Mzungu in the District

Welcome back! USA to Africa!
Left to right: Kate, Tirzah, Doug and Diana

I couldn't have asked for a better welcome home. It's true I have some of the greatest friends on the planet. Tirzah pulls up curbside to pick me up with her car all decorated in welcome signs! She knew I was sad to be home and her excitement to see me was just what I needed. Africa to America may only be a day of flying apart, but it's a world apart...

The drive home was short and I excitedly talked about my adventures away and inquired about the hubbub of the District. Tirzah had had a long couple of weeks moving and I think it was good for me to hear the more normal circumstances of my home.

As we neared my apartment, I realized I wasn't even excited to be in it. My home had become my house while I was away.

My staircase up to the door seemed long. The double lock keeping my things safe seemed excessive. I slowly inserted by key, not sure what the other side held for me. I've never been away from my apartment for that long and not really missed it. I didn't know what to expect.

What was on the other side, I never would've guessed. Kate, Diana, Doug and Tirzah had surprised me with a welcome home party!!! I had an instant realization that it was their faces that I wanted to see. There was so much to talk about and my brain was still in sleep mode from my flight. It was so special to be welcomed by my nearest and dearest friends.

I realized quickly enough that I hadn't become an entirely new person. My first thought went to how messy I had left my apartment! They assured me it wasn't, but I know better...I'm fairly certain they made my bed. Now, that is true friendship!!

We made small talk - I couldn't handle much more than that! The adventures too numerous, the challenges too massive, and the changes too precise to even know where to begin. For now, the short conversations would suffice. I have so much to share that I can't imagine I'll ever convey justly.

I was asked what single word I would use to describe my experience and it took me just a few minutes to decide what it was...happy. Not my happiness, which, of course, I was, but their happiness. I have never seen so many smiles and so much joy in my life. Moshi is a town of immense wealth...just not the kind we are used to in the States.

I've started thinking about my future plans. I want to go back. I have to go back...a piece of me is still there. I don't want to return to help them. They don't need help. They are more rich than so many people here in the States. I realize that's another trite statement and a gross overgeneralization, but it's simply the truth. I have even seen that in my life, I find myself always needing and wanting more. How can that be? I am one of the wealthiest people I know -- I have a healthy family and friends who I can always count on and are always by my side. I think that's what everyone learns when they go to Africa. The people in their lives are what make a life worth living. I learned even more...

Left to right: Tirzah, me, Kate and Diana

Left to right: Tirzah, me, Diana and Doug

In Tanzania, you don't say 'goodbye', you say 'badaaye'

I've made it back to the States...in body, not quite yet in spirit. Everything here is so drastically different it's hard to get back into my life, knowing that the old life isn't exactly what I want. The goodbyes were hard. I made a lot of new friends in the volunteers from around the world and from the local volunteers in Tanzania. Mostly, though, I made a connection with the place. I felt so at home, constantly covered in dirt, being called mzungu, and incessantly mobbed by little kids.

My ride to the airport was a somber one. It still didn't feel like I was really leaving. I think Moshi must've fit me like a glove because even as I was leaving, everyone was shocked that I was only a three-weeker. I had found my place and a home in Moshi.

It was surreal at the airport. The day before I had taken Ann-Michelle to the airport. It was finally my time. Jes was my traveling buddy, so that made things a little easier. Richard and Athumani both took us to the airport...dressed in their finest! Athumani had been ill from malaria all week, but rested up enough to give me a proper fairwell. Our goodbyes were exchanged. My tears were withheld. I don't cry in front of people.

Jes and I head to the passport window for the final bon voyage from Moshi. The passport guy wouldn't stamp me. I had my excuse! I couldn't leave!!!! My visa hadn't been properly filled out by the visa gods, which is surely how getting a work visa works. Alas, since Jes and I were traveling together, it was fairly easy to convince him to let me go...darn it.

As we boarded the plane, my imminent departure became even more of a reality. I wasn't ready to be dragged away. My time had only just begun...and yet time had passed and I knew I made an impact, even if only a little one, and a big impact had been made in me. As the plane taxied down the runway, I listened to my farewell song, Africa by Toto. It's trite, but the song rings so true. "It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you..." And it did. The clouds covered Mount Kilimanjaro as if to shield her from the goodbye that was due to her. The plane lifted. It was taking me away from the piece of my heart that Moshi had taken...or had I given it freely? I sat, I think in a bit of shock and disbelief. My only respite was knowing that my heart will one day soon be reunited.

