Safari to Zanzibar

    I will begin where I left off, even though that was two weeks ago!

    Monday, May 10, I woke up at 5:30 am, finished packing all of my stuff and said good bye to my family. They all woke up early to see me off and Mama made me breakfast with extra toast and chai with extra tangawizy (ginger) which she knows I really like. That was the last time I will probably ever see them. They were really nice to me and I loved staying there.

    I walked up to the main road (it was about 6:15ish by this time, maybe 6:30) and caught a dalla dalla. I took it to the bus stand, from where I walked to the Dar Express stand. The Dar Express is a coach bus that travels from Arusha to Dar (and the other way around as well). I got on and found my seat and the seats for everyone else (they didn't get on until Usa river). Around 8am, the bus left and headed down Nairobi-Moshi road towards Moshi. Thirty minutes into the drive we passed Usa River where Genevra, Poppy, Sam, Alec and Eloi got on and met me. We then passed the next 9.5 hours driving past fields and mountains. Near the end of the trip I was fairly dead. I had bought bottles of water out the window a few times, but it was really hot and we had been sitting for a very long time. We managed to occupy most of our time by reading, sleeping and playing cards, but those only last so long.

    Finally we made it into Dar. Eloi, who is Alec's host brother found us a taxi and we piled in, headed to what we lovingly called our "Dar Crib." Alec's host father has another son who lives in Dar, and conveniently, owns a hotel. Because of this, we got a super awesome deal on a two bedroom suite with a kitchen (for five people granted, but we don't mind sharing beds, especially when its cheaper for us!). We hung out there for the evening and didn't do very much, surprisingly, sitting on a bus for more than ten hours is exhausting.

    The next morning, Tuesday, Eloi met us at our hotel room and we headed out through the city. Eloi came to Dar with us because he had a job interview there. But he offered to play tour guide as well. He walked us through Dar and I was shocked at how much it differed from Arusha. Dar is a large metropolitan area, its dirty and filled with people and has nonstop traffic jams. We walked all the way to the port in about 30 minutes. Despite it being the largest city in Tanzania, its still relatively small compared to what we would normally consider a really large city.

    At the port we had to decide which ferry to take. This is somewhat complicated in that you can take a slow ferry (5 hours ish) for really cheap or a really fast ferry (2 hours ish) for really expensive, or you can go somewhere in the middle. But then, some of the ferries only travel at certain times, some are air conditioned, some have really nice seats, there's all sorts of things to consider. We ended up taking the Flying Horse, the relatively slow ferry (4 hours). Because I have a residency permit (because I have been here for so long and was working here), I got a really good deal (paid less than half of what they normally charge foreigners). We had to wait an hour for it to leave, but it didn't rock very much (which is good bc I get sea sick) and the ride was really beautiful, so it wasn't so bad to take our time getting to Zanzibar.

    Coming up to Stone Town, as the ferry pulled into port, I was reminded of an Arabic city. The Arabs controlled Zanzibar for a very long time and the influence is quite obvious. Zanzibar feels like a completely different country than anything else I had previously experienced in Tanzania. We got off the ferry and were met by Aliman, one of Eloi's friends who lives in Stone Town. He took us to St. Monica's hostel, located in this cool old building, next to the Anglican cathedral and the old slave market. The five of us decided to share a triple room (so that it would be cheaper). After we'd unloaded our bags, Aliman took us to the beach so that we could go swimming in the Indian Ocean.

    This was my very first time swimming in the Indian Ocean. It was really warm and so blue. I loved it. Next to where we were swimming a bunch of teenagers were hanging out and doing really cool back flips and other acrobatics on the sand between these huge tires. We watched them for awhile. Aliman left us then. We stayed until sunset, walking down along the beach until we got to Forodhani Gardens, an open area next to the port. There, the beach ends and a huge wall has been built.

