A Mount Meru of a Climb

People use the simile, “life is like a rollercoaster” to explain the ups and downs in life. To be honest, I think it’s pretty great and most of the time very accurate, but I’d rather compare my time in TZ to my recent summit of Mount Meru. Mount Meru is the second tallest mountain in Tanzania, it has been something I have been able to see from almost every location I have stayed in Tanzania, and is just shy of 15,000 feet.

 It was a last minute decision to climb the mountain but I am so glad that I did. It felt great to be at that height, seeing the world from a place few people get to see it. Meru certainly has been an impressive figure leering down upon all of us students the last few months. And it is great to be able to look at it from the rooftop of the hotel and say I’ve been up there. The climb took three days. The first day we took a few hours to get to get from 1500 meters to 2500, the second day we climbed up to 3500 meters and then did a mini hike to mini meru at 3820 meters. I am aware the conversions can be confusing, but please stick with me! There were all different kinds of scenery to look at, we passed quite a few animals, arrived above the cloud level and saw the most breathtaking views of Mt. Kilimanjaro. It was amazing to think about how incredible earth is and all of its incredible natural features. Futhermore, only a few of us suffered from altitude sickness. The last day or morning rather, we started our climb at 1:00a.m. to get to the summit of 4,266m. We arrived by sunrise, and although I didn't actually believe anyone, there was snow and ice at the top! Also, I do not know how I would have survived without walking poles. Then we spent the rest of the day until about 5:00p.m. climbing down the entire mountain, without a doubt, that last day was a bit exhausting. 

I stayed positive the whole way but it was definitely a toll on my mental and physical capabilities nearing the summit. There were the most beautiful sights along the way and at the top, and at the best parts, it was absolutely breathtaking. There was a lot of zigzagging throughout the ascension and throughout our journey to the bottom and our bodies were riddled with fatigue. This is how my time in Tanzania has been, absolutely incredible, it is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been, it has made me think, and at the best times, it takes my breath away. There has been zigzagging, and as I near the end, there has been a bit of fatigue.  

I will give one example of my past week of a Tanzania frustration and something that contributes to the fatigue. I had an oral Swahili exam, and I had to write my Independent Study Project report and present it to my teacher and the rest of the students. Finals week is something that I am very familiar with and can do, no question. But trying to find sources in a place where internet is unreliable can be incredibly defeating. Also, printing a paper which should take less than 5 minutes took me more than two and half hours. First of all, finding a place that prints in color is a trek and every time a male walked into the café, I was forgotten about. Less obvious sexism and efficiency is something I miss. But I must say I’m lucky, I presented first and got it out of the way, and am feeling okay as other students suffer from a variety of illnesses. 

Regardless of certain frustrations, I have enjoyed my semester in Tanzania for a number of reasons. It has challenged me to look at who I am as a person and how I fit in within the rest of the world. It made me question most of the things that I know and understand to be unchanging and completely altered my opinion on them. It has made me uneasy at times, unmatchingly happy, resentful, and thankful and it has allowed me to encounter people I am so glad to have met. I am a little terrified to see what happens as I clumsily try and reorientate myself to the American lifestyle…wish me luck!

I have not included every small thing on this blog, there are a number of instances that are hard to put in words, there are some really awkward encounters, and there are things I know people do not care to read about. But if you are one of those people who are interested, I’d be happy to talk about it.

Nimefurahi Sana.

The title of this blog post states "I am very happy." It is also long overdue, I had typed it while I was on the coast working on my independent study project but found that all internet nearby where we were staying was down and I have added fun and not fun things from the whole experience:

One of the things I love about Swahili is that you can say exactly how you are feeling but it manages to make it sound that much better. One of my favorite greetings that people ask “Umeshindaje?” probes to how one has conquered their day… to which the answer is typically “Salama, kabisa” or 'completely peacefully'. Anyways, it is a great way to explain how I have felt the last week and also a way that I would describe Africa as a whole as I realize I have less than a month left on this program.

