Arusha facts, I'm taking a break from writing about Engaruka.

So now its time for a little bit more detail about Arusha. I can’t remember how much of this I have spoken about before.

Arusha sits at the base of a large mountain, called Mt. Meru. It is the second tallest mountain in Tanzania (after Kili, the tallest mountain in Africa) and is basically just a constant presence that I forget about for large periods of time. Every once in awhile though, I look up and it’s like “whoa, there is a huge huge mountain that I get to see every day.” I would really like to climb Meru at some point before I leave but this will probably not happen. 1, because it costs about $600 to do (which I can’t really justify spending for doing something that isn’t really really awesome), and 2, because it takes about three to four days to do and is highly recommended that you DON’T do it during rainy season (aka now till about 2-3 weeks before I leave). It’s supposed to be a rather tedious hike, especially because there are 13 fake summits to the mountain, so you keep thinking you’re just about to reach the top, then lo and behold, turns out there’s still a lot more to do. So it may or may not happen, but it’s a cool mountain and nice to look at.

In terms of danger for white people:

I haven’t really felt to be in too much danger since being here, despite hearing numerous reports abot muzungos being mugged, robbed etc. Since being here I have caught people trying to pick pocket me three times, twice it was actually the same man. No worries, I always keep my bag close to me and generally keep a hand over the opening, so nothing has been stolen (yet anyway – I may be jinxing myself here). Needless to say, the last time I felt the man (not so subtly I might add, he was a rather lowsy pickpocket) reaching his hand along the top of my bag, I flipped out. I was in the middle of a shoe shop looking at really awesome beaded sandals (where some guy was trying to rip me off by telling me they cost 24,000 TSh) and there were a lot of people all crowded into the tiny tiny shop. I shoved the guy back into a bunch of the other people in the store, hit him in the face, and yelled at him to leave me alone. I was already annoyed because the shop keeper thought I was stupid and believed that the shoes cost more than like $3 so I started yelling at the man quite a bit. He didn’t stick around, just ran out into the street. Obviously, I left the shop without buying shoes.

There was another time where I was walking with Kristy to our houses (we live really close to each other) around 6pm. This is more than an hour before the sun sets and there were a lot of people around all walking home from work, the market etc. A car full of Indian men followed us for a ways, yelling things at us and wanting us to get in their car with them. But after we ignored them (for probably close to ten minutes- it was a really long time) they eventually left us alone.
Those are the only times though that I have felt that Arusha is a scary place. Typically we stay in really well populated areas and I never go anyway by myself after dark, so I don’t expose myself to scary people. And while I do take public transportation, I never do at night and I always make sure I hold my bag in front me and keep my cell phone, camera, etc. out of sight.

The main form of transportation is the dalla dalla and while they aren’t bad, most of the time I opt out of taking them and walk instead anyway. If it is really far and would take far too long to walk, I always try to get a seat near the door or a window. You are less likely to be completely smothered this way and you can tell where you’re going. A number of times I have completely missed my stop because I couldn’t see out any windows (there were too many elbows, backs, bags, and just people in general In my way). Also, dalla dallas don’t really have set stops, so if you want to get off you either have to yell up to the front to get the guy to stop, or you can bang on the window frame with a coin and they’ll pull right over (or they normally do anyway- sometimes they just do whatever they want). The dalla dallas are color coded so you know where each one is supposed to go. All of the dalla dallas are mostly white, but they have colored stripes on the sides. To my house, I take the black dalla dalla that heads towards Njero, a rich mostly mzungo neighborhood a little ways out of town. It drops me off by a small store that is just above the brewery. I then have about a 15 minute walk home from there. A typical ride into town costs about 250 Tsh which is roughly twenty cents. There isn’t any real consistent payment that they charge you, you just pay what you think you should pay for whatever distance you’re traveling and then they’ll either give you change or ask for more money. You can argue but normally its not a lot and not worth the hassle if they charge you an extra five cents.
I try to educate myself on how much things should cost so I know how much people are trying to rip me off (they inevitably will, if only because I have white skin and they think I’m rich). I ask my mama all the time, how much should an avocado cost? What about a pineapple? Normally I find that I paid a lot more than it was worth, sometimes even double what she would have paid (it still only cost me less than a dollar to buy a pineapple, so its not a huge huge deal). I also keep my guide book handy so that I have a map of Arusha or wherever we are around with me and can know what things are like. If it’s a poor area, lots of tourists, etc. It’s not always reliable though.