    We went back to our hostel, changed into real clothing then headed out for dinner. We went back to Forodhani Gardens. At night, street vendors line up their tables there and sell all sorts of food. It's really cheap and really good. We ended up eating dinner there everynight we were in Stone Town. Most of the street vendors sell fish kebabs. They're fishermen that go out in the morning to catch their fish, then they cut it up and grill it for us to eat at night ;-) That first night I ate a piece of coconut naan (there's a lot of Arabic and Indian influence not only in the way of life on Zanzibar but also in their food), along with a kebab of mahi mahi with tamarind sauce and some salad. Some vendors sell sugar cane juice with lime, but since I don't like sugar cane, I figured I wouldn't like the juice either and didn't try any. Another phenomenon of the gardens, is the Zanzibar pizza. This was our dessert for the evening.

    When we first walked up to one of the Zanzibar pizza tables, all we saw were little balls of dough. But we watched as what turned out to be our favorite vendor- we bought food from him every night, transformed these little dough balls into complete deliciousness. First the dough is rolled out to be really really thin (its sort of like pastry dough), then a smaller piece of flattened dough is dropped onto a hot greased frying pan, just as soon as it begins to bubble up, the man removes it and sets it on top of the larger flattened piece. This is where the toppings are added. The traditional one is beef. Chopped beef, vegetables, mayonnaise, sliced peppers, and white cheese. The two that we really liked were nutella & banana, and nutella & mango (this was my favorite). The man then folds the whole thing up into a giant square. This is then placed onto the hot, oil filled frying pan. The thing is fried until both sides are fairly brown. After being removed from the pan it is then chopped into little squares and various toppings are placed on top (for the meat ones, ketchup and sliced cabbage, for the sweet ones, chocolate sauce and condensed milk). They were so good, really filling, and cost less than a dollar ;-)

    After dinner we headed down the road to Freddie Mercury's. This would be the same Freddie Mercury from Queen, turns out he was born on Zanzibar!

    The next morning, Wednesday,we went on a spice tour. Zanzibar is known for its wonderful spices and we wanted to see what it was all about. We were picked up at 9 from our hostel, along with two more people that were staying at our hostel, an American woman from Canton, Ohio (yay! This was very exciting) and a friend of hers from Uganda. We had to drive about 40 minutes into the middle of the island to get to the spice plantations. We then got out of the car and followed our guide who explained the various spices as we passed them. We walked until about 12:30, seeing cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, peppercorn, vanilla, coffee, jambo fruit, jack fruit, oranges, grapefruits the size of my head, nutmeg (which looks soooo cool), rice fields, mangos, coconuts, lemongrass and more things that I can't remember right now. It was so cool. Every time we found a new plant he would pick some up and we could eat it and smell it. It was sweet.

From the spice tour we went to explore the Kidichi baths. These are old Persian baths that a sultan had built for his wife. They were pretty small and it didn't take much time to go through them, but it was interesting to see. We wandered around them for a bit and the caretaker explained what each of the rooms was used for.

Then they fed us lunch made from many of the spices we had just seen. We had pilau (they eat this in central Tanzania as well, rice with cloves and cinnamon and vegetables and sometimes meat), mchicha (also typical Tanzanian, steamed nightshade), a curried vegetable sauce, and chapatti.

    After that it was beach time! We went to Mangapwani, a beach just north of Stone Town by about thirty minutes. There wasn't much beach, apparently you can only go swimming there during low tide, because the beach completely disappears when the tide comes in. But there were little tables built into the sand to put our stuff on to keep it from getting wet as the tide came in. The beach was utterly beautiful. We swam for a few hours and watched as the tide crept ever close to the rocks and our stuff. Around 4 we headed back to Stone Town.

    Because we were staying at St. Monica's we were able to tour the old slave market for free. This was really exciting. We got a tour from the supervisor himself, an older man named Christopher who had given tours to many important people before (and he told us about every one of them), the mayor of Glasgow, the Bishop of the Anglican Church, and many more. He also thought that he looked like Morgan Freeman (this was maybe true, if you squinted your eyes, and it was kind of dark out). He took us into the holding cells underground where they used to hold the slaves waiting to be sold. The rooms were tiny and would hold upwards of fifty people. There was a trench in the middle of the room for waste. It used to be open to the ocean so that when the tide came in it would wash everything away with it. At least they tried to keep things hygienic. Christopher told us that small children were frequently washed away by accident though.

