Homestay: First three days.

We arrived in Bangata  on Sunday and were immediately given to our families. I was one of the last people matched up with my family but when I was matched up with my mamma it was like we were old friends. Greeted with hugs and kisses I walked back to our house with her hand in hand the whole way.

We got home and our home is actually really nice compared to where I thought I would be living! We don’t have any electricity and our toilet is the LITTLEST hole in the ground (Trying to poop and pee in a hole that is 3 inches wide is an acquired skill that I am still acquiring) but other than that I have my own room with a nice big bed and a mosquito net, although the only downside is it is well equipped with some BIG spiders.

In my family I have a momma, baba (dad), a baby brother named Junior who is 2, a 12 year old boy named Amon who I think is my mommas brother and a girl named Nmema who is a 16 year old girl who I think is my moms household helper, still trying to figure out everybody who comes and goes and lives at my house. My family is all super nice and I really like them but there is still a huge language barrier because I know a very limited amount of Kiswahili and the only word my momma knows is “language”. Everyday though I am learning more Kiswahili and my momma and Baba are learning more English and were communicating more and more. The last few days I wake up at around 6:30 help my momma with whatever job she is doing in the morning  (aka laundry, dishes or breakfast) then around 715 I sit down for a quick glass of tea and either a piece of white bread or some notes with a little banana and then at around 7:25 I start the 30 minutes walk to school usually accompanied by a group of school children all trying to hold my hand. At school we have Swahili until 1 with a 30 minute break for tea and then we have lunch at 1-2 then some type of discussion after that. Most days I stay at school to do homework and hang out with people or grab a beer before heading home around 5ish. Once I get home I either help momma with laundry, play with the SWARMS of neighbor kids, or take a bucket shower and then around 730ish every night I start helping momma cook dinner. Cooking dinner as you would expect is WAYYY different than in the U.S: we cook on a wood fire and the pots are supported by rocks, peel all the vegetables with knives, and pick up hot pots with our bare hands. Back home I consider myself pretty sufficient in the kitchen but here I feel like an incompetent child.  For example last night we made a dish called chips Myai which is basically peeled, cut and fried potatoes with a little egg cooked on, essentially an omelet with potatoes. In the U.S. peeling and cutting any vegetable is easy but here I thought my hands were about to fall off. Piles and piles of potatoes kept appearing on the plate and peeling them with this knife was extremely hard. They kept slipping out of my hand and shooting across the room and although my momma had not problem with it peeling it for me was a little chunk by chunk. In the time it took me to peel one my momma had peeled four. When I told her this she just laughed and told me I was doing a good job, although I think she was trying to be nice it did make me feel better about myself. 

All in all I love my family and the little boy is SOOO CUTE and its nice to have somebody on my language level. Its definitely exhausting trying to communicate and the only alone time I have all day is when I’m going to bed but so far it’s a great experience and I think its only going to get better! 

Random Pictures

Tarangeri 

Water buck, Zebras, and Wildabeasts at sunset

 My friend Bergen showing a  kid his picture

Super cute kids

The kid who would shoot his arms up at the site of his picture

Doctor on the side of the road who gave us the strange tea. 

Old Masaai Medicine man

Mazumbai

Whoever said aftrica was hot has not been here. The past few nights I have been wearing: wool socks, boxers, sweat pants, t-shirt, long sleeve shirt, long sleeve fleece, a friends puffy coat, a friends insulated rain jacket, and a make shift hat made out of my fleece vest. It also rains in the dry season as i learned when I woke up in the middle of the night to a slow drip of water on my head because I hadn't set up my rain fly well enough for a nice downpour in the middle of the night. 

