A continuation of Tanga/Pangani

So, now that I have power back, a few days later, I can finish the Tanga/Pangani story.

(Thanks, Dad, for the mosquito net which obviously came in handy.)

So we took this terrible room at the Kola Prieto, for Tsh. 25,000. A man showed us from the front desk back to the room we paid for, and another man followed behind us with a can of insecticide. Insecticide man signaled for us to place our bags down in the room and to get out. So we put our bags down and stepped out of the room, leaving the door open a crack so that we could see what was going on. Insecticide man sprayed the perimeters and told us to come back in. He left, we examined the aftereffects. There was a cockroach, belly-up on the bathroom floor, and another small roachlike insect belly up on the carpet in the middle of the room. Neato! So we pay for a middle range hotel room and we get two dead roommates upon arrival. And no mosquito net. And we now have to breathe in the remnants of half a can of insecticide for the rest of the night. Sweet.

At this particular moment, we decided that we really needed to head downstairs to the hotel’s restaurant for some dinner and beer. Alcohol was absolutely a necessary component, to numb the blow of this evening. But, the Kola Prieto does not serve alcohol! Nor do they cook fresh food. Everything available was lined up on a disgusting buffet counter in shockingly shiny silver serving containers. We left immediately, and asked the woman at the front desk to point us toward some beer. We asked something like, “Restaurant ya bia, iko wapi?” which vaguely (and entirely incorrectly composed) translates to, “Restaurant of beer, where is it?” Limited vocabulary in ki Swahili gets me lots of laughs. At least somebody thinks I’m a comedian.

So we were directed to the Coffee Tree Bar and Restaurant, down the street from the lovely Kola. It was dark out, but the restaurant in question was well lit and in visibly close proximity, so we braved it. We sat at the restaurant with some little fly friends buzzing in and out of our company, while our server (the first of three that evening) attempted to understand our incredibly broken ki Swahili. She was not appreciative of my order for ugali and mchichi (greens), and after a willing translator came by to communicate for us, I learned that this was because there were no greens or even beans available to accompany ugali at this hour of the evening; our choice was chicken, or mutton. If I have not mentioned to you yet, I am steadily converting myself to vegetarianism, which some of you may consider an act of reformation to my old ways – except this time, I have much more driving reasons, which I will spare you for the moment as my vegetarian lifestyle is not the topic of this entry! Bottom line: we ordered chicken, ugali, and roasted bananas. And two bia baridi (cold beers).

Some beers and Konyagi (a disgusting local liquor that is served in plastic pouches) later, we headed back to the Kola Prieto, destitute and looking forward to leaving early the next morning for Pangani.

I hardly slept that night, due to some sort of poisonous feeling in my lungs from the insecticide. Also, I believe I was afraid that a roach might somehow find its way under my covers through the partition of my lovely mosquito net. And furthermore, the air was stale and musky, sticky and humid, as it often is in waterfront towns – not conducive to peaceful slumber. So 5:00 rolled around and I thought an obscured radio alarm had turned on somewhere in the room, but quickly realized that I was noticing the call to prayer from a mosque down the street. Such a strange and penetrating, and entirely haunting sound! I halfway like it, and I’m halfway terrified by the way the broadcast voice moans out as though it is something summoned from the dead. But all in all, the call to prayer can be heard throughout Tanzania and it will forever remind me of this country, which is pretty cool.

So yes, I managed to sleep between the end of the broadcast of the call to prayer and 9:00. At nine, my alarm sounded and my resolve was to change, eat breakfast, and get out of Tanga.

Breakfast was had in the dingy dining room of the Kola Prieto, where the same buffet style meal was set up for breakfast – this time with some eggs and sausage. Whatever was in the serving trays had to be paid for, so we opted for the free-of-charge breakfast, consisting of some stale bread, margarine, and highly caloric jelly. Jake braved the other free components, which were some green bananas and some almost-rotten looking orange melon. Soon as possible afterward, we checked out and set off for the bus stand.