    After going through and seeing where the slaves we kept, Christopher showed us the Anglican church which was next door. This was really pretty and looked different than many churches that are typically seen in Europe. There was definitely some Eastern and Arabic influences, lots of red colored things and gold leaf everywhere.

    Dinner for the evening was once again at Forodhani Gardens, I ate a falafel, a shark kebab, and a barracuda kebab (shark is actually pretty good to eat, I would never have thought that) and once again a mango nutella Zanzibar pizza for dessert. After dinner we wandered down the beach the other direction from that which we had gone the night before. We made it to Livingstone's (Dr. Livingstone first starting taking actions to stop slavery while in Zanzibar) which had tables on the beach. It was cool to hang out and dig our toes into the sand. We played cards for awhile and almost didn't back in to the hostel (they bolted the doors at midnight), we had to knock for awhile and wake the guard up to let us in even though it was just 12 when we got back.

    Thursday we woke up rather early and decided to do a bit of shopping. We packed up our bags, checked out of the hostel, and left our bags in their storage room. Then off to explore the shops, the large market (with meat, fruits and vegetables, spices, and all sorts of things), and to buy some things to head north (which doesn't have the assortment of shops that are in Stone Town). We also went to the House of Wonders, which holds artifacts from throughout Zanzibar's history, including dhows, mtepes (Swahili wooden boats made without nails!), jewelry, furniture, etc. The building itself was very cool in itself. It's very large and massive and is the largest on Zanzibar. It was built by a sultan in 1870 as a ceremonial palace. The doors on the front are the largest carved doors in East Africa. From the top of the building we could see most of Stone Town, and all of the port. It was a great view.

    Around noon it was time to go collect our bags from the hostel and head off to Kendwa, a particularly touristy area at the northern tip of the island that is known for its beautiful beaches.

    We had decided to take a dalla dalla, as it would only cost us 2,000 Tsh a person ($1.35 ish). We walked to the dalla dalla stand and found a man who was willing to show us where the Kendwa dalla dallas were. The dalla dallas in Zanzibar are very different from those on the main land. These are more like pick up trucks, with extended truck beds, decorative side pieces, and roofs over them and an open back. Check out Picasa for a better idea of what I'm talking about. We shoved into the back of one with two other mzungos (from Denmark? I think?) and a ton of Tanzanians. We were so cramped. I couldn't feel my toes about an hour in. The ride began very pleasantly. But once it began to rain the driver stopped and put this large blue top over the open sides and back. It immediately got very humid and warm, not to mention, we could no longer see where we were going and were all bathed in a thick blue light.

    I believe the whole journey took about 3 hours. I'm not quite sure, but it felt like forever. Tenacious D, aka Jack Black, has a song in which he references Zanzibar, and conveniently, every one of us has this song on our iPods, so near the end, when we were all going crazy, we listened to this song all at the same time and sang outloud to it. I'm sure the Tanzanians thought we really were insane.

    About 30-40 minutes before our destination, in the midst of torrential down pour, we heard a large "bang." Turns out one of the tires had burst. We stopped, the driver looked at it, thought about it, then got back into the dalla dalla and we headed off down the road again, with a tire that was essentially a thick rubber piece draped over some metal at this point. Obviously we drove a lot slower at this point, so it took even longer to get there than we had been thinking.

    Finally though we made it to the stop for Kendwa. It wasn't the last stop for the dalla, as Nungwi, which is just up the road, is at the very tip, while Kendwa is just close to the tip of the island. The stop for Kendwa didn't look very promising when we got off. It was a dirt track venturing off into some fields, no ocean in sight. There were a few cows, but that was it. We had no clue how far away Kendwa actually was, but we began to trudge down the road.

    I can't find a good stopping place and this blog has gotten long. I will continue the adventure in the next post.

    

Last week of Working at GSC

    This last week was my last one at GSC. It hasn't really sunk in yet that I am moving out of my house here this weekend.