"...I know that I must do what's right
Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti..."

It's Tournament Time!

My last day in Moshi was spent at a futbal tournament being played by some of the local boys. We arrived at 8 am. Chels and I had been up since 6 am. We'd started our packing venture (meaning getting my clothes out of the closet), eaten breakfast, and showered. A most productive morning before 8 am. We hit up the International School with the boys, Kileo, Living, and Amani. Chels and I where we were the only white people there who didn't go to the International School. It was grand. We kept to ourselves with the boys while they figured out when and if they would be playing. Next game they kept telling us. Hey, it's TFT (Tanzania Flexible Time), it's whenever!

We sat and waited. And waited. And waited. It was kind of fun being surrounded by the locals and watching the games. It was a tournament and the International School kids (mostly white kids from the US and Brittain it appeared) got completely trashed in most of their matches. It was kind of comical and I felt a bit sorry for them.

Chelsea did some tree climbing. I laid out and relaxed. My flight was imminent. I hadn't packed. I was in the polepole zone. Once you go polepole...

The games were awesome. Scores remained safuri-safuri for all (0-0).

Teaching Woes

Week two at the secondary school gave me an opportunity to sit in some of the classes. I hadn't got a good grasp on what the classes were learning and what exactly I needed to be teaching. Mary invited me to sit in and observe her lesson in Form 2. I was told I would be teaching Form 1, so I was a little out of place watching Mary's Form 2 class. I awkwardly stood out from under the pavilion in the sun...moments later, one of the students brought me a chair. I sat back and learned. Literally, I learned. Mary taught the the students past participle. Before the lesson, I couldn't have told you what a past participle was...now I know, it's "I had gone to the store." Never would've known that before! I hadn't studied that since high school if not even earlier! I sat in the sun through the lesson, getting a sunburn and a little ridiculed from the Form 2 students. The lesson left me a little insecure about the Form 1 class I was to start teaching the next day. From what I could tell, these students were way beyond what I knew, or rather, remembered, from high school English!

My first home visit

Monday of week two. I was scheduled for teaching at the nursery and then a couple of home visits. I had talked to my mom the night before about my near mauling from the tembo and a little about my placement at the nursery. She could hear the frustration in my voice, I knew.

I was still put off because I was not more prepared for teaching. My mom was a preschool teacher for six years or something and I hadn't had an opportunity to get advice from her about teaching. I have no experience with children and was really frustrated because I was not given an opportunity to ask my best resource for tips or ideas for teaching. Talking to my mom on the phone proved to be one of my better ideas for the trip. She gave me a lot of ideas of games to teach the kids and on how to help them better at writing their letters and numbers. I put her advice into play immediately the next day!

Nursery school was finally starting to get routine. My kids were starting to welcome me more regularly, taking my hand as I walked through the office to the "classroom", and I had found my niche in the daily routines of teaching. I took responsibility for checking the kids papers. In both of my schools, checkmarks are very big deals. The students must have checkmarks for all the correct marks. They love to get them!! I started using dotted letters for the kids that couldn't copy very well. I had a lot of a lot of difficulty getting the children to understand what they were supposed to do with the dotted letters. A few of the kids picked it up really quickly. It was really rewarding to see that the kids could understand what I was teaching them. Those that could trace the letters became very eager for more!! One of my girls, Esta (pronounced AY-sta) was incredibly eager. Daily she came to me looking to trace more and more words. She was in the younger class and was writing beyond the homework given to the older kids!

I spent my first hour with the children and Mother Mary came to pick me up. We headed off with the two Finnish girls that were working with Uwawayaki also. Off we headed to Majenga -- the district of town where our patient was. Our walk to Clementine's house took us through a couple of fields and winding around pathways behind other homes. One field looked as if it was once used for planting crops, but the land then was arid and unplowed. At one end of the field that we passed through was a very large tree that stood somewhat ominously with what appeared to be large black leaves. Upon closer inspection, they were not, in fact, black leaves but large bats. The tree was filled with bats! I thought that I would pass by the tree again, so I decided not to get a picture...and, as it turned out, i didn't end up passing by again.

After a short 10 minute walk, we arrived at Clementine's. Clementine was a 50-something woman who had recently had her left leg amputated because of complications of diabetes. Her right foot had taken a turn for the worse. Our purpose for the visit was to help her daughter, a 30-something HIV positive mother of three, redress her wounds. I look at Clementine's chart which was a makeshift medical history written out on a piece of paper. It included things like her age, her next of kin, her religion, and how her last visit was. It appeared as if this was a new system being used by Uwawayaki since it only included her most recent last visit.

