Auburn to Zanzibar

Back in Musoma

2009-11-01T21:34:00.000+03:00

Back in Musoma, little enough has changed since I left for Kilimanjaro, but I have a new appreciation of it. I feel comfortable in Musoma and it is a relaxing place to be. Now that I can actually communicate a bit in Swahili, everything around town has just gotten a bit more enjoyable.

In school, we continue our same lessons in the morning but now we also have a conversation after lunch with one of the teachers. For the first two weeks of “mazungumzo” (conversation) I talk with Stephano, a young teacher who tries to make up for his shortness by wearing very tall shoes. I feel good about my speaking and understanding abilities and we do virtually the whole conversation in Swahili, except when I occasionally ask how to say a word in Swahili. I’m sure that the speed that I speak, and that Stephano needs to speak so he is sure I can understand him, is painfully slow for him, but he’s patient and doesn’t let it show and I’m glad to be able to speak as well as I can after less than two months of classes.

At that point, the time goes very quickly. We’ve gotten into a routine, school during the week and relaxing and cooking during the weekends. The bread here is terrible. This dry white bread that is painful to eat. So we take advantage of the bread pans I found in Dar to bake some whole wheat bread to bring to school for lunch. My mom bakes a chocolate cake and I decorate it for Mak’s birthday. And life here is becoming more and more comfortable as we make up for the things that just don’t exist in the peoples’ lives here. They’ll never know what they were missing, but we do.

And suddenly we’re leaving next week.

Quick Trip to Pangani and Back to Dar

2009-10-27T22:37:00.001+03:00

After Kilimanjaro, we have one night in the hotel in Moshi before we are on the move again, leaving Karyn to fly back from there to Ireland then back home, we head toward the coast. Leaving in the morning on a bus, its two seats per row on one side and three on the other packed with people. The bus ride to Tanga shows us a landscape that goes from the mountain induced green of the Kilimanjaro region to a parched desert, letting up an becoming more tropical as we approach the coast. Tanga is just a bus station, people crowd around us to “help” the wazungu. On a bus to Pangani, along a dirt road, the sea just out of sight to our left as the sun approaches the horizon on the right.

When we arrive in Pangani, I meet Doctor Vera, Robi’s girlfriend of many years, when she picks us up at the bus station and shows us quickly around the town before driving us back to her house. Her house is amazing, and we have a small house right next to the main house to ourselves. The plot is in her name, from before the government stopped allowing foreigners to lease land. She designed and had the house built herself and it is wonderful, with much of the common area always open to a breeze through glass-less windows. Can’t do that where I come from. And the house overlooks the ocean, on the edge of a small bay, on the cliff above the coconut husk-covered beach. Really, though, we spent the two days we had there relaxing on the porch, which was good, especially after Kili. Vera is extremely nice and we enjoy ourselves greatly. We even make up a recipe and make pumpkin pie, which turned out better then I expected (I admit I've never really been much of a fan).

Soon, though, we had to head back to Dar, to get back to Musoma on the Friday flight. Another set of bus rides ensues, the first leg of which is in a daladala, the small Toyota Hiaces that go everywhere and are always packed full of people because the big bus isn’t going today. At least that part was short, because it certainly was not comfortable the way they pack people into those things. The bus to Dar was much better, but long and by the time we arrive in Dar at 6:00, we have done a circle by bus that totals more than 50 hours. Starting with the trip from Dar to Musoma when we arrived, to Moshi for Kilimanjaro, to Tanga/Pangani and finally back to Dar. By the way, I don’t recommend it. I am relieved to be flying back to Musoma tomorrow, getting a round trip ticket to also fly back when the trip is over on November.

So now we have less than 24 hours in Dar, so we find a hotel for the night – the Econolodge: cheap but clean. The next morning, we have a few hours to do what we need to get done and to make the most of it, I go looking for a bread pan and brownie pan while my mom goes to deal with immigration and the airplane tickets, which have been reserved but not paid for. I wander the city for a couple of hours looking for the pans, coming to know the city a little bit better. Finally, I give up on the pans and go to the grocery store where I was planning to get olive oil and there they are: the perfect pans. My mom and I meet back at the hotel just in time to check out by the 11 o’clock check out time. And we head to the airport, asking the taxi driver to stop at a grocery store on the way for olive oil.

The airplane ride is short and it’s good to be home – back in Musoma.

Kili: Descent

2009-10-25T17:17:00.000+03:00

The way down was short and in a few short hours of hiking down, we leave the clouds and snow above us and plants welcome us back from that barren land. By the end of the day, after an easy four-hour hike, we were at camp, back in the land of trees without trees just 100m above the camp on that first night, which seems so long ago now. Everyone is pleased to be out of the cold. By this point everyone was ready to be home, or at least back at the hotel where we can shower.

Walking down, although much quicker than the way up, was far more painful. The downhill hiking was not good on the knees, even with the hiking poles that were supposed to be helping. But we were almost down and we pushed through the last day’s 3-hour hike back into the rainforest that surrounds the foot of the mountain and finally back to the parking lot where the bus back to Moshi is waiting for us. The climb was undoubtedly a great experience, but we are all glad to be back to civilization, with a bed, shower and some more variety in the food.

Kili: The Final Ascent

2009-10-20T18:26:00.000+03:00

It’s 11 o’clock all to quickly and we wake up and get on a few layers of our warmest clothes for the climb to the peak. We are served our tea, coffee hot chocolate and some glucose biscuits and we are off. We have eight people: the four wazungu, our two guides, our assistant guide and James, who turns out to be a cook training to be an assistant guide. Right away, they take backpacks: Fredi takes my mom’s, Innocent takes Karyn’s and Francis takes Patrik’s. Since I have mine on, they don’t take mine. I can carry my own backpack – or I want to try to at least. Besides, that means that I have my water on me at all times.

I realize as we are leaving the camp that I forgot the camera (I have my little camera and an extra battery for both in my pants to keep them warm and functioning, though) and I run back to get it. I am breathing hard when I get back to the group. Running is not recommended at this altitude. And it’s hot so I take off my outer jacket (down and soo warm. Thanks, Dad) and unzip the two underneath that. And we begin walking up the mountain following the trail of lights that can be seen making their way up the mountain. It becomes quickly apparent that my mom can’t keep up. She is suffering the symptoms of altitude sickness, especially the nausea, and she slows down, and Fredi stays with her.

At first, it is easy. We walk at a steady pace, sometimes over a gravel-covered slope, sometimes clambering up a rocky incline and at times walking along a clear ridge. We run into other groups some – are going slower than us while a couple pass us on their way up the mountain. The dry rocky ground slowly starts acquiring a layer of snow or ice and the patches of snow become larger and more frequent. The nearly-full moon lights our path and Karyn and Patrik follow my example and turn off their headlights, which are made unnecessary by the bright moonlight. Stars are clearly visible as they twinkle in the sky, the moon illuminates a few clouds above us but the clouds that had devoured the camp earlier are gone. It is cold, but I am prepared for that and I actually take my outer gloves off for at intervals to cool down. As they had warned us, Karyn and Patrik’s water pipes from the camel pack froze quickly and I keep mine working only by holding it up and allowing the water to drain back into the bag after every drink.

My initial alertness starts to fade as the night wears on and I keep track of the passage of time by the movement of the moon overhead and the progress of one particularly bright star that was on the eastern horizon and twinkled with an astonishing variety of colors when we started but as it moved up in the sky, it lost its bright colors. At some point, Fredi catches back up with us after taking my mom back to the tent – her altitude sickness was just too much. We trudge on up the mountain. Patrik’s smoker’s lungs betray him and he falls slightly behind Karyn and me. We continue on up the mountain. A cold wind picks up and I put on my balaclava to keep my face warm.

It starts getting darker as the moon goes behind the mountain and Karyn lights her headlamp. I am little more than sleep walking at this point. I have gotten into a rhythm with my poles and I keep right behind Fredi, opening my eyes only to make sure that I am still following and am not in danger of falling into any abysses. I notice that the shadow of the mountain cast by the moon on the clouds far below is lengthening toward the horizon and know that morning will come soon. And finally we are at the top.

A strong wind greets us as we crest Gillman’s peak and, afraid the jacket that has been hanging from my backpack strap will blow away as well as to keep warm, I put on the big down jacket. We aren’t quite there: Uhuru peak is up a path to our left. The horizon brightens as we start up the path and I fumble with my gloves and cameras to get a few pictures. By the time we reach the highest point in Africa, the sun is well and truly up and we get a clear view of the crater and our surroundings for a moment before the clouds begin to roll in around us. We get our pictures with the sign proclaiming that we have reached Uhuru peak (5895 meters), we soak in the glory of the moment for a minute and we start heading back down.

Karyn and I are exhausted and we slowly slide through the loose gravel every step as we walk back down the distance that we just spent six hours climbing. We rest plenty and it takes us more than the estimated 2-2.5 hours to get back to base camp. Karyn says that she is more tired than she has ever been – as tired as she is after running a marathon. The clouds have again swallowed the camp by the time we reach the tent and it is hailing/snowing. My mom is awake and congratulates us but we quickly crawl into our sleeping bags and are soon sleeping.

Kili: Day Five

2009-10-20T07:59:00.000+03:00

When I wake up at 5 to go visit the outhouse, the moon, a couple of days until full, has gone down and the stars are magnificent. When I return to the tent, I grab the camera to get a picture of the mountain silhouetted against the star-studded sky. It’s cold and it takes a few tries to get the focus and exposure right in the darkness and my fingers are frozen when I go back into the tent to get warm in my sleeping bag.

But I can’t go back to sleep and after tossing and turning for a couple of hours, the sun had come up and people had begun to stir, making noises in the cooking tent next door. I have begun to feel extremely nauseous and I get up, hoping it will make me feel better but find myself instead on the verge of throwing up. The rest of the morning is not pleasant and although I have nothing in my stomach I proceed to empty it out another couple of times. I am certainly not going to let this sickness stop me from climbing the mountain, though, so I assure the guide that although I’ve just thrown up, I’m feeling ok and I manage to eat some of the porridge that we have for breakfast every morning and Fredi convinces me to try to eat some of the singed bread, the smell of which certainly does not help my stomach but I eat a piece to make him happy and then we pack up and get ready for the day’s hike.

The strange thing is that as soon as we begin hiking, I fell better and again stray off the path slightly onto the volcanic scree to take photos. We hike through the mist much of the time, but it’s a short day. After only three hours of climbing, only the last part of which was very steep, we reach the base camp, Barafu at 4600m. We eat lunch (cucumber soup as usual), my mom puts on every piece of clothing she brought against the cold and we sleep in preparation for tonight’s nighttime ascent.

We wake up for dinner when they bring the bowls of hot hand-washing water (as usual when it’s cold, and it certainly is, Karyn wants to be tiny so she can get in) but my mom doesn’t leave her sleeping bag. The whole camp has been engulfed by the clouds and a light hail or snow has begun falling. Food is different tonight, though: a potato stew is all we have for dinner. I have a few bowls (and one more at Fredi’s insistence) but my mom, in her sleeping bag, has only one small bowl. And we go back to sleep again to get every possible minute of sleep before we must wake up to begin the last climb.

Kili: Day Four

2009-10-14T23:12:00.001+03:00

After tea in bed and a leisurely breakfast for a later 9:00 start today, the day starts out with an intimidating slope. Coming down yesterday into the valley where last night’s camp, Barranco camp is located, we had seen the steep path climbing out on the opposite side. This morning, it’s covered with people, the porters and wazungu wending their way up the steep grade. This section is the closest we come to rock climbing as we pull ourselves up the rock shelves that make up the bottom of the path. Our guides give my mom and Karyn a hand on the trickier ones. As we continue, the rock scrambling gives way to a steep path full of switchbacks. At some point during this climb, our assistant guide innocent takes my mom’s backpack for her.

