day camp, safari, and other fun

I had written a really stellar entry at my house on my laptop and then put it on my memory stick to throw online once I got to an internet café, but this computer is not allowing that. So I will do my best to go over everything…

The past few days have been a rollercoaster emotion-wise…but I <333 rollercoasters. We are having a graduation ceremony this coming Saturday to end our day camp at Enyoito. Many of the kids are preparing songs/skits/etc. to perform for their fellow students and their families, so it should be amusing. My dada Rachel is coming too I think, so that will be nice :) Clare is my fellow volunteer teacher, and she is super fun and energetic! One of my students, Daniel, informed me on our walk down the hill from school this afternoon that she and I are now in a Swahili learning competition, so I need to go home and practice with my dadas tonight! The Tanzanian counterpart (translator) for our classroom is Aggrey, and he is a star. He is seriously my favorite person here. He loves hip-hop, has great English and helps me with Swahili, we can joke around together, and today I introduced him to Miley Cyrus…and he loved her!!

Last Saturday, I went with the other 14 GSC volunteers in my group on our pre-paid (included in the ridiculously high program fees) safari. This means that the Kellogg Institute actually paid for it, score. We went to Lake Manyara, which was sooo awesome. They call it Tanzania’s most underrated park, and now I understand why. We saw a ton of animals: baboons, simbas, blue monkeys, twige, impala, tembo, flamingos, dik dik, vervet monkeys, wildebeest, water buffalo, warthogs, hippos, banded mongoose, and zebras, not to mention a plethora of beautiful African birds. We saw 3 lions in total, and one was UP IN A TREE. This park is the only place in the world where the simbas climb trees, and we actually saw one! Poa kachizi. Sunday was the weirdest/worst experience I have had in TZ yet. Four of us volunteers decided to try to go to the snake park which is about 25 km out of town, but on one of the dala dala routes. To make a long story short, it turned out that we got on the right one but going in the opposite direction, and we ended up in a situation where I think the conductor saw an opportunity to rob us, so got everyone else off the dala and a group of his friends on. Then they were refusing to let us off, claiming that they could not speak English and hence did not know what we were asking for once we decided we just wanted to leave. Luckily one of the girls is bigger and was able to just barrel past all of the guys and more or less force the driver to stop. She then got off, but the guys were still trying to hold the rest of us back…I literally had to pry a set of their hands off one of my friends. We got off in town and everything turned out completely fine, but it was just a really bad situation. What was really unsettling is that the dala dala is the public transport system here, and no one had ever warned us that it could be dangerous…I think it was that they knew we did not have a clear idea of where we were going coupled with the fact that it is now “high season” for tourists, so people are more ready to rip foreigners off because they think they can get away with it. Going home to my family here everyday though is great! Rachel and Durcas always greet me with huge hugs, and I have been having good conversations with Irene and her friend Nora lately too. They are 16 and 15, respectively, so I have been getting a lot of their perceptions about HIV/AIDS and gender roles in these informal convos that I can use for my anthro research, yay! Also, they are all just great fun, and in some ways remind me a lot of my family at home. For example, my mama here often randomly bursts out into song, and then all of the kids start laughing...which is definitely something that my mom does and then we all tease her. And my baba has been running around in bright orange swimming trunks lately...which my dad at home does, although that makes more sense considering we live on a lake, lol. And last night before dinner, my youngest dada tried to say grace but then said something ridiculous, and we were all laughing for a good 5 minutes before we actually said prayers. They all make me feel really comfortable. Yesterday Rachel and Durcas went to a friend’s house to borrow some movies, and came home with “Baby’s Day Out”, “Crazy Hong Kong”, and “Daddy Day Care.” Last night we watched Baby’s Day Out before dinner, then I tried to watch Crazy Hong Kong with them after dinner, but I seriously could not handle it. It was about an African bushman who gets transported to Hong Kong in a commercial director’s luggage accidentally…but it is one of those extremely poorly done B-grade movies. Eeek. Plus I have a hard enough time staying up as late as my siblings…they stay up until 11:30 or midnight every night and are up before 6:30. Normally I could totally handle that, but with all of the walking and constant hassling, I am exhausted by 10.

The food here is good, but I would never eat any of it outside of Africa. The really yummy stuff is extremely greasy and I would not choose to eat it. Since my family puts it in front of me though, obviously I do :) The healthy stuff is good-tasting, but I can think of a lot of other things that I would rather eat than rice and beans, no matter how well it is prepared. So I will just enjoy the Tanzanian food while I am here, and not attempt to learn how to make any of it. They do not snack or have dessert here…actually, dessert after dinner every night is water. For real. The fact that they fry everything more than makes up for this though. My breakfast each morning is literally a pile of carbs, haha. Good thing I just told my family straight-up that I am a vegetarian though, because the meat here is nasty. Even my fellow volunteers who love meat in the states are not fans of it here.

I asked for my rubbers back this morning (tennis shoes) because my family had cleaned them for me, and they were the cleanest they have been since I first got them I think. Now they are already dirty again because of all the mud this a.m. :( Also they did some of my laundry last week (actually the cousin, Erick, did the laundry which was cool), and then they ironed everything! My jeans had never looked that stellar…my family in the states gets out the iron maybe twice a year.

The rest of this week should fly by, and then next week we are doing a mini day camp for street children in Arusha or else are doing peer-educator camp for the select kids from the current day camps we are running to learn how to facilitate health clubs in their school for the coming academic year. I will try to put up my address here in Arusha tomorrow, pole to everyone who has been asking for it…I keep forgetting to bring it with me to the internet!