We found a bus to Pangani which guaranteed us reserved seats (as opposed to squishing into a daladala) for Tsh. 1,5000. Lovely.

The bus ride to Pangani was incredibly bumpy; none of the roads we traveled were paved. About forty minutes into the ride, we came across a stranded daladala with a flat tire, presumably incurred due to the rough terrain, and our big coach bus served as a viable rescue vessel for these stranded passengers. An hour into the ride, we were able to see the coastline of the Indian Ocean. Blue, sandy, and breathtaking. I have perhaps never been so pleased to see a body of water as I was to see the ocean that afternoon, after an entire month of dryness in Monduli. The palm trees and papaya trees populating the roadside were also a breath of fresh air, because these sorts of trees generally do not thrive outside of moist environments; they are representative of the life that water breathes into Africa, and representative of one part of the dichotomy of African nature, which is the quite typically beautiful opposition to its unfortunate sister, draught and the desert. These sights, and the fact that we had seen no more than four homes along the way, were a testament to the remoteness and the pleasantness of Pangani, which already seemed to be a safe haven from our experience in Tanga.

Upon arrival in the center of town, we assumed that the bus ride was not yet finished. We had stopped in the center of a ring of maybe eight tiny shops, with about ten customers in sight. A passenger from our bus implied that this was indeed town center and the end of our bus ride, by offering, “If you need help finding where you’ll stay, I’d be glad to help you.” All the passengers boarded off and we followed, in search of the Safari Lodge, our budget hotel of choice, according to the Lonely Planet: Tanzania guide book.

The Safari was set back about six city blocks’ distance from the beach, and maybe four blocks from the marketplace and town center. The staff of this establishment consisted of one man, the proprietor (Jake and I lovingly deemed him the Hotel Patriarch), and one twenty-something year old woman. The proprietor showed us a room with mosquito netting, as well as an oscillating ceiling fan, and its own bathroom with a shower, sink, and toilet! Never mind that the toilet was missing its seat, and that the shower looked quite alarmingly similar to a concentration camp shower – they functioned! And all of these amenities were offered to us for Tsh. 7,500. The proprietor also offered us affordable, freshly cooked meals at absolutely any hour. “The kitchen does not have any
exact hours,” he told us. We checked in, gladly, and decided to set out on a walk.

We walked first along the river, where we passed a number of old slave trade buildings – that is, buildings into which slaves were ‘stored,’ so to speak, before being shipped out. Or that’s what I understand these buildings to have been. But that’s from the word of a local man who was sitting on a stoop somewhere along the way, and though I trust his word, I’ll need to look up the slave trade and Pangani to be sure of what I saw.

Growing quite hungry for lunch at this point, Jake and I walked toward a small shack further down the riverside, which we thought to be a tiny eating establishment. Turns out this shack was a workplace for coconut huskers. We approached a crowd of about ten resting laborers, who welcomed us in ki Swahili, “Karibu!” We navigated mounds of coconuts; some mounds were just the husks, some mounds were just the coconuts as we see them sold at the market, and some were unhusked, whole coconuts, as they look on the tree. Groups of men and women huddled around various piles, counting husked coconuts and tossing them into a little shack for momentary storage. One man stopped working to ask us whether we knew that these were coconuts. He explained that he was a coconut husker, and that the rest of these people were as well. He told us that farmers bring coconuts to the huskers, and the huskers work for Tsh. 3 per coconut (that’s less than a third of a US cent) and that a typical shift for one of these employees is four hours long. Each worker is paid for the number of coconuts he or she is able to husk over the course of a shift. I took a few photos of the coconuts, and one of this man.