After one final steep rock scramble, we’re at the top of this particular climb, enveloped in clouds and not able to see anything beyond the mountaintop sometimes, although the wind would wear the clouds thin enough to see where we were headed for a few moments. For now, we go down. A short descent before another ascent. We can see the camp where we’ll stay this night, but we still have a very steep descent and another ascent before we reach it. Ironically, after all the ups and downs today, as well as the steepest terrain yet, we have hardly changed elevation at all and Karanga, where we will spend the night, is at virtually the same altitude as last night’s camp although it is far more exposed than the other one, which accounts for the coldness and lack of vegetation here as compared to our last camp.

The short, 4-hour hike for today means that we’ve made it in time for lunch. Had we decided to do a 6-day hike of the mountain we would be moving on this afternoon to climb to the next camp. We have the whole afternoon free and we take a nap. After that nice nap, we walk over to a cairn, visible from our tent, that looks impossibly tall. It is as tall as I am and yet it somehow stays standing. Karyn decides that we ought to build our own, and we do. Then clouds roll in and we are blind in the fog on the short walk back to the tents.

Kili: Day Three

2009-10-12T23:53:00.002+03:00

Day three is the first really long climb. We start the day early with tea, Karyn and I are reluctant to wake up so early but we do. The ground is again covered in frost and the hand washing water from last night is frozen over with a film of ice. It is a cold morning but as we begin the day’s hike, we all begin to warm up and shed the outer layers.

We climb up and away from any vegetation and soon the ground is a barren hill studded with volcanic rocks, people wending their way among the boulders like a line of ants extending into the distance. Clouds threaten to engulf us as the wind picks up and Karyn puts some gloves on her ears; we all put our extra layer back on. The wind drops and the clouds lessen and I am about to take off my sweatshirt again when we reach a flat section where a couple of tents are pitched. One of them is our cooking tent and part of our team has stopped to set up the cooking tent and table to serve us lunch – cheese and tomato sandwiches (cheese!! Not too common here) a hard boiled egg, juice box, the cucumber soup that everyone else was starting to get sick of and some glucose biscuits.

When we start again, Francis, officially Patrik’s guide leads us up the rock-covered slope. Soon, far ahead up the hill, a tall rock formation comes into view. I stare at it for a few minutes before it dawns on me that this might be the Lava Tower to which they told us we would be hiking today, 4600m. We continue up the barren slope, which isn’t extremely steep, and we eventually come to the place at the base of the “lava tower” that is to be our highest point for theday. After a short rest, I get out my poles to ease the impact on my knees as we begin heading back down. After a steep descent, a short ascent and a much longer descent we begin seeing some signs of life. Green vegetation, especially the sinecio (trees that remind me of llamas)becomes more common as we go back down to our camp at 3900m, just one hundred more than last night. I run off the path a couple of times to try to get a good photo and I fall a bit behind, but it’s downhill and I catch up again. And tea and mahindi pop is waiting for us on the table in our tent.

The campsite is more protected that the one the previous night. It’s in a valley between two ridges of the mountain, the main Kibo peak rising behind and above us. On the opposite side, the mountain descends into the clouds and haze and somehow it gives me the distinct impression that the sea is right there, that just beyond where the mountain drops out of view, the cliffs plunge down into the sea. The moon rises above the mountain and tomorrow’s hike looms above us as the sun sets.

Kili: Day 2

2009-10-11T01:51:00.002+03:00

There is frost on the ground this morning. We put on some warm clothes and have our tea and breakfast. Pack everything back up and head off. Through the land of trees without trees, up and up. My mom has her poles out, having borrowed mine later on in the previous day’s hike when she was getting tired and hers were packed. Mine are still hanging by my side. As we had expected, we rapidly warmed up as we began the climb and I keep my sweatshirt hanging from my camera-belt. As I had the previous day, I continued taking out the Canon Rebel from its case on my hip to take pictures. Since I was the only one taking pictures as we walked, I was the photographer. When we stop I am not the only photographer so I am here, you see?

The plants continued thinning throughout the day and on the particularly steep sections there were traffic jams with all the porters and wazungu on the trail. The plants gradually disappear as we ascend the mountain and although there are still many bushes and a few scattered, moss adorned trees, it looks extremely barren and not particularly welcoming. I’m sure the hanging moss adds to that affect as well as the bushes, the ones with white flowers and grey leaves and look like they were taken from a black and white photograph.

While we walk, the fog threatens to envelope us a number of times, but it doesn’t stay for long and sun comes back out. While we walk, it is pleasant and cool, but not cold. I walk in a T-shirt but it doesn’t seem so warm when we stop to rest, so I put on my sweatshirt.

After four hours walking, we reach the camp. Our tent is already set up for us and we are soon served lunch. We rest and read in the tent for a while, though Karyn and I move outside when the sun makes it unbearably warm inside the tent for us, my mom is apparently comfortable somehow. At 3 we’re served tea and we go for a short walk before dinner. I don’t know what the point of the walk was, exactly. We walked over to the Shira hut, a weather station with a radio tower and a gigantic fancy outhouse (I will still call it an outhouse though, for some reason). My mom and I talk to our assistant guide, Innocent, whom we hadn’t even met before, in a mix of Swahili and English, a good way to practice my Swahili.

It’s a bit colder tonight at 3800m and the campsite is somewhat exposed and windy. After dinner, we pretty much just go to sleep. What is there to do up there after the sun goes down, anyhow?

Kili: Day One

2009-10-10T15:51:00.004+03:00

Our guide is half an hour early and we are still eating breakfast when he gets to the hotel at 8:30. We finish up and go out front of the hotel, leave the backpack full of unnecessary stuff for Kili (computer, some spare clothes etc.) at the hotel. At the bus, we meet Patrik, our companion hiking for the next week. He’s Swiss, middle-aged, wearing shorts (adults don’t wear shorts here so it’s just something I noticed). And inside the bus are already some of our porters, whom we really never would know individually.

Bus on over to the office, my mom counts out stacks of Tanzanian money (the biggest bill is the 10,000/= or ~$8 so it looks like a lot) to pay for the climb… for one of us anyhow. The other two (including Karyn – she had already paid my mom in dollars we needed for rent) were to be paid by mom’s credit card, which didn’t work. We’d find out later that small amounts would work but this was to much for Tanzania and we would have to call and it became quite an obstacle because Citibank is just fun like that. But they let us go anyhow and we’d pay after climbing.

Through the back of the building, into a courtyard and into a little supermarket (small but still would have been amazing to have in Musoma) to buy some water and chocolate at our guide’s suggestion. Then we were off. The bus is more full now, all the seats packed with porters although we wazungu still have a seat each to ourselves.

We drive toward the mountain, indistinct in the haze – the volcano sloping gently into the haze as it approaches the ground. Up the hill, the bus struggling somewhat on the steeper inclines and we reach the Machame gate. People mill around, waiting their turn to start the climb. I haven’t seen so many wazungu since I got to Tanzania, but there are still a lot more porters than tourists. We sign the book with whatever information they needed and wai for whatever other paperwork needed to be done, the porters’ loads weighed to make sure they aren’t carrying more than 20 kg and to keep track of trash. And we are off.

It started out as a road, other climbers, wazungu and porters, around us as we begin the ascent. The greenness of the rainforest at the foot of the mountain is astonishing, quite a change after the rest of the country, thirsty for rain, and its typical wide savannas. We continue in that forest for much of the day, although the road changes to a path with stairs cut into the dirt, carefully lined with small logs. The vegetation also changes subtly and when we stopped for lunch under a tree on the side of the path to eat a simple bagged lunch, the trees were covered in moss and the undergrowth had thickened noticeably.

The plants continued changing as we climbed, sometimes among other wazungu and porters, sometimes on our own. The scenery has just decisively changed with much more sparse vegetation around us when we come upon the first camp. The trees were shorter and leafless, draped with a light green moss that reminds me of that fake spider web stuff sold around Halloween. But there were still many other green bushes, tall and dense. I recognized the trees draped in moss as something I had seen in the photos from Markus’, our Swiss neighbor in Musoma, climb and I had, accidentally the first time, begun calling this vegetation “the land of trees without trees.”

After checking in and signing another book, we are lead to our campsite. Our tent is green and quite large, part of it for sleeping with two separate compartments, one for my mom and Karyn, the other for me. The rest of the tent is to be our dining room for the next week and is all but filled with the table and four chairs (after we invite Patrik to join us… they had brought him his own dining tent and table). As we drink our tea and eat our dinner (pasta with veggie sauce and potatoes) it begins to get cold, even inside of the dining tent. First coldness since getting to Africa now that we’re at 3000m, we put on another layer, finish dinner and get into our sleeping bags to sleep.

Kili: Before the Climb

2009-10-09T23:31:00.002+03:00

Karyn arrived one week before we were to leave to climb Kilimanjaro. The plan was for her to get her business done in Musoma before we left. She finished her solar cooker workshop on Friday afternoon and we started packing our stuff for the climb. The power went out so we did that the next morning instead, before our bus at one. I just threw all the warm clothes and hiking boots that I had brought for the climb into the black, waterproof duffel bag (my mom bought two just for Kili).

So we go to the bus station/market in the center of Musoma in time to wait for the bus. Karyn took pictures and looked for some nice fabric to buy and we waited. The bus came, a large red bus with spider webs over the sides and we loaded up the bags and got on relatively painlessly (although one man that helped us with our bags demanded to get paid for it, threatening (I think) to take them out and leave them on the ground otherwise… I told him we hadn’t asked for help and I would have argued for longer if I could speak better Swahili and it wasn’t only 3000/=, less than three USD)

At any rate, we were on our way on another long bus ride, through Kenya and back into Tanzania to Moshi. This bus was somewhat more comfortable, with two seats on either side of the aisle rather than the 2+3 configuration of the other. We also had some more legroom and my knees weren’t constantly hitting the seat in front of me. And the window next to me opens. We drive North through Tanzania and the land gets greener. The 20 hour bus ride was broken up by a stop for customs at the Kenyan border, filling out a piece of paper for each country, one for leaving one for entering and buying a transit visa. Food stop in Nairobi, arriving at midnight, not able to see much of the city in the darkness. Back into Tanzania, this one is a much more high-tech border control point, complete with passport scanners and webcams. It is getting cold on the bus – the windows don’t really close – the luggage compartment is open and someone is doing something in there so my mom sneaks in there, armed with her solar flashlight keychain, to get a jacket out of my bag under the bus. The opposite of last bus ride’s sweltering heat even through the night, this time we each put on a jacket.

My time in Kenya was quite short – the sun was up only for the first couple of hours after we entered Kenya at around four. From what I saw, it is very similar to Tanzania, at least in the Rural areas. It is very green this time of year, like the northern-most part of TZ but unlike most of Tanzania that has been suffering a drought. Maybe it is only this part of Kenya as well. Since it was dark by the time I got to any big city, from what I saw out the window, I could have still been in Tanzania. Corrugated metal or grass roofs, little wooden stands selling fruits and vegetables. Shops are painted with the colors and logos of cellphone carriers or other random companies. I still don’t know exactly how the companies get the shop owners to agree to that.

We got to Moshi, a large, touristy town at the base of Kilimanjaro at 10 on Saturday morning, ending the second and hopefully last 20-hour bus ride of my life. We check into the hotel. It’s a nice place provided by the Kili climb company and there are wazungu all over the place. And we can see Kilimanjaro. The guide for the climb comes and he tells us the whole schedule for the climb, which would take the next week. We get one last night in a proper bed before heading out the next morning.

Claudia's Visit

2009-09-24T19:53:00.001+03:00

Saturday I was at a boxing class – consisting of all sorts of exercises. Not being accustomed to doing much other than biking, I was very sore for a couple of days after. This isn’t exactly the kind of class that you would go to in the United States. In one of the rooms at the recreation center, a small concrete room which was permeated with the smell of sweat, a group of men do exercises with what equipment they have. One punching bag hangs in the center of the room and tires serve very well to help do sit-ups and a length of fabric wrapped around the knuckles are the gloves.

