (95% of the time we don’t), and then quiz us on where we first met them. Chris especially is very unique looking—a black, dreadlocked, but still clearly westerner rather than rastafarian, man. Just two days ago, someone recognized Chris from our stay on Pemba Island about 3 months ago and approached us- he remembered his name, where they met, etc.... Chris had absolutely no memory of ever meeting him. As we were sitting in a bar in Malawi, a group of 3 British people walked in that had been sitting next to us in a restaurant across the street from our office in Iringa ealier that week. Our safari driver from our trip to Saadani National Park in March recognized us on the bus from Dar Es Salaam to Iringa (at least an 8 hour journey and 2 months later).... and as we crossed on foot into Malawi we were greeted, by name, by several men who claimed to be our friends. I get mysterious phone calls and text messages all the time, usually with odd requests such as dating proposals or asking for money, but I have no idea who sent them or how they got my number. It’s true that in a culture that you’re not used to people kind of look the same—people tell me all the time that I look like every other white woman—but I never expected to have absolutely no memory of meeting people who clearly cherished our 5 minute conversation enough to remember it 4 or even 5 months later. Crazy.

Today as we were walking down the street we were recognized by someone I did remember. “Midget” (nickname), a young British girl who helped us close down the Wildlife Conservation Society campsite about 2 weeks ago screamed “Mr. JIGGY!!!!!!” (a nickname that she gave to Chris) from a passing land rover. When we caught up with the car, she told us (among many other things) that some of the friends that we had made a few weeks earlier were robbed in their home. Apparently a crew of men, armed with AK-47s and pistols, came to their house, held their security guards and entire family at gunpoint while they stole all their money, computers and phones. Luckily no one was seriously injured. The father of the household was off on a backpacking trip with our other two housemates (they run a campsite and do trips like that- he’s basically a guide), so these guys who apparently knew the family came and stole all of their valuables. Unbelievable.....

While this was shocking to us, it came in a serious of really scary news stories. A couple nights ago, Chris and I decided to accompany a German girl that Chris met to a birthday party. When we told them we were going to walk home, a bunch of people at the party started freaking out and telling us that we couldn’t leave. Our house was very close (definitely less than ¼ mile), it wasn’t particularly late, and Iringa is usually very safe, so you can imagine how surprised we were by this seemingly irrational reaction of paranoia. That’s when they told us that “they” had “recently released the prisoners”. This statement confused us, mostly because there seemed to be no way a bunch prisoners would just be “released” without any sort of reason. So we started asking questions... What do you mean they released the prisoners? Why did they release the prisoners? Where did they release the prisoners? How many prisoners did they reslease? Logistical questions, like true Americans... As it turns out, the prison just decided that they didn’t want to have so many prisoners, so they decided to release a bunch. ???? There have been several rapes and murders since their decision, and now this robbery.... This place is absolutely ridiculous sometimes. Needless to say, we are being extra careful when going out, now that we know of the dangers of the released prisoners and the large guns that some of them have come to possess.

Other than the news of the released prisoners, the birthday party that we attended was really fun, though not at all what we expected. We left our house, hearing very loud music in the distance. I made a joke about how that was probably the birthday party, but we laughed it off. As we got closer and closer to the party, though, the music got louder and louder. It wasn’t until we were in the driveway that we realized that this bumpin’ dance party was, in fact, the birthday party where we had been told there “wasn’t much going on”. We sat around a bonfire, listened to very hilarious choices of mostly American music, and finally made a lot of young friends in Iringa! As the party was coming to a close before everyone migrated to the nearby disco, someone made a request that we stand in a circle, hold hands, and give speeches. The circle started off with a short rendition of “Oh, Happy Day”, and quickly progressed to speeches about how this party had reminded people of being boyscouts out in the mountains of the Kilimanjaro area, and how people were finishing college and would miss this place so much. As much as the circle and the circumstance made me laugh, it was actually really sweet. I was very impressed that Chris held it together, as I would have expected him to burst into fits of laughter at how awkward we felt.

My favorite moments at the party, however, were interacting with individuals. Other than the girl who had invited us (Sophia- from Germany who is volunteering for a year at an orphanage here), the first person that we met at the party’s name was Miriam, a self-proclaimed Shakira look-alike. Now, I am not an expert on celebrity impersonators, but I am a Shakira fan, and while this woman (who was a black Nigerian woman) did look vaguely hispanic, she looked absolutely nothing like Shakira. We agreed to friend her on facebook, and were told that she would be the one with the Shakira picture instead of her face. We later met a middle-aged Swedish man, who seemed just a bit too old for the whole scene, and wouldn’t stop making suggestive comments directed at every woman. He introduced himself by staring me down, accusing me of stealing his Konyagi (the cheapest liquor in Tanzania that you purchase in packets for like 50 cents), and then saying, “Hi, I don’t think we’ve met, my name is Marcus....” There was a drunken brawl going on outside the entire time we were there, with fists flying and people stumbling through the bonfire. And there was a mute man attempting to communicate his anger at the fact that he had drunkenly misplaced his shoes.

I’m not sure why there has been such a culmination of mute men entering our lives here lately, but it has definitely been a recent trend. It completely freaks Chris out, which makes the whole interaction seem just hilariously unfortunate to me.... The man at the birthday party was around our age, unable to communicate with words, but was able to understand us and communicate with other sounds. He would let out very aggressive bellowing sounds, while at the same time thrusting his upper body in your direction. My chosen form of communication with him was the thumbs up, for which we definitely had a mutual understanding. At one point, the man approached me, let out a howl-like sound and pointed at his bare feet. The shoes that he had just been wearing seemed to have vanished in the brawl he had been a part of. I looked at him, gave him the thumbs down, and he returned a thumbs down, and belted out a sound. The foot-pointing and bellowing continued on and off for at least the next half an hour, but I expect he eventually just got on with the evening. This event was preceded by an encounter with a mute man on the Malawi-Tanzania border who made loud, violent, heaving sounds as a way to encourage us to hire him as the driver of a bicycle taxi. We were already surrounded by at least 10 men trying to get us to hire their bicycle taxis or change currency, and then this man approached and started bellowing at us and making angry faces and sounds.... I have never seen Chris so eager to escape a situation. And on my walk to work I met another man who couldn’t really speak. I just had no idea that so many encounters could be possible in the time span of one week...

Well, I am shocked that it is July, that I am coming home in about 2-3 weeks, and that our time here is over in 2 days!!! (We are leaving on Friday for Kenya) It’s strange because I’m so excited to come home and see everyone, eat summer sweet corn, swim in the lake, see the fall colors, go back to OBERLIN!, and to hear all about how everyone has spent the last 6 months, but I am also so sad to have only two more days here... And the trips to Kenya, Zanzibar, and New York City in between those two things are just entirely overwhelming to me. Well, it feels like time is speeding up, so I guess I’ll just wait and see what happens. Maybe it will make the 4 plane rides seem faster, too.  I love and miss you all. See you SO soon.

Did you say your name was Ricky Martin?

2008-06-27T00:52:00.000-07:00

As we approached the Tanzania-Malawi border at dusk about a week ago, I kept hearing the person sitting next to us on the minibus insist that we needed a bike to cross the border. I’ve been to both the Mexican and the Canadian borders, and while I never expected the border between two of the least developed countries in the world to have anywhere near the security precautions that the US does, I could not imagine why we so desperately needed a bike to cross. It turned out that the bus didn’t actually go to the border, but stopped about a mile away. Immediately upon exiting the bus, we were swarmed by at least 20 men with bicycle taxis and fat wads of cash of all currencies grabbing our bags and our limbs and shouting things in our faces. It was probably one of the most overwhelming moments of the past 5 months. We decided to cross the border on foot, though I have since then developed a facination with the bicycle taxi....

When we woke up the next morning at about 5 AM (the time when it is officially too loud to sleep anymore), Chris and I were both instantly in love with Malawi. Chris described it as not having the same kind of desperation as Tanzania sometimes does, which I think is a really good description. People were equally, if not more, fascinated with us, and just smiling at someone often caused them to burst out in bashful giggles. We walked past a nursery school and heard every single child inside scream “How are youuu?” with sounds that could only come from a tiny person. There are beautiful, forested mountains that drop straight into Lake Malawi, easily mistaken for an ocean. You can see the silouette of Mozambique across the lake, and if you hike up into the mountains there are waterfalls, caves, cold springs and forests with baboons and wildflowers blossoming everywhere. It really did look different from any other place I have ever seen, and it is so strikingly beautiful I would just be content to ride around in buses, looking out the windows.

Definitely one of my favorite things about Malawi, though, was talking to people. English is one of the official languages of Malawi (it is in Tanzania too, but few people speak it very well) so we could talk to almost anyone. Peoples’ names are hilarious- we met people named simple, Jealous, Jester, Tiger, King David, Ricky Martin, 2pac, and we met three people named Gift. Everyone is really friendly and interested in chatting with you for no less than 2 hours at a time....

One thing that we were introduced to in Malawi was the phenomenon of “The Backpackers” (translated= cheap places to stay that cater to a certain crowd—not quite hostels, but similar). Most “backpackers” have things like guitars and board games to borrow, both of which you could play from your barstool. They have composting toilets, big gardens, and some sort of livestock that they would slaughter for you if you wanted to eat it so that you could “live off the land”. We stayed at several of these places, each one being very unique. For example, our second night in Malawi we stayed at a place called “The Mushroom Farm”, where we slept in a tiny tent flush against the edge of an enormous cliff. It was about 11 km straight up a mountain, so we hiked up with our packs and three small boys who were wearing no shoes. It took us a couple hours to arrive, and when we did we were both sweaty and unable to believe the breathtaking views from our campsite. We stayed at another place called the Butterfly Lodge, where we had our own personal chalet and there were rabbits along the path to the bathroom. When we arrived in the town where this lodge was, we were picked up in a boat, carted across the bay, and dropped off at our doorstep by our own personal boat escort... But none of these places cost more than $5-10 a night, even for the most expensive rooms... we spent the equivalent of about $5-7 to stay there.

For the most part, the people that arrive at these backapackers’ places seem to be absolutely ridiculous. Take, for example, the regular, Sunday night crowd that we encountered at the Mayoka Village Bar, one of the “most legendary wicked backpackers’” along Lake Malawi, as described by a young, flamboyantly counter-culture British guy that we met at “The Mushroom Farm”. We first met a man who we would later refer to as the Man-who-wouldn’t-stop-talking. I don’t know his name, because there was never really a moment where he wasn’t speaking when we could have asked, but he seemed really angry the majority of the time and his eyes bulged out of his face when he got really heated. Chris and I tried not to make too much eye contact with him, hoping that the conversation would end. While it definitely didn’t end, it was interrupted by Sage, a clearly bipolar man who we later learned came to Malawi to escape the South African Police after being convicted of a hit-and-run. Sage was giving us advice too crude to repeat while Chris, myself, a boy named Thaeus from New Zealand (with flowing blonde hair, gray, skin-tight jeans, and the I’m-so-shocked-that-I’m-hearing-these-words-come-out-of-someone’s-mouth face), and a 22 year-old guy from New York (who seemed to have acquired some sort of strange Australian-English hybrid accent from travelling) sat and listened. One of the local guys, King David, came over to listen, and all the while, there was a narcoleptic old man in the corner attempting to sell candy bars. We were later told that the sleeping man was actually the first black man to catch a fish in Lake Malawi, the first black man to work in a white bar in Malawi, and the first black man to own a boat in Malawi. While I’m not saying that these were lies, I am saying that I am highly skeptical of this series of claims.

I know I have spent many-a-blog-post dsecribing East African transportation to you, but I definitely think that public transportation reached new levels of terror for me in Malawi. I cannot get over how people drive like absolute maniacs in this region of the world... We found ourselves on quite a number of interesting vehicles over the course of the week. We started off in a big charter bus called the Sumry High-Class that had unbelievably psychadelic apolstery—with neon-colored bush animals in a mosaic-like pattern. After realizing that we were too late to catch a bus one day, we hitchhiked on the back of a flatbed truck that had 6-8 pigs, a gazillion tomatoes, and at least 20-30 people on the back. Two pigs in particular coveted the sack of beans that Chris was sitting on and muscled him off the bag in order to steal his seat. On our trip back home we rode in a dalla dalla that was literally taped together—as in the steering wheel was partially attached with packing tape, dashboard was attached with tape, and I wish there had been tape for the door handle so that maybe it would work. You could see through the floor to the ground below you, and there was no glass on the windows. I was impressed, however, that the spedometer worked, but that was the most terrifying part. I looked over at one point and saw that we were going about 120 km/hour with at least 30 people packed in. After one of the tires exploded into tiny slivers of rubber and we arrived to town with the spare, I swear I started believing in some sort of higher power. We transferred onto a new bus, where Chris and I both shared seats with many, many boxes of chickens (102 baby chickens in each box, total of 12 boxes) and drove off into the sunset. We hopped a bus the next day, only to stop for an extended period of time where we were told that the radiator had burst (?) and it might be 3 hours before we left again... so we flagged down a giant truck and hopped into the cabin, where we were stuffed into two very cushioned, though dark and confined corners where we wouldn’t be spotted as passengers at the police stops.