We realized that now, we were extraordinarily hungry and that lunch was our new priority. Due to Ramadan, however, this search for food was a bit cumbersome. We wandered rather aimlessly but in hope of something. A brotha sitting on the stoop of his home asked us in English what it was that we were looking for. Jake said, “Chakula! Iko wapi?” (“Food, where is it?”) The brotha took us to a rather masculine establishment, or seemingly the male hangout spot in Pangani; there were two pool tables and some brothas playing games at them (I say ‘brotha’ because it is a term meant to describe a male peer – not because I changed my name to KDawg :o)) Anyhow, the food was served quickly and it was thoroughly enjoyable – fresh, hot ugali, some tomato/vegetable broth, and a whole, small fish for each of us. I am becoming a great fan of these whole, pan fried fishes eaten in Tanzania. You just dig right in with your hands - scales, skin, and all but the bones (except I’m too much of a wimp for the fish head). Surprisingly, I find it preferable to a filet these days.

After lunch, we decided that perhaps we should take a swim in the Indian Ocean. We went back to the hotel, changed into swim gear, and grabbed a towel. Down at the beach, our swimming went in two shifts, so that each of us took a turn watching our belongings. In this time, we had acquired a dog friend with an injured paw. He had followed a msungu woman down the beach to where Jake and I were stationed, and left off with us when the woman walked in another direction. Probably, he expected some food from us. He followed us all the way from the beach to a block from the Safari Lodge. Pretty as he was, and friendly as he seemed, I was a bit apprehensive around him; I was glad to see him sniffing out food from around the corner, which led to his departure from our path.

And by the time we were back at the Safari, it was dark. We put in our order with the woman of the establishment for fish and rice. Jake and I discussed the ways in which we expect our time spent in Tanzania to impact the rest of our lives, especially ways in which we will think of our friend Rena when we notice rather typical Western frivolity (wasting water, electricity, etc…). As Jake put it, “Rena has never lived in a home with running water.” Rena gathers water from a communal source at 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning, every morning. And we, so many of us in the US, take for granted the simple action of opening a faucet to receive water into a cup.

On a separate note in our conversation, Jake and I concurred that this fish, which was prepared for us by the Safari, was absolutely the most delicious fish we’d ever tasted. Skin, scales, and all.

By the time we made it back to the room, I was ready to pass out. I grabbed my toothbrush and peered into the bathroom, only to notice a lovely cockroach beneath the sink basin. I turned to alert Jake to this new presence in the room, but he had already noticed a friend of his own, clung to the wall outside the bathroom. And a third one appeared, scurrying across the floor. I quickly grabbed my bottle of 100% permetherin (sp?) insect spray (thank you, Mom, Dad, or Maryanne *I think it was Maryanne, whichever one of you it was who bought this wonderful stuff for me!!!), and passed it to Jake to do the honors. After about fifteen minutes of duking it out with the beasts of the Safari Lodge, we found ourselves in an entirely cockroach free room! They all went belly up, and Jake tossed them down the toilet. Hooray for bug spray!

The next morning, we decided that we hadn’t really brought enough money to stay another night in Pangani – or I should say, we wouldn’t really have had enough money to get back, had we decided to stay another night in Pangani. But this was OK, because Pangani was a teeny little town and I feel like I certainly had a legitimate, full experience there. Another day might have failed to impress me. And it was best to come home a day early anyhow, so that I had extra opportunity to catch up on rest before the big trip with Emma and Marek this coming week.

Looking forward to Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar, and signing off until then,

-Kristen.

Tanga/Pangani

Hello there!

Here’s an update on my weekend with Jake in Tanga and Pangani:

Tuesday morning, Jake and I left Monduli on the daladala to Arusha at 8AM. After having been accosted by many pushy bus attendants in Arusha’s main bus stand, we found a ticketing agent who was slightly less than pushy and asked him for prices to Tanga. He led us into his alleyway ticketing office, and showed us a price list that boasted a Tsh. 12,500 fare for reserved seats. Unwilling to brave the bustling bus station for cheaper tickets, we purchased two one ways from Air Bus, as this company called itself.