I wouldn’t have gone to this class except that Claudia was staying with us for the weekend. After she finished language school the week before, she went to work in Buhemba, a village that is about an hour from Musoma by public transportation: daladala (little busses – Toyota Hiaces that are loaded up with people) or pikipiki (motorcycle). While she was in Musoma, she went to these classes more often, now she is only here for the weekend. She had responded to my text inviting her to dinner with a request to borrow a bed. I think she was planning to just stay the one night, but she ended up staying all weekend.

Claudia loves talking with anyone and everyone that she sees. She only had a five-week course at the school, which wasn’t enough for her to perfect her Swahili. She’s from Switzerland and her accent is clear whenever she speaks Swahili in her “R,” too, but she doesn’t let that stop her. Biking out to the Peninsula, the same one I visited last year with Pineapple Fishstick and Daniel, with her was great – and a great opportunity to speak Swahili. We climbed on the rocks on the edge of Lake Victoria and found out that the fishermen use chicken as fish bait. We have a drink on the peninsula while it rains a bit, along with Jonathan, another mzungu who just got back from a trip home to England and would stay at our house for the night before returning to his school in the village (welcome to our hotel. Good thing we have three extra beds). This weekend reminded me of what I ought to be doing. Claudia seems to be constantly talking to random people and I wish I had someone to go do these random things with normally. No, my mom doesn’t count.

Mwanza

2009-09-17T22:41:00.000+03:00

I realize I’m almost a week slow on these blog posts, but I don’t imagine it should make too much of a difference so I won’t be getting any more prompt, probably.

Saturday morning, we intended to get an early start for the trek down to Mwanza and, although not the 6am departure my mother had initially been aiming for, it was still pretty early when we were leaving Musoma in Robi’s blue Land Cruiser. It’s a three-hour drive and the road, while pretty good by Tanzanian road standards, has sections in which there are many holes, not to mention the bikers carrying all manner of things that must be avoided. Luckily there are not that many other vehicles on the road but I am sure the driving experience is still a bit stressful so I don’t envy my mother for having to drive the whole thing since I don’t have my Tanzanian driver’s license.

Well we arrived in Mwanza and luckily the store we were looking for to buy the oven was right off the main street because otherwise we would have had to stop and ask directions. We park, pay the woman with the bright vest 500 shillings and go into the store. Pretty uneventful there: buy the stove, pay for it, talk to the shop owner about selling the solar lights and solar phone chargers – he’s interested in the chargers but already has the lights. We talk with him a bit and he tells us to pull up in front of the store – putting the oven in the car wouldn’t take long enough for them to chain the car something that, he warns us, happens if you’re parked illegally even if you don’t know it. So I wait while my mom tries to go around the block to pull up in front of the store but actually ends up going around half the city and pulling up in front of the store. We load up the oven in the back, and then, though we aren’t actually parked, my mom runs back to the other store right here, Zara Solar to see if they’re interested in the solar chargers. In the meantime, the truck that had been unloading in front of us finishes and drives off, leaving us obviously not legally parked whereas before it was not nearly so obvious.

Although my mom had only been away from the car for one minute, a man comes up and begins chaining a boot on the car. At first I don’t recognize him as a parking cop in his dark blue jumpsuit when he approaches the car, but then I see what he’s doing. I tell him we aren’t actually parked here and when he asks for the driver, I run to get my mom, 20 feet away, who quickly picks up the charger and runs back to the car. She hops in and starts the engine but it is too late – the boot is on the wheel and, they warn her, will ruin the tire if you try to move. She pleads with them at first nicely, then desperately, then angrily but ends up having to pay the 50,000 shilling (currently ~$39 at 1300/= per USD) parking ticket.

This is especially unfortunate because we were running low on shillings already. At first I am worried that she would let that one parking ticket ruin her day, but after a nice lunch at a nice hotel (for wazungu apparently, because everyone eating there seemed to be) right on Lake Victoria, her mood was much improved and we began looking for fabrics and the other things that my mom had in mind to buy to make life here a bit more like life in the US.

First: store with many kitchen things conveniently across the street from our parking spot. We buy knives and a cutting board. Second: main street looking for fabric stores. Some of them appear to be closed but we find one that is open and look through the fabrics piled on the tables and the shelves spanning the walls from floor to ceiling. I buy one 12m piece with puzzle designs. Back to the car. Grocery store to get some things we can’t get in Musoma – even at Kotra (my mom rightly equates it to a 7-11 in the US, but it is the best supermarket here in Musoma and the only place to buy cheese and butter). Next stop, the bank: we are down to 15,000 shillings between us.

Our wallets thus replenished, we head to the market, which is quite a bit larger and yet more tightly packed that Musoma’s. Last year when we visited Mwanza, we missed the market, seeing only the bus station on the edge of it, but this time we wend our way through the food stands among the throng people buying and selling pretty much everything. Past the area where all the food is sold, the crowds are less dense and we look at a couple of piles of fabric in front of the shops. One man has good taste in fabric (they must choose which of the large pieces to buy and cut them up to 4m to sell them) and we buy four different designs from him – I choose three for the pants and my mom chooses one for herself. We continue down through the market, past the strangest assortment of things – much of it of the cheap Chinese variety of almost everything here. Peeler and cheese grater are checked off the list. We also get some silverware that is much nicer than the cheap Chinese set we have at home that is not holding up to any use at all. It isn’t yet four and we’ve fulfilled all of that for which we had come to Mwanza. We walk back to the car, silverware clinking in the bag, and depart for Musoma.

We arrive back in Musoma shortly after the sun has set, which means that the last few speed bumps were not fun. It had rained a little bit toward the end of the drive back but it isn’t raining now. We decide to take advantage of having the car to go to dinner at Tembo beach, a hotel/campsite/restaurant right on Lake Victoria. We are sitting down at a table outside when I notice by her accent and the silhouette of her profile against the lake that ahead of us is definitely Claudia, one of the other students at the school who had finished her 5-week course the day before. She’s sitting with Father Makarios, or Mak for short, another student at the school and we join them.

They’re both very fun and it is a good dinner, which we eat inside due to the rain that approached, complete with lightning, before dinner. We talk about the African experience in general, Claudia’s work around an hour away and Mak’s in Nairobi, we also discuss classes some, and Mak makes jokes about some of the other students. His favorite target is Melodie, the other Unitedstatesian student – a loud woman from Arkansas. After the after-dinner whiskey that Claudia ordered, we all head back to Mak’s room at the language school because we were giving him a ride anyhow, although it was a tight fit for Claudia in the back with the oven. We hang out there for a while and Father Mak (Be careful, or he’ll send you to room 18, Melodie’s room) pours some more whiskey for everyone, that’s one of those things you can only get at Kotra.

And we head home.

Habari za Siku Nyingi

2009-09-11T23:35:00.001+03:00

Let me translate that for you: it means news from the last several days. Ok, literally it means news of many days, but that just doesn’t work in English. Last blog post, I was talking about school, and not much has changed since then. I’m still in the class with sisters Cinzia and Maria we seem to switch teachers every week, a good thing because some of them are more competent than others and it is good to have a variety of perspectives and accents for the various parts of the lesson (conversation, story, grammar and exercises). Outside of school, I haven’t been doing much. I go into town to buy food at the market, go to the Anglican at lunch and hang out at home at the compound.

Weekends are especially relaxing, reading in the sun or on the porch in the hammock even if the power is out, which it often is on the weekends – apparently Tanesko (sp?), the utility here, doesn’t run the generators because the demand is low. It makes it difficult to cook food if the sun isn’t out, though. We only have a couple of electric burners and a solar cooker right now but we are going to get a gas oven in Mwanza tomorrow, Saturday, so that will fix that problem. With the rainy season practically upon us, that is a relief because the solar cookers, which we had been relying on for food and tea on the weekends, will be considerably less useful if it’s raining. .

Speaking of the rainy season, we had an amazingly intense storm the other night. Evening was approaching and I looked out the window and the world was yellow. It was the strangest thing. Walking across the compound, my eyes adjusted to the strange coloration, but from inside, the contrast of the white walls inside as compared to the white walls outside (which were yellow) it was quite a trippy experience. Soon, though, it became obvious that the yellow sky was just a warning of the storm to come. Lightning lit the sky and thunder pounded the ears and the rain was loud on the roof. I was only worried about the bike ride to school the next day. My mom would not be going to school the next day, for the second day, but I would either be biking in the rain or on a muddy road. As it turned out, I had nothing to worry about: the sky was clear and bright the next day, and the road was astonishingly dry, only a few puddles betraying the storm of the previous night. I already need to be alert for loose patches and potholes in the road every day, so the puddles don’t even affect my morning bike ride. .

Why did my mother not accompany on that bike ride to school? She was staying home to recover from malaria. The illness is so common here that the two teachers who presently have it are still teaching. This being my mother’s first time to have malaria, though it was somewhat of a bigger deal for her. Taking everyone’s advice, she took two days away from school to fully recover in order to not simply go right back to being sick. She ate nothing but fruit during that time. Her symptoms were not too extreme, for malaria. Luckily she caught it early and started taking the medicine after the test told us she had 2 rings, a measure of the severity (the lower the number the better). One student at the school had just recovered from malaria 6, which is quite bad, but the more severe cases can be much higher than that. After her two days of rest, she was back up today, Friday, and our neighbor gave us a ride to school to aid in my mom’s recovery. I’m glad to report that she is feeling much better and is off her fruit diet and back to normal food. Hopefully she is completely recovered because we have an early morning tomorrow going to Mwanza for the day.

Beginning Shule ya Lugha – language school

2009-09-01T17:25:00.005+03:00

Last Monday, upon returning from Nyamaguku, my mom called Father Edward, the director at the language school, to find out if our classmate had arrived and we would start school. She was to arrive the following evening, but he invited us to start on the next morning anyhow, one day before Sister Maria would join us on Wednesday. Luckily, Sister Maria is familiar with Swahili, having been in Tanzania and Kenya for the past few months so we do not need to repeat the grammar lessons that we learned the day before she arrived. That first week, we finished the first lesson – actually doing every single exercise twice because one of our teachers decided to start them all over when we reached the end, something that apparently he wasn’t supposed to do. That paired with the fact that I had already learned everything we were taught made that first week of lessons go a bit slowly, which led to the creation of this doodle.

So if last week was too easy then this week may be just the opposite. Over the weekend I had been warned that I was moved to a higher class. On Monday morning I arrive, hot from the 15 minute bike ride, and find out that I am in the same class as Sister Maria and Sister Cinzia (Italian. Pronounce cheen-tsee-ah.) – a very fun and energetic person who seems to have a good grasp on the language already. We are slowing her down, really. She has already done lesson five and we just went back to lesson four – skipping two lessons for us but I guess there was no other class to put her in.

I feel like I am making good progress, though. Monday morning I was intimidated because I felt like I had a lot of catching up to do. Sister Maria and Sister Cinzia both seemed far better at speaking and understanding the language than I was. And they are, but even just one day later I feel like I am improving. I know that I have a long way to go and I also know that both of my classmates can speak and understand spoken Swahili better than I can right now because they’ve both been here for the past few months or a year, but I am no longer worried about getting left behind. I feel good about my progress and know that it will just take practice speaking and listening to catch up Sister Maria, not in grammar (we are at the same level in grammar) but in fluency. So for now, I continue going to school all morning with catch-up classes in the afternoon to be at sister Cinzia’s level and then we’ll see if it isn’t more efficient to take the afternoons for myself. The time is meant for the language lab, listening to the day’s lesson on tape but I’ll have the tapes or their digital equivalent at home and I may find something more interesting and useful to fill my afternoons – save to tapes for the evening. Although I could certainly fill my life with nothing but learning the strange language, like some students that live at the language school seem to, almost never leaving the place. But I don’t need to be in Tanzania to do that: I could be anywhere. I want to be here. We’ll see what happens.

