It’s Been THREE Weeks…
And I still haven’t updated my blog. I’m currently sitting in an internet cafe in town about to leave for SAFARI to Tarangire National Park tomorrow. I guess that I should start at the beginning though…
My first week in Tanzania, our Academic Director (AD) for the program picked all 28 of us up from Kilimanjaro Airport and whisked us away to Ndarakwai Ranch near the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro (with a view of Mt. Meru too). The first 5 or 6 days we spent camping, participating in orientation, and basically just watching zebras, elephants, giraffes, and impalas wandering around our campground. The food was amazing, we had a campcrew that cooked all of our meals and boiled water for drinking. We learned a little bit of very basic swahili, which didn’t exactly come in handy when we were abruptly dropped off in the streets of Arusha (a large tourist town full of all the jewelry-selling friendly men that prey on mzungu). Oh, by the way, my new name HAS become “mzungu,” which is what Tanzanians call white people, or any people that aren’t African. The nice thing about Arusha, though was our hotel—Club Afriko. Four of us in an individual little tiki hut and delicious cuisine.
After two nights here, we went to Bangata, a peri-urban community of Arusha, for the homestay portion of the program. In my homestay family, I have a Momma, Baba (dad), a 2 year-old brother, a 7 year-old brother, and a 9 year-old sister. We also have five cows, three goats, and 20 chickens. The house has a beautiful garden (pictures to come later), electricity (most days of the week), and a nice drop toilet in the backyard. I’m not going to lie, the first weekend of homestay was really awkward because the fam doesn’t really speak English (and at this point I literally spoke NO kiswahili), and Baba who does speak English was away on business (he is a vet). But during the weeks we went to Mama Nunu’s, which is like a little compound with classrooms and we learned Kiswahili for most of the day. Here’s a little schedule of our Monday through Fridays:
8:30am -10:30 am Kiswahili
10:30am-11:00am CHAI (which means tea)
11:00am-1pm Kiswahili
1pm-2pm Lunch (chakula cha mchana)
2pm-4pm Various lectures or freetime
4pm-4:30 CHAI again
4:30 Return Home to study
6pm-8:30pm Help Momma Cook (which consists of another outdoor room with a fire-ring type thing to put pots on)
8:30pm-9pm Eat Dinner
Then Sleep
I don’t really have much time right now, but basically now you know my entire schedule…Anyways we left Bangata this morning and will go back in a week after our safari. I’ll add safari pictures in a week and write some ancedotes soon too!
I leave in less than 48 hours!
Currently I am sitting in a disheveled room with laundry to wash, things to buy, and 4 months worth of things to stuff into a small (ok I guess it is pretty large) backpack. I leave for Tanzania in less than TWO DAYS. I’ve created this blog to keep contact with you all (friends and family), and to assure you that not matter what people have warned you about Africa, I have not (yet) been A) mamed by a lion, B) contracted malaria, or C) run off with a local villager (surprisingly some people have warned me about this).
I’ll be in Tanzania for almost 4 months, studying “Wildlife Ecology and Conservation.” I’ll have pretty limited access to the internet, but I will try to write as often as possible and offer entertaining anecdotes, which I’m sure I will have PLENTY of (I tend to attract very odd behaving people). I just googled “swahili” because I wanted to learn how to say goodbye so that I could have a super cute sign-off signature each time and the first thing it pulled up was Tafadhali nataka bia barid. This means “I’d like a cold beer.” I like Tanzania already.
Kwaheri rafiki!
PS- Contrary to popular belief, rafiki does not in fact mean monkey, as one would naturally assume given the lovely character of the same name in the Lion King, it means “friend.” And kwaheri means goodbye.
Also, I CAN’T WAIT TO SAY HAKUNA MATATA.