My last week has been spent on Ushongo Beach, it is the most beautiful place, I wish everyone could see it and be as peaceful as I am. Well, except for the whole Independent Study Project that I am conducting here. Although it may not sound exhausting conducting interviews in another language, it can actually be quite tiring, even with the help of a translator. I have learned really interesting things about changes in the village since tourism has arrived and what the desired direction for tourism is for the villagers. None of my predictions have really came true, which tells you how well I thought I knew this place. Also, the food is incredible, I thought by now I would be tired of beans and rice, but having great parachichi (avocado) and nazi (coconut nothing to do with Hitler) to go with it, makes it taste like a new dish. Nevertheless, I have never felt more welcome walking into people’s homes and asking them questions or for food, I think the people may be the nicest I have encountered in my lifetime.

Great things:

Snorkeling

Swimming

Running on the Beach

Talking to villagers and the food

SEEING 74 SEA TURTLES HATCH (so cute)

Hanging out with the coastal crew (8 of us)

Deep conversations with my translator

The stars

The crabs that cover the beach at night that are funny to watch

Chumvi- our coastal kitten

Going to the school and teaching them about sea turtles, coastal reefs, fish, and trash

Dancing at the club in a nearby village owned by the owner of where we stayed

Not so great:

The girls that are studying the outer reef suffering from jellyfish stings

The tsunami warning

Swimming in my tent one night when it rains

Mosquitoes

The salt water helping things heal but helping to infect others wounds, two people got ring worm, and there were a few hospital trips

It may sound unpleasant at times but I love the coast and I loved conducting my own study there. It could be hard to get motivated with the beach trying to steal your attention but I got the data I needed. Then, it was a long rainy travel day back to Arusha to write my ISP report.

Crater Wildlife Cowskin Riverbed

All I can say is that for the last two weeks, I wish you could have been me.

Although they were two of the coolest and most exciting weeks I’ve had they were also very challenging. There was a lot of traveling but we got to Ngorongoro Crater and it was incredible. I’ve never seen so many wild animals, the crater is a bowl about 12 to 19 km across (the diameter in different areas) and it is packed with animals…and tourists. We had no trouble seeing lions, zebras, wildebeest, we also saw black rhinos (which have become extinct almost everywhere else) here were eland, hardebeest, giraffes, and we spent some time looking for leopards but hadn’t had success. The Big 5 are lions, leopards, rhinos, elephants and cape buffalo. In that one afternoon we saw 4 of the 5 and I was dying to see a leopard. We also got to see some lionesses hunting but once she was upwind of the zebras, the smelled her and moved away.



The Serengeti was equally as incredible, it was a much larger area but it was also packed with animals, we saw some smaller ones like Jackals, rock hyrax, but we also saw leopards, too many lions to count, a ton of cheetahs and many of the other animals that we had seen. We had birds to study in the morning but we could be tourists in the afternoon. That week may not sound like it was very difficult because it was so cool but my thoughts about the tourist industry in Tanzania and wildlife conservation have drastically been altered since I have been here. Where I really didn’t have much to say about it at first, now I know how little of the money from tourism goes to Tanzania itself and only the building of the Serengeti Road (that will go right through the park itself) will benefit Tanzania although it will also cause a number of ecological problems. So being a tourist and representing the industry has become harder to do, nevertheless, seeing so many animals is addicting. Wildlife conservation is something I support, but my ideas have also changed regarding this topic. National Parks are closed areas that keep out the local people, these people were displaced when the parks were created and land for their livestock to graze on is shrinking. Furthermore, even though a lot of populations of animals are thriving, others are nearly extinct, for example, rhino populations have declined significantly (there are maybe 12-20 of them left), and although they may not survive in areas populated with people, the parks aren’t necessarily helping them either.



I am not trying to be a downer because I absolutely love seeing the animals and studying them, but I’ve also learned a lot about the negatives of tourism and tourism in these National Parks. There is a lot more to it but I will leave it at that.