Well, I could go on and on about the adventures that we had in Malawi. Needless to say, the trip was unbelievable. I will post some pictures and creat a link to them which you can find below with the other links to photo albums. Enjoy! Chris and I will be in Iringa, Tanzania again working for about a week and then we’re off to Nairobi, Kenya for another little trip. Hopefully we’ll be going to the northern extension of the Serengetti (where the wildebeast migration is), a giraffe sanctuary, and an elephant orphanage... Okay, more later. Love.

Adventures!!!

2008-06-18T04:45:00.000-07:00

We're going to Malawi tomorrow!!! I just wanted to give everyone a heads up that I might be a little out of touch for the next week or so. But it's for a good reason, like kayaking in a tropical lake, or absailing down a waterfall, or mountain biking through a herd of zebras... definitely something along those lines.

Also, I put up a more pictures a while ago. They're in the album labelled something about working with the Wildlife Conservation Society (on the right if you scroll down). Enjoy! Later.

Midget, Fidget and Squidget

2008-06-16T02:05:00.000-07:00

Some very unexpected things have happened since I last wrote... First, we were evicted from the camp where we were living. Second, our boss quit. Third, about 100,000 Shillings ($85) disappeared from Chris’ stuff. But despite all of these terrible things happening, we are still in good spirits.

We have all spent the past three days packing up and moving everything that was in camp, including the entire solar-powered electrical system and the pet eagle, to town. Legally, everything should be fine- the Wildlife Conservation Society didn’t do anything wrong to be evicted- there is just a big corruption scandal and a few powerful people are getting paid off to let some really shady behaviors slide. I heard that a $15,000 bribe was paid by a hunting company (that currently hunts in the nearby game reserve) to the district commissioner to issue an eviction notice to the WCS. This all makes sense in light of the fact that they are hoping to set up a “photographic” tourism sight near to where WCS had its camp... The whole “shida” (swahili: problem) has been escalating since before we got here, but I never would have guessed that the WCS would be kicked out of the Wildlife Management Area by someone who didn’t have the authority to do that.... The whole situation has turned into a really huge mess, and it seems like had it been handled a little differently by the rest of the WCS management it could have been easily resolved. Therefore, our boss resigned. He’ll be here for another 6 months and then may be transferred to another WCS program.

It was really sad to drive through the villages today on our way to town and think about the repercussions that closing Lunda Camp will have on the nearby community. But at the same time, it was really great to think about all the ways it has helped these villages. Our boss (Pete) seems to be really admired and respected. Whenever I mention that I’m working for WCS, people always respond with kind words about “Coppolillo” (his last name). There are about 10 people employed at the camp—they’re all really wonderful and work really hard. They will all lose their jobs. In the villages, making a couple dollars a day is a really good income that can easily support a family. While I have no idea how much the Lunda staff were paid, I’m sure it supported an intricate web of family members and friends. People seem to love the WCS—you see people wearing WCS paraphernalia, and people are always so happy to see the WCS truck pull through the villages. I’ve been reading interviews that a PhD student here has been doing on human-elephant conflict, and everyone is aware of the connection between WCS and benefits they have started to receive from the nearby wildlife management area.

The program here will still continue- there will just be a new program director and possibly some program changes. The older generation here is so passive about everything, but the younger generation of WCS employees and villagers are really fired up at the government, the WCS country director, and the association of villages that actually has the jurisdiction to issue permits for the Wildlife Management Area. There has been talk of protesting... but it’s amazing to me how fearful people here are of their government. I have been brought up with the value that if something that was happening was wrong, you should speak out against it. It seems like the younger generation here embraces that same idea, but the older generation (who recently lived through a period of socialism) has such a different approach to dealing with political problems. I don’t want to say which attitude is better, because I really have no idea what people are up against fighting this incredibly complex and corrupt institution. Either way, it will be really interesting to see what happens...

While all this bad stuff is going on, there have been some lighter moments. To break down camp, a group of about 10 of Pete’s friends came down (the majority of them under the age of 15). It was fun to have kids around—they called themselves fidget, midget, and squidget, names that were even funnier when they pronounced them with their British accents. We got to hear some British opinions on the election, roast marshmallows over a fire, and inch our way out on a sandbank where a crocodile was sunbathing. Side note: it’s amazing how closely the rest of the world watches our politics—I’ve met people who never went to school, who can’t read, who are following our election closely...

Okay, I think that’s about all for now. We’re back in town now, and will be for a while, so I’m sure that I’ll have entertaining stories about civilization soon. After a while, crocodile.

Going a little Bush, now, are we?

2008-06-12T01:02:00.000-07:00

“I think you guys are probably gonna want to see this...” I love when people start conversations with sentences like this. Especially in the wild African bush, the second half is usually pretty good. Today, when Dave (an up-and-coming graduate student studying fire monitoring here) came into the office and said those words, he finished the sentence with, “There are elephants in the kitchen...”

If I had to guess why we have had a recent explosion in the amount of wildlife that is entering our camp , I would say that it is because all of the nearby water sources are drying up, but I can’t say for sure. Not only are the elephants roaming through camp, feasting on all of the trees...Each night we go to bed hearing loud, carniverous animals very, very close. Four nights ago it was a leopard (tracks spotted no more than 10-15 m from our tent), and the past three nights it has beena combination of hippos, hyenas, and lions. Many, many lions in every direction. And one left tracks just a few feet from our friend Sarah’s tent. There were 4 water buffalo across the river when I was brushing my teeth the other morning, a monitor lizard was acosted by some large water-birds, and the other night in the middle of dinner an enormous splash next to us in the water caused two of us to run for our lives towards the nearest shelter. Chris and I have taken turns having irrational reactions of terror regarding the predators just outside the tent (mostly lions)... Some of the reactions have involved hyperventilating and forcing our way through partially-unzipped tent walls. And the tension has followed us into our daytime activities. Yesterday Chris looked at me, and out of nowhere stated that literally every time he got out of his chair that day he knocked it over. I’ve picked up the habit of clicking constantly on everything when I get on the computer to do work, and any time we hear a sound in the distance we run to the window with out foot-long mag-lite flashlight to investigate what kind of frightening beast might be approaching. Some people use the phrase “Going Bush” to describe these strange habits that people pick up, and I definitely think that we are working our way towards earning that title.

While we are going a little nutty, we are making progress in the work that we’re doing. We’re done with the website! (Except for the photo gallery if you are about to go look at it) You can see it at: http://www.ruahaconservation.org. If you notice any problems, you should let me know.

Someone recently asked me to give a little more detail about the place that we are living. Let me start with this... Other than the office where we work, which is full of skulls and computers, none of the buildings really have any walls. There are 2 “bandas” where people stay (we are not staying in one- we’re jst staying in a canvass tent). The bandas are basically just wooden decks with thatched roofs and straw mats that you can roll down on two sides as “walls” if you want. Dave and his girlfriend Ashley are staying on one banda and Pete, our boss, lives with his family on the other banda. There’s a school banda- with a tent full of bookshelves, art supplies, and insect collections- where Pete’s two children are homeschooled by their mother. There’s a dining banda, which is basically just a thatched roof on sticks, a bunch of choo’s (bathrooms) and showers, a supply banda, and a kitchen banda (with the most walls of any building- 2), that has a solar-powered refridgerator, stove, a big cooler, and a few cupboards that the monkeys occaisonally raid. Just outside of this last banda is where the elephants were located. And when the elephants were right outside the kitchen banda, we were located inside the banda, some of us partially under the table, and one person perched atop the refridgerator.

Okay, I hope all is well in the homeland. Chris and I will (hopefully) be leaving in the next week or so to go on a trip to Malawi!! Although we recently found out that the horseback safaris that we thought were offered have been temporarily cancelled due to some government corruption scandal, something we hear a lot around here. I think instead we’re going to go do something called “absailing” down a waterfall and kayaking on Lake Malawi... neither of us know what absailing means yet, but it sounds fun whatever it is. Baadaye kidogo.

Eggs in your french fries???

2008-06-07T08:45:00.000-07:00

Since coming out to the bush, Chris and I have been talking a lot about how we have been able to normalize a lot of things that were at first quite frightening/shocking to us. For example, everyone here fries eggs into their french fries— weird at first, but now we love it; when in a car, if you come to a river, you drive through it, rather than over it on a bridge, and the person driving is often drinking a beer; when bathing, you look out on the river and see hippos and elephants doing the same; and when you sleep at night, you hear growling and howling right outside of the canvas walls.

While all of these things seem quite normal to us now, some things which are quite normal still shock me. For example, this happened:

A couple of days ago Chris and I received an invitation to go to “World Environment Day” at a primary school in one of the (somewhat) nearby villages. We rolled out of bed a little past six and hobbled over to the truck and hopped into the back. About an hour later, we rolled into a small village. The village looked like not more than a couple hundred people lived there, small homes made out of mud and grass, one small store, a mosque and a church, and lots of whildren running around. We drove through the village, out a ways to the school. When we arrived we started talking to one of the teachers... we asked him how many teachers there were- he said 6, which I thought was a good number for the size of the village. When I said that, he looked at me and told me that there were 592 students at this primary school. I couldn’t believe it..

The actualy festivities didn’t start for about 2 hours , and in the meantime the children amused themselves by surrounding us, staring, and inching closer and closer. If we said or did anything, someone would repeat it and the whole group would stir a little bit. If we were still, they were still. If we smiled, they smiled. It was a really strange experience, and with several hundred children literally two feet away from you, it’s really easy to go a little nutty. After a very long time of the staring activity, the teachers began the event. Groups of students from four or five nearby schools sang and danced songs they had written about the environment in absolutely beatiful four part harmonies. There was a short interlude, where a man in a lion costume and a man in a ninja costume pretended to beat each other up and do a little gymnastics routine. Afterwards, each musical group came back and performed the same songs they had sang earlier. To conclude, representatives from a bunch of nearby organizations (including the Wildlife Conservation Society) gave speeches about the importance of protecting the environment.

After the ceremony ended, they took us inside one of the school buildings to feed us a delicious lunch, along with all of the other special guests. You could still hear children laughing, playing and singing outside, and their celebration continued until we left about an hour later.

On our drive home, we stopped in another village to pick up some of our friends who were doing interviews on elephant conflict. After thinking that World Environment Day was kind of strange, this seemed absolutely unbelievable. The entire village (not that many people) was out in the center of town drinking Pombe (home-brewed maize beer) and they were incredibly drunk... all of the elderly women were smashed and the old men were sloshed. Everyone wanted to talk to us ut we couldn’t make any sense of what they were saying... and it was only about 4 PM. We collected our friends, hopped back in the truck, and made our way home. We saw 6 or 7 groups of giraffes, tons of impalas, and two kudu, after seeing zebras and elephants and all sorts of game animals just that morning.

We are working hard on the Wildlife Conservation Society- Ruaha Landscape website. As soon as we’re finished I’ll post the link on here if anyone’s interested in seeing where we live... and more pictures are on their way. They won’t upload here but I’m determined. 6 more weeks until America!!

Are we at a Miss Tanzania Pageant?

2008-06-03T07:12:00.000-07:00

It is really interesting to compare how I am treated in this country when I was living with Chris, the woman, to when I am now living with Chris, the man. The experiences are in some ways polar opposites. For example, when I was living with Chris the woman, we could hardly go anywhere without being approached by someone who was interested in who we were, what we were doing, whether we were married, and whether or not we wanted to marry them (man) or their brother (woman). When Chris the woman and I were together, people wanted to shake our hands, make eye contact when talking, and acknowledge our presence in any way that they could, whether that was screaming our names at the tops of their lungs or gently stroking our noses to tell us how nice they were. When Chris the man and I are together, we are hardly ever approached... by anyone. And if we are, I am virtually ignored.

I thought that this was a locational difference at first... maybe that people were more forward in Zanzibar than on the mainland, but then the other night Chris and I went to this bar where we heard it’s easy to make friends. As long as we were together, it was the same thing. We could have been completely invisible. So we decided to split up for 5 minutes as an experiment. Not 15 seconds after he left his chair to go outside to “make a phone call”, someone sat down across from me and struck up a conversation.