Class in Mazumbai

Top ( HUGE TREE in the tropical forest)

Middle ( view from my tent at the swiss Chalet)

Bottom ( Last day "saying goodbye" to the forest on this assingment we could bring cameras and go with friends) 

Class Today consisted of  us reading an article about how to enjoy nature and then as we finished one by one we were told to walk into the forest and go wherever we wanted and do whatever we wanted the only rules being we needed to be back

around 12 and we could not bring cameras, watches, books, music or anything but ourselves. After initially falling into the river trying to jump the bank I started bush waking my way up the mountains just following my nose. It was such a cool feeling, after getting far enough up the mountain, realizing that I was completely alone in a tropical rainforest in the middle of rural Tanzania. Not going to lie it was kinda freaky. After bush waking up the mountain for probably about an hour or two stopping to swing on vines and climb trees I found a great deadish tree that went about 20 feet high with a ton of other dead branches that intertwined to make what looked like a giant bird nest. I was barely able to make it up but once I did I kicked off my shoes, took off my shirt and dosed off. I woke up a little later to birds all around me darting from nest to nest. There were so many different birds singing and because I had been still for so long they didn’t realize I was there. This was one of the best class periods ever, I mean who can say their teacher told them to walk out into the middle of a tropical forest they know nothing about and jump in puddles, swing from vines, get naked, and do whatever you want, basically our assignment was to get lost in the woods. 

Tarangeri National Park

Just got back from a week long safari in Tarangeri and Mto Wa Mbu and it was incredible. In Tarangeri we had field study in the morning, usually some sort of presentation about our field work around 12 then we got to safari and be tourists all afternoon before another lecture of some sort, dinner and bed. Our campsite was in Tarangeri and we literally had elephants, baboons, dik diks, and even lions walking through and around our campsite. It was a scary experience to wake up in the middle of the night to a lion roaring and baboons screaming in what sounded like only a few Km away. I was in birds group so before dawn we would wake up eat a piece of white bread with peanut butter and head out by 6 to do 2 hours of data collection. Although I didn’t originally want to study birds it has become in my opioon the best field study group to be in because our experts are awesome and we see so much because we get up so early. On the 3^rd day or so after getting lost trying to come back to camp we encountered what I thought at first to be a sleeping zebra but as I looked closer I noticed a exhausted mama lion and her 3 baby cubs gnawing on a leg, it was one of the coolest things I have seen yet. This kill was not even an hour old and the mom was laying on the ground in complete exhaustion while her cubs hardly noticed us because they were chowing down. Overall Tarangerie was a great National Park to visit because of all the wildlife we got to see but I have started realizing that my original idea and visualization of the African National parks is nothing what I thought it was. I though the national parks were mostly a Tanzanian in studied thing to protect wildlife but I have come to think that they are there to please tourists and give them the image of “Africa” that everybody thinks of. There are man made watering holes next to the roads and driving along the roads during our “tourist” portion of the day I couldn’t help feeling like I was in some sort of Disney land ride. After reading lots of articles and discussing Tanzanain small national parks I have come to realize they hardly benefit the local population at all and in my opinion are really there not only to conserve wildlife but more satisfy rich westerners coming to experience “Africa”.

After Tarangeri we went to a small village about an hour away called Mto Wa Mbu which literally translates to mosquito river. And although I’m a little bitten up from late night swimming in the campsites pool it was not nearly as bad as I thought. Anyways the day we got there we set up camp and then got to go on a cultural walk of the town which I think is up there on the list of best things I have done here. We walked through their rice fields and then through the little village streets visiting local artists as well as traditional banana beer brewers along the way. We visited traditional carvers and painters and watching them do their craft was so cool! But I have to say my favorite part of the trip was all the kids we got to play with along the way. They LOVED getting their pictures taken and would pose, do flips, and do anything to get it taken. After you took their pictures they loved seeing them, one little boy would get so excited  he would shoot his arms up in the air and squeel with excitement, it was one of the most adorable things I have ever seen. The next day in Mto Wa Mbu we did birds field study at lake Minyara and then I got to go on a Ethno Botoney “tour” sort of thing. We first stopped at the village doctor which was literally a man sitting on the side of the road with lots of herbs that could fix a number of ailments. We ended up getting what he called a “cocktail” of herbs and drank them in our tea later that night. I can tell definitely tell you that they aren’t some fake ground up leaves. After the village medicine man we got to go to a masaii healer and some people tried to fix some of their problems but more interesting was the construct of their boma. The medicine man had 25 wives and 50 sons of warrior age and many more girls and younger boys. This boma was HUGE!!!

