October 15th

Guess what. Classes have actually started, I've registered for classes (I think?) and I have a set schedule for lectures! I'm taking African Theater, Intermediate Kiswahili, African Political Thought, and African International Relations. I'm really excited about all of them, and I know at least one Tanzanian in all of them (except Kiswahili, obviously). I'm the only white person in my African Theater class, and I really think the Fine/Performing Arts kids are more outgoing than others, so I think that will be really fun.

Other than that, nothing too exciting is going on. Ida took Siri and I shopping on Saturday, which was fun. She and I get along really well so far. She likes to joke around with me, and her boyfriend makes fun of me a lot, so don't worry someone is still trying to keep me in my place, haha.

I finally got sick this week, though. Boo. It was just the normal stomach crap, but I basically stayed in bed all day for two days. However, after that it was over, so it wasn't so bad. One of the girls in my group is a nursing student, so I asked her if I really needed to go to the doctor because I knew my mom would freak out if she knew I was sick and didn't do anything about it. But, she said I could wait to see if I got better on my own, so I did. And now I'm fine! See Mom? I'm not totally irresponsible.

Anyway, other than that, I'm enjoying playing my friends in pool because I had never really played much before, but I don't completely suck. A lot of the time I'm just really lucky, but we don't tell them that. Girls don't really play here, so I'm kind of a spectacle, but really what else is new. I think they're also pretty amused at my competitive attitude, haha, and I definitely have the Moen family to thank for that ;-)

October 5th

This past week was the first week of classes, though I didn’t attend any because everyone is just dealing with registration, so none of the Tanzanian students attended either. There is only one girl in our group that had class, and that was a biology class. Others tried, but I decided just to start fresh this week. So, on Monday, I will be attempting to find Intro to African Theater at 7am, Government and Politics in TZ at 8am, and African Political Thought at 10. My backup PS course in case the other courses don’t work out is African Politics. My other course will be Intermediate Kiswahili, which is going to be incredibly difficult, but I’m excited. My roommate said she’ll help me 

Oh yeah, my roommate moved in!! Her name is Ida (EE-dah), she’s 21, and in her 2nd year here. She’s a political science major as well, and she’s learning French, so that’s cool. Her family is from Mbeya, which you may remember we visited briefly, but they are now living near the University.

She was quite surprised at the way I was living, which was pretty funny. I didn’t think it was that bad; my bed was unmade, and my desk was messy, but there was nothing on the floor! Haha. When I came back to the room after lunch, she had made my bed for me and swept the room (we never knew where to find a broom, so the floor was a little dirty). I’ll try a little harder for her (I tied up my mosquito net this morning), but I refuse to make my bed, haha. So don’t feel too bad, Mom 

September 23rd -- Dar

Now we’re back on campus for a while, and lots of Tanzanians have moved in. We still don’t have roommates, but we’ve moved out of our old rooms, so right now I’m living by myself until my roommate gets here. And no, I don’t have any idea who I will be living with, and I won’t know until she shows up one day with all of her stuff.

It’s so crazy coming back to the same place and having it feel so different. Before we left, I felt like I knew what to expect everyday, but now I feel out of place again. There are two more giant cafeterias open which weren’t open before, and there are just so many people. It reminds me of the first day that all of the upperclassmen moved in when I was a freshman because I haven’t quite figured everything out yet, but it’s old news to them.

In addition, I’m much more aware of the fact that I’m a minority because the white people’s percentages just plummeted in that one week. As I mentioned before, I had never been bothered by the fact that I was a minority in Dar before, but the first day back here was a little disconcerting. It’s just because instead of having 20 people stare at you over the course of your walk to lunch, now it’s like 60, 70, 80… I’m just really anxious for classes to start so that I can feel like more of a normal student because right now I am still the freshman who’s never been in a college class; I won’t feel legitimate until I am in class.

September 16th --Moshi

The view about 50 feet from the front door... Mt. Kilimanjaro, everyone

Last week, everyone in my group had the pleasure of relaxing in the northern highlands at Chris’ family friend’s house. It is actually in a village in the foothills of Mt. Kilimanjaro. We met a bunch of her late husband’s family members, and hiked around by her house. Because there are always clouds around Kili, during the day you really can’t tell that the mountain is even there. However, in the morning and at sunset the clouds would lift for like half an hour, so we could see it then. It was really frustrating trying to take pictures because the haze made everything so beautiful, but you can’t really see anything in the pictures, so you’re just going to have to take my word for it.