My second week we spent a night in Wasso so that we didn’t have to camp for a night, then we headed to Maasailand for our Maasai homestay. We spent three nights and four days with our Maasai families, it was very interesting but I am very glad that we did it. We met our mamas in the square and had someone translate our specific issues (if we were going to be taking out contacts- very confusing to them, if you were vegetarian or lactose and tolerant, etc). Then we all went to our different homes or ebomas. A eboma is both the hut that one family lives in made of sticks and cow dung and also the area that many wives of one man lives in. Each eboma has its own cows and goats which determines their wealth. My family redressed me the moment that I got to the boma, in four cloths and then decked me out in pounds of jewelry. I spent most of my time with my 12 year old sister Koyeni and the other children that ran round the area. We spent time gathering water, making jewelry, fetching firewood, resting, going into town and meeting people and we got to go to sotos at night (or the dances that you may have heard about). What I can say about my family, is that they are some of the nicest people I know, they let me help them make some good food and they were always concerned with how I was doing. The sun was very hot and we all had many layers on. I had trouble communicating sometimes, although my sister and mom spoke a lot of Swahili their first language is Kimaasai and so that was sometimes difficult. Respect dynamics are interesting because men are very important in society, we had to bow down to them, and men of most ages are more important than almost all ages of women. Furthermore, there is an interesting relationship between warriors and girls under the age of 14 that are uncircumcised. Feel free to ask me more details about that if you are interested.



I really loved it, maybe more than my other homestay, but what was hard was sleeping in the eboma at night. It was very hot (the house has two small windows that you can’t fit your hand through) and you sleep with most of your family. I asked to sleep outside the next two nights and they graciously moved the layer of cowskin outside for us all to sleep on. It was cooler and you got to watch the stars and the sunrise. The stars were incredible, there were few trees so thousands of stars would go all the way down to the horizon. The other thing I struggled with was the idea of community. For the maasai, everything is everyone, so I came with a little bag of my stuff, camera, headlamp, water and although it was my personal stuff everyone had access to it because personal items and personal space are not really things that they concern themselves with. Nevertheless my family visited me two days after when we were at camp after that to say hello. But they also wanted me to buy most of the jewelry that I had been wearing…. It is difficult to bargain with your family and I definitely paid extra.



After that we spent the next two days before heading to Arusha hiking to waterfalls. One day we even hiked a few hours each way to the source of the river for Maasailand that runs into Lake Natron, and found ourselves in a large open area with the Great Rift Valley rock walls so far up around us with water coming through the wall from underground rivers. Too cool to explain. We also celebrated our academic directors birthday by slaughtering a goat and having a little party.



It was a great two weeks, I really loved everything we did but I found myself analyzing the things that I had seen and struggled with some of the differences between Maasai and American culture. Feel free to ask me more about it at some point there are so many other things I could say. Once again, I am not trying to bring down the mood because it is so fun to be here but every reality I encounter is not the easiest to digest.



We have finals week in Arusha right now, papers and presentations and getting ready for our Independent Study Projects. I promise I’ll keep the details of the rest of my stay lighter hearted! Hope all is well with you!

"Witty Title"

It’s been awhile since I’ve been able to blog. We had midterms the last week of home stay, there was also a home stay party and figuring out what I was going to do for ISP prep days (the week that we go to the site where we will conduct our independent study project to make sure everything will work out). My home stay was a learning experience, although I believe that I made connections on personal levels, I think the presence of SIT students in Bangata is negative. As a result, analyzing why I am here in Tanzania and what it means looks different than it did before when our group was just on safari. To quote another SIT student's blog, my friend Chloe,

“Bangata is a very fortunate community in most respects. Situated up on the slopes of Mt. Meru, it has plentiful water, good agricultural land, and it’s only about an hour (road conditions permitting) outside of Arusha. These people are doing well for themselves, and they don’t need or want our sympathy. But there is still no denying that this is a very different standard of living, and post-colonial Africa is used to looking for foreigners for gifts and aid. And most aid doesn’t work. I’m not a cynical person, but most of our readings, discussions, and observations suggest that foreign aid is a guilt-fuelled commodity to maintain the status quo. And by coming here – just by being here – we are legitimizing this system. Even as we learn the language, customs, greetings, and dress appropriately, we are inescapably wazungu (white people, European) and we are promoting Westernized lifestyles, fuelling what is, realistically, an unattainable desire.”

It may sound negative but our presence is perhaps not the most positive thing for the village as a whole, nevertheless, I am glad that it happened, regardless of what it means.

As soon as we left home stay there was a lot to do, it was a sort of a last minute decision but I decided to go to the coastal village of Ushongo, which is right on the Indian Ocean.