Back to Nyamaguku

2009-08-30T14:53:00.003+03:00

Monday morning we got in the car just after 8:00 to head to the village. We head out of Musoma, drive east then north. Over the Mara River on a small suspension bridge then we take a left off of the paved roads. We start out far too fast because one bump sends Peter and me, sitting on the padded benches attached to the sides in back of the Land Cruiser, to the ceiling, hitting our heads. From that point we slow down to a more reasonable speed for the dirt road.
We turn off the road onto a bike path and over what, some parts of the year, would be used as a field to grow something. The house we come to has electric lines going to it: one of only two in the village – this is Chacha’s house. We get out of the car and greet him. His children – or maybe grandchildren – are curious but slightly frightened of us and they keep their distance. Chacha gets in the front seat with my mom and Justin and we head off.
At the first house we visit, the owner, a teacher, and his wife greet us and show us around. My mom starts out by asking questions, through Justin who serves as the translator, about the system. He likes it but he needs more lights, he says. I try to take pictures of the meeting as I had been instructed but the close quarters of the living room make it difficult. We follow the owner into a hallway where, up on the rafters, is the controller and battery. I take some more pictures as Peter checks the voltage of the battery and solar panel.
All of the visits followed more or less this same pattern. We drive to the house or walk there from the last one and greet the owner. We ask them questions while Peter does all of the voltage checking. All the while I am taking pictures. I take pictures as we approach the house, as we walk between houses, as Peter checks the voltage, as my mom and Justin ask the usual array of questions. When I first heard that my mom was going to go back out to the village, I didn’t expect to be going along; after all I am not really part of her non-profit here. But my mother needs pictures for the website and whatever else the company would have for promotion. And for that she needs a photographer. That’s me.
I am not really much of a photographer. I have never used a nice camera of either the digital or film varieties. So what am I doing with my mom’s brand-new-for-the-trip Cannon Rebel T1i? I had spent the day before familiarizing myself with the thing so at least I won’t waste time with that, but I still am lost when it comes to exposure and aperture settings. Luckily I can let the camera deal with that and I leave it on “creative auto” setting.
The day becomes very repetitive. The first few houses are actually in a neighboring village to nyamaguku but everywhere they tell the same story. They need more lights. The lights aren’t bright enough. The battery is losing capacity. They want a phone charger. They want a TV. All of these are fixable in the near future, except maybe the last one, which would require a much larger system than the 10-watt, 4 light ones installed here. We drive off of the normal dirt road onto bicycle/foot paths that were never meant for cars to visit all of the houses with the solar light systems installed. Luckily the Toyota Land Cruiser is made for that kind of terrain and takes it in stride. We see a lot of houses and ask a lot of questions (and get a few answers many times). Around lunchtime, one of the customers is a bar and we stop for a soda.
Most of the customers are just normal families, though. Many times, just the woman is home, and the kids who stay away from us for the most part. There are animals at many of the houses, too. Mostly they’re chickens around – or even in – the house, or a dog or cat but there are even a group of cows gathered in the shade of one house. One of our customers has little pigeon houses set up under the eaves of his house. The last house we visit (I remember being told last year that he was the richest in the village) has many goats and cows penned up next to the house, which weren’t there when we visited last year – gone grazing or getting water.
After visiting 19 houses and taking over 300 pictures, we drop Chacha back at his house and start heading back to Musoma, stopping at a couple more houses along the way. By the time we get to the last house, it was 4:30 and I was ready to get back to Musoma. I wasn’t feeling well and I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Besides, I knew the last house that we would go to and I distinctly remember finding the man’s manner rude and dismissive when we were there last year. I keep my objections to myself and we turn off the road. This is the worst path yet. Maybe it seemed longer because I was so ready to be done, but there definitely weren’t plants scraping against the side of the car on any of the other paths, and I don’t think that they were this bumpy.
The last meeting is like the others for the most part: same complaints but maybe with a bit less of the niceness. Although at first I thought I had gotten a bad impression of him last year, it doesn’t take me long to remember why I found him disagreeable. Luckily, the meeting is over soon enough and we head back to Musoma. I took 345 pictures throughout the day but there is no proof that I was actually there at all.

Coming Home – to Musoma

2009-08-25T15:43:00.003+03:00

First, the compound. Since it’s the same house we stayed in last time we were here it feels immediately like home. There are some compromises that we have to make here, but we have hot water, electricity and, when the antenna gets installed, internet. Some things have changed since I was here last year. Most obviously, 250 boxes containing 3000 solar lights fill part of the living room and we now have a dining table and chairs.
From the road, the first changes are the painted signs on the wall outside the compound for Tanzsolar and Juasolar, my mom’s company and its partner that is affiliated with Juasun, Robi’s Internet company, and does the installations for Tanzsolar. Inside the compound, the new headquarters for those two companies is visible in the new paint job on the small building in the back that was not in use last time I was here. It now has yellow paint halfway up the walls and is labeled “Ofisi ya Tanzsolar/Juasolar” – office of Tanzsolar/Juasolar. There are also solar panels strewn over the lawn, charging two-dozen solar lights on weekdays. There is also a white car that is partway hidden under the tree on the side of the house.
Being the company offices, the house constantly has at least one person during the week. They had been using our kitchen while we weren’t here and my mother quickly took that back over, giving them one electric hot plate and hot water kettle to use. We meet the new guard – we have one guard in the day and two at night now. Markus and Daniela, who live in the smaller house on the compound, are nice as ever.
The first day we get settled in. My mom sorts out all of her luggage and makes piles for Robi, Kilimanjaro and everything for her. We have no food in the house so we eat peanut balls – like giant versions of the peanut clusters in cracker jacks but spiced with pepper because they were a gift from Robi – for breakfast with our tea. We then get on our bikes and go to the market to fix the lack of food.
Having spent almost a month here last year, I am very familiar with Musoma and it hasn’t changed in the past year. We bike to one of the entrances to the market and lock up our bikes then walk through the narrow gap between the two shops and into the market. As always, there are counters full of fruits and vegetables and baskets hang from the roofs above some of the counters. Through the fruit counters there can be seen the rice and grains on the other side of the market. We walk through the market buying whatever looks good, filling out backpacks with a watermelon, cucumbers, green bell peppers and some small bananas. Going to the shops surrounding the market we also get peanut butter, tea, milk and bread.
It is suggested to us to begin taking classes at the language school and we bike out to the school, a long-ish journey that is certainly not flat. We talk to Father Edward, who is in charge there, and arrange to start classes the following week with a Sister Mary who will be arriving from India soon. The classes are going to be at least all morning long, every morning and I am not sure yet how that will change my plans of working for Juasun.
After finishing at Shule ya Lugha Makoko, the language school Makoko, we head past our house and toward town. Instead of going all the way to town we turn off to the right and down a familiar dirt road, past some shops and a sports stadium to Juasun’s office. We greet the familiar faces and sit down with our computers to use the internet. Having to bike to Juasun to use the internet is inconvenient but until the antenna, which my mom sent nearly a month ago and only just arrived, gets installed, the compound is without internet.
The first day in Musoma reminds me most of all of one thing: we would be bicycling a lot while we are here. Especially going to language school every day, my legs (and butt), which already after one day’s biking are complaining when I encounter a hill, would have to get used to the exercise.

Crossing the Country by Bus

2009-08-25T15:01:00.001+03:00

Unlike waking up to go to Zanzibar, this one was painful. 4:00 is early no matter what schedule you’re on. We each take a very quick, cold shower and begin lugging the bags downstairs. My mom calls Rogers, the taxi driver (who should be here by now – it’s 4:35 and we told him to come at 4:30) as I continue carrying the luggage downstairs. Rogers arrives (late – he had forgotten) and we try to stuff all the bags into the car. This taxi, also a Toyota Corolla although a newer model, appears to not have as large a trunk as the last one because this time I am sharing the front seat with quite a few of our bags.
When we get to the Mohammed Trans Ltd. bus office, our bags are weighed in at 120 kg total, not including the backpacks we would carry on the bus with us. It honestly isn’t all our fault that we have so much luggage: my mom, as always, is carrying stuff for not only her company but for Robi’s as well. Either way, we are charged 95,000 Tsh (Tanzanian shillings: about 1300 per dollar at today’s exchange rates) for the 80 kilos excessive luggage. This is the reason we are taking the bus instead of flying – it would have cost even more to fly with it.
We get on the bus and settle into our seats on the left side of the bus where there are two seats per row as opposed to the three seats per row across the aisle from us. The seats are small and my knees rush against the seat in front of me. Although we head out of the parking lot at the scheduled time of 5:45, when we go across the street to the bus station. We sit there for an hour for no reason that I could discern as I doze in my seat and when we actually get on the road, it is 7:00.
I sleep for most of the next hour, looking sleepily out the window when I wake every so often, seeing the tropical plants and palm trees, simple dwellings appearing less often as we leave the city. When I finish with the Joshua Radin that I have on my iPod, I switch to some music by The Album Leaf: perfect sleeping music. I decide I can sleep no longer at 8:00 and switch to some Plushgun to begin waking up. I spend half an hour simply gazing out the window at the land we travel past. It is still lush and tropical but with fewer people than before.
The bus slows for a weigh station and outside, men hold up food and drinks to the bus windows, selling cashews or sodas and water. Our window, unfortunately, does not open, so we ask the person seated behind us, a nice man who knows some English, to buy us some of the little cakes. He leans out the window and gets one of the sellers’ attention. We look on as the men outside scramble to find change while at the same time trying to keep up with the bus, which is moving slowly up in the line. We finally get the muffins and change, thank the man behind us and eat a couple of the cakes. I take out my book and begin to read The Best of Roald Dahl while listening to some Eve 6.
I look up at the end of each short story to watch the land change from the wet tropical vegetation of the coast to a drier climate. I notice rows of what looks like agave (do they grow agave here?) and scattered trees of a variety that has a gigantic trunk and apparently looses its leaves this time of year – although I don’t know if this can be called winter, it is the cooler time of year. We stop at the bus station in Morogoro, people selling food, drinks and phone credits to the passengers through the window. We then leave the bus station, which takes a while: the area is packed with busses. The bus makes a quick stop at the office of the bus company to pick up a few more passengers and we continue on our way through the country.
I finish a short story and look out the window. This time I see more buildings than I had seen since leaving Dar. They aren’t large buildings but I we are approaching the capital of Tanzania, Dodoma. We go through the same routine as we had done in Morogoro through the bus station. The city is smaller than Dar in size and population and the buildings here are not as tall as those in Dar. Having driven all the way through, it’s hard to believe that that was the capital of the country. The bus stops at a gas station and we get out and buy some apples and water.
The bus ride continues uneventfully for a while until the bus veers off the road. The road across the country is not yet complete so we begin driving on a bumpy dirt road. The landscape is very dry at this point and every vehicle on the road kicks up dust. We occasionally get caught behind a gas truck, making the drive that much more unpleasant, but we pass them pretty quickly, never staying behind them for long. Nonetheless, the dust means that it isn’t wise to open the windows, not that ours opens anyhow, and it is stifling inside the bus. The new paved road being built– gravel with cement drainage pipes visible at the moment – can be seen beside the dirt road that we traverse; sometimes we drive right next to it and at other times the dirt road carries us out of sight.
The bumping of the dirt road shakes anything that I have on my lap onto the floor – including my phone. Luckily I manage to find it during the first stop after the bus leaves the dirt road. The dirt road does end eventually and my mother breathes a sigh of relief next to me as we drive back onto paved road after around 100 km of dirt road that the bus had taken at around 45 mph.
Stopping a handful of other times after that, we drive on into the night. Once the sun had set, I could no longer read my book though I didn’t try the light and we use a splitter to both listen to a book on my mom’s iPod, which turns out to not be very good. We switch to The Album Leaf and we doze off. Even after the sun had set, I am overheating and very sweaty in my seat (I know, very pleasant). Without the ability to open our window there is nothing we can do to ease our discomfort for the remaining hours.
When we reach Mwanza, it is 11:30 and I wake up to the street lamps and buildings. We text Robi, who would be picking us up when we reach Musoma, to tell him that we were in Mwanza and we’d be getting there late. Mwanza is at least a two and a half hour bus ride from Musoma so it was obvious we wouldn’t be getting in at the 12:00 time that the bus company had told us. Unlike the last time I took the bus from Mwanza, in the darkness nothing was visible. If anyone had electricity, I slept through that section of the drive.
It was such a relief when we got to Musoma at 2:00 and I could finally get off the bus after almost 20 solid hours of sitting there. The night air felt so wonderful, I didn’t even mind lugging the bags to the car, a little SUV with enough room for all of the stuff in the back. The dogs greet us when we get home to the compound and it is a huge relief to finally be able to unpack after the long trip – and to sleep in a bed after the long bus ride.