Nothing particularly exciting happened at the hospital this week. On Tuesday I managed to help a couple of people check their email ;-) and after work went to visit Patrick at his house in Sekei. Patrick is the head tech in the laboratory at St. Elizabeth's and is very friendly and talkative. Genevra and I took the dalla dalla with him to his apartment around 4pm, the end of his work day. I had been to his apartment once before but Genevra never had, so this was a new experience for her.

    Patrick lives alone (he is 29, so this isn't particularly abnormal) in a two room apartment. He shares a toilet and a shower with those who live in the 4 other two room apartments that lie adjacent to his. Despite being small and cramped, it is a rather nice place and sits in the back of Sekei, a nice-ish area of Arusha with a bunch of bars and a young(er) family community and lots and lots of people. Sekei is really green and filled with banana and mango trees, a nice treat for the people that live there.

    We had sodas with Patrick and talked to him about Kung Fu (which he is really into, he takes lessons and wants to become an instructor) and watched Westlife music videos with him ( a British boy pop band from the early nineties with which he is obsessed). I had brought two bottles of maple syrup with me from America and had given one to my family already. I didn't know who to give the second bottle to and Patrick as been a good friend at the hospital, so I gave him my second bottle. He enjoyed it and loved to get something else "mzungo." Patrick really really wants to marry a mzungo girl and move to some western country. Genevra and I both made it clear that we were off limits from the beginning, but he decided that we if weren't going to marry him we should help find him a white girl to marry. About a third of our conversations are about how he should go about doing this (he has a sister who is married to a Swedish man and lives in Sweden – he loves talking about her and wants to marry someone and have the same lifestyle that she does). G and I are never quite sure how serious he is about this, sometimes he makes fun of himself for this and sometimes he is very serious about finding a white wife.

    We left Patrick's sometime after 6, maybe 6:30ish. I took the dalla dalla home with Genevra to Usa River. Usa is a really nice area about a half hour past the limits of Arusha. It's a long dalla dalla ride for Genevra to work every day, but she doesn't seem to mind. The family she is living with is much younger than my family, about mid thirties – a couple with a young daughter (about 8 years old?). Genevra and Poppy live with the same host family, sharing a large bedroom with their own bathroom. The baba, Joshua, is a professor English literature at Arusha University and the mama, Beatrice, sells stationary and papers to companies around Arusha, as well as performing secretarial duties for them (typing, letter writing, etc.). Someone who can speak English well and can use a computer (type, use the internet, whatever) is a hot commodity in Arusha. Beatrice and Joshua lived in England for 7 years while Joshua was going to University. This was readily apparent as soon as I walked into their house. I felt like I wasn't in Tanzania anymore.

    First of all their house is quite large, if I had walked into it in America, I would think it was a fairly normal sized house (on the small side for normal though). Then they have photographs and pictures hanging on the walls. They had a bowl of fruit sitting in the middle of their dining room table, a gas stove, two fridges, two flat screen televisions (one in their bedroom) and three indoor bathrooms (all with showers and toilets- although the toilets don't flush and the shower only has cold water). I was amazed at walking into their house. It's weird to see western amenities amongst so much poverty. From what I have seen, many families with two people working make somewhere between $1500 to $3000 a year (if they live in Arusha) and there are still plenty of families that survive on much less. It's quite luxurious and expensive (by Tanzanian standards) to live like Genevra and Poppy's host family does.    

    For dinner we had potatoes and beans and chopped chunks of beef ( fairly normal Tanzanian foods to eat) but we also had salad!! (unheard of) and broccoli (my host family had never even seen it before when I cooked it for them)! After dinner we watched a Julia Roberts film on their dvd player. It was like spending a night in America.

    The next morning Poppy had to work, but Genevra and I went to the UN to watch the ICTR (International Criminal Tribunal for crimes committed in Rwanda). I had been before, but wanted to go again before I left. We watched the court speak to two witnesses, a hutu colonel and a hutu lieutenant about the murder of 60 women and children. The colonel had moved away to Holland with his family shortly after the genocide was over and the court was trying to get him to admit to forging government documents in order to get his family permission to move there and to apply for Dutch citizenship. It was interesting to watch and on our way out, the guard at the door handed us documents explaining the background of the people currently on trial, which was very cool.