Reading my Lonely Planet Tanzania book here, I keep finding things that I wish they had included, especially about things just around Arusha. For example, while many hostels charge somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 Tsh a night and the book includes these and what amenities they offer, they don’t mention anything about guest houses. Guest houses are typically where Tanzanians stay when they travel and are only about 5,000 Tsh a night PER ROOM. Many times each room will have two beds in it, so if you’re traveling with more than one person its an even better deal. These guest houses sometimes provide breakfast (usually for a little bit more money, but its worth it in most cases) and a shared toilet and sometimes even a way to bathe (they’ll either heat up water for you, or they have a cold shower, I know of one that has hot showers). They don’t advertise though, so if you are new to an area, it may be hard to find one.

Also, The Lonely Planet doesn’t list many local restaurants. While Muzungo restaurants are fine (and delicious and sometimes necessary places to go when you can’t possibly eat any more beans), there are plenty of really good, filling, cheap local restaurants that they completely ignore. Example, there is a restaurant in town called Milk and honey that has AMAZING curried vegetables and rice (and it’s a huge portion-way more than I can eat) for 4000 Tsh. Sherry’s Snacks, a particular favorite of GSC employees because its really close and really good food, serves you almost anything for between 2000 and 3000 Tsh. We call that place Space Cadet, due to a super ditzy waitress who works there (she forgets orders, has to double check that what she’s bringing to the table actually IS sprite or coke or whatever, and will completely forget to ask half a table what they want to eat- we like her anyway). In addition, Sherry, the owner, LOVES it when white people eat there (especially us, since we’re basically regulars) and will come and talk with you FOREVER.

Anyway, Arusha also has a lot of amenities that can’t be found anywhere else in TZ besides Dar and Zanzibar. It has a movie theater, a mall-esque collection of rather high end shops, multiple grocery stores that sell foods besides beans, lentils, rice, etc. , and a large collection of health and fitness clubs and intramural sports leagues. Although I have not yet seen this sport played, it is also where the national rugby team plays its international matches. I am planning on going to watch a rugby game in the near future, so I can figure out exactly what this sport is.

Living here is like living in fake Tanzania, while things aren’t super elegant, I forget a lot that I am in AFRICA. It isn’t until we’re camping in the middle of the desert that I remember again that there are people who have never seen white people here, that don’t have and have never seen electricity, that they don’t even have water to drink. All in all, I’m glad I’m staying in Arusha and only venturing out into the bush for three weeks at a time. I always feel like I’m being pampered when I’m at home here. I get to sleep in a real bed, and have drinking water whenever I want, and I have electricity (most of the time) and internet. It makes me super appreciative of how awesome Arusha really is (and how beautiful all of the green everywhere is).

More Arusha facts. There are a little less than 300,000 people that live in the whole city even though it is the third largest city in the country. The elevation of the city is really pretty high (1400m) which is good because it means Arusha is a lot cooler than most of the other areas around here. Its normally in the 80s F here which is a super pleasant temperature to live in year round. In the rainy season (beginning now) it even gets a little colder which is great.

The region Arusha is in (called Arusha region) is famous for a gemstone called Tanzanite (creative name, I know). This is the only place in the world it can be found. It is pretty, a blu-ish purple color and really expensive. There are mines all over the region that find it and Arusha is filled with Tanzanite shops and museums.
Arusha is also where the Criminal Tribunal for the Rwandan genocide is being held, so there is a large UN presence here. Soon, I am going to go and watch a trial. It’s on the to do list.