Zanzibar!

2009-08-22T15:58:00.005+03:00

This is an exciting milestone for this blog (after all it is in the name) so please excuse the length of the post. I just didn’t know what to leave out.

Waking up at 5:45 wasn’t hard: since arriving in Tanzania I’ve adjusted to a very early schedule. I haven’t needed to get up early, but without anything for which to stay up late I have just continued with the early nights of the first day of jet lag. The convenient thing about this is that it was easy to wake up in time to shower and meet the taxi in time to get to the ferry by 6:30.
I read on the ferry ride, a book off the English shelf in our host Susan’s rather large collection (I didn’t want to read through the few books I had brought too quickly). It was an uneventful trip to Zanzibar, the bright blue seas quite calm in the sunny morning. We pushed our way off the boat and onto the shore, and went through customs (“for statistical reasons”) although Zanzibar is the same country as Tanzania (and the reason it is no longer called Tanganyika). As expected, a taxi driver was on us immediately offering us a tour of Stone Town, the main town of Zanzibar, and to drive us to a spice tour. We negotiated for the spice tour and, rather than the tour of Stone Town, which we would explore tomorrow, a drive to the beach. After some bargaining, we headed off and got in what turned out to be a seven-passenger van that my mother and I would have all to ourselves.
Stopping once for some sort of paperwork from the government for tourists, we drive out of Stone Town and north to the spice tour. The tour starts at a tree with vines climbing up it. Our guide crushes a leaf from the vine and, giving us each a piece, he asks what the vine is. The leaves smell somewhat spicy but I have no idea what spice this plant is. He shows us a string of tiny green spheres hanging from the vine, giving us each one to eat. “Pepper!” says my mother, biting into hers. I put mine into my mouth and realize that it is indeed pepper. Our guide explains how the pepper is made into different kinds, to be sold as black pepper, red pepper, green pepper or white pepper and we move on. Next he points out a tall tree with some spiky – or perhaps fuzzy – fruits growing on the large branches near the trunk. Our guide explains that this is jackfruit, which tastes like a mix between pineapple and ripe banana, while another man leaps up and begins climbing the tree. Apparently the fruit isn’t ripe, so we move on.
Next, vanilla. Another vine climbing up a tree in an interesting zigzag, the familiar dark brown vanilla beans hanging from a low part of the vine. We smell one and continue. Growing out of the ground are what could be palm leaves with very thin individual blades. “Lemongrass?” my mom ventures a guess. But no, it is ginger. Our guide cuts a piece of one of the roots and we taste it. Then we see cardamom growing at the base of one leafy plant and taste a piece of cinnamon bark. Taking his knife, our guide finds a root of the cinnamon tree and gives it to us to smell. As he had claimed, it smells just like Vick’s. He explains the medicinal qualities of the root and, showing us a bright yellow slice of the next root, does the same for turmeric.
The next spice is again cardamom, this time on the leaves of the plant, then curry leaves (pictured with my ma). We continue, seeing henna, cloves, lemongrass and pineapples. He shows us a small plant on the ground that shrinks from the touch but is good for nothing else. The man who had climbed the jackfruit tree climbs up a tall African coconut palm with a rope wound around his feet.
“Looks like it’s going to rain,” my mom commented. “Do you think it will rain?” she asked the guide.
“Oh, no,” he says emphatically.
We sit on a small bench, drinking some “tea masala” – a tea made with some of the spices we saw growing here today – and eating the coconut meat from a coconut that we just watched our tree climber open for us, letting us to drink the milk, which is better than I had remembered from the last time I tried it. It begins to rain very suddenly, an intense downpour that stops as quickly as it began.
Leaving, we are led past a table where they are selling the spices. We look at it all and my mom buys a small bag of pilau spices to add to rice. Paying the various people for the tour, we leave and head for the beach. Our guide was adamant that we see the beaches in the far north so we negotiate the price for the drive and decide to head up north rather than a beach nearer to Stone Town. (“The beach near Stone Town isn’t that nice,” my mom confided)
Our driver, Solomon, turns the van around and we begin driving north. As we drive, we are stopped a few times at police posts that block off half the road. Sometimes they ask to see the paper we had picked up in Stone Town and sometimes they simply wave us past. We drive up through the tropical landscape, through densely forested areas then out into the open. As we approached the north end of the island, Keep it Together in my ears, the plants were shorter, cultivated land interspersed in the wild growth. We leave the road and drive down a narrow and extremely bumpy dirt road through a small town until we arrive at a resort beach. The weather still does not look great: it has just rained and threatens to rain again. My mother and I wander down the beach, declining offers to go snorkeling or to have a tour of a neighboring island. We reach the end of the short beach and continue through a resort. We stop and lean on a fence on the edge of a 20-foot drop to the ocean and just admire at it, the turquoise waves hitting the rock below us. It isn’t sunny but it isn’t cold and a pleasant ocean breeze blows. Heading back, we stop at a restaurant on the beach to eat lunch.
While we eat, the wind blows to the north, taking the clouds with it and when we finish, we are treated with a sunny stretch of sky. The beach begins to fill up with the other visitors from all over Europe: the Italians seem especially well represented. I lie down on the beach and relax in the sun. The water is not very warm and I can see that we won’t have sun for long, and, not having a towel with which to dry off, I don’t dare go swimming because I would never dry off before the taxi ride back to Stone Town. We relax on the beach for the next hour and a half, through another cloudy stretch and again into the sun.
The drive back is uneventful. I sit watching the scenery pass and listen to music. Three times Solomon stops: once to check the price of some coconuts (too expensive), the second time to buy some and the third time he buys some fruits to make juice. The fruits grow in a bunch and look somewhat like oranges. He rips one open for us, revealing a harder peel than that of an orange and many seeds inside covered with a little fruit. It tastes extremely sour and Solomon tells us that it is called bungo.
We check into our hotel in Stone Town and then, asking Solomon where to find the spice market, we enter the maze-like streets of Stone Town. At first, the alleyways of Stone Town are utterly confusing and all of them seem to look identical. Not knowing the layout of the town or even where we had been to begin with, I could easily have gotten lost. Since my mother had warned me of the way that the alleys of Stone Town make it easy to lose one’s way, I was attentive and could easily find my way back after we found our way to the market and bought some Saffron and tea masala spices.
The next day, after breakfast at the hotel with what we decided may have been bungo juice, we head out to find our way through Stone Town. At first, we do not have any idea where we are or where we are going but, finding our way to a large street, we find where we are on the map and realize that we are not on the right side of town. Backtracking, we head up a road that we had come down and expect, as the map seemed to suggest, that the road would continue or connect to other large roads to take us to the ocean. In reality, the street ended in the maze of alleyways. We start out just randomly choosing what direction to travel but soon realize that since the sun was behind us, we simply had to continue the way we were going, taking the north and west alleys. Then we were suddenly out of the maze, gazing at the old fort, its tall walls and threatening towers blocking the view of the sea.
My mom and I went into the House of Wonder, a museum that, it turned out, my mother had already seen. It was all about the history of Zanzibar, which was interesting, but the tour was a bit too long for me. We then spent that day hanging out in the newly re-done park next to the ocean and wandering Stone Town. The town, despite the initial appearance of impenetrability, is actually quite small and we walk virtually all the way around it. Navigating the alleys is simple if the sun is out or with have a compass and even if we went the wrong way, we would soon get to either the ocean or Creek road, the town’s boundary on the East. I would love to spend more time in Stone town if only to explore its many alleys. For now though, we head back to the ferry and to Dar.

Susan's

2009-08-20T17:45:00.001+03:00

On Saturday, the friend with whom we had hoped to stay upon arriving initially in Dar had returned from Musoma, so we checked out of our hotel and stuffed our bags into a taxi (Toyota Carolla, as most cabs are. Very different looking than the US version even besides the fact that the steering wheel is on the wrong side – I’ve gotten used to the cars driving on the wrong side for the most part by now). The cab ride was short: down Samora, a street that I have come to know well having walked down it at least twice a day since arriving here, left on Ohio, another main street in Dar, and down an extremely bumpy driveway to an enclosed space, quiet due to the buildings between it and the street, which contained a number of four-story apartment buildings. We pay the cab driver and begin the fun part. Susan’s apartment is on the top floor of one of these buildings, so by the time we’ve finished lugging our bags up the stairs we’re sweaty and thoroughly uncomfortable.
Susan isn’t there but she’s left us a key so we let ourselves in and relax. Later, when she has returned, we go to dinner at the Badminton Institute, which also has a good Indian restaurant, in the Indian part of Dar. She is funny and interesting and I like her immediately. She’s German but has been working in Dar for the past three years as a lawyer. Earlier that day, we had hired a taxi driver, Rogers, to take us to buy bus tickets and tickets for the ferry to Zanzibar. He coincidentally knew Susan and he told us that she spoke but a little Swahili. Watching her interact with people, though, it seemed to me that she knew plenty to be able to communicate whatever she needed to say even if I could tell that her accent wasn’t perfect.
We have one day of rest before we go to Zanzibar on Monday. We spend part of the day Sunday trying to find a hotel but all the internet cafes are closed on Sunday and the power is out so it wouldn’t work very well at any rate. By the time the power comes back on we have reservations at the Malindi guest house in Stone Town, Zanzibar that we get with many phone calls – most of the hotels are full – and a German guide book that we can’t understand. Susan and her German friend Babette, who is living and working in Mwanza, return from their facial, we all hang out and then have dinner. Just a relaxing day on the bed-like couches before our traveling begins again.
I have not had internet for the past few days so I am catching up one event at a time.

Dar es Salaam

2009-08-13T17:30:00.007+03:00

Dar es Salaam: largest city in Tanzania, located on the Indian Ocean, used to be the capital of Tanzania but is no longer. It is definitely not a Unitedstatesian city and its valuable to describe it from a couple of perspectives.
(as compared to the US) Coming from the United States, Dar seems small, disorganized and somewhat dirty. It lacks sidewalks in many places and where there are sidewalks, they are often filled with little stands selling watches, shoes, or cell phones. Stoplights are quite rare on all but the largest streets.
(as compared to Musoma) Having experienced a smaller town here in Tanzania, I already have another point of reference from which to look at Dar. Although it initially seems so different from the United States, Dar is very westernized compared to a place like Musoma. It is obvious much of Dar has been influenced by Europe or the United States. Coming from the United States, this is hard to see sometimes with all of the differences distracting from the similarities. The picture (which seems to not be working) is from the hotel room window. The hotel, however, is very nice, if small.
I suppose that this is a sort of middle ground between the United States and rural Africa, but I think that I prefer Musoma to Dar. Musoma is even less like the United States, but there is a crazy disorganized air here in Dar that doesn’t exist in Musoma. It is actually more organized than Musoma in reality, but all of the people just make it seem very wild. I am also not all that familiar with the city so that only adds to the perceived craziness.
So far, I have done little but walk around on errands or for food, so it hasn't been all that exciting. Over the next few days it is likely to improve, however. Get ready for the goat races (what? apparently the largest event all year in Dar), a night out on the town and perhaps even a trip to Zanzibar (better get there before Ramadan).