The root of this difference (I think) comes from the fact that everyone assumes that we are married. On an almost daily basis people look at Chris, ask him if I’m his “wifey”, to which he typically says no. If he chooses to say no, they usually deny his negation and reaffirm that I am, in fact, his wife. The conversation usually goes back and forth a few times. “She is your wifey”---“She’s not my wifey”—“She is your wifey”—“She’s not my wifey” until someone tires or he laughs, gives up, and accepts our marriage. The strangest part to me, though, is that all the meanwhile I’m standing there next to him. They never address me, even though I can obviously hear and understand every word. And do they think that he would deny our marriage in front of me if we were actually married? I don’t get it.

The other night this was taken to an extreme, when we accidentally found ourselves at the Miss Iringa, Tanzania pageant and someone approached Chris and asked to take a picture of his “wifey”. I remember staring blankly at the man with the enormous camera, and wondering why he didn’t ask me... ? I think Chris gave permission, but my dagger stares may have inspired him to leave without the picture.

If anyone read that last paragraph and did a double take at around the 17th or 18th word, I just want to reiterate the point that we found ourselves at a Miss Tanzania Pageant... and that this happened by accident. Here’s how the day went:

Chris and I woke up, just a lazy Saturday morning, cooked breakfast, walked into town, went grocery shopping, and decided to rent bikes to ride to this Stone Age site where a bunch of researchers have done a lot of archaeological digs and recovered tons of prehistoric artifacts and skeletons. We rode our bikes, labeled the “Chevrolet”, the 20-25 km to the stone age site. Once there, we walked through a dried-up river bed with enormous stone pilars towering above us and a really nice man named Mohammed telling us all about the history of the area. We were escorted on our bikes back to the nearest village, took a Dalla Dalla back, came home to do laundry, cook, play a board game that we have developed an obsession with (called bao- I will teach anyone who wants to learn).... just normal things. Then, in came our other two house mates. They told us that they had met a man at a bar who said that there was going to be some traditional music being played in town, and that the musician usually danced with snakes... It was kind of expensive, but we decided to go check it out anyways....

When we got there, looking around the audience was like a strange fashion show. Women were dressed up in blue sequened dresses that covered no more than 3 inches of thigh, in little black leather jumpers, and all kinds of fancy outfits. We thought this was strange, but waited it out. About an hour later, the festivities started when 12 girls came out with numbers pasted to their bodies doing crazy, almost stripper-like dancing routines. The MCs came on... and within the first minute of their frantic joke-making, said something about the “Wazungu” (Word for Westerners). Suddenly, everyone in the entire place turned around, looked at us, and burst into laughter. Not shortly after, the girls came out, one by one, described their aspirations in life, explained the meaning of the “traditional”outfits that they had designed, and strutted their stuff. By the time the swimsuit competition and the ball gowns came around, we were sure that we had suffered some sort of miscommunication about the nature of the event to which we had just come. We quietly excused ourselves and returned home.

Upon arrival, we received a text message from someone who was still there saying that we had just missed the most unbelievable contortion artist they had ever seen. Chris just looked at me, wide-eyed, and said, “I think I need to go to bed”.

While our time in town was good (as you can see), I am very happy to be back in the bush camp. There are elephants around basically all the time, and we can definitely get more of our work done here. And we have plenty of time to think about the ridiculous, ridiculous situations that we have gotten ourselves into in the recent past. I’m still afraid of the large animals, and this fear may soon develop into an insomnia of sort.

For example, Chris and my bedtime conversation last night went like this.
Me: “Chris, do you think you’re going to fall asleep soon?”
Chris: “Definitely...Probably in just a few minutes.”
Me: “Really? Even after those scary growling sounds we just heard?”

I find that if I have to get up an pee in the middle of the night, the entire process takes about a half hour to an hour... because I have to first accept the fact that I can’t wait until the morning (at least 20-30 minutes) and then gain the courage to go outside, despite all of the animal noises that you hear (at least 15-20 minutes). Once I actually get up and leave the tent, I swear I’m back inside within 30 seconds. I wonder if this fear will quell after a little more time here, though I’m not hopefull.

Okay, I’m going to get back to work. But there’s so much more to tell you... and I definitely will. Soon.

The most impressive angry noises I have ever heard from a domesticated animal...

2008-05-30T05:57:00.000-07:00

I’m pretty sure that today is the four month anniversary of when I left home. It’s crazy to think about this period of four months- in some ways it seems really short, and in others it seems like an eternity... Chris and I have so much planned for our last 7 weeks here, including trips to Malawi, Kenya and the Serengeti!

We have started our work at the Wildlife Conservation Society, and I think it’s accurate to say that our work is in full swing. I really like the experience of working in an office environment in such a different place. Each day is so hit and miss. For example, I don’t think anybody really cares when and where people show up for work. We usually come in at 9 or so, after a leisurely morning of cooking breakfast and walking the half-mile or so to the office, and it’s completely unpredictable what the situation will be when you arrive. Some days there are literally 8 or 9 people packed in the same small room- typing away on laptops, making phone calls, or just sitting staring into the distance. Other days, like today, we came in at about 9:30 or 10, thinking that we were late, and the place was literally deserted. Some days there is internet, some days there isn’t, but regardless nearly everyone’s work depends on it. I listen to peoples’conversations as they crowd around what we were told was the “compulsory” tea, about how what this office really needs is porridge, not tea. Languages go berzerk here, with some people fluent in some languages and others barely coherent with their broken English or Swahili. There is a balance of men and women in the office, though they have kind of taken on stereotypical roles within the organization. Every once in a while, someone bursts into uncontrollable laughter when they get chain mail in their email inboxes from their coworkers... and there are at least 50 large jars filled with various kinds of fish and other aquatice creatures displayed in a glass case that covers the majority of one of the walls.

In a few days we’ll be taking our projects (which include redesigning the Ruaha website, analyzing elephant conflict data, analyzing trends in prices of staple crops and bushmeat over the past several years, reorganizing the photo database, and potentially writing an article for Africa Geographic- a conservation magazing- about water diversion problems from the Great Ruaha River) back to the bush once again where the elephants roam and the hippos bellow all night long. I’m really excited to go back- our tent has been unoccupied for about a week now. The city where we are- Iringa- is really cool, but the bush is much more exhilirating.

One of my favorite things about Iringa so far has just been sitting, walking, and occcasionally running around the city and observing the surroundings. Chris and I have both developed a wild fascination with all other Westerners and our interactions with them. There are an extraordinary number of people who are clearly foreigners here- and they come in all forms. For instance, yesterday we saw a stout, middle-aged white man wearing an oversized cowboy hat standing outside of the artillery store near a large water buffalo statue. Another example, about 3 months ago, I emailed a really well known British ornithologist, he wrote back saying that he would be out of touch because he was going to chase storks for a long period of time. This same man offered us a ride home today in his large, run-down safari vehicle. We often find ourselves pretending not to notice or be particularly interested in the other westerners who we see walking around, but I think our interest is very apparent... because their interest in us is equally apparent.

Another one of my favorite things to observe are the groups of people who congregate together just to sit and have a chat. Even in Zanzibar, I often found myself wondering if groups of people like the one that I found myself with would ever interact if they were in the US. For example, one night in Zanzibar some of us went out to a little bar near where we were staying. I looked around and took note of the people we were sitting with. It was Chris (the girl), our friend Kassim (who every single person I have introduced to him has later made some comment about how intimidatingly large he is), a very introverted, quatrilingual, Zanzibari friend of ours, an old crazy man who is convinced that he is the last sultan of Zanzibar, and this rotund Arab man who was from out of town and reminded me of a Cheech and Chong-type character. Chris and I just watched as these men lit cigarettes, passed them around to one another, until they reached the Sultan man. As soon as he got a hold of the cigarette, he promptly buried it in his small potted plant that he carried with him everywhere. The rest of the men proceeded to get very angry.

My other favorite thing to observe are the animals that roam freely around the city. Every day Chris and I walk home along the one busy street near where we live. Enormous buses and all sorts of decked out safari vehicles constantly zoom past, but this activity strangely doesn’t seem to disturb large herds of cattle, goats, maybe some donkeys, lots of chickens, and many other species that wande the streets. The day before yesterday, I was walking alone and an exceptionally large herd of goats came bleating past at an impressive trot. I took note, but wasn’t that surprised. Maybe 3 more minutes into my walk, however, I came across the very distraught, angry goat who had lost its way. I’m not sure if it was ever reunited with the rest of the herd, but it made some of the most impressive angry noises I have ever heard from a domesticated animal.

Since coming here, we have heard several times that the average income for a Tanzanian person is less than a dollar a day. Chris and I have been talking about how this initally sounded absurd to us- that even in this country you would starve with that amount of money. More and more, though, we are starting to think that it might be possible. Many people here grow a lot of their food- every inch of many peoples’ yards are turned into gardens or fields. The ditches along roads are full of corn and nearly every tree around here grows edible fruits. You can buy a large cabbage in the market for about 10 cents. Yesterday we bought a large plastic bag full of tomatoes and onions and it was only about 40 cents. I think we are going to start keeping track of how much money we spend per day, to see whether we could live on a similar amount of money.

Okay. We have big plans to go to the post office and purchase a pineapple. Hope all is well in America , that summertime has finally arrived in full force, and that hail hasn’t been too big of a problem in the recent past (those pictures of the hail in MN were unbelievable!). Love.

New address...

2008-05-28T12:08:00.000-07:00

I've gotten a few requests for a new address. If you want to send letters, etc. you can send them here:

Anna Santo
c/o Wildlife Conservation Society
Box 1654
Iringa, Tanzania
East Africa

Just keep in mind that I'll probably be leaving here the first week of July and it takes about 2 weeks for mail to get here. You can also send letters to:

Box 3040 Vuga St.
Zanzibar, Tanzania
East Africa

And I'll get them up until I leav (July 18). Okay... I have loved all of the letters and postcards so far. Thanks :)

I have some stories brewing but no time to write them now. More later.

PICTURES!

2008-05-27T01:18:00.000-07:00

As promised, here are some links to pictures from the past few months. I haven't had time to write in everyones' names or where everything is yet, but if you look again in a week or so maybe I will have done that. Maybe.

Enjoy.

An album of mostly people....
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2032237&l=c885d&id=4303159

Safaris and wildlife, etc...
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2032298&l=e8f90&id=4303159

Mostly from the ocean...
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2032239&l=90273&id=4303159

Random assortment...
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2032380&l=04fe4&id=4303159

Zanzibar and Dar Es Salaam
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2032241&l=3d6d6&id=4303159

Pictures from our Independent Study Project on (mostly) Pemba Island
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2032240&l=a1412&id=4303159

Just to let you know, there are elephants in camp...

2008-05-23T23:53:00.000-07:00

Each morning, when we wake up, Chris and I have developed this routine. It isn't intentional, it just sort of happens this way... Here's how it goes.

1) One of us wakes up, opens their eyes a little and then closes them. Immediately afterward, they realize where we are, and their eyes shoot open much wider than believed to be humanly possible.
2) Awake person takes a deep breath, gets up and walks around the tent. Listens to the river and any sort of large predators off in the distance. Starts to get ready for the day.
3) Rustling of person #1 and sounds of elephants and lions cause person #2 to awake. They slightly open their eyes, close them, then they shoot open like person #1.
4) Person #2 gets up, scùttles to the window, peers out.
5) Person #1 says, "Yep. Still here..."
6) Person #2 repeats "Still here..."

It's kind of a nice reality check every morning. I can probably speak for the both of us when I say that we have come to enjoy the routine, which made yesterday's wake up call even stranger than one might already think it was. Here's what happened...

Yesterday we woke up to someone coming into the tent, saying, "Just to warn you, there are elephants in the camp." This seemed like a funny observation to me because OF COURSE we had noticed that there were elephants outside of our tent. As the largest terrestrial animal, they are pretty bad at being discreet about their arrival and morning feast on the surrounding trees. And, its not like they were a ways away where we might have questioned the noises that we were hearing, they literally left grapefruit-sized poops just a few paces from our tent... So, needless to say, our usual wake up routine was disturbed by our visitors, though I thoroughly enjoyed their appearance.

I don't know if any of you have ever heard of Larium, the malaria prevention drug that causes crazy dreams and sometimes makes people a little psychotic, but Chris and I are both taking it. The dreams that I have had for the past 4 months have been strange to say the least, but I am usually pretty amused by them. FOr instance, I recently dreamt that a man we met on a boat brought us to his mansion where there were warthogs swimming in their large pool... But yesterday my dreams took a turn for the worst. I had a dream that my friend was eaten by a crocodile (for those of you who were in Zanzibar- I'm talking about Devon) and it scared me so much... The strangest part was to wake up to the sounds of what I think were crocodiles in the river below us. In retrospect, it was ridiculous to freak myself out like that, but in the African bush it is hard to slow down your heart beat in the middle of the night.