The ride from Arusha to Tanga was about seven hours long – much along unpaved roads. Well, I should say that the last two hours were spent on unpaved roads, and that those two hours seemed endless. One redeeming part to this leg of the journey was the changing scenery, however – lots of orange trees and palm trees, and papaya trees.

Anyway, back to the chronology:

The Tanga bus stopped in Moshi to pick up some more passengers. This time, I enjoyed Moshi from the protection of my bus window, and avoided being accosted by annoying taxi drivers, and thieves out to steal my toothpaste (did I tell you about that? A thief stole my toothpaste in Moshi at the bus terminal last weekend! I was furious.)

Upon arrival to Tanga, it was nearly dusk. We needed to find a place to stay quickly, as our guidebook strongly suggests NOT walking around after dark (although this is suggested almost everywhere but Pangani). We were in search of a hotel called the Ocean Breeze, but seemed to have some difficulties in finding the place.

We came across another decent looking hotel, and asked the receptionist for prices. Tsh. 10,000 per night for a room with no mosquito nets, he said. We asked if any rooms had mosquito nets, and the proprietor explained to us quite matter-of-factly, “No, there is no need for nets. We have air conditioners.” Right. Like the air conditioning chases away malaria carrying mosquitoes. I don’t quite think so. So we refused that room, and continued our search for the Ocean Breeze.

A young street vendor of packaged cashews saw that we were a bit directionless, and offered to point us in the right direction. He was kind and quite innocent, so we took his offer and planned to buy some cashews from him in a gesture of thanks for his help. We walked through a very humid night, about fifteen blocks to the Ocean Breeze hotel with out guide. We purchased cashews and he was rather pleased.

Relieved at our final arrival at our destination, we wiped the sweat from our brows (we are highly unaccustomed to humid heat because of Monduli’s severe water shortages). We were prepared to pay nearly any price for a room with mosquito netting – but alas, there was no vacancy at the Ocean Breeze hotel. Our lovely receptionist offered us a taxi for Tsh. 2000 to the Kola Prieto hotel, which she assured us offered rooms equipped with mosquito nets. We offered the cabby Tsh. 1000, and he agreed. We took off for the Kola Prieto.

Turns out, the Kola Prieto charges Tsh. 25,000 and ALSO does not provide mosquito nets! But for the sake of safety at this time of night, we took the room and decided to ghetto rig a mosquito net from a light fixture over the sleeping area.

Aah looks like we're losing power... I'm going to post this. More later.

Some millipedes along the riverfront in Pangani (each one is about four inches long... eewwww)

A photo of me at one of the Pangani beaches. Hooray, swimming in the Indian Ocean!

Sunset at Pangani along the street where our lovely hotel, the Safari Lodge, was located.

Recent photos

Here is a photo of a coconut husker from Pangani. He is paid 3 Tanzanian Shillings per husked coconut (that's less than one third of a US cent), and he husks either 2,500 per shift, or 25,000 per shift (we weren't able to get that straight).

Weekend travels

Kisamo is paradise. Imagine four houses in sight, each painted to blend in with the banana leaves that surround them. Wooden window frames, nearly the color of ebony, and windows tinted with just the right shade that the sunset is reflected in them. Tiny streams, trickling water from the mountaintops, and children gathered to collect this water in little yellow jugs. They greet us was we pass them on our way to Mama and Baba Christian's house.

Rena acts as our interpreter - we arrive bearing a kilo of sugar as a gift for the parents of the house, but six children are present to greet us and parents are nowhere in sight. We wait for three hours in the living room. Each thirty minutes, we urge Rena to ask the oldest sister, Aisha, whether she expects her mother home soon. Each time, Aisha convinces us to wait - mother Christian will be home any moment.

In the mean time, a neighbor notices us sitting inside the house at the front windows. He enters the living room and offers to buy us sodas while we wait for Mama Christian. Rena and I have Fanta Orange. Jake has a bottle of Kilimanjaro water.