Arriving in Dar

2009-08-12T20:45:00.004+03:00

The flight from Dubai was nicely uneventful. It wasn't until we got off the plane that the differences became evident. The airport in Tanzania’s biggest city is nowhere near as organized as Dubai’s. Rather than a thermal imaging camera like the one we walked past in Dubai to scan for swine flu, we crowd around to complete a short questionnaire on any available flat surface and an official gives it a cursory glance before waving us through. I’m honestly not quite sure what they hope to accomplish with this.
Having made it through the baggage claim and customs, we step outside. I suggest that we go to the kiosk for the mobile phone company Vodacom to purchase a SIM card for my phone, which is conveniently unlocked. Mostly, we would need a phone to contact the friend at whose house we were hoping to stay in Dar, but this is where the problems began.
After trying every one of the numbers we have for Susan, my mom’s friend in Dar, we decided to call Robi in Musoma. As it turns out, Susan is in Musoma right now and since my mom has not gotten a reply from her recently, we aren’t sure whether she may have left a key for us. By the time we come to this conclusion, it’s too late to go check and we tell the cab driver, who had been taking us to Susan’s office, to take us instead to the hotel we’ve stayed in before, Q Bar.
We hadn’t made a reservation since we thought that we would have a place to stay so of course they had no more rooms left. My mother asks the cab driver where we could stay that isn’t too expensive and he drives us closer to the center of Dar to a hotel that looks pretty nice and is not much more expensive than Q Bar. It turns out that there was a misunderstanding and we initially were put in a room with only one bed and the room with two costs more. Consequently, my mom (being the kind of person she is) demanded that we get the room with two beds for the original price, as that is what we had been told. I stand and wait for what seems like forever while my mother argues with the receptionist and the porter, finally dragging the manager into it and getting us into the room with two beds. Good thing we didn't have to carry out her threat of moving hotels, though: we have about a million pounds of luggage what with the gear for climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro and the equipment we always need to bring from the United states for Robi's company and her own.

And we walk to go eat dinner...

Re-opening the blog

2009-08-12T07:49:00.004+03:00

Ok so I haven't written in this blog for almost a year. While I was in Chile I'm certain I could have had enough to write about but the thing about living someplace for so long is that it all begins to seem mundane after a while. I thought that writing about day-to-day life would become boring, so I stopped.
Now that I am heading back to Tanzania (this time for three months) I figured I would dust off the old blog and begin blogging again. At the moment I am in the Dubai airport, waiting for the second and flight in this journey which will take my mother and me to Dar es Salaam. The first leg of the voyage was a non-stop flight from SF to Dubai, a long but surprisingly bearable flight. Emirates airlines' 10 inch touch screen per person in Economy helped. I watched three movies, a couple of episodes of TV shows and listened to an album by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
Weather in Dubai is unbearably hot and muggy and I am extremely glad to NOT be staying here longer than one night.

Orientations at Valdivia

2008-09-12T04:50:00.002+03:00

Last weekend AFS, the foreign exchange program had another set of
orientations, and in spite of the prior experiences with AFS
orientations, I was looking foreward to it. All of the AFS students
south of Curicó would be heading to Valdivia and I was hoping that
would be interesting.

Although the orientations were unsurprisingly useless, it turns out
that all of the students were extremely interesting to talk to and the
best conversations were definitely the ones between students that had
to communicate in languages that aren't their native ones.
Conversations ended up being half in English and half Spanish for me,
and I think for quite a few people although some also had people with
whom to speak their native tongue for the first time in at least a
month, such as the Finnish and Thai girls and those from German-
speaking countries, but I was surprised how little of those other
languages I heard.

We all shared our experiences and the nationalities were pretty mixed,
I did spend some time with the Italians although they seemed kind of
exclusive as a result of their only being able to communicate in
Spanish and some peoples reluctance (or inability for some of the
students that have only been here slightly more than a month) to speak
purely in Spanish, though also because they didn't try to mix too
hard. We all had a lot of experiences in common and had made a lot of
the same observations, but the differences between families or cities
waere interesting.

Over all, the majority of the students that came to Chile at the same
time as I did are also getting used to the situation, although some
are still struggling with the language. It was fun, and a bit sad that
we spent so little time together, but even though I was not speaking
all English, I am glad that I got back to a fully Spanish surrounding
because I am pretty sure that being able to go into English mode too
often wouldn't help my Spanish development.

Pruebas

2008-08-28T04:27:00.001+03:00

I had two quiz things today but as I missed the covering of the material for filisofy, I only had to do the half that I was here for, and the lenguage test on don Quijote covered much less for me - I only had to read and summarize two chapters while everyone else had to read 14 and answer specific and somewhat obscure questions. Other than tests such as these first ones for which I missed the teaching and those that require the reading of books written in old castilian, I will be able to keep up with most of what everyone else had to do, and though the first bio test was almost impossible, I am hoping it will get better too as I missed the teaching of some material.
In terms of weather, though we got one good day on monday signalling the coming of spring, the last two days have been depressing and rainy. Hopefully it gets better soon, because not even getting driven to school is worth having to put up with this weather.

Colegio. Three weeks in.

2008-08-22T02:53:00.002+03:00

By now I almost know the schedule, but it is so weird and random that I sometimes have to guess. Not that it matters too much. I have math in one form or other (math electivo or comun) almost every day, but physics comunes once a week, on Friday so we haven't really had it yet because of a presentation the first week and a holiday last week. So far my impressions: three classes will be quite easy for me, one pretty easy, three rather hard and two pretty much not graded.
Those easiest classes would be math e+c, English e+c, and physics e+c. Math is stuff I covered three years ago and is super boring and (my opinion) not that well taught. English goes in this group for obvious reasons, and since it isn't even at a level where I will learn Spanish, it will also be boring. Physics will at least interest me if only for the new vocabulary, but also to relearn what I forgot after my cram for the SAT, but judging by the classes so far and the test I just got a 7 (100%) on, it should be easy.
Next level includes chem. Since I had Mr. Fox (for anyone unfamiliar he is an abysmal teacher) I may not have learned quite what I was supposed to but I think that I know enough to make the class relatively easy. It is the BSing for why that will be slightly more difficult.
History and filosofy will be okay, I think, and I think I get special grading. My group for a group project we did gave a presentation today on the Punic wars and although I said the least and worst (not surprisingly at all), I think I still got a good grade. Filosofy is weird and we just started a unit on sexuality and individual. It was kind of odd that one student asked (translated for your convenience) "is homosexuality an illness or preference?" and got the difinitive response of "preference/choice. There is no person that is born gay." while I certainly respect opinions, I don't when they are presented as facts. Oh well I think I will get past the (by CA standards) old fashioned beliefs and that class shouldn't be too bad.
In the hard category will be bio because my one year of bio is not what we are learning. Having missed thae learning part, I think I will do quite badly on the test tomorrow, not to mention all the new special vocabulary I will have to learn. Luckily, that doesn't matter.
Both of my teachers of lenguage (spelling mixed english/spanish) have told me that I am graded specially (or pretty much not at all), so those classes will be easy but not boring as I will learn a lot of Spanish, I suppose.
Not that any of the grades matter because they aren't sent back to the US (even if they were, they wouldn't know what to do with a 6,3). The other day I was feeling quite sick of school when I reminded myself of that, and now it isn't nearly so bad, almost like a game. Still not a big fan of the uniform, but what can you do?
Chico is in the centro de alumnos, the student government thing at our school, so I have gone with him to the after school meetings. We were going to go to an all Chile centro de alumnos thing at a school near Concepción this weekend, but I'm not quite sure if it's been cancelled. At any rate the centro (only 5 students or so) has been planning the aniversario, which strikes me as kind of like homecoming week. There is a king and queen and lots of competitions. I don't completely get it, but I am already excited anyhow.
It is good to have a friend that drives because Chelo (marcelo) can save us some money and time getting home for lunch and today he gave five of us a ride to the small mall thing after school and we ate ice cream. He had a Nissan truck when I first got here, but I think that broke down so now he has a fiat car thing with two seats up front and a covered truck bed thing in back, which is where we ride mostly.

Flaites and fighting

2008-08-10T03:35:00.002+03:00

After another day of school that lasted till 5, Chico and I left for home along with a few other guys. We made it a couple hundred yards when Xico warned me to make sure my cell phone or something was safe. I was wondering why when from behind us approach the kind of person called fleites here, 4 or 5 of them. One of them approaches Chico and says something like "WTF do you think you're doing, fag?" it looks like it could turn into a fight, though the other Conce guys with us are trying to break it up, saying "¡¡tranquilo!!" and it almost seems like nothing would happen when a different fleite, a small one that had been behind the one that was mainly in Chico's face, runs forward and punches Chico in the face. Since they were speaking quickly with plenty of slang and stuff, I must have missed something because the little fleite's attack was completely unanticipated. Chico is pushed backwards and at least the two fleites are punching him, and I realize it is time to do something. I am slow to come to that conclusion and to reach them, because now a white truck stops and the fleites vanish. Chico asks that I don't tell our parents or abuelita, because abuelita would worry too much. He has the slightest cut lip, but other than that seems unhurt. Chico doesn't know what got the fleites all reiled up and The next day I was informed by a classmate that something like that never has happened before. So that is the first actual fleite experience I had, before I had just been warned to avoid them and that they steal stuff a lot. They apparently have their way of dressing but I am not yet quite certain what defines that.

The first day of Colegio

2008-08-08T04:41:00.002+03:00

Today was the first day of school and I woke up right away when the first alarm went of at 6:58. That won't last; I always start out that way and end up pressing snooze 3 times. Anyhow, Seba and I got ready for school, breakfast and stuff, and then had time to spare because my host dad was to drive us, something unusual as he is normally in Santiago all week but today most schools have off. At any rate we got to school with time to spare and waited for the first class, P.E. today.
We wear a different uniform for P.E. than for regular class days, and that is what we're all wearing today, blue pants with a yellow stripe, grey shirt and blue and grey sweatshirt. We run around the gym for a while and then do some dribbling drills around some cones with a football (yeah that is a soccerball for you unitedstatesians). I am really bad because I haven't tried to play football for years. For that reason I choose to go shower when given the choice of a game or that, and about half chose the same, it seems. That means that I have a while while we wait for those who chose to play finish playing and shower. Next is English. I have a feeling that I won't have too much trouble in that class.
In English everyone asks me questions as a quiz type thing with a grade for asking questions no matter what they are. I get "do you have a girlfriend?" twice from the girls in the class and then again from Diego and "do you have a boyfriend" from another guy. They get points for asking the questions and they get to be funny. Otherwise, most of the questions are "do you like...?" kind of questions.
We stay in the same room with most of the same people for most of the classes, and the teachers come to us. Not all of the classes are with all the same people bacause everyone chooses an electivo of either matemático, biología, or lenguaje and each takes extra of certain classes. As it will be the easiest, I chose matemático which includes extra of math, English and physics. So my electivo math class is next.
As always we all stand until the profe greets us and tells us to take a seat. He goes over distance and midpoint formulas, informs us that there is a quiz the following Monday and gives us a study guide. This is geometry stuff that I learned in eighth grade, so it isn't too hard if only I knew what the longitud de gravedad or something is. Luckily the profe helps me out with a little drawing that makes it quite clear.
Lunch time so we head for home. Normally we might walk a short way then catch the micro to get closer to home, but one of our classmates drives and gives us a lift to someplace nearer home. We get home and eat lunch, always the largest meal of the day, and mom (how am I supposed to refer to her in this blog?) tells us she'll give us a lift back, again unusual as she normally needs to get back to school too.
Now is PSU lenguaje, which is our language class that prepares us, or everyone else, for the PSU test that determines something about what college you get into and has a lot of different subjects in it as near as I can tell. We take notes from the board and the profe's dictation, and I get most of it but need to glance at Chico's page for a couple of words. We then have a class that is actually just a talk with the boss-teacher Carolina and back to PSU lenguaje for more of the same. The talk with la Caro was interesting to listen to, mainly discussing grades and how they should try harder, then going over who can help in each class. My classmates volunteer me for English (surprise) and for math and I accept although I think that it will be quite hard trying I teach in Spanish.
That was school, and now it is after 5 (Monday is one of the later days, I think, and Friday is only until lunch) and we walk in a large group away from school saying "ciao" to people as the group shrinks and everyone heads home.

Everything

2008-07-30T02:08:00.003+03:00

I have been bad with keeping up my blog here, but now I will try to catch up. All in one post.