So for those of you who have loyally stuck out this entire blog process sans pictures, I have very good news. Pictures are one their way. I managed to get a total of 3 pictures on photobucket in one hour, but then realized that I can upload them through facebook really easily. I've already put about 300 pictures up, and as soon as I straighten them out and label them, etc., I'll put a link to all of them up here. I hope you like them... Give me a few days and then check back.

The family that we are living with here are so amazing. It's really funny to see what has been normalized for the two kids, ages 7 and 9. When we sit around the bonfire eating dinner each night and talk about anything and everything, the kids often have to ask what some of the things that we are talking about are. For example, questions like, "Who are Beavis and Butthead?", änd then we talk about our worst jobs ever, and they ask, "What's K-Mart", "What's Wendy's?" and even questions like, "What's carpet?"... And while they don't know what these things are, they can spot bat-eared foxes in the dead of night on one glance, and could tell you anything about the ecology of any animal in the bush.

I know I last told some people that their son had a pet falcon, though I must correct myself. It's actually an African Hawk Eagle and it escaped last night. The retrieval process this morning was incredible. It involved ladders and ropes and climbing a huge tree and carrying the eagle down in one arm while the other one hung on to branches. I am surprised that nobody died or broke any limbs.

Okay, today we are going back in to town, so I will have more tales of dental vests and down jackets soon. Baadaye.

Anna living out her elephantasies.

2008-05-21T12:15:00.000-07:00

Hi loyal blog readers. This is Anna's dad. She's having trouble posting to the blog from her new spot in beautiful downtown nowhere, so she emailed the following to me to post on her behalf. Enjoy.

-------------------------------------------

Okey dokey, here goes....

I'm not sure if it's intended to be a fashion statement, or if it is to keep warm, or purely to ensure safety in the event of a horrible crash, but for some unknown reason, people living in Iringa, Tanzania wear dental vests when riding motorbikes. The first sighting we had this morning, I was convinced it was a bullet-proof vest, which made me a little nervous, but upon closer inspection and confirmation from a weathered Tanzania resident, it was clear that those thick, gray, outfits were, in fact, the dental vests that you wear when getting an x ray or just plaque scraped off of your teeth.

Chris and I made it to our final destination in the middle of nowhere african wild bush after 3 ridiculous days of rest and relaxation in Kendwa, Zanzibar (aka vacation paradise), the waviest ferry ride that I can imagine, a night in a hostel in Dar es Salaam, and an 8 hour bus ride across the african plains and into the mountains. When we got on the bus it was about 90 degrees and we were right along the coast, and when we got off it couldn't have been much more than 70 and we were surrounded by people wearing large, puffy down jackets. We climbed about 3000 feet in elevation and were looking at mountains in every direction.

This place is unbelievable. Yesterday night we spent at the Wildlife Conservation Society's house in Iringa (which is a pretty big city). Tonight we are staying at the bush camp, about 130 km outside of the city, which is unbelievably posh, as ironic as it might seem. For example, while we are technically off the power grid, there is a solar-powered satellite TV and (obviously) internet where I can type on my blog... We ate delicious Mexican food for dinner, and were only interrupted 2 times. First, when two elephants came splashing through the river whose banks we were sitting next to and second, when a lion roared off in the distance. There is one family who lives here all the time- and their two kids are awesome. They gave us a tour around the camp, introduced us to their pet falcon who they are nursing back to health after being hit by a car, took us to see the monitor lizard and the hippo tracks, and showe d us their trampoline (?). To get here we had to drive into the Great Rift Valley, the place where humans evolved!!!!! This trip just gets crazier and crazier.

I can't wait to get started on some sort of research project. There is a lot going on here- I wish that I could summarize it all for you, but I think that will have to happen another day.... because we are about to have a lot of days with very little communication with the outside world. I can't wait. :) More later.

Tarehe Kumi Na Sita

2008-05-16T01:02:00.000-07:00

Today is “Tarehe kumi na sita Mei” (translated May 16), the day that has been rolling off of my tongue literally since the day we arrived. I feel like I told at least 75 people that I was leaving the country “Tarehe kumi na sita Mei”, and now that day is today, and like the true crazy that I think I’m becoming, the plane left, carrying the majority of my friends in this country, without me… And I am so excited!

The entire event of changing our tickets was an absolute nightmare. The flight left at 4 AM this morning, and we literally did not receive final confirmation from the airlines that the changes to our tickets were made until about 7 PM yesterday. I love that everything in this country is laid back, that people don’t strictly adhere to daily, or even weekly, schedules, but it would definitely be an understatement to say that yesterday morning Chris and I were in a panic. We were convinced that we were going to have to buy new tickets back to the US. I don’t know how we kept our cool through the situation, but with the help of my dear mother and Chris’ wonderful Stepfather, the SIT coordinator, the travel agency, the airlines, and some random American man named Dan who is apparently our ‘group leader’, our tickets were finally changed. I will be arriving in NYC on July 19th and in Minneapolis on July 21. W are traveling on three different airlines for four different flights, and it only ended up costing about $400 to change all of them... Holy buckets of relief. Anybody going to be in NYC July 19th???

After figuring all of that out, it finally hit me that all of these people who I have been living with in VERY close quarters were leaving in just a few hours… We all went out snorkeling, out to the sandbank that we visited on our first day, out to a really fancy dinner (compliments of SIT), stayed up all night, went to the disco with all of our favorite Zanzibaris, and danced the night away… literally. I didn’t sleep until the sun was up… and even then only for about 2 hours. It was so funny to hear all of the final confessions that came from everyone, like that our academic director actually has absolutely no interest in coral or coral reefs, and that all the boys had a ridiculous crush on our teacher’s daughter…

Chris and I are headed up to the North of the island today for about 3 days… There are 3 Oberlin students who were on the School for Field Studies Program in Kenya who are sprawled out on the beach in Zanzibar for about a week (Joanna, Mark and Val)… and we’re going to go sprawl out with them before we head off on our next adventure.

It’s exciting to feel like I’m starting over here. We have already been here 3 and a half months, and now we’re starting over with another two. The only difference is that this time we kind of know the language… and that there will be a lot of elephants.... and not a lot of dolphins.

Well, we have quite the to do list, so I should probably go start with that. I’ll let you all know soon what this country is like without supervision….

One last thing...

2008-05-13T05:32:00.001-07:00

The other day I saw an oxcart, carrying an enormous metal drum, pull in to a gas station, fill up with gasoline, and then trot away with it's newly-filled fuel tank...

Weddings and Safaris and Giant, Empty Pools...

2008-05-13T05:14:00.000-07:00

It’s a very strange feeling to be in Africa surrounded by people who are leaving in just a few days, but knowing that you will be staying for another 2 months. I put in a request to change my flight home to the 18th of July. While the airline said that there is a possibility that the request will not go through and I will have to hang my head in shame as I hop on a May 16th flight, I’m keeping my fingers crossed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (makes typing difficult) that they are just saying that for liability reasons. Who knows, though… either way it is bizarre to not know which continent you will be on next week.

We have finished all of the academic and logistical parts of the study abroad program, and now we are mostly just hanging out during the day and boogying the nights away. Yesterday we went to Prison Island, about a 20-minute boat ride away, where they have a tortoise sanctuary. There were dozens of tortoises meandering around, chomping on spinach that we offered them, and making strange hissing noises at us when we ran out of edible vegetable matter for them to feast on. I couldn’t believe how big they were- some at least 3 feet tall. Their giant legs look prehistoric and their shells are so thick that they appear to be invincible. Along with the peacocks and miniature deer-like duikers that were running around the island, I was definitely confused about where we were and what time period it might have been. 

Last time I wrote I told you that I was on my way to a wedding- it was outrageous. First of all, I didn’t realize that we were invited to only one of the 3-4 days of celebration. The actual ceremony is only the husband and wife in the mosque and a whole series of different celebrations take place after the actual ceremony. We went the second night, when mostly women come to dance and listen to Tarab music. We were told to arrive at 8 o’clock at Bwawani Hotel (side note: this is the night club that we sometimes go to. I have only been there once, but it was insane. It’s on the roof of a building and there is a GIANT, empty swimming pool with some small posts around it to protect people from drunkenly plummeting to their deaths. The night we were there, there were lots of psychedelic lights spinning in all directions and hundreds of enormous grasshoppers that I thought were bats until I spotted one on my shoulder under one of the neon green lights….). So, knowing that things never start on time here, we decided to arrive fashionably late at around 8:30. Sure enough, when we arrived, about ¼ of the guests were there…. And they were dressed to kill.

Before going to the wedding, I was asked on several occasions what I was going to wear to the wedding. I had a nice dress that I assumed was appropriate, but got some funny looks from Zanzibari women when I told them I was going to wear it. Maybe an hour or so before the wedding, we were told to, “look like peacocks.” I thought that sounded nice but didn’t realize that all of the women took that statement absolutely literally. I have never seen so many shiny, sequenced, brightly colored full-length dresses in my entire life. The outfits that people wore to this celebration were way beyond what would be appropriate for an occasion like prom or any other celebration in the US where people get dressed up. It was really fun to see them all in their Saturday-night bests… but really strange to see all the women with their heads uncovered! They were all done up with fancy hairdos and busting moves on the dance floor. It was almost too much to process.

The most fascinating part of the whole event to me was what was happening on the dance floor. There was a live band, and they played exclusively Tarab music (the loud, kind of whiny music that is traditional to Zanzibar. I really like when men sing, but when the women sing their voices are often so whiny it is really grating to listen to). The music was so loud we had to leave the room on several occasions because we had headaches… but everyone else was enjoying it SO much! As soon as each song began, a crowd of women would gather on the dance floor, waving money around in each other’s faces and at the band. The strangest part, though was that as soon as a song was about to end, the dance floor suddenly cleared out entirely. Within 10 seconds, a crowd of 40-50 women would suddenly bolt for their seats so that by the time the music stopped and a new song began, nearly everyone was back in their seat.

The bride didn’t show up until at least 11, and when she did, she was escorted in by her younger brother directly towards this large, sequenced fish, plush-toy like sculpture that somebody had made for the occasion. The groom came in later and joined her on a bench near the fish, and the two of them had their picture taken with an assortment of different people for no less than an hour. She looked so nervous to me- I cannot imagine an arranged marriage like that- and after the wedding she was moving to Hong Kong where her husband worked….After the pictures ended, we all ate dinner (around midnight). We had definitely had enough excitement at that point, so we dipped out.

Enough about the wedding…. On to new topic. Wild African Safaris!!

We finished our Independent Study Project early so that we could go on vacation! We decided that our time in Tanzania would not be complete until we took a trip up towards the Northern Circuit (ie Serengeti region). We took 5 days at the end of our time to take a ferry to Dar es Salaam, a bus to Arusha (10 hours), go on safari one day, take the bus back and then the ferry back. The trip was insane- we spent so much time staring out of windows and being escorted around the country in different forms of transportation, but I am so happy we did it. We saw Mount Kilimanjaro from the bus, met tons of people, and got to visit Ngorongoro crater (AMAZING). We saw a cheetah, 4 lions, rhinos, ostriches, flamingos, zebras, water buffaloes, hippos, elephants, warthogs, and just about everything else you might expect to see on an African safari. It was so fun!

Okay, I am proud of anyone who has read all of this. I know I can get a little wordy.

I think I’ll be leaving Zanzibar on the 18th of May to go to the mainland. I have absolutely loved all of the letters and postcards that everyone has sent, but for now if you are going to send anything, wait a few days until I get my new address. If you send stuff here I will still get it, but not until the middle of July.

I hope everyone is doing well. I miss and love you, but am SO excited to cohabitate with elephants!

Chasing Elephants???

2008-04-29T06:08:00.000-07:00

So... I know I told most of you that I was returning to the US on the 18th of May. BUT my plans have changed. My friend Chris (Chris Rice- another Oberlin student, a different Chris from the one that I have been living with) and I applied for stipends to stay in Tanzania to do an internship with the wildlife conservation society of Tanzania. We're going to be living and working at the Ruaha Landscape Program outside of Iringa, Tanzania until the end of July. I am so ridiculously excited that I can hardly contain it! I definitely miss a lot of people, and will be excited to come home at the end of the summer, but this opportunity seemed too amazing to pass up. So, if any of you have any plans to go on summer trips, I strongly advise you to consider coming to Tanzania. :) I think we'll be doing some sort of analysis of elephant tracking data and "bushmeat consumption", which can only mean exactly what it sounds like...