Lake Natron Weekend

We left for Lake Natron from Engaruka on Saturday morning relatively early. It takes about five hours to drive (northeast) from Engaruka to the lake. Lake Natron lies about 25 km past Oldonyo Lengai so we knew that we were getting close when we passed right by the volcano.
On the way there we passed by herds of zebras, wildebeasts, dikdiks, and gazelles. It was was so cool to see them in their native habitats just wandering around the plains.
When we had climbed to the top of our mound in Engaruka we had seen a large crater so on our way to Natron we stopped by the crater to check it out. Turns out, it had once been an active volcano that had essentially imploded and fallen in on itself,leaving this large crater in its wake. It was a good size crater with little greenery on the inside. It stood at the base of two other sleeping volcanoes and just beyond it on the horizon we could see Oldonyo Lengai or "Mountain of the Gods" in the Maasai language. We could also see the gases that the mountain was releasing creating a puffy white cloud that hung constantly around the top of the volcano.
The road we drove on was a dirt path, frequented with large holes, ditches, rocks, and other obstacles. About 45 min into our drive we got a flat tire from one of the rocks we had driven over in GSC's Land Cruiser. So we all piled out while Tom 'dogo, Harry (the driver), and Dismas changed the car tire. A little bit away from the road were a few Maasai bomas. The children immediately ran over to our car, "pipi?, pesa?, maji?" They never ask for anything different (candy, money, water- actually water only gets asked in rural areas, generally in town its pens, "kalamu"). We tried to talk to them but because they mostly only spoke Maasai, and we mostly only spoke English, our communication levels were low.
Shortly after the children came over though, the mothers followed with their babies wrapped tightly to their backs. They immediately started asking (in English), "eyedrops?, eyedrops?" It was at this point that we realized that almost all of the children that we had been speaking with (and holding hands with) had really bad cases of pink eye. It wasn't hard to see why though, one of the mamas (who was holding her baby in her hands) had manure and straw covering her hands so completely that no skin could be seen beneath her wrists. Turns out thats how they build the mud walls of their bomas. Hygiene isn't really a top priority here.
After we explained that we didn't have any eyedrops on us the mothers began to take all of their copious amounts of jewelry off of their necks and wrists and putting it on our necks and wrists (only the girls bodies, they ignored the males). They then began to sing and dance and gathered us in a circle on the road to teach us how to sing a call and response song with them, and move our bodies just right so that we got the jewelry to swing in the correct way. It was completely random and tons of fun.
Shortly after this the tire was finished being changed and it was time to leave the women. So we took the jewelry off, handed it back to the women (even though they wanted us to keep it in exchange for water, money, or medicine from us- but we didn't have extra of any of these to give to them) and got back in the Land Cruiser to continue on our way.
Twice we had to stop to pay Maasai men in little wooden shacks on the side of the road. Each shack stood at the line to a new region. The government doesn't give any money to regions to help make or upkeep existing roads, so the only income people have for their road systems in rural areas is to charge those who drive through exorbitant amounts of money. They don't charge Tanzanians, but each Mzungo had to pay 18,000 Tsh at one stop and then 10,000 Tsh at the other. If we had had our resident permits with us this price would have been cut in half, but because GSC didn't know (or at least told us they didn't know) that these charges were in place, most of us didn't have copies of our resident permits with us (apparently we're supposed to carry copies around with us everywhere we go, but until that point I hadn't heard that rule).
The closer we got to Oldonyo Lengai the more dead and barren and gray the landscape looked. When we finally got close to the mountain, we found that the whole area was covered in fine gray dust. The mountain looked gray and stony and had brief amounts of greenery on only one side of it.
We could see Lake Natron in the distance, but it looked only a dim, blue gray color and was hard to see even though we were relatively close to it. We continued on to stay this super lush and awesome campground. I don't know what it was called but it was super fancy. They offered platform tents that had king size beds and electricity in them for almost $300 USD a night. Since we had brought our own tents it only cost us 10,000 Tsh a person (about $8 USD), so it was cool. We got to enjoy the rest of the amenities, like flush sit down toilets, mirrors, working sinks, and canvas chairs in shady areas even though we weren't paying the posh prices. There was a bar and a restaurant at the campground too, but dinner cost $25 USD a person, and even a soda from the bar cost $3 USD, so we found food and beverages in the small village that was close by. We did get to enjoy the pool though, which wasn't large but really enjoyable (it was about 115* F each day we were there).

It was about lunch time when we got there so after setting up our tents we sat down on the grass underneath a shady trees where some monkeys were hanging out to eat. It was actually a super good lunch, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, pineapples, mangoes, and oranges. If I ate lunch like that every day I was in TZ I would be perfectly happy. At lunch we found out that if we had wanted to hike up Oldony Lengai we should have done it the evening before as they didn't want us to do it on such short notice (its supposed to be a really arduous hike). We also would be potentially exposed to a large rain showed while up there and since it is slick already (being hardened molten lava) it would be more dangerous. In addition to these things, GSC didn't really want us to hike up the volcano. So we didn't go. Which I was really bummed out about. But oh well.
After lunch we went on a hike up a creek to a waterfall. The hike wasn't super hard and was really beautiful,as the creek was really the only water source for a great ways (besides Natron which has water that is far too basic to really support plant life). It was also really nice to walk through the water and to get wet since it was so hot out. About 1/3 of the way into the hike, while we were walking though water about waist deep, I caught my Teva sandal on a rock and the sole ripped off from the top part of the shoe. I managed to get both parts before they were washed away byt he current (so I could bring them back to Arusha and try to get it fixed) but I had to complete the rest of the hike with only one shoe (there and then back). It wasn't too bad since most of the walking was in the water. It was only when we had to climb up the rocky parts that my foot hurt because the rocks were SO hot. The waterfall was beautiful (as you can see if you check out Picasa) and had palm trees growing all along the walls of the canyon area that the creek went through.