Well I have to go because I’m running out of time but the semester is going great and were off to the Mozumbia forest for the next week! 

Yesterday we went to what we thought was a used clothing store but ended up being a 8 football field long flee market packed with cloths, shoes, underwear, backpacks, bedding, and everything in between. It was just me and two other girls and we were the only 'Mzungu' (white people) in the entire thing, because of this we were bombarded with guys trying to sell us everything. For just the three of us there were probably 7 or 8 guys throwing dress after dress into our arms. Needless to say it was a bit overwhelming, but afterwards were filled with adrenaline from arguing with them about the price for the last 10 minutes. I can safely say we conquered bargaining at an authentic Tanzanian flee market.

This is a dola dola with a normal amount of people in it....not nearly maximum capacity though. Last night for a friends 21rst we rented out a whole dola dola and fit 25 people in it. 

 Hanging out the window for more space!

On the way home it was rush hour and instead of using the main road our dola dola swerved in and out of the back streets and driving into oncoming traffic to bypass lines of traffic. Everyday I get more and more amazed at the lack of driving laws, but like i said before at times I feel safer driving here than in the U.S.

Tomorrow were off to Tarangeri for a week and then maybe back in Arushu for a day then off to Mozambi mountains so I don't know when I'll get to blog again so Kwa Heri for now!

A women carrying bananas on her head right outside our hotel

Walmart is taking over!

The street we walk down to get to the SIT office is covered with gardens and nurseries. 

Pictures from the first week

 Tent Town at Udarakwaii Ranch 

Sun setting over Mt. Meru

Eating ugali and drinking Tanzanian beers with Onesmo one of our Masaii teachers.

Onesmo at the Masaii Boma 

Masaii Women singing to us with their jewlery hanging on the thorns behind them. 

Masaii women with their kids wrapped on their backs.

 The group of us after church

 Bathroom in the Bush

 Massai children playing with a glass bottle

 Women selling avacados on the street. 

Klub Africo

HatuJamobo!

In the last few days we have been learning LOADS of Swahili and already whether its on the 'dola dola' or the streets of Tanzania I have been able to make my way around and even carry on conversations with the local people. Although yesterday we were in a group with 3 boys and two girls and I'm pretty sure I was asked to marry the guy we were talking to. My friend Bergen started talking to him and then he grabbed my hand and was pointing to his heart and all the girls in the shop were giggling at me because I didn't know what the heck he was saying! This kept going on for a few minutes until he realized we had no idea what he was trying to say to me. Many interactions like this happen but for the most part whenever we are traveling with boys people ask if we are their girlfriendS (notice girlfriends is plural), when we say Hapana (no) they give us a very surprised look.

other than that we are now staying at a place called Klub Africa. We rented out the whole hotel which consists of 7 huts, a place to eat and a bar. Everyday we have been taking 4 hours of Swahili in the morning and then are set free to get our own food and do whatever we want the rest of the day. It is a really big reality check stepping out onto the street from the hotel and seeing the drastic change from the place we are staying where more wealthy Tanzanians come to being in a relatively poor neighborhood. You see children as young as 2 just wandering around outside of their "houses" or playing with a stick and ball or even glass bottles sometimes. Talking to the little kids is my favorite because when you say "mambo" which is whats up, you see their faces light up as they say "pao" (its cool). Sometimes they even come over and bow their head at you waiting for a blessing which is very humbling.

 At night after the nightly discussion about different readings we eat dinner do homework and then sorry mom and dad but spend a little time at the bar playing pool and trying all the different kinds of Tanzanian beers, which are delicious! We have met lots of different characters at the bar and for the most part Tazanians come up to us constantly wanting to talk and ask about the politics of the United States. Sadly I think the majority of Tanzanians are more up to date with American politics than the majority of our country is. They are very interested in our views and what we think of Obama.

I'm Still Alive!