For the past few days I have been on a mission: a mission to buy a postcard. It sounds like kind of an easy task in such a tourist-y place. There are postcards everywhere you look.... BUT, this was a little more difficult. Chris and I were looking for a specific postcard. It had to have giraffes on it, because it was for a specific person who as a very strong love for giraffes. The only problem is, there are no giraffes in Zanzibar. I don't know why I didn't realize that... if you want a postcard of a boat, no problem. A sting ray, no problem. But it has been about 2 weeks since I started keeping my eye out for giraffe postcards and we have yet to see one. UNTIL today. AND, not only was there one giraffe postcard, there were many of them to choose from in a shop that we meandered in to. It was almost like divine intervention. And then I looked on the back and saw that it was from the place where we will be living this summer- Ruaha National Park. Then I knew it was divine intervention. :)

Chris and I moved back to Unguja Island a few days ago. We felt confident that not only had we met every single man in the city we were living in on Pemba, but we were pretty sure that they had all proposed to us. And by us I really mean that they would ask both of us to marry them at the same time because men are allowed to have 4 wives according to Islam. It got to the point that Chris described marriage proposals as a kind of "courtesy" to extend to someone, and that we should be slightly offended if a man didn't propose. So after refusing all of the proposals, there were many angry men after us, so we had to leave.

But our time in Pemba was amazing. I moved back in with my host family for a few days, which was wonderful. My host mom (who was only 26) is absolutely wonderful, and I love all of her friends and family. It was so great to see them again.

When we got back to Unguja we decided that for a change of scenery/to save some money we would move into the house where some of our friends have been living for the past two weeks. So we hopped a Dalla Dalla, along with another 32 people crammed on the inside and 8 dangling merrily off the back, to Paje (another town on the east side of the island). We arrived an hour or so later, where our friends met us and brought us back to what they have appropriately named, "The mansion". THe house is UNBELIEVABLE. A red cross worker owns it- it's right on the beach, with at least 4-5 bedrooms, 3 of the biggest bathrooms I have seen in my entire life (think 1.5 dorm rooms), a courtyard in the middle, and guards sitting outside 24 hours a day. I can't really get used to it, but it has definitely been a posh last several days. We spend days working on our projects, and our evenings lounging in hammocks overlooking the beach, playing cards, and cooking amazing food in their amazing kitchen. I think I'll have to snap out of it soon.

Ok, well my time is up, but I can't wait to hear from you all! Thanks for all the letters and emails, etc. I'm going to a wedding on Friday, and I think it's going to be quite the experience, so I'll be sure to tell you all about it.

A Car!

2008-04-17T01:48:00.000-07:00

Since I have been in Tanzania, I have ridden in cars exactly 2 times, and once was this morning. We ride on Dalla Dallas, the Zanzibari form of public transportation, fairly often- maybe once every two days- but there are very few cars here. It's so ridiculous to think about the cold Feruary days in Minnesota where I got in and out of a car 6 times, or maybe even more. Now it has been nearly three months, and only twice have I gotten into a car. I'm sure that's why everyone is so healthy and strong here.

Let me describe the experience on a dalla dalla a little more to you. Most of the dalla dallas here are pickup trucks with benches all around the edges and a top/canopy thing that they stack high with anything and everything. A few days ago Chris (Chris is actually Christine- she goes to Brandeis University. I realize that many of you thought I was talking about Chris Rice, but it isn't him) and I got on a dalla dalla that had maybe 25 people on it. Everyone squeezed in on benches that face the middle of the truck. If there's a centimeter of empty bench next to you, someone will say "sogea" and then booty-bump you with impressive force over to the person sitting next to you to make room for someone else on the other side. As we looked out the side of the dalla dalla, we saw that the one next to us was piled high with all kinds o things- one one roof we saw an entire bedroom set- bedframe, two chairs, table, bedstand, mattress, and small bureau-chest-like thing. We also saw a 10 gallon bucket, about 10 about 8-foot long metal poles, several potato sacks full of charcoal, and my favorite thing, a banana tree. All of this one one small pickup truck. Sometimes they pass with no less than 30-40 mattresses stacked high, another one of my favorite sights.

When the dalla dalla stops, which is usually indicated by the person hanging off the back banging on the side of the truck with a metal stick or a large coin and shouting a string of words in swahili, you never know what people will take out from underneath the benches where you are sitting. The other day, when we stopped, someone got off the dalla dalla and asked where his chickens were. Everyone looked under their benches, and not one, not two, not three, but at least 5 live chickens appeard, tied up in plastic bags, from under the benches where we were sitting. As he left, he yelled that he was still missing one, and sure enough someone reached under and pulled out another bagged chicken and passed it down the line until it got to the last person in the dalla dalla, who passed it out the back to the man. I love riding on dalla dallas.

Ok my internet time is up. Talk to you all soon!

Hamna breki!!!

2008-04-15T05:48:00.000-07:00

I often think language barriers are completely unsurmountable barriers to establishing relationships with people here, but yesterday someone came whizzing past us on a bicycle, screaming "HAMNA BREKI" and as they bounce over a nearby speed bump, I remembered... I bet we understand a lot more than we think we do, without speaking the language. It was funny to see this man's friend greet him with "peace be with you" and hear only his cries of panic as he couldn't slow down his bike. More later.

Grocery Shopping

2008-04-12T02:00:00.000-07:00

In order to turn our small little chyumba (room) in to a full blown nyumba (home), Chris and I have gone shopping several times in the past few days to get things like food, tupperware, etc. Here's a list of what we bought.
Day 1:
2 lb pasta
1/2 kilo small potatoes
1/2 kilo lg potatoes
3 tubes tomato paste
2 rolls TP
1/4 kilo sugar
1 L oil
2 limes
3 tomatoes
bottle of sweet basil essential oil
1 mango
1/2 kilo cabbage
small package of whole black peppercorns
dishsoap
2 carrots
curry powder
ginger powder
6 eggs
1 head of garlic
2 packages of cookies
2 packages biscuits
salt
1/2 kilo rice
2 red onions
1 coconut
1/2 kilo kidney beans
1/2 kilo mystery beans
2 bananas

Our total for the first day was about 16000 TSH or about $15.

Day 2:
15 bananas
5 mini-doughnuts
bar of soap
1/2 kilo laundry detergent
1 cucumber
4 limes
2 hot peppers
1 mango
1 avocado
cinnamon
sponge
4 tupperwares

Our total for the second day was about 5000 TSH or $4.

The cost of living here is unbelievable. Ok, must go. Love you all.

I fear drowning in the streets...

2008-04-10T04:04:00.000-07:00

It is definitely the rainy season here. Every day, for at least 1-2 hours, it pours buckets. Today, as my friend and I walked to town, we had to plow through areas of many inches of carrot-juice colored flowing water. I think we are quite the spectacle, two Americans, me wearing a bright yellow raincoat and her wearing an ankle-length green poncho, trudging through small rivers while everyone leans out their windowns screaming at us, welcoming us into their homes. I can't help but laugh at what they might be thinking.

It is now time for us to choose anything we want to study individually- we have finished our marine biology classes and have all split up all over the country. My friend Chris and I returned to Pemba Island, where we were before, to come live at the Essential Oil Distillery and learn to make different essential oils. Our little home is very cozy- with bright green walls, blue doors, yellow plaid sheets and little wooden shutters. Right outside of our front door is a jasmine plant, two toads that hang out near our doorstep, a field of lemnongrass and a field of sweet basil. I really love it so far.

We took the night boat to Pemba- it left arouind 10 pM and arrived around 6 AM. It was a surreal experience. I mostly remember a lot of thick fog, mist, spray, some huge waves, freezing cold air conditioning, and people coughing the entire way. I got up and went outside around 4 AM and couldn't even see to the end of the boat. I felt like we were in The Perfect Storm. :) While I might have slept, I really have no idea whether I did or not.

Last night we tried to cook our first meal in the kitchen- but when we arrived it was locked. After several phone calls and several visits from strangers, a man arrived with the key. Unfortunately, we absolutely could not communicate with this man on any level. After he left, we made a delicious soup, and just as it was almost finished, he returned with someone who might have been his son (?). We quickly found out that the only word that we knew in common with each other was "Roast" because he took one look at our soup and assumed it was a roast. I bet he repeated that word at least 20 times before our conversation was over, and I think that to this moment he still thinks that we had made a roast last night. We offered him some to try, so that he would believe us that is was, in fact, something other than "Roast", but I think he feared our American concoction. It was really funny...

One of the things that still amazes me after living here for more than 2 months is the fact that every single person that we see wants to greet us. CHris and I befriended a hotel manager who offered to put us up for free in his hotel the other night. We accepted, went and spent an awesomely luxurious night lounging in a seaside pool and listening to drums on the beach, and the next morning rented bicycles and rode across the island. It was so funny to ride through little villages where I swear every single person who saw you would not only greet you, but scream greetings at the top of their lungs until you a) responded, b) were out of sight, or c) they ran out of breath. I wish I could record the sound and play it back to you- it is unlike any sound I have ever heard in the US. It's also funny to think about how they greet you- I'm not sure if it is a cultural difference or a language barrier- but the way that people greet us is so hilarious. For example, a common one, "Hello how are you i love you welcome!" or "Hello how are you welcome home come closer". We receive at least 3-5 marriage proposals a day, and now have an impressive set of reasons that we could recite of why it is better to marry a Zanzibari man than an american man.

Well, my half hour of internet is up. I miss you and love you all... Big decisions for summer plans are pending. I so far have 0 job options, 1 offer for a marine ornithology class in Alaska, and several options that I'm still waiting to hear back from. Later, gators.

Tickle Ferns

2008-04-03T08:15:00.000-07:00

Have you ever seen a sensitive plant? You know the plant that when you touch it the leaves close together? Well, they grow everywhere here. Sometimes they are the main "weed" that you walk through as you walk through a vegetated area. The other day we were walking through a big patch of them and we started talking about what everyone called them. My two favorites, though, were: 1) "fake death plant"- I thought it was fitting. 2) A friend on the trip - her name is Elly- grew up calling them "tickle ferns". That one is definitely my favorite.

Today we went on a spice tour. I can now say I know where nearly all of those little jars of powder in our kitchen come from. It was so cool to see nutmeg, vanilla, cinnamon, cardamom, anatto, black pepper, cacao, mace, and all kinds of other exotic things growing just like any other plant. We also tasted what are supposedly the hottest peppers in the world. One little lick and my tongue was nearly numb. Two of the students at whole ones (they are really small). I thought they were going to die. They just thought that they had eaten fire.

After the spice tour we went to see an abandoned slave chamber and go to the beach. There was beautiful coral and shells all over the beach and a little cliff to jump off- so much fun!

We have a meeting in a few minutes. I just wanted to say hello. Tutaonana baadaye(translated: we will see each other later).

I have malaria...

2008-04-01T05:19:00.000-07:00

April fools! I'm fine... But unfortunately, two of my dear friends on our trip have been sick all morning. Here, if something bad happens to someone you say, “Pole sana.” They have both gotten that many times today, I'm sure. That was a mean april fool's joke. Sorry, mom and dad.

Once again it has been a long time since I have written, but I'd like to think that's because we have been doing so many exciting things that there hasn't been any time for frivolous blog writing. In reality, it might just be because we have been out in the wild rain forests of Zanzibar where there are no computers, let alone internet. :)

The forests were so amazing. The first one, Ngezi, has been protected for decades and is home to dozens of endemic species. It was really cool to walk around with a guide who, after pointing out a tree or a nut or bird, would say, “That does not exist anywhere else in the world.” The same thing happened again in Jozani Forest (which is actually a National Park). In Jozani, there is a population of 5000 Red Colobus Monkeys, and based on how frequently you see them, it seems unfathomable that they are endangered, let alone scarce in this world. It makes me wonder what these jungle and bush territories must have been like before all of these animals were endangered. I can only imagine the Lion King times 10.

One night several friends and I went out looking for the endemic Pemba Flying Fox, thinking that we had a pretty good chance of seeing it. We didn't see any, and had nearly given up because the sun was setting and apparently it's really dark at night on islands with no electricity. But as soon as we got to the top of a hill, we looked up and saw thousands of these massive flying foxes right above us. It was so surreal. They really look like miniature batmans, and their winds are slightly translucent so you could see the bright colors of the vibrant zanzibar sunsets through the wings. Unbelievable.

We also spent a few days learning about all kinds of agriculture on Pemba Island. It's really funny to think about how many products I use without giving any thought to where they might come from. For instance, we drove past this huge plantation of trees, where all of the trees had diagonal, circular slashes through the trunks, white goo oozing out, and, small, half coconut cups tied to the trees collecting the white goo. If you went up to the tree and doused your hand in the white glue, it came out with a texture strangely similar to Elmer's Glue. It turns out that's how rubber is harvested. We drove for miles, and along the road there were rubber pieces, about the size of washcloths, hanging on lines to sundry. It was really cool.