Since my camera is waterproof, I took it behind the waterfall to where the more powerful chute of water was and where we swam for about four hours. The pictures aren't super clear, since water kept spraying all over my lens, but I tried getting a few pictures of it.
AFter the walk back (where I tried to do almost the whole thing in the water, with the exception of a few larger drops) we went back to camp to change out of our wet clothing (or in my case, put on other shoes). We then headed out to Lake Natron. The last 2 km or so we drove over sticky mud flats from where the lake had retreated. Because there is only a little bit of water constantly going into Natron, and nothing moving out of Natron, the water level is almost entirely dependent on the amount of rainfall that has been received recently. Since there hadn't been alot of rain, the water was pretty low. We were able to walk out farther on the mudflats than the car since we weren't as heavy, but in most places we couldn't reach the water without risking sinking deeply into the mud.
The lake was beautiful, and covered in hundreds of bright pink flamingos. As we could see them standing a few hundred meters out into the lake, we found that the Lake was only a few inches deep for a very long way (its very shallow the whole way across even though it does get slightly deeper in the middle). At that point, Natron marks the border between Tanzania and Kenya and we could see Kenya across the lake from where we stood. Natron is one of the only places where greater flamingos can live. This is because the alkaline nature of the water allows specific types of microorganisms to grow that represent the greatest portion of a flamingo's diet. Lesser flamingos (yes, there are two completely differnt types of flamingos- crazy I know- I had never heard of this before Natron) live in a wider variety of places, btu they do not have the bright pink feathers and can eat a wider variety of food. Apparently they have some other physical characteristics that are different as well, but I dont really know what they are.
We spent quite awhile looking at the flamingos, trying to get close enough to them to get good pictures (a challenging task), and enjoying walking in about 1 cm of water (our pictures look pretty cool, check them out on Picasa).
While we were there, a bunch of Maasai women walked over and tried to sell us jewelry; many of the Maasai in the area are very very poor and have no income. And although they can mostly survive off what they can get themselves, they don't have access to medicine, clean water, or fruits and vegetables (at least in places like Natron and Engaruka which have almost no water sources). Because of this, whenever they see white people they come and ask for money, medicine, water, and sometimes jewelry or sunglasses that they see us wearing.
They also try to sell us jewelry they have made. The jewelry is beautiful and even though they typically ask outrageous prices for it, it's not too hard to get them down to a reasonable price. They are also, many times, willing to trade what they have made, for things we are wearing ( I have bought very little, and have traded nothing, but the longer I'm here, the more I feel tempted to buy things each time I'm asked).
That night we went into the small village for dinner at a local restaurant. They were playing bongoflavor music (a type of modern Tanzanian music that is very popular). It was my first time ever hearing it and I decided that I liked it alot. There is one bongoflavor musician called Marlow who I particularly enjoy ( I am going to buy a CD of his before I leave TZ). I also tried Konyagi that night. This is a local liquor that is very popular among African men (only "loose" African women drink except on very special occasions). It can be bought in little plastic bags (they call them sachets) for very very cheap or in larger glass bottles (or just at bars or in restaurants). Its very normal for people to start drinking early in the day and since there aren't any laws about drinking and driving or drinking while working, we see people drinking everywhere (alcoholism isn't really recognized as a huge problem). anyway though, Konyagi is made from sugar cane (even though they call it gin) and is thick (ish) and kind of syrupy with a kind of sweet flavor. I found it nauseating and couldn't drink more than a few sips. I have no clue how people can drink whole bottles of by themselves a day.

The next morning, we decided to go back to the waterfall bright and early. So after breakfast we headed back up the creek (I wore tennis shoes this time). We swam for a long time. Adam decided to go off exploring while we swam. He found another path way up the mountain and followed it even farther up of the creek. After we had been swimming for awhile we heard him calling from way above our heads. Looking up, there was Adam standing on the ridge. We called down to us that it was really cool and we needed to climb up. I was wearing tennis shoes that day, so i decided i could brave the climb. Alana, Dismas, Rachel, Tom (Kiwi), Mike and I all scrambled up the crumbling rock side of the canyon. It was probably over 100 ft straight up with really crumbly rocks and only a few plants not so firmly rooted into the sides of the rocks to support us. It was a kind of scary climb since if we fell there was nothing but rocks and a shallow creek to break our fall, but it was completely worth it.