After a week in Tanzania I can already tell its going to be hard to come home. Everything about this country from the people, the language, the food and the landscape I absolutely love! We are finally in Arushu and even after a week SOOOO much has happened so I'm going to try and give you an idea of the chaos, adventure and allure of Tanzania. Also sorry if this is jumbled and doesn't make sense, its hard to organize all my thoughts in only 30 minutes.

After 24 hours of traveling we landed in Tanzania and were all corralled into 5 Safari cars and driven into the middle of the African bush where we set up camp in the dark and ate our first amazing Tanzanian meal. That first day was a crazy whirlwind of meeting new people, sleep depravation, small talk, new places and constant action, and trying to figure out how to put my tent together in the dark (it only had one pole...) The first full day we woke up at dawn (aka 7am aka 1 o'clock tanzanian time) ate some breakfast and went on a hike in the bush. It was really interesting to be hiking and have a guard with a huge gun at his side. Already by the first full day we had seen zebras, monkeys, wildebeests, giraffes, and elephants.

On the second day it was pretty similar to our first day but we started Kiswahili lessons and I love the language. At this point in the trip after only a few lessons I can already have simple conversations with people and make my way around town! I have definitely made a few mistakes but people here always correct which is super nice. For example when you great an elder you say Shikamoo, which literally means may I hold your feet, as a sign of respect before you carry on the conversation. So to follow Tanzanian culture I went up to great one of my new teachers and tried to greet him in a respectful way but instead I accidentally said Shikambo...it means "may I hold your penis", needless to say when i realized what I had done I was completely mortified. But on the bright side I have Shikamoo DOWN! Never making that mistake again.

On Sunday we were able to go to a villages church service and it was one of the most amazing experiences I have had, and one I will never forget. The whole service was full of music and dancing and watching the men and women sing full blown and dance was so powerful. There were masaii as well as regular village folk but everybody was so respectful of everybody else and you could tell there was a very strong sense of community there. One of the biggest differences besides the singing and dancing was at the end of the service there was an auction to auction of goods given by families who couldn't afford to give actual money for the church. After the service everybody filed out of the church and the Priest begin to yell out numbers and auction off eggs, nuts, and other little crafts. After that we hung out with all the people and practiced our greetings and learned new dances from all the kids (who are SO FREAKING CUTE!) After church we went to a little meat roaster and had our first experience with completely authentic Tanzanian food and beer.

On tuesday were able to go to a Masaii Boma which is part of a village but only about two families (aka two husbands) are in one boma but there are still lots of women and children. When we got there the massaii women put their jewelry on the thorny bushes and we were able to buy one or two pieces off of them. It was a little awkward at first and so incredible different from anything I have ever known but it got me extremely excited for our home-stay. Whenever we would take pictures the kids and women loved looking at the picture we took. After that we split up into groups and got to actually go inside the mud/poop/pee hut and talk with the mama. Our mama had three kids already and couldn't be over 25, but she was super funny and seemingly happy and care free. The house was way more extensive then I had imagined and they said it takes about 3 or 4 months to make depending on how well liked they are in the village and how many people will help them.

We got into Arushu last night and it has been a little overwhelming but mostly so awesome! we are staying at the Klub Africa which is a little hotel but each room is its own little hut. The first day in town we packed 6 people into a little taxi and road 10 minutes into town, paying 60 cents each. People kept pestering us constantly to buy stuff and I got really good at saying Hapala! (no) We got some food in this bar where the polite thing to do is just go sit where there are empty seats so we sat down with two tanzanians and started talking to them while eating some great food. On the way home we took the dolla dolla which is this van that pulls over on the side of the road, you jump on, and then drive off taking all of about 30 seconds. The dolla dolla is about 10 cents a ride and its motto is there is always room for one more person! They definitely stick to that motto and during rush hour i was sitting on multiple random Tanzanians lap, swerving in and out of rush hour traffic. It is quite the experience, and one that I LOVE!

Basically I love it here and can already tell that going home is going to be hard. Everything about this country I have fallen in love with and the people are so incredibly friendly and love talking with us in Kiswahili. I don't have pictures off my camera yet but as soon as I can I will put up some pictures!

Kwa heri!