We also visited several local cooperative farms. It's really funny to me that in the US cooperatives seem so counter-culture, because here, just like in Latin America, coops just make so much sense and could almost be considered the norm. Why not share capital costs- at one of the farms they were so proud of the fact that because they worked together they were able to purchase an oxcart to bring their produce to the market. It's really cool to see what they grow- huge bunches of bananas (think at least 100 to a stalk), eggplant, beans, tomatoes, okra, cucumbers, papayas, and a lot of crazy looking things that are completely foreign to me. :) I really loved seeing how things are run here- crops are grown with drip irrigation, and a big farm is only 2 hectares. Animals are tethered to what seems like twigs stuck into the ground, and all the poultry prefer to stay on the roofs of buildings. In some ways it seems so different, but in other ways, it's very much the same as farms in the US.

I have definitely been continuing to make a lot of new friends. Everywhere we go we attract so much attention, it's pretty unbelievable. I don't feel like I've gone anywhere in the past 2 moths without being watched at every moment. Despite all this attention, I'm still in a state of disbelief about how much people here will call you. For instance, if you don't answer your phone, the person who just called you will keep calling until you do. If this means calling every two minutes on the minute for one and a half hours, that doesn't stop them. If you leave your phone for 20 minutes, you might have 10 missed calls from the same person. I have almost stopped answering any calls because it drives me nuts! The most puzzling thing to me, though, is right after you answer, many people will immediately hang up and call them because phones are expensive. So someone might call you 17 times consecutively, and if you decide to answer the 17th time they will immediately hang up when they hear your voice. It's so ridiculous.

Because calling is so expensive/ridiculous, I usually text message people. I like to write in Swahili, and many of the people like to write back in English. It's SO funny to read what they say, though. Let me give you soe examples of text messages that I have received:
 “Yester day u sent 2me 4 where they kept me from worrying but, 2day u sent 2me 100 msg where kept me from fear”
 “gond night.and don't let the bed bugs bite you too”
 “how'ere you my frand. evening to day it coming big ran fall”
 “Hallo! do you araived? I need to ask you soe question. are you have boy frand? Plaes answer my quest”
 “I wish I could came there to hug out with you. have a nice dream. take care of you”
I think they're funny to me because most of them are so genuinely trying to be sweet, but saying predominantly nonsense. :)

Well, I should probably get off the computer. But I hope that everyone is well. Nathaniel and Haley I got your postcards- thank you, they were so great! I'm going to be on this island for another week, and then I've decided that for my month long independent project I'm going to go back to the other island to learn how to distill essential oils from all of the spices that are produced here- clove, lemongrass, cinnamon, eucalyptus, vanilla, ylang ylang, jasmine, etc etc. Love you. Baadaye.

Alive and well...

2008-03-26T09:21:00.000-07:00

...but no time to write until Friday or Saturday. Love you all.

Easter Monday

2008-03-21T03:30:00.000-07:00

Just a few quick observations.

1. Here they celebrate Easter Monday. And the day before yesterday I went to Mohammed's birthday party (yes I am talking about the prophet).
2. Trees don't grow straight here- they grow all kiddy-wompus towards sunlight. They grow around other trees and buildings and anything. And once they get to the sunlight they sprout enormous coconuts, papayas, mangoes, passionfruits, leachees, breadfruits, guavas, bananas, and about 20 different fruits I swear I have never seen before.
3. If a vehicle doesn't work very well, that doesn't stop anyone from using it. For example, the bus that we usually take around Chake CHake (city) has to be started Little Miss Sunshine style. If that doesn't mean anything to you- before the engine actually starts, you have to push the bus about 50 yards to get it going. There might be 5-6 men pushing the bus and then the engine revs up. Another example- we took a boat out the other day that had to be bailed out continuously- and when I say it had to be bailed out I mean someone had to continuously dump water out or I'm sure we would have sank. If there were lots of waves, and they splashed into the boat, you could bail out a 5 gallon bucket in probably 30 seconds. Without waves, it might have taken 2 minutes or so. But we went way out into the Indian Ocean, fearless (like the true Oberlin students that some of us are), without any concern that we might sink.
4. Colors are brighter here. I was thinking about how my hair is blonder and my skin is browner here- and started noticing that everything is brighter. Trees are rich green colors, the dirt is bright red, houses are pink and turquoise, and women wear vibrant, clashing colors and patterns. People are more colorful, the landscape is definitely more majestic, and the buildings are either made of bright red mud or painted wild colors. It puts me in a good mood. :)
5. People name their prized possessions with ridiculous English names. For example, I have been collecting names of Dalla Dallas (minibuses or trucks) that I think are funny. Here are just a few: The Cops, Baby Girl, The Spiritual Battle, Fresh Meat: Try Again, Fantastic, Sugary Treat, Gunner, Racing, Sweet Love, Judgement Day, Guzzle Sport, My Baby, California Love, Home Boyz, Laver Boy, and my personal favorite, Titanic. I could honestly go on and on for quite a while.

Well, I'm off into the world again. Baadaye, rafiki.

Pemba Paradise

2008-03-19T06:46:00.000-07:00

Hello all- I need to figure out how to write more often so that I can tell you everything... Alas, this will have to do.

As usual, so much has happened in the past week. Just in the past two days we have travelled by dalla dalla, by airplane, boat, bus, and foot all over Zanzibar. So let me give you a few highlights.

After taking our ridiculously easy exams a few days ago we had two days off. The first day I spent relaxing with some friends in the morning until we left for (who knew) the beach in the afternoon. We gave ourselves mud baths, played cards on a dock in the sunset, drank ginger sodas on huge couches with big, plush cushions, and relaxed the day away before we went out to see the night life of Stone Town (which never fails to shock me).

The next day was almost as good as the safari day I wrote about last post :) We have all been getting a lot better at Swahili, to the point where we can kind of communicate enough to have real friends who speak Swahili. It is SO awesome. So another girl (Chris) and I went to visit a cave on our day off with a friend. It took about 45 minutes to get there, down deserted gravel roads in a bus packed tight with smiling strangers. We got off at what seemed like a random stop and walked a little bit when we came to a small clearing. We were greeted by two men- one old and wrinkly, the other young and chipper. The younger one brought us down into the cave with a flashlight. It turns out that during the days of Omani sultans in Zanzibar- after the slave trade was abolished- the sultan used to hide hundreds of slaves in this cave. It was pitch black when you turned the light off- and a python lives inside of the cave- so our guide would whistle to make sure we were not about to step on it. He said that he likes to hold it, though, and we shouldn't worry (yeah right!). you could walk about 3 km back into the cave, but we climbed out a small hole about 1/3 of a mile in. It was so cool- Luke you would love to rock climb here, but all the rock is old coral so it is sharp. After the cave, we talked with the man who had shown us around in the cave about America. Everyone wants to know different things about our country- and it is so sweet to hear how (sometimes) misinformed they are. This man wanted to talk about discrimination in the US. He said that they had heard that there was no discrimination in the US, that black people could marry white people, white people could marry Asian people, and anyone would be friends with anyone. We told him that this was true but tried to explain that there was still sometimes racism and discrimination. You could tell that he was so enamored by the idea of equality in the US, I didn't want to tell him too much. :)

After our chat, Chris, our friend (I'm leaving out names intentionally), and I walked to the beach. It is amazing how few people here know how to swim, despite living so close to the ocean (No women really know how to swim)! Our friend didn't know how to swim, so we tried to teach him. He really got the hang of it. It made me realize that there is so much to remember. For example, he kept coming up and saying that his eyes really hurt, and of course they did, because we didn't think to tell him to close his eyes to stop salt water from getting in them! It was so fun to chat and swim and splash in the beautiful water.

The dalla dalla ride home was hilarious- after walking for about a half hour, a bus finally came to pick us up. Picture this: a pickup truck, with a top over the back, PACKED with people, huge stacks of eggs, fruits, and anything you could think of. At one point I mouthed to my friend on the other side of the dalla dalla "Count how many people are here". A few minutes later she looked back and said, I count 65 just on the seats- that wasn't including the people spilling out the sides and on the floor or in the front of the truck. I dont't even know how to describe the trip. BUT it gets better- lucky us- everyone has massive respect for white people so when we got on the bus they tried to make space on the seats. :) I would have been perfectly happy on the floor, but they scooted over, one by one, to make space for me in the corner seat (prime seat). Unfortunately, there were so many people that the people on either side of me's knees met, leaving just a tiny square of open bench. So I flopped down, sitting on top of these two sweet women, knees up to my chin, and laughed hysterically with everyone about the situation. It was so funny. :)

We took a plane to the other island in Zanzibar two days ago (Pemba Island). I am already so in love with the people and the place! The geography is totally different. THere are rolling hills and fertile soil. They grow cloves and jasmine and have salt farms. We are staying with new host families now- and my family is so amazing. The first night, my host "mom" (she's 27) taught me to cook about 8 Swahili dishes, and yesterday we went out to "kutembea" (to walk around) around thte city. We started with 3 of us, but she has so many friends and family that when we stopped there were at least 16 people with us! It was so fun- and they all want to help us learn Swahili and feed us exotic fruits.

Yesterday and today we went to Misali Island (a small, protected island nearby). We snorkeled in the coral gardens, played in the sand - we even saw a sea turtle! Since our lessons from an amazing marine biologist who has been living in Tanzania for about 15 years, we have all learned to identify lots of the fish and coral species. We knoow some molluscs and other invertebrates- like sea squirts and sea slugs and all kinds of things. It is really neat to see the coral reefs and to know that it is healthy because we see butterflyfish and parrotfish and triggerfish and goatfish... I could go on and on. Long story short, I am really enjoying the marine biology part of what we are doing.

Well, I should probably go home to my host family, but I definitely miss you all very much! There isn't much internet on this island (or power at all, really) and we will be here for another week, so I may not get a chance to write emails back to people or on the blog again- but know that I love and miss you and can't wait to hear what you have all been doing! And, of course, to tell you what I have been doing.

Also, I'm getting desperate for a summer job or volunteer opportunity- anybody have any leads? :) Thanks!

Baadaye.

Imagine this....

2008-03-11T07:48:00.000-07:00

This may have been the best week of my 20-year long life so far. I can’t possibly tell you everything that happened, but I’ll start with what I think may have been the best day of the best week of my life.  My “Birthday”.

Last Saturday I woke up at around 6 to watch the sunrise atop the roof of our six story tall hotel in Dar Es Salaam (six stories is very high for that area- most buildings are about the size of Minnesotan ice houses). I think the smog makes the sunrise more beautiful, as distressing as that thought is. I read my book (The Poisonwood Bible- highly recommended) for an hour before I went down to meet all of my fellow students to go on SAFARI! We ate breakfast and hopped in our land rover (ridiculous in the city but absolutely necessary in the bush).

On the way out of the city we stopped at a market where one of the three cars was swarmed by about 300 screaming children. I swear that sound is unlike anything I have ever heard… It was unbelievable to see that many kids come out of one street dressed in the same blue bottoms and white tops, screaming in unison and running as fast as their little legs could take them- directly at us. While we were stopped I smiled at a woman in another car and she offered me a MONKEY. She wanted to give us this baby monkey… after much debating, we decided against accepting the monkey, but I still wish we had taken it. Afterwards, we drove and drove out into rural Tanzania- we passed through cities made entirely of bright red dirt- the houses, the roads, the landscape, everything is a firey red color. As you drive through each village you hear the screams of children as they come sprinting toward your car screaming, “Mzungu!” We passed pineapple plantations, where they grow most of the pineapple for the entire country. There are papayas, mangoes, coconuts and cassava growing everywhere- and nearly all of the countryside looks like it has been used for slash and burn agriculture in the past few decades. Baobab trees tower over everything else and you can see them way off in the distance. When we drove to the top of a hill and saw the mountains for the first time I swear we all stopped talking.

After about three hours of driving, one of the cars got a flat tire. This might sound bad, but it was a really good thing. We stopped in a town along the way, where another student and I befriended a young girl named Sofia. She took us around the town, introduced us to her friend’s mother, took us to the market, and showed us around a bit. It was so awesome to be able to communicate in Swahili with someone I never imagined I would meet.