Mother Christian arrives, prepared to cook us lunch; Mama D has alerted her to our travels. We partake in rice, beans, and cooked spinach. Dessert consists of an orange slice and a watermelon slice for each of us. We leave the house together in search of chipsi (french fries) and locally brewed beers in Kiboroloni, the town at the base of Kisamo, near Moshi. We find a 'restaurant' (more of a chipsi stand, also serving alcoholic beverages to plastic tables and chairs in the open air). We partake, and happiness ensues.

We take the daladala back up the hill (mountain, I should say) to Kisamo. It is a wonder that these daladalas survive so many trips up such treacherous terrain. I thought on several occasions that the twenty-something people packed into this tiny minivan would tumble over the edge of threatening rocky ledges, and that this would be our terrible end. But no - the daladala drivers are experienced in such twists and turns. I hold them in high faith now!

Mama and Baba Christian gave Rena and me a room separate from Jake for the night. We slept well after a dinner of traditional Chaga (the tribe native to Kisamo) banana/bean porridge.

Travel with Jake Hess

Jake and I are using the net in Arusha. It is 11:34 and we are about to post some letters, followed by a nice lunch at our favorite eating establishment in this terrible city.

At 15h00, we are meeting Renalda in front of Shoprite (a grocery store), and then we will take the daladala together to Moshi, a town at the base of Kilimanjaro. We will stay in Moshi tonight, and tomorrow night we are going to visit Mama D's brother in Kisamo, a small town at a higher altitude near Kilimanjaro. Tomorrow is a market day in Kisamo, and Mama D says market days there are just as hectic as they are in Dar es Salaam. Should be exciting! And I look forward to seeing Kilimajaro, even if I don't have the 800 USD required to climb it.

On Tuesday, Marek arrives (that's Emma's boyfriend). I think that Jake and I are going to travel to Tanga, a town on the coast of Tanzania, on Monday. We'll stay there until Saturday and come back by Sunday, when Jake, Emma, Marek, the Doc and I will visit Ngorogoro Crater together. And then, the following Monday, Emma, Marek and I are off on our adventures to Dar and Zanzibar!

In essence, I won't be around much. But maybe I'll be in contact more frequently, since I'll be in larger cities with Net access. We'll see. Anyhow, if I don't get to update again for a while, look forward to some adventurous reports in the future ;o)

Arusha

October 10, 2006

Emma and I went to Arusha today. What a hell hole. Probably decent for East Africans to visit, but standing out as two "wazungu" (plural for white person) females really sucks. We try to orient ourselves by walking down main roads, but in doing so, we are CONSTANTLY distracted by pesky salesmen, trying to get us to buy stale biscuits, sodas, tapestries, electronics; trying to get us to come to their tourism ofices and make appointments for safari trips.

Always, always these men approaching us in packs - "Hello, baby/ Welcome, Karibu!/ Let me show you the way/ Where are you going? Let me guide you..." We thus decided that men are not to be trusted, and we ask only women for directions or information. Women here are lovely, across the board.

Emma and I went for lunch today and a man there brushed his hand across my butt while I was standing at the water spigot, washing my hands; then he told me that I am beautiful - "Ina pendeza." Earlier, on the daladala, the man squeezed onto the seat next to me persistently brushed his leg against mine, and I kept pushing him away. I wanted to castrate him, and the butt brusher from lunch.

Our tactic for dealing with these sorts now is to act mentally insane; to make jerky movements and strange, throaty noises at high volumes. This has so far worked to ward off annoying street vendors and strange men at the main bus terminal.

By the way, we bought our bus tickets for Dar es Salaam today! I'm excited! Dar and Zanzibar!

In other news, Emma and I climbed to the peak of one of these mountains surrounding Monduli yesterday. It was fantastic! Totally draining and treacherously steep toward the top, but the view was paramount. Impeccable! And we felt well exercised afterward.