    Thursday was pretty insignificant, normal work day. Friday was my last day of working. I didn't teach anyone, just did some stuff for the laboratory, followed the doctor on rounds, went on a chai break with Patrick and Genevra, and helped deliver medicines. At the end of the day I walked around and took pictures of the hospital and of everyone I have worked with for the past six weeks. At 4pm, I headed to the new GSC office to have my "exit interview" with Jenaya.

    I am now officially done with my purpose for being in Tanzania. It seems really weird. I have begun to pack my suitcase and will leave it at the GSC office for the next two weeks while I am in Zanzibar. I will say good bye to my host family Sunday night and am leaving on the bus for Dar es Salaam at 6:30 Monday morning with Genevra and Poppy. We will spend one day in Dar, then take the ferry to Zanzibar. I will not be posting again until after I return on the 19^th of May.

Kwaheri!!!

Moshi, Marangu, hot springs, and waterfalls

I have been a bit behind on blogging because GSC has recently moved their offices and we have been moving, packing, etc. And of course, there isn't any internet. Anyway though, time for details on last weekend- aka adventure to Moshi.

    Originally, Genevra, Poppy, and I had planned on going to Marangu for the weekend to do the "waterfall hike." But we found that a group of other people that we know also were planning on going to the Moshi area for the weekend and knew of some hot springs that they were going to go see. They were going to rent a car and drive there, but as they were planning on going to hike Kili on Sunday, they needed someone to drive the car home. This worked out perfectly for us.

    We ended up renting a Land Cruiser (and fit 9 people into it, a cramped venture, but we managed). Julian drove on the way to Moshi. As he is from Holland, this was the first time he was driving a car on the left hand side of the road. I was a bit worried, but everything was fine. We picked up Genevra, Poppy, and Christine and Lea (two Danish volunteers who work at an orphanage) in Usa River and from there, Moshi was a little more than an hour away.

    We ate lunch at The Coffee Shop, a restaurant owned by an NGO that works to give fair trade prices to all of their vendors and pay their employees a fair wage. They are not-for-profit and because of this, we got to eat mzungo food for African food prices! Poppy and I split a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich and pasta with some grilled vegetables in it. After lunch we headed off to the supermarket to buy some food for supper and for breakfast the next morning. Then we headed off to find the hot springs, Ben driving this time. Ben is from England, so this was nice, he's used to the steering wheel being on the opposite side of the car.

    This drive turned out to be a bit of an adventure. The so called "hot springs" aren't a tourist attraction, aren't in any guide books, and are only occasionally visited by locals. The road to access it is along the lines of many Tanzanian roads during rainy season, essentially a very muddy, wet track rambling through miles of vegetation with the occasional small village springing up every once and awhile. After driving for about an hour and a half we came upon a couple of cars parked in the middle of the track, water having formed a large-ish river across the road. We got out of the car and walked up to where we saw a lorry stranded, tilted in the middle of the new river. A mzungo family from Arusha was there looking at the road. We talked to the woman who told us that they had ventured out into the water to see if their car could make it across and that the water in the middle was waist high. There was no way to continue along the road. Luckily, the family was headed to the spring as well and knew of another road to get there. We decided to follow them. This took another hour, through more villages, streams and muddy, rocky roads, but eventually we made it.

    There was a nice flat area next to the spring where we could camp and the water was an amazing blue crystal clear color. The children of the family were already changing into their bathing suits but we decided to set up our tents first. We had the tents that the boys were going to use when they hiked Kili and they were on loan from SOKO. We had no clue how to set them up, but after some configuration, we managed to make all three stand up and look somewhat presentable. It was then time to go swimming!