Through I now feel very comfortable here at home, the first few days were a little weird. My family learned quickly that they need to talk to me rather slowly, but I was(and still am) constantly asking people to repeat themselves and I hope that they don't get too annoyed, though it seems to me like it could easily be extremely bothersome. The one thing that still I feel uncomfortable with is refusing an offer. My abuelita that lives with us is always offering me food. Not that it isn't good, because it is generally, but I feel like I am eating way too much sometimes. That is of course her goal because I am assuredly far too thin. Luckily I am exercising. I'll get to that later this post (sorry it is so long)
As for people I've met, they all seem quite nice, if only I could be more a part of the conversation. We had a party/onces de bienvenidos and around 18 of my class of 25 came. While I barely talked at all with some, others put a lot of effort into having a conversation with me. One girl decided that I should always be talking with someone and asked me quite a few questions, until someone else noted their growing absurdity and mocked her, asking "does el Toby breathe?" Overall, the party went quite well, though I was very tired by the time the last few guests left at around 2 in the morning.
My brothers here are very active and one of the first things I spent my pesos on upon arriving was a gym membership. At 9000 pesos per month it seems like a pretty good deal, that's about $18 U.S., and I will be going pretty often with my younger brother. Sebastian is 16, and somewhat shorter than I, though about the same weight. He goes to the gym often so while I could best him in a race, he has a bit more upper body strength than I. We do lift weights together, but he is almost always lifting more, if it's not with the legs. The gym is not huge, but since there aren't normally that many people there, we can use pretty much any equipment we want.
My older brother, David, also goes to the same gym, but not with us. With him, I run. We have only gone on one run so far, but that is only because of the bad weather we've been having(it rained every day for the first week I was here). The air is pretty good here, though there is quite a bit of wood smoke as that is the principal method of heating here, also causing the houses to be lacking the warmth of our centrally heated ones.
Other impressions include the amazing view of the Andes from anywhere in Linares, and the wonderfulness of being able to walk anywhere, though come school next week that one might lose its charm slightly.
If I've forgotten anything, it must not be important right now. This post is long enough.

Linares

2008-07-23T03:43:00.003+03:00

I got to Linares by bus on Sunday and was picked up by my family and an AFS volunteer called Domingo. We got dragged my bags to the car, a silver Citröen five seat hatchback, and got in. My mother, father, and two brothers went to pick me up from the bus station, and at home there were two grandmothers, one of whom always lives here with us and her birthday was the day before I arrived. The other was just visiting and she left soon after. The brothers are six months older than me and six months younger. The 16 year-old, Sebastián, goes to the same school as I will, and the 17 year-old, David, now goes to a public school because of bad grades. Also at home there is a cousin who is staying here for break, which ends in two weeks.
I am still adjusting to living here and speaking Spanish all the time, but at least we can comunicate most of the time. I almost started writing this in Spanish because my mind gets in that mode sometimes. I had better write my college applications soon.

Miami

2008-07-16T17:34:00.002+03:00

I arrived in Miami a bit late last night, at around midnight, here time, and when I found out where the shuttle left to my hotel, I left for there. One of the other people on the shuttle was also going to Chile with AFS. He seemed a bit unprepared, and out of it - he left his bag at the airport or something. Today, I had breakfast with another AFSer, by accident (I thought he was done and had left his table). Along with one other person I met on Facebook, I now know 3 other people going to Chile for the semester program. None of them are in the same city as I am, but I will meet others at the orientation today, so maybe one of them will. So far they all have one thing in common - 2 years of Spanish. I am feeling quite prepared at this point and not worried.
The surprise of the day was running into Emiliana Mattson at the hotel I am at. She is getting back from planting trees and stuff in Costa Rica, and we were both very surprised when she found me at breakfast.

Still hasn't completely sunk in that I will be in Chile for 6 months.

For whom it may concern

2008-07-09T23:20:00.004+03:00

As it turns out, I just found out, here in Dubai (first Internet for a couple of days) that am returning to California on the 10, arriving in the airport at sac at 8. I might be tired though. Who knows. See all you Auburnians soon. (Or any of you who might read this blog)
The time on the post might be TZ time, but I am in Dubai (one hour later) but my iPod clock is on NY time (430 pm) which just happens to be the same as chile's right now. How nice. Maybe it is time for an afternoon ice cream snack, Evan thinks so anyhow. Haven't had ice cream for a long time.

edit: am now in Denver and may get back at four instead of eight! Assuming I get on this flight (standby) but I'm not too worried.

Orfans

2008-07-07T12:09:00.002+03:00

On friday, Evan and I went to Chipemoyo, where our neighbor Daniela works. She goes every Friday to play with the kids and brings board games, paper, colored pencils and puzzels. We get there and walk in, all the boys dressed in worn out t-shirts, and they greet us happily (Shikamoo, marahaba), if a bit shyly. That wore off pretty quickly.
They just make up rules to their games because Daniela does not speak Swahili perfectly. We play connect 4, but the game isn't over till the board is full, and the king can do anything in checkers. They try to make the simple puzzels, and we help them out. There is one girl and she wears this nice dress, though the boys' clothes are threadbare. Their drawings seem to mainly be of houses, and I wonder if that reflects their desire to find their homes. Origame fortune-tellers without fortunes inside. They all crowd in front of Evan's camera. And behind to see the pictures and videos of themselves. They all seem so happy.
The kids are all trying to find their homes, and chipemoyo helps them do that, and also helps them have money for school in the mean time. Emmanuel, who I have seen too much of: he comes to our house every day, was there at some point, before he found this family that he is now staying with. The kids are always changing, some leaving, some arriving. 8 checked in from the streets on Friday.

Nyamaguku

2008-07-05T12:38:00.002+03:00

Speaking of contrasts, on Thursday we got to see the other end of the spectrum, a town that makes Musoma look big. My mom's nonprofit has one villiage with 16 or 17 houses with solar lighting. It is often referred to as the research villiage by Robi and my mom because the name is so hard to remember. Upon arriving, the first house we go to is that of the richest man in the village. He is not an especially nice person, it seems. He is like Scrooge: he is rich, but he doesn'teven have furniture in his house and he almost didn't let my mom take a picture of the system in the rafters. I was worried at that point that the whole village would be that way toward us, but it wasn't so. Most greeted us warmly and one particularly outgoing older woman posed in a picture with Evan and the system. Everyone seemed happy to have the two electric lights, and only wanted more lights and a bigger system for a TV, radio or cell phone charger. Before having these lights installed in their houses, the only source of light after 7 was a kerosene lantern, which not only created disgusting smoke to breath in but also was expensive, and as with all petroleum products, the price just keeps going up. The waiting list on this one small village has already reached 90 people.
My mom has pointed out how unusual it is to be invited into peoples' homes in rural Africa, and it is true that it is very uncommon, but so is the thing my mom is doing with solar lighting. The systems are humble, but even they are an improvement over what they had and what they have in most of Tanzania and rural Africa still.

Mwanza

2008-07-05T12:36:00.004+03:00

Musoma is a small town by unitedstatesian standards, but rather large for the area when many of them have only a handful of houses surrounded by some large gardens then a vast expanse of nothing, or at least nothing human influenced. For that reason Musoma is a hub of activity for surrounding areas, getting produce and stuff in its market from miles around. So it seems big sometimes, until there is someplace bigger. Mwanza is the second biggest city in TZ, we think, after Dar and it is about 260 km south of Musoma (if you want miles, do the math. Something like 150). We take the bus, but the big one, not one of the polluting mini buses. It drops us off on some random(as far as we can tell) street in the city, and we set off. The contrast is startling, really. It is really a city. One thing that is an interesting difference city to country is the cars you see. In the country and in Musoma there are almost strictly Toyotas. there might be a Mitsubishi or Suzuki every once in a while, and VERY rarely anything else (one Honda in Musoma and couple Nissans) Notice a trend? Yeah. All Japanese. In the city, there is slightly more variety, and only a bit more than 2 in 3 are Toyotas and there might be a Ford, Peugeot, Mehindra etc. This is a very small example, but it just illustrates the differences. We do some shopping for the house because there is a lot of stuff that one simply can't buy in Musoma.
After a few hours of shopping (we got lots of African fabric for clothes and curtains, some bathroom fixtures and some other stuff) we catch the bus home. This proves more difficult than planned as the main office was not where we were dropped off, so we take a taxi there. At the main office, we buy tickets back to Musoma and sit down to wait. While we wait, Evan points out how the man sitting across from us looked very very similar to Heath Ledger, only black. I had noticed him, but until he pointed it out, I didn't notice how much he actually did resemble the actor. Later, once we got on the bus (he does too) we sneakily take a picture of him, pretending to take pictures of the outside and eachother. The busride home is uneventful, but the busdrivers go SO fast on these roads, and people buy stuff through the windows of the bus when we stop. Both are normal here, apparently.

Running with the bull

2008-07-02T15:09:00.001+03:00

So my mom, my brother and I were walking back from lunch at The Anglican, which is Robi's favorite lunch place, (he is very set in his ways) along the dirt road to Juasun. Small children bid us good afternoon (practice your English on the wazungu), I can understand them after a moment. We smile and reply good afternoon. We continue walking and presently we hear fast footsteps approaching us. I think that there are children running after us, after all there had been a gaggle of children following us not 5 minutes ago. I decide not to look at the children running after us. Then my brother makes a noise of surprise and distress. Maybe it was my mom, I really don't know because what is running behind us isn't a group of children and what happens next wipes other thoughts out of my head. I had started to get out of the way as soon as I heard the sound of alarm from Pineapple Fishstick but a split second later the thing behind me runs into me. As I finish leaping out of the way, a bull runs past me, cream colored, with horns spanning about two feet. One of those horns had just stabbed me in the buttocks. It hurts, but I'll be fine, yet my mother keeps making a huge deal out of it. Looking back, it could have been a big deal, if I hadn't leapt out of the way just in time. There is a hole in my shirt. And my pants. And my boxers, yet it feels like I've got no more than a bruise. It isn't even so bad riding my bike. Luckily the bikes have wide seats here.

Safari

2008-07-02T15:07:00.001+03:00

Saturday was safari day. We got up early, alarms set for 5:15. Still we didn't get breakfast. We left at 6:03 according to the Nissan Patrol's clock. The sun rose as we drove, and we were at the gate to the Serengheti park at 7:45. After paying for entrance, we enter. I am surprised somehow at the amount of animals already, right near the entrance and right near the road. Right away there are wildebeast, zebra, impala and warthogs (I guess one would not expect warthogs to be cute, I didn't. But they definitely are. Especially when they run.). We spent the day driving around the dirt roads of the Serengheti in search of wonderful animals, stopping just to eat lunch in the parking lot of a super-expensive hotel. We would have gone in to eat but lunch was 50 dollars. Each. By the end of the day we had seen almost every kind of animal we could have hoped for. we saw far more wildebeast and antelope than we needed, but though we also saw tons of zebra, I never grew tired of them (they look like striped donkeys, and that is what they are called in Swahili). We saw giraffes, elephants, lions, a leopard in a sort of distant tree, viboko (hippos), an unimpressive crocodile, gorrillas, monkeys, buffalo, mongoose galore (tons at the lodge. baby ones are really cute; adult ones not so much), lots of birds including a walking one that Evan swears he saw in the Lion King and even a hyena, which was stockier than I expected and very ugly. The only things we can think of that we didn't see is a cheetah and a rhino, but apparently we weren't likely to see a rhino had we stayed for a week. That at least gave us four of the "big five"(leopard, lion, elephant, buffalo and rhino). We had planned to stay for more than one day, but at the end of one we felt we had seen enough and another day would just be more of the same. After leaving the park, we see more zebra, antelope, even giraffe and an elephant crossing the road makes us stop for a moment. Same with a herd of wildebeast crossing, though we just drove through that – far less dangerous than an elephant. Not like animals know about such things as park boundries.

Dr. Seuss

2008-06-29T15:03:00.001+03:00

I am sure that Dr. Seuss drew inspiration for his plants and even animals from African vegetation. It first struck me how suess-like the trees are on Saturday morning, with the trees silhouetted against the sunrise. He not only stole the typical African planes trees that are big and flat but also these weird trees that have lots of little tufts of leaves on long, thin and sometimes squigly branches. Then there are papaya trees and these little puff balls on sticks that seem to be everywhere in Seuss books. I have decided that Seuss formed his world one day while in Africa, probably on a safari. Like I did today (Saturday).