I feel this intense kinship with Emma and Jake lately. Like they are siblings my own age. We fight over silly things, or I should say we nit pick at one another from time to time; and we can't always communicate everything we're thinking to one another (in the way of emotions and such, as mentioned in a previous entry) - but oftentimes, we are good at discussing these issues which impact us most; and we are like a strange little family. Family is an element that was missing from my experience in Belgium. No - I shouldn't say it was missing, because I had Nicole and Jules. Family was just something very different than this Tanzanian experience has been. Interacting with these two has really made me appreciate my siblinghood with Jonathan in a whole new light. It's good. I like it.

Well, what else? I booked my flight to visit Uncle Don, Aunt Michele and Kelly today. I fly to Boston viz Amsterdam from Kilimamjaro on the 14th of December. I'll stay with Ethan for the evening of the fourteenth, and then leave at 6am on the 15th to catch my 8:30 am flight to Las Vegas! Furthermore, right now, I am trying to decide whether I want to leave Tanzania early and visit Belgium before traveling back to Amsterdam on the 14th to catch that leg of our originally scheduled flight, and the layover in Amsterdam at 7:30 am. Depends on money, really. And whether I really want to leave Africa early.

Travel plans and et cetera

Emma's boyfriend, Marek, is coming to visit next week. He'll arrive on the seventeenth, and he and Emma will climb Mt. Meru over the course of three days and two nights. After that, we will travel together. Here is the itinerary:

23 October. Depart from Arusha to Dar es Salaam
23/24 October. Overnite in Dar es Salaam
25 October. Depart from Dar es Salaam to Stonetown (Zanzibar)
25/26/27 October. Overnite in Stonetown
28 October. Depart from Stonetown to Jambiani (also Zanzibar)
28/29 October. Overnite in Jambiani
30 October. Depart from Jambiani to Stonetown, change bus toward Dar es Salaam
30 October. Overnite in Dar es Salaam
31 October. Return to Arusha, and back home to Monduli. Marek leaves.

I hadn't been certain about planning trips this early on, since my research is all but stagnant. But the Doc has not been making appointments for me to speak with anybody really. I have been doing whatever work is possible on my own, but if nothing significant can be accomplished without going over the Doc's head, then I might as well travel in the meantime. So, this is our plan. I'm quite excited for Jambiani, which is a coastal area with beachfront huts. We will take a day trip to a coral reef to snorkel, if it doesn't end up costing more than the sugested 30 USD from Lonely Planet's guidebook.

And aside from travel, what is new? Perhaps I will recount some journal entries to pass the time, and to give you some updates. I do not know what to write otherwise, when I sit down at a computer here.

October 3, 2006:

Yesterday, there was a frog in the bathing basin. Emma picked it up with her hands after my attempts to shovel it into a bucket with a dustpan proved futile. I wanted to just pick it up with my own hands intially. Why did I resort to the dustpan?

Today, just walking, I fell on the dirt road that runs between the Teachers' College and Moringe Sekoine Secondary School campus. Lost my footing, tried to catch my footing, and in trying to catch my footing, I tripped myself. My left knee is cut rather deeply, through probably most layers of skin, but only in about a .5 square centimeter area. More tragically, my second favorite pair of long pants is now torn. I'll need to mend the left knee and reinforce the right knee as soon as I find some thread.

We bathe with buckets of warm water here - have I mentioned this? Makes things complicated, sometimes.

Found out that Mama D's mother is so glum because she lost her youngest daughter to HIV five years ago. Makes me remember not to be so quick to judge.

Over dinner tonight, the Doc talked about the importance of gender equality education in primary and secondary schools; it is actually a part of the curriciulum! This conversation popped up after Emma and I expressed concerns about two young men who joined us, Jake and Rena for drinks tonight, and who tried to convince us to marry them. The Doc said, "Try to make this a part of your study - do not get angry or frustrated, but realize that this is the sort of treatment all the young girls must withstand. That's why equality education is so important."

