Kwaheri Tanzania

Well the journey is over. I'm leaving Tanzania tomorrow. TOMORROW! It seems so soon! While I can't wait to see everyone back home again, I'm also not ready to leave Tanzania. There are so many people I'm just now getting to know, and I feel like I finally have gotten the hang of things around here, including the language. I think I woke up one morning a few weeks ago and realized, Hey, I can communicate in Swahili! I am by no means fluent, but I'm just now becoming confident speaking to people in Swahili and now I'm going back to the states. I think any study abroad program should be for a year; you really need a semester to get into the swing of things and another to enjoy it.

I've learned so much in Tanzania and know I will continue to learn from my experiences here. I've met some amazing people and seen incredible places. I wish everyone could experience Tanzania, and I'm so glad that my sister was able to.

My last few days in Dar have been nice. Miranda and I went to one of my friends' houses and she taught us how to make chapatti, and tonight I had my last night of teaching in Mwenge. It was really sad to say goodbye to all of the students, especially knowing how unlikely it is that I will see them again. Hopefully I can keep in touch though.

There are a lot of things I'm going to miss about TZ, such as...

• Mwenge
• Chillin on the roof--with great company
• The fruit
• The stars
• The people (Tanzanians and foreigners)
• Swahili
• A city that is somehow bustling yet no one is ever in a hurry

Still, I'm really excited to get home to things like...

• Friends and family
• Laundry machines!!!
• Air conditioning
• People respecting the concept of a line
• English
• My lovely mountains

Well I guess that's all from Dar es Salaam. Thank you to everyone here that has made my time in Tanzania so enjoyable and so rewarding, and to everyone at home, I'll see you soon!

Tutaonana tena.

Woodcarvers, Lions, and Spice Rastas, Oh My!

Hoorayy! I'm finally here!

After a LOOONNG journey from Raleigh, NC to Dar es Salaam, I finally arrived in Tanzania!! Parker was waiting for me at baggage claim and we hopped in a taxi that took us to our hotel. After I settled in a bit, Parker and Katie took me to Posta where we went to a khanga market and bought some very cool fabrics.

After Posta, we went back to the hotel and, despite my efforts to stay awake, I took the greatest nap of my life. Later that afternoon, we went to Mwenge where I met all of the amazing woodcarvers who are also Parker and Katie's students. These woodcarvers are probably the nicest, happiest, most talented people I have ever met; they were extremely welcoming and incredibly nice (even though they called me "shiny" because I'm so white...).

That evening, I went with Parker and Katie to watch them teach English to the woodcarvers. However, a few Princeton students have come to take Parker and Katie's place since they will be leaving soon, so Parker didn't get to teach that much. After the class, everyone walked to the "tuk, tuks" together and rode home. Parker and I had a very nice dinner at our hotel and hit the sheets pretty early.

Early the next morning, we hopped a bus to Arusha and 10 hours later, we were there. The next day, we headed off on four day camping safari. (Parker went into depth in her blog, so I will spare you all in this one.) As much as I don't like camping, I found the camping safari to be a very cool experience. Although, not showering for four days is not a good look for me...

After the safari, we headed to Kendwa Rocks in Zanzibar and stayed on the beach for two days. During our stay there, I muscled up the courage to go scuba diving for the first time in four years. I was extremely nervous, so I ran out of air in about 25 minutes....Oops. It wasn't the greatest scuba experience, but we saw some incredible things.

After Kendwa Rocks, we took a bus to Stonetown where we are right now. Last night Parker took me to a market-type place for dinner and they had TONS of seafood, Zanzibar pizza (dough, bananas, and chocolate) and the greatest tea I have ever had. It was so good that we asked Sammy, the tea maker, to teach us how to make it. He said that he would take us to a spice market the next morning at 4:00 or 5:00. We assumed that he meant 10:00 or 11:00 because 4:00AM in Tanzania is actually 10:00AM (it's odd, I know). Anywho, we met him this morning and he told us that he went to the market at 4:00AM and waited for us....Oops. It all worked out, though, and we bought lots of spices.

On our way out of the market, we walked through a place FULL of chickens. Sammy, the spice rasta guy, explained that if you buy a chicken and don't know how to kill it yourself, you bring it outside and someone will kill it for you. Unfortunately, right as I walked by, someone was chopping up a squirming little chicken--it was enough to make someone go vegeterian, but I do love me some chicken....