Clementine had to be carried in to the living area space of the house by her daughter and Mother Mary. She stays in the single room off the living room. We spent some time asking how she felt and how she had been in the past few days. All of this exchange took place in Swahili, so I only understood parts of it before Mother Mary translated. After about 15 minutes we began undressing her foot.

Her foot was swollen and was excreting fluids. I won't go into the extremely gory details, but it was quite infected. Her foot was numb except when a lot of pressure was placed on it.

We left Clementine's house advising her to go to the hospital. She had an appointment scheduled, but it wasn't until March...her foot wouldn't wait that long. I found out on my last day that her right foot had been amputated that week.

Our second home visit was to a woman who was HIV positive. She, like Clementine, lived with her daughter and her daughter's children. Her home was a bit bigger than the last -- a living room and two rooms connected. I read her medical sheet as I had done for Clementine. She did not have any visible problems. She had a cough that wasn't going away and was out of cough medicine. Mother Mary offered to try to get more medicine for her.

As Mother Mary explained to me how she was feeling, I acknowledged her by saying "sawa" which, in Swahili, is just saying "okay". The patient asked if I spoke Swahili (which I understood), the shock that registered on her face as I responded to her question with "kidogo" (a little). Both she and Mother Mary got a good laugh at my attempt to learn Swahili, but I was trying!!

After we wrapped up at the second home, it was time for me to head back to the school for my morning pick-up. Mother Mary guided me back to the school through alleyways, backyards, and side streets. I was able to really see the town and see off the beaten path.

The home visits were really powerful and a small idea of life without access to proper healthcare.

Near Death by Tembo

The day started early again. Wake-up at 6 am. Breakfast at 6:30 and departure for Lake Manyara at 7 am. We had to get an early start because we had a short day due to the long drive we had to get home. We pass into the park to a family of baboons. If you don't know anything about baboons, you soon will from the massive quantity of pictures taken...their families consist of anywhere from 50 to hundreds of baboons. Baboons were almost more populous than zebras in the Ngorongoro...almost! It was incredible to see the habits of the baboons. They fought just like real siblings (I've got a video of it to prove it, Mom!). They groom just like we do. It's a little more disgusting because the nitpick (which is how we got the word in the English language) and then eat what they've picked out, but I guess they have to get food somehow!!! They were in every nook and cranny of the Manyara. Danger from baboons comes from invading their territory (which we were obviously doing) and when they are in very large numbers (which they were!). We were quite safe, however. I think they have become quite used to the visitors of the park.

Elephants were everywhere. They were even more plentiful than they were at the Ngorongoro Crater the day before. We were shocked to see so many of them. They were crossing the roads, they were walking down the roads, eating, bathing, and at one point getting very angry at us and exploring our vehicle. This is the proper segway to our near death experience.
Our safari had three vehicles. My vehicle had the same passengers as from the day before, Ann-Michelle, Lindsay, Cathy, Leann and myself. We are driving through Manyara National Park and stopping at every elephant along the way. They are just such majestic creatures. Up close, or as close as we thought we would ever get, their eyes are so soft and sleepy. They are so calm and gentle looking, always moving pole pole (slow). They walk pole pole, they eat pole pole, they bathe pole pole. Everything with the elephant is pole pole...at least we thought.

We drive by about five of them (including a baby elephant) at very close range, probably about 100 feet away. They didn't even seem to notice us. Perhaps that is because they are bigger than the vehicles we are traveling in and we are quite non-threatening. Words can't even begin to express how truly massive these animals are and it still is extremely hard to grasp that these animals are in the wild. We were constantly grappling with that and kept feeling like at night the animals go back to their cages! That's not the case at all...at night, these elephants must fight off lions and other animals that might attack and eat their young and/or weak. I digress. Back to the story at hand...

As we drive along the forest lined road we happen upon a bull slowly eating in the middle of the road. I should note that by eating, I mean the bull was ripping trees out of the ground and chomping away on them. He ate slowly but chomped quite forcefully. He was getting what he needed. Jonathan killed the engine knowing that we had to wait for the animal to finish his morning snack as he has the right of way. So we sat and waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, the tembo starts his slow, steady movement off the road. We were so close to him!!!! He mosied on closer to us. It was incredible. Jonathan told us to get in the jeep because we had previously been sitting on the roof (which was completely open). Our car was still in shock that we were this close to a wild elephant!!!