    The water wasn't exactly "hot." It was more of a slightly warm bath water temperature, but still really pleasant. The water was super pristine and came out of the ground just along the bank of where we had pitched our tents. If we didn't swim or hold on to anything, the water would push us downstream into the plants lying along the stream bank. The spring was deep, far over any of our heads and there were trees all along the side that we could climb and dive and jump off of. I got a few videos of people doing this, I only jumped off the tall tree once myself. It was really high and once I had climbed out onto the branch I was really nervous to jump off, but I finally managed and survived! It was exhilarating, but once was fine for me. The boys of the family that was there had brought a rope with them and tied it to the tallest branch of one of the trees so that they could swing and jump off of it, this also provided us with some entertainment. We swam until 7pm when a man (who guarded the springs at night) came over and had us get out of the water since the sun was setting.

    We built a fire and changed into dry clothes. Being poor students with no income in Arusha, we had bought a motley collection of food from Moshi. We had jointly split the cost of a few things and had bought individual food for ourselves as well. We had bread, peanut butter, Blue Band (margarine – mostly they don't eat butter in Africa, it's expensive and melts in the heat), Nutella, bananas, tomatoes, and carrots. Genevra had brought Marmite with her (a weird British food that I don't particularly care for) as well. We toasted the bread over the fire by holding it on two sticks. Toasted peanut butter and banana sandwiches make for an excellent dinner. Christine and Lea had wanted something more substantial to eat, so they had bought canned tuna and canned corn for their supper.

    The next morning, we started swimming a little before 7am (the earliest the guard there would let us in the water). We swam for a few hours then packed up our stuff to go. We finished whatever food we hadn't eaten the night before and headed down the road to Machame, the gate to Kilimanjaro National Park where Julian, Ben, and Bjarke were going to start their hike to Kili. The drive there was beautiful and the surrounding land was lush and green. As we were driving there it began to rain and was still raining as they met the rest of their crew at the gate and headed up the mountain. The rest of us headed off to Moshi again. We dropped Christine and Lea off in town then drove on to Marangu, set on our original plan to see the waterfalls. We got to the Marangu route gate to Kilimanjaro around noon. We saw everyone preparing to head off (it had stopped raining by this time) and found ourselves a guide for the hike.

    The hike was nice but not as interesting as I had hoped. We did get to swim in the last waterfall though, which was really nice, but really really cold. The water from the waterfall comes from the melting glacier on the top of Kili. Once we got in, our legs became numb, so it was okay, but waiting for the numbness to kick in was a bit painful. We ended up not spending a ton of time swimming because it was sooo cold. We warmed up a bit, changed back into our other clothes and walked back to the car.

    It was then time to head back to Moshi to pick up Christine and Lea who had spent the day there hanging out (they wanted to do the waterfall hike another time). On the way home we all took turns driving, I didn't drive until Christine, Lea, Genevra, and Poppy had all been dropped off in Usa and it was only Freddie and I left. It's about another half an hour to 45 min from Usa to my house in Darajambili. I was a bit nervous to drive on the left hand side of the road, but after the initial getting used to it, it was fine. It was a bit strange to shift gears with my left hand and the Land Cruiser is a very large vehicle, but I managed to make it home without crashing, causing any accidents, or doing anything dumb ;-)

 

Catch up on St. Elizabeth’s

    Last week was eventful at St. Elizabeth's Hospital. But it had nothing to do with my real purpose at the hospital. While I did manage to teach someone how to check their email, the computer skills teaching front is going poorly. The hospital has one working computer on which I can freely teach people how to type, use Care 2 x, show them how to use their email, etc. This one computer is locked in an office owned by a particularly elusive individual. His name is Sunday. Sunday is almost never around when I want to unlock the office, and although I can occasionally convince him to loan me the keys, inevitably I can't find him to give the keys back and I am forced to leave them with the billing department (where he spends most of his time – I can't decide if their computers break a lot or if he just has a crush on the girl who runs the desk – potentially it's both). Anyway, it's a bit of hassle.