Since I arrived in Dar, Parker has been teaching me some Swahili. She gives me vocabulary lists and verb conjugations every other day and I listen to her speak to everyone, so I'm trying to learn the language as best as I can. By the way, Parker speaks Swahili EXTREMELY well; in my mind, she's pretty much fluent. The two of us plan to speak Swahili to each other even after we get back because I think it is the coolest language, and Parker wants to get better, too.

Well, that's where I am in my Tanzanian adventure for now! We leave to go back to Dar tomorrow morning and spend about three days there, then Parker and I head back to the States for the rest of the summer. This has been incredibly long, but I hope you enjoyed my Tanzanian adventure so far!

I miss you all and I am excited to see you!!
Kwa herini (bye) for now.
xoxoxoxo
-miranda

Lions, Tigers, and Bears?

Well I'm back in Tanzania, and my sister is finally here! It's really nice to see a familiar face from home, and it's great to be able to show her what I've been up to since January. Katie and I showed her around Dar and introduced her to a bunch of the students from Mwenge. They all said we looked alike, only Miranda is "so white and shiny!"

The two of us took a bus north to Arusha, a town near Mt. Kilimanjaro. From there we did a four-day safari, which was a lot of fun. We visited three different parks: Lake Manyara National Park, Serengeti National Park, and Ngorongoro Conservation Area. They were all beautiful yet surprisingly different from one another.

Serengeti landscape

We started out in Lake Manyara. It's much more forested than I had expected, though when you get down near the lake, it flattens out quite a bit. In the forest we saw tons of monkeys, and down by the water we saw everything from giraffes to elephants and warthogs to hippos. The coolest part was that the edge of the lake was covered with hundreds of flamingos! It was pretty amazing to see the water covered in a layer of pink.

Next we drove through Ngorongoro to the Serengeti. On the way there, a baboon stole one of our lunches. We were in a parking lot at the gate and everyone else had gotten out to stretch their legs. I was still chillin' in the car, and when I looked up there was a baboon in the front seat grabbing at our food. Of course, all I could think of was to yell "Hey! Wait! Come back!" Alas, he didn't listen and we were short one lunch.

Unlike Lake Manyara, the Serengeti is totally flat. It's almost entirely open savanna except for a few bushes here and there. Since it's the dry season, everything is golden. The first day we saw a group of lions on the other side of a small river chowing down on a delicious wildebeest. On the way back to the campsite, we ran into more lions that were right next to our car; I probably could have reached out the window and played with one of the cute, very non-ferocious looking cubs, but I decided against it.

Lions in the Serengeti

The next day we drove to the western edge of the Serengeti to see part of the annual wildebeest/ zebra migration. It's the dry season, so thousands of animals migrate north toward the Maasai Mara in Kenya before returning to Tanzania in the fall when the rains start again. The zebra must be a little quicker (or slower) than the wildebeest because what we saw were hundreds of wildebeest on either side of the road. It was pretty amazing; there was an endless herd running toward the road. They would narrow down to single file to cross the road then fan out again on the other side. During the wet season, many of the wildebeest come to the Serengeti to have wildebeest babies, so there were tons of wobbly calves running around as well.

We also saw large herds of zebra, though they didn't seem to be in such a hurry. They were just hanging around big grassy areas eating. The Serengeti definitely seems to be the place to spot cool animals. Other than lions, zebra, and wildebeest, we saw hippo, buffalo, elephants, crocodiles, etc. On the way out of the park, we also saw lions in love (it's baby-making season).

Finally we bactracked to Ngorongoro. Ngorongoro is really interesting for a few different reasons. It is dominated by a large crater than was once a huge volcano but has since collapsed. Beyond the crater, the land is similar to that of the Serengeti- flat, golden, and grassy, though there are some mountains in the distance. Around the crater, things are much more lush and green, and the walls of the crater are a beautiful mix of greens and blues. When we were there, it was cloudy, but this made for some cool effects when the sun shone through little pockets in the clouds, highlighting certain places within the crater. It's a beautiful place with tons of wild animals. We saw buffalo, zebra, hyenas, more love-lions, a cheetah, lots of flamingos, and even a black rhino off in the distance.