The bull stops right on the side of the road about 20 feet from the jeep. The excitement I had being so close to this massive beast was unreal and completely indescribable.

What happens next I would've never have imagined. The tembo (elephant, if you didn't already gather that) decides he needs to relieve himself...which seemed to indicate that he was getting pretty agitated and was marking his territory. Indeed, he was. By this point, the elephant had moved to within 10 feet of our jeep and we began to worry. Jonathan stayed calm. Ann-Michelle, in the front seat, was nearly eye-to-eye with the beast. She seemed to be fairly in control. Later, I would find out that was not the case. Cathy and Leann were in the middle, Lindsay and I in the back seat. The bull explored the front part of the jeep with his trunk...touching the sideview mirror and the side of the jeep. His tusks brushed the sideview mirror where they left scratch marks that we would later discover. He continued to move forward. His trunk and tusks were directly in line with Cathy and Leann. He stood, menacingly, next to our jeep, seemingly begging us to make a noise or some movement. Each of us were inside the jeep freaking out in our own way. I was taking pictures, scaring everyone in the jeep because my camera made little clicking sounds with every picture. Why I didn't think to take a video is something I still question....

At this point, the elephant had moved so that his entire body was directly beside our jeep. It greatly outsized our vehicle and another person in our group has a photo that shows exactly how large the tembo was. His tusk was about three inches from my face...with only a measly glass standing between it and my face. His beady eyes (note that by this point, his eyes were no longer soft and gentle) were coldly staring at Lindsay in the seat next to me. His trunk swung from side to side. With the small tree size trunk, he picked up a snort of dirt and flung it on himself...and into our jeep. This action is a sign of anger and agitation...not a good sign for us.

We sat there covered in his dust spray, quivering, wondering what was going to happen when (not if, when) the elephant nudged our jeep and it tipped over tossing all of its passengers around like rag dolls. Thankfully, we never had to find out...the tembo moved on...as slowly and innocently as he had come. The whole encounter seemed like twenty minutes of almost complete terror. We never did find out exactly how long it lasted. Perhaps that's a detail we might not like to know -- knowing we were so close to the complete unknown is terrifying enough.

Team Tembo (as we were no donned and would be for the remainder of my time here in Moshi) had made it out...unscathed...barely. The jeep, however, had a couple of brushes with the massive ivory tusks of the beast, but suffered no major damages.

Shortly after we sped away, we stopped for a bathroom break. All of us had to get a serious grip on what had just happened. Only then, did we learn that Jonathan had a death grip on Ann-Michelle's hand and was as equally as terrified as we were. I honestly thought that he had been that close to many elephants!!! We relished in our close encounter and most of the jeep (myself not included) vowed to not spend anymore time near the tembos!!!

The rest of the afternoon was much calmer with no more near death or near attack encounters. We spent some time in the plains with the giraffe and actually got to get out of the jeeps and walk around with them. I guess I should mention that they were several 100 yards away (this picture is probably a fairly accurate depiction as to their distance from us), but it was still incredible to be walking around in the wild Savannah of Africa. It's an experience that I can't even begin to describe and will absolutely never forget.

Our trip ended with a quick camel ride. Think carnival pony rides Africa style! We mounted the humped creatures and got lead around for about 200 yards and returned to our starting point for the awkward dismount. If you've never been on a camel, their front legs go down before their hind legs and they are quite gangly about it. It's not an easy feat and is pretty comical to watch. We watched everyone in our group...and everyone was as ridiculous looking as the next person!! It was a blast though...and now I've had the blissful (ha) experience of riding an African camel!

Touring the Ngorongoro Crater

Our early morning consisted of a lot of zebras, wildebeasts and water buffalo...but our adventure had only just begun. The land was beautiful. We were surrounded by mountain walls with only us and the wildlife within. It was incredible to feel so intimate with them. It's difficult for me to even use words to describe the experience. Going to zoos is nothing, although, I'm certain that that has numbed me to being so close to the animals. The picture above can indicate that. We were literally that close to a lion...and he just stared at us. This was just after he finished mating with a lioness. The lioness was under the culvert in the road. He was lying in the ditch and staring at us.

Lions, elephants, wart hogs, zebras, rhinos, hippos, everything on day one...and even more adventure to look forward to the following day!!