One day we went to visit a hotel which on of our friends’ dad owns. It is very near to the entrance to Kilimanjaro National Park, which is where people start their climb. We hiked up to the entrance and actually got in and walked up to the point which you can’t cross unless you pay a large sum of money. So technically, we climbed Kili! Haha.

The rest of the days were filled with drinking tea and coffee and hiking around. We had to go fetch drinking water from a stream which was clean enough to drink without boiling. So, we actually drank natural spring water from Kilimanjaro! And yes, I’m sure it was safe to drink because we all drank it for a week and never got sick. 

September 9th --Kilwa Masoko

Siri and Stacey finally relaxing on the beach after a long week of travel

Finally, we were waiting for the bus to Nangurukuru, which is the junction near the coast where we could catch a daladala to get to Kilwa Masoko. We found the guy who sold us our tickets yesterday and asked him where the bus was, and he said it was coming, but that we had misunderstood the time (he had written it down incorrectly) and that we were an hour early. We were a little bummed that we missed out on some sleep, but now we had time to find more food for breakfast.

After about an hour and a half, our bus still wasn’t there, so we were starting to get nervous. The signs around the station all said that there was a bus going to Tunduru today and Dar (this is the one we wanted) tomorrow, so we got really concerned that he had misunderstood and thought we wanted to get on the bus coming FROM Dar going to Tunduru instead of the other way around. We found the guy eventually, and he seemed to understand and said that no, we were going to Nangurukuru. Seriously about 5 min later, the bus showed up, and it only waited there for about 5 min before it started going; we hadn’t even gotten into our seats yet.

This bus ride felt like the most amazing bus ride ever. I had an entire inch of leg room, no one was sitting on me, and the road was PAVED! According to our book, most of the road was supposed to be unpaved, but it has been paved since then, so what was supposed to be an 11-14 hour bus ride only took 5. After 5 straight days of traveling on crappy buses, we were SO EXCITED when we got there at 1:30. We took a taxi the rest of the way, so we got there at about 2. It took us an hour and a half to figure out our hotel situation because a lot of places were full, but we got everything figured out and immediately headed towards the beach.

We were really hot and sweaty, and we accidentally took the long way there, so once we got in the ocean, we were all very relieved. We lounged in the water for about an hour before heading back to go find dinner. At this point, I hadn’t showered in a week, so I didn’t even care that I was all salty. I felt cleaner with only salt on my skin instead of dirt and sweat combined.

It is Ramadan right now, so finding food was difficult in the smaller towns. We asked the lady working reception at our hotel, and she brought us across the street. The guy there told us that dinner wouldn’t be served until 7, and it was 6:20, so we said that was fine. A secondary school girl came out and started talking with us, and ended up pulling a chair up to our table for like an hour because our food wasn’t actually served until 8. Everything was going fine with her, but we seemed to be attracting a crowd of kids. At one point, there were 10 of them surrounding our table, all asking for things from us. One girl wanted colors and paper to draw, and a swimsuit, another wanted my watch. They only spoke Kiswahili, so I ended up pretending that I didn’t understand because we can’t give stuff to every kid that asks us or we’ll go completely broke.

Then, all of a sudden, the girl says she’s going to give us her address so that we can send her money for school fees. We didn’t know how to react because no one understands when we tell them that we don’t have a lot of money. We ended up just not really answering because our food came out, so she left. That encounter was frustrating for all of us because we were really enjoying talking to her up to that point, but then we sort of thought that the only reason she was talking to us was to get money. We started wondering how we would ever know if anyone was genuinely interested in who we are as people and had no supplemental motives for talking to us. I don’t blame her for doing that because if there’s someone who you think has a lot of money, you don’t really have anything to lose by asking them to help you out. It’s just not something that we do in our culture, so it’s really hard to get used to.

The next day we finally got to sleep in, so I got up at about 8:30 (late compared to 5 or 5:30!). We didn’t have any plans except to go to the beach, which was really nice. Swimming and then resting on the beach after such a tiring week was glorious. Nothing too exciting happened, we just bought our bus tickets for the rest of the way to Dar, ate, and went to bed. We got back to our dorms at about 2 the next day.

September 8th -Masasi

Us in our hostel in Masasi celebrating my birthday with chocolate

The next morning (my birthday) we left for Masasi. This time we weren’t on a coach bus, so we were uncomfortable in new ways. Still no leg room, but now also our butts started going numb. I made a friend, though, because the girl next to me slept on my shoulder almost the entire ride. The whole reason we were going through the rural south part of the country was to get to Masasi to see the famous woodcarvings that the tribe there makes. But, when we got there we had to figure out where we were going the next day and how we were getting there in Swahili at the bus station. This took about 2 hours because we would ask if buses went to Nangurukuru, what time, and how much it cost, and we’d get different answers from everyone we asked, but we were pretty sure there was only one bus that went on this route.