Oh, how we learn at least one new lesson every day...


October 6, 2006

I would like very much to write a letter to someone, but as I sit out on the front porch here, and I consider the steppe which extends past the horizon, there exists this feeling that no one would ever receive such a letter. At least no one would understand such a letter. I think of writing to one specific person, as I believe that this person's mind might begin to comprehend or to appreciate this existence.

For the first time in my life, there is not a single person here with me in spirit. Even alone in Belgium, I felt more accompanied. Here in Tanzania, in the constant presence of two other students, my emotions can only speak to themselves. Emma and I have discussions on our families, our friends, and on our hopes for the future almost nightly. This is important for me, and I think also for her. Especially since it has been so long for her since she has seen her family (nearly a year). But so far as our exchanges in the way of nature here - how the breeze bends my thoughts past anything material or comprehensible even; how the distant call and answer of some melodic bird answers something unanswerable in my jumbled contemplations; how my hands feel fresh from hand washing my laundry in buckets behind the Msinjilis' house; how the unidentifiable drum beats that stream up our hill from Moringe Sekoine Secondary School make me want to dance in some new way, yes unlearned by myself; all of these things remain undisclosed, as I feel no ability to communicate them to either of my two very understanding peers.

These are thoughts and emotions which must be cafefully shared, iuf shared at all, with an individual capable of a certain something. A certain comprehension that is not approached by means of logic or reason, but by transcendence. And should these transcendent realizations ever be conveyed? Might they ever be shared and grasped or appreciated in their fullest possibilities? I think, perhaps, not.

Thus, I believe that these thoughts, these never before realized items which are truthfully inexplicable anyhow, must remain something for myself, my soul, my own person. Perhaps it is simply something that becomes part of a person's glare when she stops mid day in order to daydream. Is my time in Africa a daydream?

A small ant, which actually proves to be quite larg for an ant, with a grey peachfuzzed abdomen has paced back and forth along the edge of this top step upon which I sit. So funny that I appreciate his presence as a foreign and welcomed bit of company, simply for the small difference in his appearance; when I project this scene (my sitting here, writing) onto my front porch at home, a pacing ant might seem so ordinary and unnoticed, in his black, shiny, exoskeletal casing, searching for bits to eat. It is this Tanzanian black ant with grey peachfuzz that keeps me company, however. What a difference.

The breeze is blowing stronger now than when I previously mentioned it. This is due to a passing storm cloud. Although I have just hung my laundry to dry, I had hoped that the could would stay overhead and perhaps bring some rain. Monduli is becoming drier and drier these days, and few people have the luxury of purchasing cartons of water to drink. At least the breeze is cool, and perhaps it is refreshing. I consider it so.

Finally, PHOTOS!

Here are some photos!

There is one of Emma and me when we went on our first long hike together, one of me eating sugarcane in the marketplace at Monduli, one of Dr. Msinjili's car parked in the front driveway, one of us at the Snake Park, our shadows from atop the backs of camels at Snake Park, our friend Ernest in front of his rap recording studio, and some others that I forget because I can't view the thumbnails right now.

Maybe I will only have time to upload one or two of said photos. We shall see.

Emma and I are currently at an Internet Cafe, where the power is down because a generator has run out of petrol. So let's see what happens now that the generator is back up and running...

Straight from the Journal of Kristen Wallerius

As I sit at the Msinjilis kitchen table, drinking chai za maziwa (tea boiled in hot milk) with ginger root infusions, Dr. Msinjili and Mama D are preparing hot water for the washing machine so that we IF students can wash our clothes. Dr. Msinjili bought this machine in Russia while he studied there in the eighties. We will take turns washing our clothes in the first cycle of the machine, then we will scrub the clothes with our hands, then we will rinse them in buckets, and they will dry tomorrow morning on the clothes line outside. Hooray for clean underwear!