    As the for exciting bits though: Last week I got to watch TWO surgeries. The first one was an emergency C section. Genevra and I had asked to watch the surgery that was happening later that day but as we went to go ask what time it was going to happen, they told us it was being postponed because of a woman who had been in labor for too long. We didn't really understand the situation, but asked if we could watch that as well. The doctor performing the surgery readily agreed and we went to change into scrubs. As we walked into the operating room we saw that the woman was awake and looked very calm. We had been told it was an emergency surgery, but the doctor was very calm and moved quite slowly. This led us to believe that the baby had died while the mother was in labor. When the doctor pulled the baby out (upside down by one foot) the baby was blue. It didn't look like a black baby certainly. The child wasn't moving as the nurse cut the umbilical cord and carried it into the next room. Genevra and I followed the nurse and watched as she laid the baby out on the table. Very slowly we saw it start to move its arms and legs and then we heard a very quite "meeeehhhhhhh." It was so extraordinary. I loved the whole experience. Also, watching this surgery was more reassuring than watching the previous one. Dr. Palapala performed this one and he is very calm and jovial. He talked to us throughout the entire thing and told us about himself. When he sewed the woman up, we could barely see the stitches whereas in the one before they had been large ugly black ones.

    The next surgery happened in the afternoon, so we had a break for lunch in the middle of the two. The next surgery was a hernia repair (which has a name but I can't think of it right now). This was very cool because we got to see it from the beginning. They had the man (approximately 60 years old) walk into the operating room barefoot on his own with a sheet wrapped around his waist. He sat on the table and the anesthetist gave him a shot of anesthesia in his lower back. They then had him lay down on the table and just waited until the anesthesia started working. There wasn't as much to see in this surgery and it didn't last very long (a little more than an hour and a half), but it was interesting to see something else.

    This most recent week hasn't been as interesting, no surgeries or ambulance rides. I did organize all of the paperwork for the medical ward. I don't think the drawers had ever been organized before. They had piles of prescription forms, patient files, billing records, inventory books, and everything they could possibly need thrown haphazardly into three drawers stuffed so full that they could barely shut. I'm leaving on Friday, but maybe they'll remember my good organizational skills ;-)

    Went on an adventure this past weekend to Moshi and Marangu, I'll post about it tomorrow.

Wedding!

    Last week, one of my neighbors got married. It was the daughter of the family that Kristy has been living with, a 24 year woman named Nanginyi. She was supposed to be married this past February but because they didn't get the planning done on time and they can't have the wedding during Lent (because it is a period of mourning and they can't be excessively happy or have celebrations then), they had to move the wedding back.

    The ceremonies began on Thursday night. The whole wedding party and all of the family members dressed up in elaborate clothing and paraded around town around 5pm. The procession was led by a pick up truck filled with band members playing brass instruments, then followed by a line of cars filled with the whole party. Everyone was dancing and singing and all of the cars were decorated with flowers, ribbons, and crepe paper. I watched the last bit of it when they were going through Darajambili until they got to their house. Then it was time for the Send off Party.

    The Send off party is where (officially) the bride's family says good bye to their daughter and gives her to the groom's family. Traditionally, the bride would move in with the groom's family and would probably never see her own family ever again. This isn't exactly followed anymore, at least by those who live in cities and are close to things like public transportation – but they still have the ceremony.

    Mama got dressed up and left with the wedding party to go to the hall early to help set up- she is a really good family friend. At about 6:30, Veronica and I got dressed and got a taxi there. The party was held at Green Acres Banquet Hall, a building on the grounds of a really excellent private school for Tanzanians, Green Acres (coincidentally where Ipti goes to school). The hall was decorated quite elaborately and was filled with people. Everyone was mingling around outside and hanging out and admiring the gifts the Nanginyi's parents had bought for her. The bride's parents are supposed to handle the Send Off party, while the groom's parents are supposed to pay for the wedding. Nanginyi's parents also bought her gifts for her Send Off, two sofas, a chair, three coffee tables, a china cabinet, and a stove. It was insane, the amount of gifts that Nanginyi and Eliasi received for their wedding. They had the gifts sitting outside the entrance under a tarp so that everyone could admire them as they walked inside.