Anyway, we finally got it all worked out, so we wanted to go see the market where they sold the carvings. However, we had no idea where it was, and we didn’t have a map of the city, so we asked a taxi driver. I ended up doing all of this, but I didn’t know how to ask about woodcarvings in Swahili. I struggled for a bit, then I tried using a mixture of English and Swahili, but it wasn’t working. Finally I looked up “art” and “wood” and basically guessed at a phrase that I thought would mean art made of wood, and he understood. I was so excited that he laughed at me and pounded my fist like good job. He even said the same phrase I used back to me, which meant it was a real phrase, so then I was even more excited.

Then we just had to negotiate price. I bargained, and he said that my price was too low, that it was far, and I said he was lying, that it was not far, so he laughed and reduced the price. When we got there, I was going to ask the driver to wait for us, so when he saw me take out the dictionary, he shook his head and walked over to me to read what I was going to say. I started laughing and said “Oh, rafiki yangu! Pole sana!” (Oh, my friend, I’m very sorry for your trouble), and just like that we were friends. He pointed stuff out to me and explained what they were, and I just loved it. Stacey told him her name and asked what his was. I told him mine was Elisabeth because Tanzanians don’t understand Liz. He just decided that he would call me Eliza (Eh-leez-ah) instead. Anyway, the “market” was this little tiny shack that contained like 20 carvings… not exactly what we had in mind. At this point, we were all just laughing in disbelief.

We had read that there were two markets, so I asked if he could take us there, and he said he would. The second place had even fewer than the first, so I just asked him to take us to a hostel listed in the guidebook. On the way, we saw more carvings, so he pulled over and asked us if we wanted to look, which was really nice of him. This place was still small, but at least it had a few full shelves of carvings, and the girls seemed satisfied. I was running low on money, so I wasn’t going to get anything, but my new friend continued picking stuff up to show to me. When everyone was ready to leave, he took us to the hostel, and dropped us off. He shook everyone’s hand, and then he was like “Ah, Eliza, asante sana. Safari njema” (thanks very much, have a good trip). So awesome, I love Tanzanians.

Our day did not end there. The hostel he dropped us off at didn’t have any open rooms, so we wandered around and it wasn’t until the 5th one we tried that we finally got rooms. We were so exhausted, and hungry, so we went to find food. We sat down at a random restaurant and the girls paid for my meal, which was really nice. We walked to get some snacks for the bus the next day, and then hung out in Siri’s and my room for a while. Siri and Sara had also bought me chocolate and apple soda while we were out which I totally didn’t expect and was really excited.

September 6th -Songea &Tunduru

This is Siri about to attempt to slice open her coconut...

Next was on to Songea which is basically in the middle of southern Tanzania, close to the southern border. The bus ride here sucked a lot. We were on a coach bus, but we had very little leg room. The ride was 9 hours, and the driver packed it almost like a daladala. Everyone was trying to fit three people into each pair of two seats, and there were people standing in the aisle as well. The girls in our group who happened to be sitting on the aisle pretty much got sat on the whole way. We were not so happy when we arrived in Songea… We only stayed the night here, and we actually stayed at a place called New Star Bar and Guest House. I thought it was pretty funny that we were staying in a bar. This was the last time that we had running water.

The next morning we left for Tunduru. Keeping in mind our last bus experience, we chose the back 5 seats so that no one would be sitting on us, and if they were it would be on Sara, but at least she would have leg room since there’s no seat in front of her. However, we failed to consider that our guidebook at referred to this road as literally the worst road in Tanzania. It is a dust/dirt road, but not like American dirt roads. There were a couple points where everyone had to get out of the bus so that it could get up a hill, or get through a portion of the road that was literally like sand. The rest of it was just incredibly bumpy. So, we were literally flying around in the back seat. We bounced so high that we would get into a standing position. Every time this happened, we inevitably started laughing, and the Tanzanians were all very amused by us. The other thing, was that on this bus we had the least amount of leg room of any bus we have ever taken before or since. I literally couldn’t sit down in one of the seats. I had to sit with my legs at an angle in order to fit, which left my back in a twisted position for about 4 hours because Siri and I took turns sitting there.

When we got to Tunduru, it was in the afternoon, so we wandered around looking for a guest house for a while. When we finally found one that had open rooms, the money collector wasn’t there, so we had to wait for him for an hour and a half. We had no running water, but we were so tired we didn’t even care. We basically just went to eat dinner and then went to bed. The atmosphere here was a bit like Tukuyu.