Wildebeest in Ngorongoro Crater

The other cool thing about Ngorongoro is that it isn't a national park so people are allowed to live traditionally within the conservation area. The people that live there are all Maasai. It's interesting to see these people living in the non-park park just as they did before colonial days. I can't imagine what it's like having q giraffe in my back yard and chasing lions away from my cattle. Katie is up there now doing an archaeological dig. She said that about a month ago, a Maasai man killed a lion with a bow and arrow after it ate two of his goats. They then cut the lion open and ate the goat meat out of its stomach (apparently it's not good luck to eat the lion itself). This has to be the closest people will ever get to living with the dinosaurs...!

After our short stint in the North, Miranda and I headed to Zanzibar. We were laying on a beautiful beach for a few days and are now in Stonetown exploring the narrow streets and tasting the delicious street food. It's our first time travelling alone together, and It's been a lot of fun. Tanzania isn't exactly a place that she would typically choose to travel, so she's really stepping out of her comfort zone, which is great. After her being away at boarding school and me being away at college, it's nice to have some sisterly bonding time.

A nice Zanzibar sunset

Gorillas in the Mist

With the rest of our all-to-short time in Rwanda, Katie and I visited the Volcanoes National Park. It’s a beautiful park that backs up to other national parks in Uganda and the DRC. The chain of volcanoes between the three countries is home to the world’s only mountain gorillas, and I got to visit them! I’ve seen gorillas in zoos before (although apparently those are lowland gorillas, not mountain gorillas), but it was nothing like this. But I’ll get back to the gorillas.

We took off from Kigali at 4:30 AM, which was pretty painful, but the drive through the mountains was beautiful. As the sun rose, we were looking down into a valley covered in a thick layer of fog. It was amazing; it looked like a silvery lake with little islands peaking out above the surface. The countryside of Rwanda is incredible. They try to use every square inch of the country for agriculture; I’ve never thought agriculture made for a particularly pretty landscape, but here it does. Everywhere you look there are green terraced hills (apparently the terracing is done mostly by people convicted by local courts for participating in the genocide).

As we made it closer to the park, we could see 5 volcanoes looming in the distance. Katie’s plan was to climb one of them, Mt. Bisoke, and I was off to see gorillas, so we were pretty excited. We started off climbing up an unbelievably muddy slope at the base of Mt. Bisoke, but it only took us about an hour to find the gorillas. It was amazing. The group we saw is called the Umubano group and consists of about 8 gorillas. We first saw a female with a baby. The female was just chillin’ out, eating the stinging nettles that had brutalized me on the way up. The baby, Sun, was having a blast climbing trees and swinging around. She’d check us out for a bit and then put on a little show. It was so cute!

Soon another baby joined up. In true African spirit, she is called No Worries, and she is quite a bit bigger than Sun. They’d start rough-housing and she’d toss the smaller one around. When they wandered off, we followed them to a nice shady spot where we could also see the huge silverback, Charles. He must have been 500 pounds; he was massive! He could have taken us all out if he wanted, but the gorillas are all so docile. They didn’t mind us being there at all, and I think the babies enjoyed having an audience. You are supposed to keep a distance of 25 feet or so, but it was hard because the gorillas would move close to us, rather than the other way around. At one point one of the babies wanted to come play with us, and the guide had to shoo her off.

The whole experience was just incredible. It’s such an amazing feeling being in the presence of such huge powerful creatures, and they are so gentle. It’s very humbling. Gorillas have a pretty sweet life, though. They just hang out all day getting drunk off bamboo shoots and wandering around the rainforest while the babies play around in trees. At one point, No Worries would hang on a vine, getting a running start, and then swing back and forth while spinning in circles. When she fell off, she would just lay there because she was too dizzy to get up. It was precious (see the video at the bottom). Overall it was quite an amazing day. Katie had a nice, yet anti-climactic, climb up a volcano that was covered in fog. For me, I’m have trouble describing how cool the gorillas were, and now I’m having trouble picking which photos to use, so here are a bunch.

Charles, the huge silverback

Charles and one of the babies, No Worries

My token non-gorilla picture. Volcanoes!