At the top we found a little narrow path wandering around the edge of the ridge, following the creek back to its source. In many places the path was only about a foot wide with a solid rock wall straight up on one side and a solid rock wall down on the other, but the view was utterly fabulous. Across the canyon were lush green plants with baboons playing in the branches. There must be an underground river flowing along the ridge line on the opposite side, because every few feet had water literally seeping right out from the rock to drizzle onto the creek a couple hundred feet below. When I wasn't busy climbing over obstacles when the path disappeared or watching to make sure I didn't accidentally walk off the cliff, I couldn't keep my eyes off of the scene unfolding across from me, it was so beautiful. At one point the creek was only about 30 ish feet below us (it dropped quite quickly through a series of small waterfalls just above where we had been swimming before), so we climbed down to get back into the water. Walking up the creek bed again we found a collection of moist green grottos, each filled with a series of waterfalls, mossy walls, and small creatures hanging out. ( I have seen a few scorpians here p.s. they're really scary).
We knew the others would be waiting for us to have lunch (those that hadn't risked the climb up the wall) and that it must be getting late so we put our shoes, shirts, bags back on and climbed back up to the trail. Following it back, we realized that we wouldn't be able to climb back down the original way we had climbed up, so we continued to follow the path back along the ridge line. It went on forever seemingly. Eventually we got to a steep steep place where it seemed the path just ended. We were up way higher than we had been and didn't really know how to get down. Adam had done alot more exploring up there then we had and we thought he might know another way to get down, but he was about 15 minutes behind us with Alana, so Dismas, Rachel, Mike and I decided we would try to climb down the ravine. I was freaking out because it was super steep and really high up. I was so happy when Tom appeared and said he could see where the path continued and we just had to do a little bit of climbing around this one rocky area. Thank goodness we hadn't managed to get down too far. We managed to make it back to camp with everyone all in one piece (I was rather sunburned though since all that swimming had washed away most of my sunscreen) by a little after 230. Everyone else had way given up on us and had eaten hours before.

After lunch we took down our tents and packed everything back into the cars. Two of the cars headed back to Engaruka so they could be there before dark. One car decided to stay so we could hang out in the nice shade and pool area of the resort style campground before heading back to a week of much more barren camping in Engaruka. I lounged around in the pool for about 2 hours talking to the other people who had decided to come swimming. First two older German men who were really into scientific nature things that went way over my head, then the bartender (a Tanzanian man) came over to speak with me for awhile. He was wearing an Obama belt. Lots of Tanzanians are obsessed with Obama, because he "half AFrican." I constantly get asked if I know him, if I live close to him, and if I want to "make an Obama" by the local men (its best to ignore them or they just keep going). Anyway, this bartender was pretty nice and didn't ask any obnoxious Obama questions so that was good. After awhile Tom (kiwi) and Mike (also a kiwi) came to join me in the pool. Tom is really into birds and pointed out the kingfishers, the weavers, and all sorts of birds that were in the surrounding trees.
A little after 5, Adam, Alana, Mike, Tom, and I (the last people from our group left in Natron) headed back to Engaruka. Because it was getting cooler and was starting to head towards night we managed to see a TON of wildlife. It was so cool to see gazelles, strange birds (that Tom identified for us but I can't remember what they all were), wildebeasts, and zebras everywhere. We drove straight through a herd of ostriches and saw Maasai men herding hundreds (literally) of cows through the plains. Because it was starting to get dark and some of these things (like the one giraffe we saw) were kind of far away, my pictures aren't all that good. But it was so cool to just be there and experience it.

We got back to camp a little after 9, just when everyone else was finishing dinner. Good timing on our part, there was still food to be eaten.

There is still one more week of Engaruka to share, but I will save that for another day. I'm supposed to be doing work now anyway, so time to be productive.

Some more tales from Engaruka

In the afternoons of the two weeks we were in Engaruka we taught at a government run boarding primary school. Primary schools are traditionally standards 1-7, which is like kindergarten through 6^th grade in the U.S. There isn’t a mandatory age for school attendance or enforced requirement that  children go to school at all. So the ages of children within each standard varied significantly. We taught standard 7 and had a range of kids from 13-17 years old.
We taught them about puberty, reproduction/fertilization, anatomy, HIV, nutrition and basic life skills like goal setting, proper forms of communication etc.  Because it was a primary school and the headmaster was convinced that his students would not be having sex any time soon (even though lots of people become sexually active around 13, 15 years old here and its  considered a good sign of fertilization and health if a woman has a child when she is young and before she is married), we weren’t allowed to mention contraceptives, the word “sex,” or the fact that women are more likely to be infected with HIV than men. This posed a few problems for us, especially when we taught about HIV, but we managed.

Home Sweet Home in Arusha

             I am back from two weeks of camping in Engaruka!  It was a long time and I must admit, I am now so happy to be back in Arusha and to sleep in a real bed. The ground is hard and not the most comfortable thing to sleep on for two weeks.