Yesterday we took our first trip into Arusha on the daladala (bus) from Monduli. We visited some shops, visited Ernest's recording company (a small shack tagged with rapper names and DJ names, and portraits of Che Guevara and Malcolm X). TGP Records (Truth Gives Power) raps about staying HIV free, about working toward a better life, about education, and about "the power of truth." We heard a recording of Ernest's group and it was pretty nifty. First time I really dug rap, aside from a few songs I've heard otherwise (even though this stuff was mostly rapped in Kiswahili).

We ate lunch at a cafe across from the Arusha International Conference Center and UN library. Delicious fresh tilapia from Lake Victoria, with rice. Afterwards, we visited the UN library and accessed the Itnernet for free!! Yay free things!

Jake decided to return to Monduli on the daladala in order to catch the evening's football game and to give an English lesson to our friend Reynalda. Emma and I stayed with Ernest to visit a lovely lake and a fresh spring, where we sat and watched monkeys play across the water, swinging between trees. This spring was for local drinking water, I assume. We counted eight locals carrying water buckets to and from the place. A young boy balanced a blue jug of fresh water on his head and teetered back p the path toward home. He was interested in our camera, so Emma snapped a photo of him and we showed it to him on the display screen ; he giggled and continued walking. We left the spot soon after taking some photos, only to find a dead cow along the path. The cow was foaming at the mouth - looked like its lips were entirely covered in shaving cream. Must have had rabies, and we were unsure whether the cow had been deliberately killed or whether it had just expired.

We walked back to a clearing where we found a market, and a daladala to take us back to the center of Arusha. Oh, the daladala. There's always room for one more. These refurbished, independently owned vans from places like China and India are meant to seat about eight passengers. Somehow, twenty one passengers rode with us back to Arusha in one such van, and this is the norm. This is public transportation in Tanzania, and the fee per person is approx 1000 shillings (1 dollar). We needed to fidn another daladala from Arsha to Monduli, but due to pushy customers, Emma, Ernest and I could not make it into the first three daladalas. So we were late for dinner, and I felt pretty terrible. It was ok though.

Anyhow, flash forward to sleep and the next morning. Today, Emma and I hiked up to somewhere near the peak of this mountain which Monduli is located at the bottom of. Along the way, we saw more giant locusts, beautiful painted beatles whose colors looked like they came off of the most colorful kanga, some butterflies, and the vast, vast steppe. We heard monkeys laughing in treetops. We really walked through some wild, overgrown brush - thorny brush - Im talking four feet high, and we can't see what's in front of us, of what is underneath our feet, or what is watching us from our sides. Totally wild and untamed. There were bees with black bodies and bright red stingers/abdomens. There were strange pulsating clicks coming from small animals or insects that we could not locate, but were surrounded by. There were all sorts of flying, hopping insects that sprung across our paths, always seeming to aim for our faces as we walked. A bug fell down Emma's pants and she pulled out a part of its body and some legs, but the rest undoubtedly remained lodged for later. When I took my shirt off later, four dead bugs poured out. We are scratched up our legs and arms, and we are still picking burrs off of our skin and clothing. Some burrs feel like shards of fiberglass stuck in my fingers. But we had an amazing day, and I wouldn't trade it.

In other news, after seeing goats slaughtered at the market, I'm considering becoming a vegetarian again. Oof. It's really tough to eat meat without thinking of terrible things...

But I am a big fan of the sugarcane which can be bought in its natural state, but hacked into twelve inch sticks by a machete. Emma and I bought some at the market today at 4pm, and we chewed it and sucked the sugary water out of it while we watched the Monduli soccer game. We played hand games with some of the young girls and we took photos of them and showed them the images afterwards. It was a great deal of fun. Sticky, dirty, sugary fingers, playing hand games. We felt like children again! Liberating, and just overall fun.

(September 28, 2006)