One of the females grubbin' out on some delicious leaves

Woohoo gorillas!

Sun, the cutest gorilla of the bunch

I love gorilla babies

Mom & baby

Video of some good vine-swinging. You have to tilt your head because I don't know how to rotate the video...

A Thousand Hills

So Rwanda is amazing. Although I was only there for a few days, it is one of my favorite places I've ever been. It was so different than anywhere else I've visited this trip. Taking a bus from Kampala to Kigali (the capital of Rwanda), I was amazed by the beautiful scenery; it really is the Land of a Thousand Hills. Kigali is situated on a few of the hills, and the first thing I noticed was how clean the city is. Unlike Dar and Kampala that are littered with trash, Kigali is spotless. In Kigali, there are no street vendors like there are in Dar. Although I enjoy the street vendors in most cities, they really do give a place a somewhat chaotic feel. Kigali on the other hand was quiet and peaceful. People went about their business and were always friendly. In Tanzania, most people associate foreigners with wealth and can be quite abrasive trying to convince you to buy whatever they are selling, yet in Kigali, I never felt like a walking money symbol. The air is clean and the climate is perfect, and the city was refreshing.

We only had one day in Kigali. We wandered around the city trying to get a feel for things and really enjoyed what we saw. We stopped for ice cream at the Hotel des Mille Colinnes. It's the hotel that the movie Hotel Rwanda was based on, though the movie was actually filmed in South Africa. It's a nice hotel with a great view. There weren't many people there, and it had the same calm quiet feel that most of Kigali has. It's so hard to imagine a place like that being the site of something so chaotic and terrible.

"Hotel Rwanda"

We also visited the genocide memorial center. It is really well done and I feel like I could have spent an entire day there. I learned so much about the genocide that I did not know, like the fact that France signed a huge arms deal with the Rwandan army just beforehand. French troops also went into the hills around Kigali convincing many Tutsi in hiding that it was safe to come out. The troops left, and when the people emerged from the hills they were slaughtered. I also realized just how much of a failure the UN mission was. There were so many warning signs that were ignored. One anonymous man involved in the planning went to the UN and told them what was in the works. He offered to go public with all the information he had along with locations for training camps in exchange for his protection. The UN said they couldn't guarantee his safety, so the matter was dropped. Even after the genocide started, the amount of troops needed to evacuate foreign nationals was enough to stop it.

There was one section dedicated to the children who were killed. It was heart wrenching. They profiled a few children. There would be a picture of them along with their name, age, favorite food, behavior, and cause of death. I held it together pretty well until then; I was a mess. They also have a section dedicated to genocides worldwide. That was really interesting, especially considering I'd never learned about many of them in history class... Outside there was a beautiful rose garden surrounding mass graves. The whole place was done very well, and it's nice that something so beautiful and so educational was made to commemorate something so horrible.

Part of the memorial garden overlooking the city

Walking around Kigali, you'd never know that the country was ripped apart just 14 years ago. Now it is so peaceful, and it seems like a place that runs so smoothly. We were only in Rwanda for a short time, but after talking to people who have been there for longer, I feel like my first impressions were probably not too far off. It seems that now, people are first and foremost Rwandan, though they don't forget where they came from. There are still cases where people are arrested for trying to spread genocide ideologies, but most people have turned their goals to healing and improving the country, and it really shows.

When we crossed the border, it was the first time our bags were actually inspected by customs. They weren't looking for drugs or weapons, they were looking for plastic bags. Plastic bags are not allowed in Rwanda. They are making a huge effort to clean up the country, which is great. Also, plastic bags collect rainwater and create vectors for malaria-carrying mosquitoes. It's amazing that the country has been able to move from the aftermath of genocide to keeping the country free of things like plastic bags. There are lots of rules in Rwanda, and even though some may need some work, they seem to be doing a lot of good. Urbanization is not so obvious there, and poverty in Kigali is not as prevalent as it is in other major cities. The rate of development in Rwanda is clearly much faster than in Tanzania or Uganda.

The view of from our hotel in Kigali

I absolutely loved Kigali. It's devastating that something so horrible could happen in such a beautiful and peaceful place. Although I'm sure the country will always bear the scars of genocide, the people have really come together to make Rwanda an incredible place again, and I can't wait to go back.