       When we left two Mondays ago for Engaruka, the trip was off to a not so good start. The Land Cruiser that GSC takes on most camping trips was broken and the mechanic had still not said it was ready to go by 9am (when we were supposed to leave).  So Erwin, the GSC director, left with some people in his car, and Crispin left with some in his truck, with about a third of all of gear. That left five of us hanging out waiting for the car to be finished. It ended up working out really well though.
         Those that went to Engaruka early had a chance to finalize the classes that we were going to teach, set things up, and begin their lessons. Those that stayed in Arusha, got to relax a bit, which was thoroughly appreciated. Alana and I had both not been feeling super well, so it was nice to nap on the GSC window seats for a few hours, while Tom 'dogo (aka Tanzanian Tom: there are two GSC employees named Tom, New Zealand Tom and Tanzanian Tom- TZ Tom is "Tom 'dogo" short for Tom Kidogo, or "little Tom" - he's really tall and thin, so it makes alot of sense) got a chance to go to the hospital since he had been feeling awful for quite awhile. Turns out Tom 'dogo had Malaria, really good thing he went to get it checked out. They gave him some antibiotics to take for a few days and let him come with us- Malaria is rather common place and not a huge deal here since medicine is readily accessible in Arusha.
          We ended up not being able to leave until after 4pm. The drive took about 4 and a half hours (a little longer than normal due to a flat tire along the way). On the way we saw  zebras. I was so excited, it was my first time seeing them and we managed to see a decent number of them. 
           Engaruka lies along The Rift Valley, a mountain chain that makes up a section of the perimeter for Ngorogoro crater. As we drove along the dusty, rocky, super bumpy road, the mountains were beautiful in the dusk.  I got to see the landscape in a completely different way as the sun wasn't so blinding and glaring off the rocky ground.  We also got a really good view of Lake Manyara as we drove around it.
            We had just been at Engaruka the week before, so driving into the campground felt really familiar. Teaching the next morning, we were back at the same location. It was nice to know where we were and what to expect.  I taught the second week with Brendan. It was our first time teaching together, and Brendan's first time ever teaching with another person (besides what we call a counterpart- aka translator). It was a learning experience for both of us. I had never taught with anyone besides Kristy or on my own so I got to see another way to present our material, while Brendan got to see how to split teaching lessons, and how to incorporate a different person's method of teaching into his own. We also worked with a CP (counterpart) that we had never taught with before, it was a nice change of pace.

It's raining now, so once again, the internet will die. So I'm signing off now. I will post more tomorrow.

More Engaruka, Week One

           We taught in an open air class room in one of the only shady areas in Engaruka Juu (the village is divided into two parts, Juu and Chini, Upper and Lower).  There was one man in our class who had had 7 (yes, that says 7) siblings die from HIV, and his mother was infected. She had actually contracted the disease while taking care of one her daughters who was dying from HIV. Hearing stories like this is awful, but it makes it seem like we're doing something worthwhile while we're here. Everyone in our class was negative, and we later found out, that Engaruka has a very low percentage of HIV infected people within its population. This is great because in small villages, particularly Maasai villages, HIV can spread very quickly.
          It is very common in Maasai culture for men to have more than one wife, for wives to have boyfriends, and for teenagers to become sexually active at very young ages. If a girl has a baby before she is married (in their culture) it is seen as a sign that she is fertile and will be able to produce many offspring for her future husband. For this reason, girls try to get pregnant when they are 14, 15, and 16 years old, when they are still in school and years before they will probably be married. Many times they don't worry (or care) about who the father is. This concept is starting to die out as the Maasai become more and more assimilated to a world culture, but it still runs rampant in many rural areas.
        It is conundrums like this that make it particularly hard to teach here. How do you teach someone to only be faithful not just to his 1 wife but to all 2 or 3 or 4 of his wives or to his wives and to his girlfriend in order to stop the spread of HIV? Or how do you explain that if someone finds a new girlfriend, he should go get tested before he sleeps with his wife (afterall its basically his right to sleep with her whenever he wants- in his eyes)?  The cultural differences are hard to take in and even harder to adapt a western mindset around.
          While we taught, people asked us tons of questions pertaining to healthcare. The problem is that to many of the questions, the only answer we had was to say, "you need to find a doctor." There isn't a great supply (or barely one in most regions) of doctors in rural areas. And unfortunately most people that live in these areas don't have electricity, forms of communication, or forms of transportation with which they could provide more proper medical care. It was depressing because we don't know anything more than to tell them to have good hygiene (this is really hard to tell people: when they don't have running water its really hard for them to be concerned with washing their hands all the time, washing all of their dishes when they're just going to be putting the same thing back into it,  or washing sharp instruments. ) and to eat a lot of fruits and vegetables (also hard to do in an area that has been plagued with a drought for almost a year).
          We got to experience first hand what could happen to people without available medical care when 6 people of the 16 we went with all became sick.  We never found out what it was. (which is very unfortunate because we are going to be there for another two weeks). It could have been the unclean water, improper handling of food, or just bad food. It wasn't just white people that got sick, so we knew that it was probably something serious, since normally Tanzanians don't get ill when white people do (they're stomachs are used to handling parasites and bacteria that ours just haven't grown up dealing with).  It was pretty bad though, especially because we really didn't have lots of available clean water to give them, it was really hot with little shade, and there weren't any hospitals that were close enough that it was worth making someone with frequent vomiting and diarrhea sit in a car on along drive (it would have been close to two hours on a bad and bumpy road).
           Even now, some people are still ill from last week. I started feeling sick on Friday our last day there but fortunately we went to Arusha soon afterwards so I had a nice bed to sleep in and it was much cooler, and I had nice, clean, boiled water to drink.
           On Friday when we returned, five of us went out for pizza. It's expensive to eat mzungo food here (dinner cost me approximately $6, about 3 times as expensive as for what i could have had food at a Tanzanian restaurant).  But after eating badly cooked (and just plain not good) food consisting mostly of half burnt rice, beans, and unidentifiable meat (probably beef, but weird body parts- like stomach, and other organs), we felt like we deserved it. It was so good. A very typical Tanzanian pizza has mango and pineapple with white cheese and tomato sauce on it.  Its surprisingly delicious.
We ate in Njero, a place filled with white and rich people (sadly, these are normally the same, except for government officials).  As Alana pointed out while we were eating in a courtyard surrounded by nice restaurants and a movie theater (that plays movies in English), we could have been somewhere in California. 
           Speaking of government officials, I am getting a clearer and clearer idea of how different the Tanzanian government is from ours. I hear stories of how local officials will let people starve or go without medial treatment because a law or policy isn't being enforced while they have multiple houses, and while the Tanzanian government buys EVERY parliament member a car so that they can make sure they have transportation (this is in addition to the salary they make which is roughly ten to twenty times the listed average salary in the country - $600 a year).   A parliament member who lives relatively close to me, just gave his house away to some friends of his because he has four more and didn't really need it.