Travel: 

·         8 hour bus ride from Arusha to Tanga: 14,500 tsh

·    1.5 hour dala dala ride from Tanga to Pangani: 3,000 tsh

·         5 minute ferry ride across the Pangani River: 200 tsh

·         1 hour taxi ride to Ushongo: 6,000 tsh

These rates are per person (there are 9 of us on the coast) and our travel budget is 20,000 tsh… so we went a little over, but we were able to make all the prices much cheaper on the way back.

We camped out on the beach in front of a hotel, merely meters or feet from the water itself (especially during high tide), the Indian Ocean is beautiful and it was great to relax and get a chance to see what I would be able to do on the coast. The villagers were very welcoming, Ushongo has about 700 people in it but there is a area that has more tourists called Ushongo Mtoni (named after the river) which is where I will be interviewing the locals about their perspectives of tourism and finding out what direction they want their town to go in. The area has become more of a tourist area within the last 12 years, attractions include:

-snorkeling

-fishing

-swimming in the Indian Ocean

-cultural tours

-horseback riding on the beach

-seeing sea turtle eggs hatch (April 25, I can’t wait)

-diving… and more

And the dynamic between the local people and the tourists was not expected., more harmonious than I would have guessed. Before we got there I wanted to study perspectives of tourism and then after interacting with the local people, I only want to study it even more.

The food was good, we went to homes in the area and had mamas make us food, mostly local, chapati and beans, and very very fresh fish, rice and veggies. The hotels had food but it was out of our budget. Either way, I found a translator that will help me interview 1/6 of the town, and I should be able to complete my ISP in enough time. The next two weeks are for the Serengeti, the Ngorogoro Crater, Lake Natron and our Maasai Homestay.

Wishing Cute Dogs Didn't Have Rabies

It’s been one and a half weeks at homestay. Things have been going really well. Every once in awhile I get frustrated by the miscommunication and I wish I could ask my family deeper questions about their lives but sometimes I can only scrape the surface. Also over the weekend it was a free weekend with our family and I did some data collecting for our midterms but also found myself yearning to speak to someone in English.

Some homestay highlights:

-          I really enjoy learning Swahili in my classes, I’ve always enjoyed learning languages and this may be the easiest one (very few rule exceptions)
-          When my mama told someone “Yeye si mzungu, jina lake Jennifer” or in other words “she isn’t just a white person, her name is Jenny”
-          Going on walks with my little brother Ema, and one of the local kids named mika, playing with bubbles and making random sounds
-          Making Tanzanian-flag colored bracelets with my sister Suzie and having her do my hair in cornrows (but it was tight and I took them out)
-          Watching very strange soap operas (on a TV) and laughing with my family
-          Trying to help cook but it’s different trying to things over the fire and over a gas tank (and then getting bumped to sweeping and cleaning the floor duty)
-          Trying to learn the name of foods and sometimes saying inappropriate words instead
-          Getting downtime at the center where we learn Swahili and playing soccer and Frisbee with other students, and finding some time to read
-seeing cute homestay puppies and wanting to pet them but avoiding them because they could have rabies

A few downsides:

-the bathroom
-the miscommunication with the family
-thinking I had appendicitis and trying to figure out who could take me to the hospital a country away because Tanzanian can’t do internal diagnosis (false alarm, I felt better after the day)
-somehow managing never to get enough sleep
- the roof leaking onto my things when it rains
-handwashing my clothes in the river when the spigot stopped producing water and having my mom take over because I still don’t do a good job

Although there may seem to be a lot of downsides, I would say overall the experience is so positive. We are finally interacting with Tanzanians regularly (I don’t count Safari) and I really feel like I’m being shown Tanzanian culture every moment. I’ve truly been analyzing why I’m here and putting things into perspective much more efficiently. We have midterms next week and I have lots to do. I am thinking I may even put clips of my papers on here if it helps explain how I am feeling effectively. I’m hoping for a great rest of my time at homestay, no more sickness and picking out great gifts to give my family upon my departure. Hope all is well with those who are reading this! 