Lakuba

2008-06-29T15:00:00.001+03:00

We pack frantically the morning of departure, Wednesday. Well we'll only be gone one day, but somehow my mom tries to make the mood in the house frantic anyhow. I sit on the bed reading Dry until one minutes before we are supposed to be leaving. I then go about and throw everything into my backpack. We leave only nine minutes late, and arrive at Tembo beach, where we are to get picked up, the boat is there but the people arrive shortly after the appointed time of 10. The water is calm as we start out, but more and more waves appear as we leave the shore behind us.
We pass close by some small rocky islands, one full of white birds another with black ones covering it, then we arrive at the island, Lakuba. When we get off the boat on the beach we are met by a white woman and a black man holding a tray with three glasses of deliciously tart orange juice. The beach is pristinely beautiful. Five small cabins with thatched rooves hide beneath the trees on the edge of the beach, and a hammock is strung between two of the trees, and three chairs are set up in the shade of another. The sand is coarse but comfortable to lie in, and birds of every kind fly around the trees and beach. We have it all to ourselves - we are the only guests. Then the monkeys come. little white monkeys with black faces and hands. The first one wanders down the beach toward us while we relax on the chairs and hammock. It pays us no attention and then slowly wanders off. Later there are at least eight on the beach, in the shade of the trees. Most of them keep their distance from us, but one fearlessly approaches me as I crouch to seem less intimidating. He comes within a metre of me. I have no food and am not very exciting to him, and he heads back to join his fellow monkeys.
The white woman that came to meet us when we arrived at the beach turned out to work there and she is a very funny person. A guide born in Zimbabwe, grew up in South Africa and has never lived in a city. She enjoys the word "freak" and I think she doesn't like people so much, though we got along with her well. She doesn't try to be funny usually, but she succeeds nonetheless. I can't really explain it.
On the island is also the first time we swim in the lake. That isn't because we haven't wanted to go swimming but because there is a parasite that is common on the shore of Lake Victoria here in Musoma. We have heard conflicting things about the parasite (it isn't a danger this time of year, it is dangerous to go swimming now; there is no danger of the parasite on Lakuba because of the currents, it is also dangerous on the island) but we know for sure that it is painful and potentially deadly, but completely treatable. Either way, I hope I didn't get it and if I did I hope there is a way to treat it in Chile.
The water was warm but not super warm like the ocean around Hawaii. There are many tall rocks right next to the water, and Evan was excited about the possibility of cliff jumping. Too bad it seems impossible to get on top of the good rocks. We went swimming from the beach and just sat on some warm, but low rocks while on a canoe trip to find good cliff jumping. Oh well.

The Peninsula

2008-06-27T17:03:00.001+03:00

I'm a bit nervous. It's Monday and we'll be meeting Daniel at 5 when he gets off. Evan and I were at Tembo beach, or right next to it earlier in the day when we got his text. He wants to know if we'll be there at five to go and take pictures of stuff like rocks and monkeys. He had already called once, on Saturday, to verify that we would indeed be there. That is when I began to get slightly worried. Yeah it was probably nothing. He probably just wants to make a couple new friends and show us the cool local places. Like that rocky peninsula with no signs of human habitation. The reason I'm worried is that he seemed very interested in both the price of Evan's camera and about my GPS. And I also had my phone out at some point. That is all in addition to the fact that we're wazungu. Adds up to a prime target for mugging if you ask me. Even Evan thought the insistence a bit suspicious, especially the monkey detail.
We arrive late. Evan wasn't ready to leave Juasun, our Internet access point, until we were supposed to be there at the fish industry. We bike home and I leave all of my stuff, the only thing we bring is Evan's camera. I send Daniel a text to tell him we'll be late then drop my phone on the bed. It turns out that I really needn't have worried, Daniel was obviously just being friendly, and while we saw no monkeys that day, the peninsula was still worth the trip.
We walk down the long dirt road, Evan and I walking our bikes next to Daniel, who is no longer wearing the orange rubber suit, stopping to
take an absurd amount of pictures, though the boys carrying sticks didn't want us to. Too late. On reaching what is pretty much the end of the peninsula, we find what Daniel tells us is a hotel. We lock our bikes together and head toward some large, interesting looking rocks and a tree. The large rock says "house of goat" in Swahili. We climb around to the edge of the lake and look out, next to us on the rocks are a couple of boats made with styrofoam-filled reeds. Fishermen actually live here. We take pictures of each other and of some weird mongoose type thing and head back to the hotel, order three sodas (Evan says he has money though I've left mine at home). After finishing our sodas and paying (almost 600 Tsh each) we go out onto some different rocks at the very end of the point and watch the sun set over Lake Victoria, an endless expanse of water.
We walk back to a small group of huts and Daniel offers us porridge. We duck under a short reed roof with reed walls part way up to it and take a seat at a short table with benches. Everyone crowds around the wazungu as we eat our porridge (I think it tastes like spaghetti Os only good, Evan disagrees). We then walk a short way until we part ways with Daniel, only then do we get on the bikes, even though my mom will be frantic. It is getting dark and I warn Evan to be careful; people drive crazily here, though most people walk or ride bikes. Any collision would be bad, but we make it home fine and sure enough my mom was just calling us on our neighbor's phone (hers was out of minutes) Why do I include such random details? Who knows. Daniel told us about a disco with Swahili hiphop that would be on Saturday, too bad we'll be on a safari. Ok no, I'm pretty sure it'll be worth it.

Friends

2008-06-27T11:47:00.001+03:00

People here in Musoma seem really nice. At least some of them, the
ones that aren't trying to get money from us "mzungu" ("white person"
that's the singular, wazungu is the plural but it doesnt seem as
common. Yeah we started taking Swahili lessons). But it seems that
some Tanzanians
like making friends with us when they see us, like a good way to
practice their English, or maybe we just look lost all the time.
Hassan was the first such person we met. On our second day in Musoma,
we needed some stuff, a water boiler for tea, cups, plates and
utensils. Upon entering the market, we see a row of small, open-
fronted shops with who knows what inside. We wander down what appears
to be the road of furniture makers. In the middle of the street there
is a pile of rock we must walk around; it is still a dirt road and it
looks like it will be paved soon. The next street has more variety of
wares as well as more people, on bikes as is most common here. We
approach a promising shop and are greeted by a man who speaks English
well (though I hadn't been here long enough yet to realize how
uncommon that is). He translates for the shopkeeper, who doesn't speak
English at all. We buy a thing to boil water and look at a set of
plates, cups etc. before deciding they're too expensive. The English
speaking man, Hassan(as I found out later. I think that is how it is
spelled), leads us to a place with plastic stuff and we buy a few
trash bins. He again translates for the shopkeeper and my mom is
getting angry, deciding that as a middle man, Hassan was getting a cut
and her dislike if him begins. Later that day as we shop he approaches
us with lower offers for that dish set we had decided was more than it
should be, but my mom was definitely done with him. In the following
weeks my brother and I would run into him while shopping, and though I
at first had agreed with my mom that he should be avoided, Evan
trusted him more, so I gave him a chance. He helped us find bike locks
and it really does seem like he's doing us a favor and not profitting
from the transactions.
Emmanuel S. Mkeba was the next friendly Tanzanian we met, though
closer to our age. After riding (we had purchased bikes by that point:
red, white and blue ones as I noticed later, it really annoyed me
because I don't want to be seen as an obnoxious American so it is
better when just two of us go out, although I doubt anyone would
notice anyhow) through the white gate to our house, I turn to close
the gate and there is a boy standing there. Evan is already walking
toward the house but I call him back. Emmanuel (though he introduced
himself as Mkeba; they often use last names here) had apparently
seen us in town and biked like crazy to catch up to us. He wants to
make friends with us, and he already has friends from Sweden and some
other places. Over the next week he emailed us once and visited our
house twice. As it turns out he needs a sponsor to keep going to
school. He has a four page history on himself that is rather tragic,
and taken along with his appearance, (with one bad eye that goes the
wrong direction, except I can't decide which one goes the right
direction and therefore which to focus on) he seems like a very
compelling charity case. It seems that he doesn't expect us togive him
the money but rather for us to take the story to others in the US. I
find it kind of painful to talk to him, simply because his English
isn't very good, apparently Evan is better because they were talking
for a long time on the porch.
Daniel is my favorite so far. Evan and I were biking down some street
we didn't know, looking for the lake. It seems like it wouldn't be
hard to find since it is the second largest lake in the world, after
the Caspian Sea. The street was dirt, and looked like it had to lead
to the lakeside at some point. We stop to take a picture of the absurd
pelicans with the lake in the background (or a bay of it because we
could see across it). At that point a guy in an orange full-body
rubber suit and boots walks up to us and greets us. In English. He
works at the "fish industry", which is where we are, apparently. He
should be at work because he gets out at 5:00 and it is just after 3,
but he says to us that his boss won't do anything to him of he's with
us. So we ask him how to get to the beach. He leads us past some huts,
with us walking our bikes, and we arrive at an extremely small beach
with a good view. We exchange phone numbers (I've put an african
vodacom sim card that Robbie, my mom's friend, gave me in my phone)
and make plans to go to the rocky peninsula we saw off to the right.
He heads back to work, and we have plans to see him Monday (yeah that
already happened, I'm a bit behind – that story next post) Sorry about the formatting – i dont know why my email does that. I am now too lazy to fix it. Photos coming soon.

TZ 2: settling in

2008-06-26T15:52:00.000+03:00

The house is livable, it just lacks some things, like a functional refridgerator and a mirror. The first few days were devoted to fixing the house up and getting to know Musoma. Though the fridge is still not working, someone is working on finding a replacement part and we have a freezer that doesn't freeze for the meantime. We do at least now have lights in the living room and both showers work. But that's the boring stuff. The town of musuma is close to our house and before we purchased bikes, we could walk there easily, right past the airport (4 flights per week, dirt runway). In town there are streets of little shops and a market with the food, and some of the vendors see us and immediately try to charge us 7 times what they'd charge any African, but for the most part it's relatively cheap, about 1000 Tsh (Tanzanian shillings) per dollar. I'm not even caught up yet, sorry my island vacation got me off schedule... I'll try to get pictures up at some point, but i can't do that from my iPod at this point. Let me know if there was anything interesting described that there should be a picture of.

TZ number one: flight & arrival

2008-06-23T16:40:00.000+03:00

Flying to Dar Es Salaam, the biggest city in Tanzania that used to be the capital and is now losing it to some city in the geographical center of the country, was the longest amount of time I have ever spent in an airplane over any 2 day period. After spending the morning (1:45 to 11am) in JFK international airport in NY and sleeping on the floor, we departed on the longest flight, around 11 hours. It was long, but on the best plane I've ever been in. Each normal seat (not just the first class ones) had a touch screen monitor on which we could watch movies and TV shows on demand and play their library of music and games. I did take advantage of the movies and tv shows but I had my own music and didn't like the game controller or the games. My brother did not want that flight to end, but I was ready to be at our hotel in Dar, where we were after another 5 hour plane ride. We were in Dar for 1 day, which was enough time to get almost lost and to find the Indian ocean. The next day we arrived in Musoma. My mom has a friend here who is in the internet business - that is to say that he is the sole Internet provider around and does internet for Musoma as well as other villiages that have very little other contact with the outside world. He had Rhode (pronounced road-y because he's the driver) come get us in the truck to take us to the house we're renting. We got there and took our stuff inside, it was lacking some things but it was still quite luxurious by standards here.

Intro

2008-06-23T11:15:00.001+03:00

So I guess we got to Tanzania last Tuesday but just today (Sunday) decided to start a blog. First, as an explanation of the name of the blog, at the moment there are no plans to go to Zanzibar, an island off the east coast of TZ, but I needed someplace starting with a z in order to have an A-Z blog name, and Zanzibar is pretty close to Dar Es Salaam. More on that later.