Obviously not everyone in the government is like this, but it is disheartening to hear so many tales of the lives of wealthy, while I see people who survive on almost nothing every day.  A major problem we encounter is that the government offers to give free ARVs to all people infected with HIV who have CD4 levels below 200. The problem is that if these hardcore drugs aren't taken with lots of food and water they can make people really really really sick. Alot of the people that have CD4 levels this low have already lost/quit any job they had and have to rely on others for food, shelter etc. The government gives no help to these people to help them find food and water to take with their medications. In many ways, giving them these drugs is hurting them more than it is helping them. Of course, I don't know the whole story behind this and don't know if the government has ever tried to put a program to help this in place. I just know what I see around me everyday, and what people in our classes tell us. 

Many NGOs are reaching out to people, like GSC, and working to help bring education, food, and clean water to these people.  But it still makes me greatful that I live in a country where most people don't have to be afraid that they won't be able to find clean water to drink or at least some food to eat.
         

The beginning of my week in Engaruka.

So , it is time once again for another blog post.  It’s Sunday morning here and I’m just hanging out at the GSC office. Arusha has a very high percentage of Christians, so the city basically is completely shut down on Sunday mornings.  For those of us that aren’t at five or six hour long church services (which many of the services are here) there isn’t a great deal to do. There is hiking in Arusha National Park if you can find an armed guide to take you (its illegal to go into the park without one, due to the potential danger of meeting a wild animal). Or you can relax, do some house things, or go to one of the few muzungo restaurants or stores that are still open. I have decided today that my most productive time will be spent using the internet. We have just returned from Engaruka, a village to the north of here. It was only about a four hour drive but the last hour to an hour and a half was on a relatively bumpy road.

The land surrounding the road was a strange combination of huge green cacti, brown dried up looking grass and other plants, and squat and green balboa trees (sort of like the tree Rafiki lives in, in the Lion King- they are short, fat, and seem to have a lot less branches than you would expect a tree with a trunk of that magnitude to have).  I have posted a few pictures on Picasa of our drive so you can have a better idea of what we saw. The drive was beautiful though, the mountains that form the ridge to Ngorogoro Crater served as our horizon and there were plenty of cows, goats, and even a few ostriches to watch  as they foraged for food. Once we got onto the dirt road it was hard to decide whether to shut my window because of the huge clouds of dust that we were creating or to leave it open because it was so hot.  I settled with it half way and tried to breathe only when the dust was residing a bit.

We camped in an area surrounded by prickly plants  with wooden gates at one end of the enclosed area so that cars and people could pass in and out of the compound. This was due to the possibility of scary wild animals otherwise coming in to roam around our tents while we were sleeping.

A large-ish mound (potentially a single hill, sort of randomly placed in the middle of a quite flat plain) sat just behind our camp. In the late afternoons (when it began to get cold) boys would graze their large goat herds along the semi-green base of the mound. One day, around 5:30 or so, when we could venture out from the shade, we climbed to the top of the hill to see the surrounding area.  On the way up we ran into many holes hardened into the mud/rock  with overhangings, providing shady nooks at convenient stops on our walk. Israel, one of the Maasai men of the village of Engaruka who took care of us while we were there, explained that the holes were made by hyenas who needed places to eat and store food. Fortunately, the hyenas only came out at night, so we were safe.