The Death of Three Alarm Clocks

I'll start by saying that of the three alarm clocks purchased for this trip, none of them have survived. The one that I got in America before I left stopped working in the airport, the one I got during my Amsterdam layover broke within the first week and a half and the most recent alarm clock purchased in Arusha in Tanzania fell on the floor and shattered to a point I could not fix.

I would not mind so much if I didn't feel as though I had to wake up at 5:00a.m. with my homestay mother to manage the cows and clean. Nevertheless, I have decided to use the option that makes the most sense, and use my pay-as-you-go-phone as an alarm.

Today is my fourth day of homestay. It goes well. I have a homestay Mama, a 20 year old sister Jackline, a 15 year old sister Susan, and a 11 year old brother Emmanuel. There is another teenager that was living with us, her name was Aisha, but Aisha and Jackline left this morning for Nairobi. There are also a number of other children from the area that hang around and many other mamas and their babies that come around during the day.

One thing I was not expecting was that our house has electricity, although it turns on and off throughout the day, and during rainstorms (which happen frequently in Bangata, where we are staying). Although it is not very reliable, there is a TV and my first afternoon, I watched a lot of Tanzanian music videos. I have my own room, the others share the other two rooms. There is a bathroom hut, which has dirt floors and a hole, and when I looked to closely I noticed the walls were lined with moth-like flies. So I have stopped looking, and although it sounds bad, it really isn't the worse thing in the world.

As mentioned before, I get up early in the morning to try and help out the family with cleaning and do cow business. I tried milking the cow yesterday but I was quickly shooed out of the way for my failed attempt. We eat Tanzanian cuisine such as chapati and rice and beans and ugali (eaten with your hands) and I have not gone hungry yet. Although breakfast is just tea.

Jackline speaks a little English but rarely understand me when I speak. I do a lot of motioning with my hands. Although we have Swahili classes everyday, and my Swahili is improving, there is definitely still miscommunication. I've made friends with a few of the local kids because they love to play frisbee with my custom-made one from Illinois Wesleyan. My walk to school is about twenty minutes uphill and I get easily lost (no road signs), if my homestay brother can't walk with me, these other kids will help me get there.

Interestingly enough, this family has had SIT students before, they have a lot to teach me and I believe I can still teach them a few things about American culture or at least about myself. I feel as though I'm actually spending times with Tanzanians because on Safari we are surrounded by other American kids and our camp crew that speaks English.My family is warm and welcoming and I believe the next three weeks will go smoothly. I will try and update this the next time I get to Arusha!

A Cheetah, Hippos, and Bird Poop

We just spent the last week in Tarangire National Park and then Mto Wa Mbu which is in a tourist town. We stayed at the public campsite in Tarangire and we had visitors throughout the week. We broke up our half of the group into three teams there was a non-ruminants, ruminants and a bird group. This described the animals that we would be watching in the mornings. In the afternoons, we had presentations, reading to do and then around four we got to be tourists and go on game drives in Tarangire and then at Lake Manyara. We even got to swim in the pool at Tarangire Lodge.

Highlights:
-seeing a tortoise, then fitting a bunch of us into a tree an elephant had devoured a hole into, and then having it rain in Africa for us for the first time (and as we all started dancing in the rain and tour guides started to look at us like we were crazy wazungu (white people))
-seeing a cheetah in Tarangire a few feet away and hippos at Lake Manyara
-as always, watching the sunrise and sunset (but my group had to get up early to watch birds and were up an hour before the sunrise)
-studying birds and identifying over 100 different species with the help of an expert
-bargaining relatively successfully for some paintings and carvings as souveniers/ gifts

-swimming in the pool in Mto Wa Mbu and coming back and swimming at night after going to the ‘disco’

-getting my fortune read by a Maasai spiritual healer: who had over 25 wives and more than 100 children and grandchildren

Not so fun moments:

-getting attacked by tsetse flies
-birds pooping all over my rainfly in the second campsite and having no way to clean it

Pictures will be coming soon, I hope. Also, I hope I’m doing a good job giving my two cents about the trip. The journal I’m keeping is getting every tiny detail and I don’t want to overload the blog. So I hope that this explains the trip well since I don’t have access to electricity or internet very often.

Moving into my homestay for three weeks the day after tomorrow! Wish me luck.