Our safari guides drove like madmen. I don’t think I would have been able to visualize the types of roads that we would be driving on before seeing them. But the drivers drove down them at no less than 100 km/hr (is that like 60-65 mph?). They are narrow, to the point where one car might have to drive partly off the road if you want to pass, and enormous trucks full of pineapples or 40 people hanging out the sides or maybe full of mattresses and bricks would come barreling down the road, head-on, at about the same speed. The rules of the road are as follows: the larger of two vehicles honks continuously at the smaller of two (or more) vehicle(s), until the smaller one moves off the road. There is no slowing down, certainly no stopping, unless absolutely necessary. You go faster on straight road, slightly slowed on curvy/bumpy/washed out road, but you never, ever, waste any time. These rules apply to anything on the road- including women with 5 gallon buckets of water on their heads, or bikes carrying enormous heaps of charcoal ar tree branches. It is unbelievable. The two people in the backseat of my car were holding hands, while one clutched a small stuffed animal like her life depended on it. At the moment, I was having a great time- about 15% terrified and 85% thrilled at the adventure. In retrospect, I probably should have reversed those percentages. 

As we approached our destination, Saadani National Park, warthogs and baboons greeted us from the trees. After about 5 hours of driving, we pitched our tents and went out on safari. Almost immediately we saw monkeys, baboons, lots of different kinds of antelope-like animals (waterbucks, redbacks, and at least 2-3 other kinds). Off in the distance we saw giraffes, and as we got closer I could see their eyeballs through binoculars. We spotted 2 lions ever so briefly, just their faces among the trees. We drove right up next to small herds of zebras, wildebeasts and water buffalo. It was awesome. I think my favorite was probably the warthogs, though- I never realized that they had blonde-ish Mohawk-like hair and big, poofy mutton chops. And they walk so funny…. Cohabitating with the wildebeasts, but so obviously less graceful. We drove into the lion king-like sunset and came back to our campsite/cabin to eat a delicious dinner prepared over a campfire, including my birthday cake, which was delicious.

I think it was destiny that it would be such a good day, because people were planning to make it special for about a week in advance. My birthday falls on August third (8-3-87) and it just so happens that the date 8-3-87 means MARCH 8 in most of the rest of the world… so a couple nights before March 8, people started asking me when my birthday was. To make a long story short, all of the students figured out it was not going to be my birthday for another 5 months, but we decided to keep it a secret so we could get a cake… and the card that they made was pretty funny (with inscriptions such as: “Happy fake birthday” and “I can’t believe you lied and told me your birthday was in August”) so we decided to have a grand celebration anyways.  I told our academic director that it was not my birthday, and even she said to pretend so that we could have a birthday cake. So ridiculous. So we celebrated my birthday, ate cake, and walked about 20 yards out to the Indian Ocean to go swimming.

The night was incredibly clear- the Milky Way has NEVER looked so bright to me, not even in the boundary waters. You can see some of the same constellations as the northern hemisphere, but so many other ones as well. I think there are more stars in the southern hemisphere, personally, or maybe there are just fewer lights. I haven’t figured that one out yet. So the sky was full of sparkles, but the WATER was full of more. If any of you have ever been swimming in the ocean at night you know that there are tiny plankton that light up when you splash- so we swam at night, with the water full of lights and the sky full of lights and a light up Frisbee being thrown on the beach and shooting stars everywhere. It rained that night, and we got drenched our tent, but it was good because we woke up at about 4:50 AM (before our 5:30 wake up call), but enough time to swim in the ocean before our sunrise safari.

So that was one day of our trip- I can’t imagine telling you about every day because each one has crazy adventures like that. We saw hippos and crocodiles on our boat safari the next day, and just the day before that we went sailing to a remote island in a traditional dhow sailing boat, where I saw sting rays and cuddlefish, and squids. We did this thing called a “Manta tow,” where you cling to a wooden plank and get dragged behind a motor boat with a snorkel and mask to see everything in the water quickly. If you tilt the board downwards, you speed under water and can dive way down to get a closer look at sea turtles or coral formations or whatever you want. It was so fun. And we did it with the man who wrote our textbook about the Indian Ocean… It was really cool.

Well, obviously there is more to tell you, but I will leave it at that for now. I miss and love you all. I want to send birthday love to some of you- there are a lot of birthdays in March- especially Megan (my sister- for those of you who haven’t met her), Kayla, and Lauren O. Thanks for the letters James and Jean- I got them this morning and will write back soon! And I know that I’ve had a few people still have trouble calling, so let me reiterate phone numbers. Dial 011 (to get out of the country) 255 (To get to Zanzibar) and then 0777641798 (my phone number). If that doesn’t work- double check the country code for Tanzania/Zanzibar on google.

I also want to ask all of your advice/help on summer plans. I’m pretty sure I want to stay after the program for at least two weeks to travel to the Serengetti, Ngorongoro crater, and Mt. Kilimanjaro, and I might even want to stay after to volunteer somewhere in Tanzania for the summer. I know a lot of you told me you had connections in Tanzania- if you do and think they might like a volunteer for a month or so, please let me know and I will get in contact with them (my email is anna.santo@oberlin.edu). I’m getting nervous about not having a summer job- I applied for a few but have a feeling that I may not get any of them, so I’m trying to figure something out… OR, if any of you know anyone looking for someone to work this summer- PLEASE let me know. It’s definitely harder to find a job in Africa . I would love to work anywhere around the country, so even if it is far away, that is a good thing… I obviously love to travel. THANKS!

Here comes the downpour- the rainy season has begun!!!! Maybe I’ll go splash in the puddles once it calms down.

Niko wapi?

2008-03-01T22:25:00.000-08:00

Translated: Where am I?

We made it to the GIANT city of Dar Es Salaam (Translation- "Haven of Peace") where we are taking classes at the University for a few days. I can't believe how enormous this city seems. Maybe it's because every street looks exactly the same to me, with dirt roads, huge, filthy trenches, fruit stands and french fry/chicken vendors, and people zooming past in every direction at alarming speeds on bicycles, or down the "sidewalks" in minivans and taxis.. or maybe it's because I'm used to vertical cities with tall skyscrapers and and tall people everywhere, and the one story shacks that are everywhere let you see for miles and miles... or maybe it is just because the city is gigantic. I still haven't figured it out. For whatever reason, though, each time I ask for directions I find myself going the exact opposite direction that I expected to go, only to find myself at the desired destination. It's like the largest-scale game of hide and seek I have ever played, except I don't speak the same language as anyone and there are new, unusual smells around every corner. ANd everyone wants to help you, but there is an insurmountable language barrier. It is so fun.

Last night 10 of us piled onto an already over-capacity Dalla-Dalla to go into town. It would not be an exaggeration to estimate 25-30 people on that one minivan. It was ridiculous. At one point we thought we lost someone along the side of the street. "Where's Chuck?" someone said... turns out they had ushered him up, along with a couple of other people, to the front, left side of the van where the passenger's seats are. Everytime I see someone in that seat, though, I can't help but think that they're driving (the driver is on the right side of the van). Naturally, I thought Chuck was driving the van for a moment. :)

When we arrived downtown we walked around in circles for at least an hour. We met a man who was an aspiring musician security guard who said that if we came back he would sing us no less than 5 songs that had been inspired by bird sounds. We found a really strange fast food court in the middle of nowhere, saw the hotel where Bush stayed when he was here, and circled back to where we had come from. Before getting back on a Dalla Dalla, though, I naturally received a marriage proposal (they still crack me up- This one went like this: "Where are you from?" "America" "Oh, good, I need an American fiancee- are you ready?" "Gotta go. See you later" Run away....). After all of our adventuring, we got on a bus back towards the hotel... but we quickly discovered it didn't go to the hotel. So we had lots of young guys trying to help us 10 wazungu (westerners) get back to the Rombo View hotel. It was so funny. We passed by flaming trees and and the Bollywood Disco, saw people out drinking everywhere and businessmen on their way back from downtown (around 9:30). There is always so much activity in this city , but at the same time it seems like nothing is going on anywhere. People just lounge around in any place that seems suitable.

The boat over here was so cool. I got to ride on the front with a bunch of other students. You could see schools of fish was off in the distance and close by, beautiful old sailboats that must have sailed for days to get so far out in the ocean, and islands all over the place. It was amazing and I took about a thousand pictures, so I'm sure you will all be seeing them. :) Dar Es Salaam was quite a sight from the water- big buildings unlike anything we've seen in the past month, boats everywhere, and SO MANY people.

On a totally different note: I conquered my first experience with international medical care. I got pretty sick a few days ago (maybe a week) and ended up going to the doctor. He treated me for malaria, though he never tested me for it... (Hmmm. Strange). Anyways, I got better, but I don't think I had malaria... I think it was probably something I ate. Anyways, I stopped throwing up and started sleeping, so I was very happy. But the trip was quite an experience. They wanted to take me to the hospital to keep me on an IV to not lose liquids, but I refused, imagining the alternatives of our hotel or the hospital... So instead I got a shot in the "bum" as he described it (His technique was very comical). In restrospect, the situation was really funny. My friend Chris came with me- and she witnessed the whole thing. I am so glad she came, though... I don't think I would have made it without her. :) Now I feel better, so now worries family.

A few days ago we went to an ecoreserve called Chumbe Island where there is a protected coral reef. We saw sting rays, squids, trumpetfish, parrotfish, and dozens of kinds of fish. At htis one reef alone there are 200 species of coral. It was amazing. The United Nations Environmental Program and other organizations have given it all kinds of awards. If you are interested, you should google it and learn more. It was unbelievable. AND they have the world's largest crab on that island. It's endangered-- it's called the coconut crab. It gets to be 2-3 feet long or so. We saw one sleeping in a crack of an old coral bed. SO COOL.

Another thing that is really different here is electricity. It often just doesn't exist. I bet the power goes out 6-8 times a day for various amounts of time... It went out for about 3-4 days in Stone Town when we were there (That was during the doctor incident). It isn't so much a problem for us because we buy or filter water anyway, but my homesaty family was telling me that they have to go buy water every time that happens- for about 30 cents a gallon (which is a lot here). It's a really big problem with government infrastructure. I don't know how many people heard about the scandal with the Tanzanian Prime Minister and power supply in the country- he resigned a few weeks ago because they discovered that he and several other officials had been pocketing money that was supposedly going to a fraudulent electricity company in the US rather than relieving the power shortage around the country. It's a big deal here.

Well, today is our day off so we're going to hop a bus to a nearby forest where our academic director has a friend who is a yoga master. I think we're going to spend the afternoon digging in the garden, doing yoga, and going to the beach. Not too bad, huh? I love you all. Hope things are good... Those of you in MN- hang in there- I heard spring is coming after the long, bleak midwinter... :) I'll send sunshine and sunburns your way.

Pick your dinner from a tree...

2008-02-23T23:01:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, as a group, we took a bus to the other end of Unguja island (about 60 km away, I believe) and stopped along the way to see seaweed farms, boat building, the fish markets, a sea turtle sanctuary, and a few other places. We passed through lots of villages, all very different- where the huts were made of bright red mud, white coral and lyme, palm-thatched roofs, or homemade cement blocks. As we were driving, though, I realized that the scenery that we were seeing could have been from a hundred years ago and I don't think it would have looked any different. There were no identifying markers that we were living in the 21st century-- that's when I started talking with another guy here (Nick- from Idaho) about how time just seems different here. At home, everything is very linear, and you do things for a reason. I feel like I always have a goal in mind at home. Here- time is more circular. People just hang out everywhere on benches, on tires, in the shade, at home, on the streets... Most people aren't going anywhere or trying to accomplish anything in particular, they're just living. It's weird how there's such a little sense of the future-- everything is about the present. Someone said to us that in Zanzibar there is no stability of the future, and I think it makes so much sense. People here die so young but live so joyously. I can't really explain it, I guess, but I'm starting to understand it...

It's also really strange to have people, especially kids, ask you for things that seem so basic. Yesterday I had kids ask me for water, for pens, for paper, for food. I was in an elementary school about a week and a half ago, and they were telling me that there is no potable water in the school. A group of German people donated a water tank for them to fill with water for the kids, but they didn't have the $250 to build a stand for it. So kids have to go home from school to get water to drink when they are thirsty. It's crazy to me because I know that where I grew up, if an entire school was without potable water and it was going to cost $250 to install it, the money would come instantly. Here, though, in the entire village nobody had even a fraction of that to spend on water. Monthly salaries are around $50-80, and like the family I am staying with, that might have to support 8 people. It's really a different world. I wish Mr. Bush would donate a little more money for kids to have water...

Also -side note- yesterday on our drive home the bus got a flat tire, so we all got out of the bus in the middle of what seemed like nowhere, but LOTS of people came, including a man with a monkey on a leash. He let us pet it and play with it- it was pretty funny to see everyone jump every time the monkey made a sudden movement. Laurie- I thought Jared might like that... :)

Today is our last day with our homestay families. To say goodbye- my family gave me this lovely pink dress and khanga and painted my hands and feet with beautiful henna. We had a reception yesterday with all of the families- I have never seen so many kids in one room. My family alone brought nine of them (3 were neighbors, the rest live with us). Later my mom is going to teach me how to cook Chipatti! I've had a really great time living with them, and I'm sad to leave, but I am SO EXCITED for the next part of our trip! We are going to another island tomorrow, and ion 2 days we're going to Dar Es Saalam for 2 weeks! THEN, we are going on safari for two days- to see hippos! I can't wait.