    As we walked inside we were offered appetizers, bowls of beef broth and kebabs with beef deep fried in egg on them – they didn't look super appetizing, so I passed on them. Veronica and I found where Mama was sitting (she had saved seats for us) and went to sit down. A little after 7, the ceremony began. There were many different parts and the whole thing last about four hours before we ate dinner. First, the bride paraded around the room with the wedding party and everyone was introduced. Then there were a lot of speakers from the bride's family, minister, and friends. Then the bride had to go "find" her groom who was hiding somewhere in the audience. Then he was introduced and there were more speakers. Nanginyi and Eliasi then thanked her parents, grandparents, and friends for raising her and giving her away. First there was "English" cake, normal white cake which they fed to their grandparents and to each other and their friends, and they gave away a whole one to her parents and to his parents. Then there was "traditional" cake, a roasted goat (a female one because they were celebrating the woman), which they fed pieces of to each other and various people. The goat was paraded around and sung about as it was wheeled in by the chefs. (there are pictures of all of this on Picasa).

    After the "cakes" was the gift giving. This is a very elaborate dancing line of party who line up with their gifts and dance forward as music plays to present their gift to the bride and groom. This was repeated many times, for various categories of people and gifts. Afterwards, gifts were then given to Nanginyi's parents as thanks for raising her. The whole experience lasted about an hour. I helped my family present their gifts, it was strange to stand in line and dance up to the front, but quite entertaining (there are videos of this on Picasa).

    Finally, after the gift giving, it was time for dinner. By this time it was ten thirty. Dinner was a buffet of typical African foods. There were a lot of people and we were sitting close to the back, so we ended up eating around 11:15. Dinner was good though, and it was fun to see what kinds of food they would pick for the wedding (they had chicken, fish, goat, and beef as well as beans and bananas, rice, pilipili, fruit, cabbage, and many other things). After the dinner, there was another hour of speech giving and prayers and a leaving ceremony where the bride is presented to the groom's family, then it was over.

    Afterwards we hung around for a little bit and took pictures – I got home a little after 12:30 AM.

The wedding itself was on Saturday. Around 2 ish my mama and I headed over to Nanginyi's house. Everyone was getting dressed and ready for the wedding. It was very exciting. I ate some Nyama Ndizi that their house girl, Fatuma, brought me, while a bunch of other women from the village (with a few men in tow) arrived. About thirty minutes later, it was time to go. The family had paid for a dalla dalla to take their close friends to and from the wedding. We piled into the dalla dalla and headed off to the Lutheran Church in downtown Arusha.

    Turns out that in Tanzania, churches will marry multiple brides, at the same time, to save money. So at this wedding there were SIX brides. To make things more interesting, FOUR of the six were pregnant. Huh. Anyway, so there was a band playing when we got to the church and people were just starting to walk inside and sit down. Mama and found seats near the front and sat down. A few minutes later the band walked in, followed by the six brides, the six grooms, and the six bridal parties (best men, bridesmaids, flower girls, the whole shebang). After everyone had sat down, the minister came in. He said a prayer, introduced everyone, then began his sermon. It was about an hour (ish) long, but since it was in Swahili I'm not quite sure what it was about. He was a good speaker though, everyone got really excited and was clapping and laughing throughout it. After the sermon, there was the usual wedding vows, etc. Except that this all had to be repeated six times. Then there was signing the wedding certificate six times before all of the newly married couples left the church together at the end.

    There was a flurry of picture taking afterwards. For little more than an hour we moved to various locations around Arusha to take pictures of the bride and groom and everyone. Then it was time for the wedding reception.

    This was exactly like the Send Off party. As we walked in there were appetizers, chicken broth soup with garlic croutons and once again we received inscribed handkerchiefs. The reception after the wedding is where the groom's family officially accepts the bride into their family. So instead of the focus being on the bride like at the Send Off, the focus was on the groom and his family. There was once again speeches, cake feeding (both English and traditional cake – the goat was a male this time), gift giving (although less because these were gifts from the groom's side of the family and they're not supposed to give as many gifts), and then a buffet dinner. The food was very similar to that which we had on Thursday. After dinner, the bridesmaids danced for awhile, then everyone got up and danced. We left relatively early though, I was home by 11pm.

 

It was a great time though – I totally loved it. Look at the pictures on Picasa!!