The view from the top of the hill was breathtaking. The land was so stark. Because the rainy season hasn’t started yet, much of the surrounding area was brown; the only thing marring the fields of dried grass, stones, and dust were hardened piles of mud, roughly four to five feet high on average, built by termites.    The areas that had water flowing through them were like green lines sort of meandering through the desert.  There were a few spread out mountains opposite the Ngorogoro range. All  pretty big with flattened tops. Israel explained they were all sleeping volcanoes that had craters in the tops where they had previously erupted.  In the distance, we could see dark clouds and rain falling . A double rainbow appeared, one strong, one light. I captured a few images which I have since posted on Picasa.

I can barely remember what I have and haven’t posted here.

For a much more updated and interesting account of events here, please look at Picasa. My pictures are decent and can tell you the same story I will here in a much more visually appealing form.

Anyway. We leave today for Engaruka. This is a village about four hours to the Northeast of Arusha. It is Maasai territory. The village sits at the base of a volcano which is supposed to be a beautiful hike.  We will be in Engaruka for three weeks.  We will go for this week, camping out for four days, then return for the weekend. The following Monday we will  leave to camp out for two weeks straight. The weekend in the middle we will hike the volcano.

             
                It’s supposed to take eight hours to hike up, so we will begin at midnight so that it will only begin to get warm as we walk back down.  I will let you know how it goes.

I have done one other hike since we’ve been here. To the water source for the stream that runs around Meru, the mountain that overlooks Arusha. It was another hike that we had to begin early as it does get rather warm in the middle of the day. In this case though, we only began at 7am so we could be done by 1:30 in the afternoon.

We had to drive into Arusha National Park (and pay a park fee of 20,000 shillings- about 17ish dollars). From there we began to walk down a steep ravine (or slide in a somewhat controlled way in places) until we reached the water. From there we walked up the stream either on the bank, or through the water depending on how shallow the water was and what the bank was like. In one area there was a large ant hill about 5 feet long that we had to avoid.

One of the GSC employees, Tom, a native of Tanzania, was our guide. No one is allowed to enter any National parks in TZ without an armed guard. This is not really so you don’t get lost, but more so that if a wild animal attacks you, there will be someone around who can theoretically protect you. Tom is a Maasai and males in the Maasai tribe carry these large, large knives with them everywhere. This counts as being armed to the national park.

Walking up along the creek was beautiful. We were in a steep valley with huge plants and trees hanging over our heads. Occasionally we would spot a glimpse of a monkey as it raced from one tree to another and we tried to spot the chameleons blending in with their surroundings. 

The waterfall itself wasn’t large in width but was magnificent nevertheless. It was tall and sent spray over the whole lagoon onto which it fell. At the beginning of the river, the trees opened up into this large circle, allowing the water to puddle at the foot of the waterfall inside of massive boulders piled at the bottom of the walls of greenery.  We ate lunch sitting on the boulders and watching the water drop seemingly out of nowhere and down a couple hundred feet to where we were sitting .

We went back a different way than we came, on a trail that took us straight back into town. Even after following the river up to the base of the waterfall, we still had to go up before we had to go down. Pulling on the plants to get up the steep slope, it seemed to take a lot longer to go back than it had seemed to come. After getting to the top of the ravine we realized that we were now on a different slope (still not on top of Meru, that takes 3 days to get to the top) from which we could see all of Arusha if we looked one way and the Arusha National Park if we looked the other way. It was remarkable. We then, of course, had to walk down an even longer way than we had either climbed that morning or that we had just climbed up the ravine. It wasn’t too bad though. And the walk down was still beautiful.

 While we were up at the top we met  an older retired couple from England who were living on the border of Mozambique, volunteering for an NGO. They had already been in Africa for a year, and are going to be here for another year.

                It’s always interesting to meet other muzungos  here. Many of them are volunteers for local NGOs, UN employees, or tourists, but occasionally you meet people that live here for other reasons. Those are the best people to meet. In general, their life stories tend to be really fascinating.

                For something more recent. Yesterday, it was really warm and I was sick of having to wear skirts past my knees and sleeves covering my shoulders. So I splurged and went to a tourist hotel where I spent 5,000 shillings (less than $4) so that I could use their pool and sit on their deck chairs. It was so glorious. I stayed there for four hours, basking in the sunshine underneath cold chlorinated water.

Since I normally take baths out of a bucket of warm water which I scoop over my head, after swimming yesterday I felt cleaner than I have in a very long time. Dust seems to cling to you here. No matter what. I wear sandals every day. And every day my feet and legs are black by the time I come home.

Time to leave for Engaruka.  I’ll post more when I return.