Well, the power is out everywhere in the city (I think this place has a generator), so I'm going home to our candlelit home. But I will send more news soon!

PS Janine- thank you for the letter- it was so great to see pictures of everyone!
PPS Bad news about the pictures- none of the internet places have a fast enough connection to upload pictures, but I will keep trying. I tried to upload one and it still hadn't loaded after about 10 minutes... Oh well.

Mambo

2008-02-20T02:44:00.000-08:00

Hello again! It's great to hear that everyone is doing really well. Zanzibar continues to be paradise... Beaches and boats, giant clams and 2 foot long sea cucumbers.

I realized today that in the past 48 hours I have received at least 4 marriage proposals. Some of them were typical requests, such as, "Will you marry me?" While others were more demanding- "I will marry you. I will come with you to America tomorrow with Mr. Bush to get married!" Others, yet, were more round-about. For instance, "I want to tell you the story of how we got married. Will you sit with me and listen to my story," and, "take me back in your suitcase so we can get married" I think I should start keeping a journal of all of the funny one-liners that people use on us.

I'm definitely having a lesson in frugality here. The other day we went to the beach on our day off. I thought I was going to buy 3 mangoes for 1000 Tsh to share with everyone (note $1=1200 Tsh), but the man I bought them from gave me two extras... so 5 mangoes for less than a dollar. It's insane! But it's also really unbelievable to see some of the poverty... Even though the mangoes were literally dimes, many families can't afford them. I think it's giving us all a really new perspective on the distribution of wealth in this world.

Well, class in 5 minutes, gotta go. Happy Birthday, Laurie-- I hope it was a good one!

I also wanted to tell everyone that I goofed up with my phone number. I think you call this number: 011 255 0777641798. Maybe that will work for those of you who said the other one didn't. :) What an adventure. Later!

Sikukukumbuka. I'll give you ten Shillings if you can figure out what that means...

2008-02-15T02:29:00.000-08:00

Hello again! Thanks for all the emails- it is so fantastic to hear from everyone.

Zanzibar just keeps getting better... We are all staying with our host families now (for 2 weeks) and it has been really awesome to get to know families who have lived in stone town for literally generations. My family is really ridiculous- there are 6 children, ages 15, 8, 5, 4, 2, 7 months, and two parents, so it ends up being absolute chaos in the house. My new Swahili name is Aysha-- and the youngest son runs around screaming at the top of his lungs, Eshe, Eshe, Eshe. My host mother says that he's in love with me and my sister says she thinks we should get married. I'm considering, but I'll have to consult with my parents first... to work out the dowry and everything.

Both of my host parents speak English, but we don't really speak much at home. I spend a lot of time listening and making funny faces at the little kids. They have been really good to me.

We're in the thick of school now, but it didn't take me long to realize that the experiential learning part of this program means minimal homework. We have class for 6-8 hours a day (4 hours of Swahili, 2 hours of Coastal Ecology seminars, and sometimes another 2 hour lecture- we had one on Zanzibari history and one on Islamic culture this week). I really love our Swahili classes- we have two teachers, Almasi and Bi. Asia. Bi Asia is, without a doubt, among the most jovial people I have ever met. She is basically a mother to all of us and I will be so sad when Swahili ends in a week. But she's coming on our adventure to another island in a few weeks, so that's when we'll really show her a good time.

We usually have a few hours in the middle of each day to wander the world and see the sights. Two days ago, some of us hopped on a DalaDala (minibus) for about 25 cents and went to the beach outside of Stone Town. It was SO amazing. It was low tide so we walked out probably 1/4 mile through bubble crab sand balls, then through thick mud, past the mangroves out to a little rock peninsula... And the only other people that were there were some kids having a rock fight (note: bring more toys for kids). As we walked further out into the water we all saw these bright red things in the water, so we picked one up-- it was the most beautiful, bright red, orancge, and tan, opaque starfish I have ever seen. It looked like a creature straight out of the stone age. After enough of us had cut our feet on things we couldn't see we all sat around watching the microscopic crabs scurry all over the rocks. And sunbathed... all before we went back to class.

My first introduction into the Muslim world has been really interesting. I feel like there is so much that I have always tried to understand about the religion and culture that only took me a few days to understand while living here. The calls to worship (prayer is 5 times a day) are so beautiful- the first is around 5:15 AM, but I'm usually stirring about around that time anyway. (I definitely haven't mastered sleeping in a new place yet). Yesterday we had a lecture where we talked about gender roles, polygamy, the pillars of the reilgion, etc. I'm trying really hard not to judge gender roles in this society, but there is so much that is still so foreign to me... For example, we learned that a man can divorce his wife simply by uttering 'I divorce you' in front of two people, whereas a woman can only divorce a man if she presents her case to a high court. A man may also decide within 3 months that he wants to remarry the wife he recently divorced and she must accept (he can do this up to three times before it is no longer valid). I am really interested to learn more about the religion.

Well, I have to go back to class soon... but I WILL put up pictures soon. It's just an issue of bringing cameras and cables to internet cafes... but they will come soon. I love you all! I miss you all (but not enough to come home yet)!

Neno hili lina maana gani? (What does that word mean?)

2008-02-10T04:13:00.000-08:00

After much toil, the blog is finally back up and running. Sorry to all of you who sent emails saying it wasn't working. Let me know if there are still problems.

SO MUCH has happened in the past week and a half it is really difficult to start telling you all about it... but I'll try my best! I left Minneapolis for New York on January 31 and didn't get to Zanzibar until 11 PM February 2-- I flew from Minneapolis to JFK in New York, New YOrk to Dubai, Dubai to Nairobi, Nairobi to Kiliminjaro, Kiliminjaro to Zanzibar. It was an epic several days, but the planes that travel half way across the world are very posh. It was almost impossible to be bored (Kate- I watched the Bee Movie and HSM2 for you). THe man sitting next to me watched friends all the way across the Atlantic and Europe. It was really amusing. And I sat next to some interesting characters, too... For example, I sat next to a Chinese Kenyan man who had been living in Singapore for several years. He had a lot of questions regarding "sporks"-- apparently he was under the impression that Americans were obsessed with the spoon-fork hybrid. The trip was really good- long and exhausting, but good- and it was great to meet everyone who would be on the trip during our many, many hours of boredom in airports. :)

Zanzibar is awesome! The streets are only a few feet wide and you can't see more than 50 or so yards in front of you. It's SO easy to get lost.. It's really beautiful and the people are incredibly friendly. I was very surprised how many people speak English here- and it's not just because of American tourists. It's common to see Zanzibari peope speaking English with people from all over the world, including some other Zanzibaris. Naturally, there are english words everywhere. For example, people will say "Mambo" to you, to which you can respond, "Fresh". It would be really easy to speak English the entire time I was here, but I hope to be able to use evweryone's English to help me learn Kiswahili!

We have already gone on some amazing adventures. One of the first days we were here we geared up in our snorkels, flippers, masks and SCUBA booties and took two boats out into the Indian Ocean. We snorkeled near a shipwreck and saw amazing things-- like pufferfish. I swam with a student from the Marine Institute who taught me the names of many of the fish. After we got back in the boat they brought us to a deserted sand island, built a shelter and we ate lunch along the beach. The next day we got onto a Dala Dala (Minibus) and drove to the rural village of Kizimkazi. Along the way we stopped at a butterfly project site where they raise butterflies for educational purposes. We also stopped at Zala Park, where a boy Ramadan, who couldn't have been much more than 20 showed us many native Zanzibari species. It was really amusing-- there were cement walls to the "cages" (some as short as one or two feet) with all kinds of crazy animals that he had caught himself. He tracked down chameleons, these giant crabs, LOTS of poisonous and dangerous snakes (including Mambos and Pythons), giant lizard-things (I forgot the name), mini antelopes, monkeys, etc. He took us around to see and hold all of the animals (it was really funny to watch our academic director freak out when we held the pythons and other dangerous animals...). It was a really great way to keep the animals for educational purposes- and ot protect them. Mot of them could have easily left, but Ramadan took such good care of them that they apparently had no reason to leave. It was in the middle of the jungle- with monkeys jumping over our heads. I still chuckle when I visualize this very small man tracking down and capturing these enormous, incredibly dangerous snakes. Heh.

Kizimkazi was a really neat place as well. We went there to study Swahili intensively and to learn about marine mammals. Swahili is going okay... it's still really difficult to understand anything, but I think I am getting the hang of it. We are all really good at being polite to people. I guess for only studying for a week we are all doimg okay. On occasion we really screw up, though. For example, today in class someone confused "Kumi" (the humber 10) with "Kuma", which I will let you look up at your own disgression. :) In Kizimkazi we walked through the village in small groups assigned to things we were to find out about the village. Unfortunately, our group asked someone which way to town, and while they appeared to understand us, they pointed us toward the next town over. So after an hour or so of walking, we arrived at the next town- the OTHER Kizimkazi. It was funny, though, because when we were there we ran into the students from the marine institute that we had been snorkeling with on the beach (ufukwe) a few days earlier. They were dissecting a dolphin that had died and washed up on shore... there were dozens of men gathered around weighing pieces of the animal and jut watching. It was really cool.

We were staying right next to the beach- and taking classes ina gazebo on the oceanside. During our breaks we'd go hunting for shells or swimming in the water. Talk about amazing. It made Oberlin look pretty bad... At night we walked out into the water (low tide was at night) and found Octopi and sea cucumbers, crabs, eels, fish, jellyfish, sea horses, and tons of stuff that no one had ANY idea what it might have been. And bioluminescence will never, ever, stop being cool to me. Amazing.

The next morning we went out on a boat with people from the marine institute at 6:30 AM to see the dolphins before many tourists arrived (there was a little bit of tourism there...). We found a pod of around 60 dolphins and they let us jump in the water and swim with them (with snorkels, etc). It was amazing. You could see them playing, feeding, jumping, and could hear them... we swam with them for probably a half an hour to an hour before we came back in. The only down side of swimming in the Indian Ocean is the jellyfish- they REALLY hurt when they sting you- and they're everywhere. One girl had an allergic reaction to a sting. She had hives, couldn't stop shaking, was curled up feeling freezing cold, and she said her muscles were so tight that they were incredibly painful and she could hardly speak. It was really crazy- but there is a girl here who spent last semster living on a boat and she said it used to happen to people all of the time. We'll see... The girl is better now, but it was pretty scary.

Right now in Zanzibar (Stone TOwn) there is a big music festival called "Busara". There are TONS of people there, mostly Mzungu (european), and music from all over Africa- a big emphasis on West Africa. I can't wait to show people little video clips of the musicians singing and dancing. It's absolutely beautiful. We will go tonight for the third night in a row... Last night I met some people from Minnesota! They are living and teaching at an international school in Dar Es Saalam. One of them had spent the past several years in THailand, another had spent the last three years in Bangladesh... They said that when they go to the internaitonal school job fairs there are usually 900 jobs and only 300 people, so they can choose to go to pretty much any country that they would like. It made me really want to teach at one of those schools (DOnna-- you definitely shoul consider).

Tonight I am staying with my host family for the first time. There is a baba na mama (father and mother) and 4 dada (sisters) and 2 kaka (brothers). They are wonderful- I will tell you more about them soon. So far my Swahili is so bad that I can't really say/understand anything. Both parents speak English well, though, so hopefully I will learn Swahili fast enough to get to know the kids before the two weeks are up! :)

I hope to put pictures and videos up soon! I haven't quite figured that out yet... but I really want to make sure you all get to see them because everything looks, smells, tastes, and sounds really different here! It's absolutely wonderful. I love and miss you all- I will keep you updated on everything here! Kwa herini (good bye)! Baadaye (later)!

PS I got a cell phone-- feel free to call it. You dial 024 0777641798 (I think). I am probably 8-9 hours later than you (depending on where you are).

Five days...

2008-01-26T10:52:00.000-08:00

...until my first African adventure! As you can see to the right, I'm brushing up on the most important Kiswahili phrases and getting all of the most important vaccinations. Other than the Great White sharks that run (swim) rampant along the eastern coast of Africa, I think I'm pretty much immune to any harm that I could possibly encounter in Tanzania. Thanks so much for all of the love and excitement that people have been sending me. I'll use this blog to tell you about every African happening, be it exhilirating or exhausting. I better go practice my Swahili!