Waterfalls and Banana Beer = Good Day

Yesterday we had a very adventurous day. It started bright and early, as does every day here. We are gentle awoken by screaming dogs outside our window. Amy firmily believes that one even got killed this morning. From the noise it was making if it is not already dead than I promise you it will be soon...

Our first stop was in a little village where we met a man who makes batik art. He is coming to our house on Monday to teach us how to make our own. Then we stopped at a very small village to look at a big tree... we don't know why, but just in case you also wanted to see a big tree we posted a picture.

So after this we went to a blacksmith, which you can also see in the picture! This was more just a selling point for the blacksmiths. Neither of us particularly wanted an African spear so we didnt help them out much. From here we took a short hike to a locals home where there was a historical underground cave. The cave was meant for the chagga people to hide in for weeks at a time when the masai people would attack their villages.

The cave was dug out and had many rooms. It went miles all the way to a connecting point at the river. It was incredible to think that they could actually build this with little access to tools. We actually went in the cave, five people at a time, and it was an adventure. Tiny little tunnels, we both came out with dirt splotches...pretty awesome though.

Next we stopped at a local maranga market where the guy we were with wouldnt let us leave his side so it was a pointless stop but I guess we can say that we stood in a maranga market while we watched our friends buy kangas.

At the stop the older woman on our trip got extremely cranky so we had to find her a "nice bathroom" Both Kasey and I fodn this hilarious because if you are traveling to Africa you really shouldnt have such high standards for bathrooms. A lot of times it will just be a hole in the ground (which I still cant really get the hang of) but oh well...

After the market we went to the waterfall. It was AWESOME, best part of the day. We hiked down a "hiking trail" that would be completely unacceptable in the states. It was more like stumbling down a steep dirt hill and the only reason we didnt tumble was the weak bamboo stick fences for stability. Still great though.

Once we got to the fall Kasey and I with two of the guys treked across the crazy rapids created by the water fall and made it to the base. It was cool because the water was hitting us so hard we couldnt even open our eyes!

On the way off the base back into the rapids...it was a bit difficult to find your footing to get down. Andy, a funny awkward guy that gets easily flusterd, is tryign to tell me where to put me feet to get down. In the process he just gets annoyed and then he straight up picks me up and plops me into the river. Hilarious. I was like a little rag doll to him.

The other funny part of the hiking trail was the continuous string of painted arrows showing us where the water fall was. It was like rocks under the water even had arrows. We were cracking up everytime we saw a random arrow guiding us...as if we couldnt find it without the painted arrows.

So we ended the day at a very rural bar near the falls. They served banana beer which I believe is the equivalant of moonshine. See picture above. It was not great and it was a bit sketchy but hey, you only get to be in Africa once.

Other highlights of the past few days include a random ride to an Italian restaurant (delicious food) in the back of a truck-it was free! Multiple times when we were positive we maybe getting sold to the sex trade industry-dont worry we havent gotten sold..yet! And we still have lost no weight or gotten any tanner...that is to come.

Also to Daddy Boston-the biggest bully, worst student at Bridge is named Ithan and he is our favorite BY FAR!

More later. Enjoy for now.

-A and K

Safari Time!

Just got back from a three day safari! It was amazing! We went to Lake Manyara and the Ngorongoro Crater!

The first day was very rainy. We drove for a long time and we and finally ended up in Lake Manyara. For the first bit we saw mostly forest areas. The forest stays green here all year round. After first entering the park we came up on some baboons. They were so cute and right outside our car just sitting there. There were three babies holding onto their moms and it was so adorable. The next big animal we came to was a huge giraffe in the middle of the road! It was just standing there and as we surveyed further there were about 10 more off to the side eating.

My favorite part of the safari was also in lake manyara-we were driving and all of a sudden a baby elephant just hustles right across the street in front of us! I actually did a dance and sang a song about how awesome it was, haha. I was excited! After the baby walked by a HUGE male elephant came through.

The rest of the day we mostly saw different birds, zebras, wildbeast, warthogs, and hippos. It was all very cool. We will post pictures so you can see more!

The second stop we made was to a Masai Village. The Masai are just another tribe located closer to Arusha. The tribe living around the Moshi area are the Chaggas. The Masai people are much more traditional from what we learned. The village we went to was completely remote. It was off the road in a clearing. The people all wear fabric wrapped in different ways-it is all plaid and different colors, but the colors represent different things. We will post pictures at the beginning of the week so that you can get a better idea of what I am talking about.

When we approached the village the people all came up and surrounded us welcoming them to their village. Soon after they all lined up and started chanting and doing a traditional dance. The men were on one end of the line together jumping-the higher they jumped, the more cows they owned. The women all wore these large necklaces that they then put on each of us and we all were able to dance with the people. We have a video of Kasey in action, dont worry Bostons, definitely one of her best dances ever! haha.

After the dancing they showed us their huts. The huts are made of sticks carefully placed and laced together to make the back bone of the hut. Then cow dung is used like plaster to insulate and hold the building together. The top is sloping because it is the rainy season and is also made of sticks bundled together. The huts were TINY. I am about 5'8 and I was as tall as the building (not including the roof) When you walked into the hut the door curved around so that animals could not get in as easily. The first thing you saw was on the right and it was a pin for the young animals. Then you proceed into the hut and there are only three areas. In the middle there is an area for cooking and then there are two sleeping chambers. The main one is for the father only and then the second chamber is shared by the mother and children. Their matresses are made from cow hide and as one of the men told me, "lie on it, its very comfortable". I did not choose to lie on the mattress in the dirt with the children because I already know-there is NO way that mattress is comfortable!

In the Masai culture the women do the work-they build the house completely alone, cook, and take care of all the children. The culture also believes in circumsition of both men and women. The women are circumsized at the ages of 10-12 and the men from 15-18. So sex is not a part of their culture other than for the natural purpose of procreating. The only time the man and wife will have sex is when they want children. Polygamy is also in their belief.

After visiting the village we finally arrived at our camping spot for the night. It was within a hotel ground area and the hotel was really nice. We slept in tents in the back area. We had dinner cooked by Freddy and Goodluck, it was delicious! Pumpkin soup and bread with pasta and fish, and the equivalent of tater tots.

We then hung out by the pool with our cooks and our main Bushman, Abus. They are great fun and we got to experience African liquor for the first time. It tasted a lot like vodka. We all went to bed fairly early because in the morning we had to wake up at 6, eat breakfast and hit the road for the rest of the safari!

The next night we stayed at on the rim of the crater. It was very high and overlooked the entire valley. It was a beautiful view but not a fun place to sleep. It had been raining all day so the ground was a complete mixture of mud and elephant poop. It was also freezing because our elevation was so high. I had on every piece of clothing I brought and still had to spoon with Amy all night to stay warm. As we were falling asleep we could hear lions growling and elephants making sounds in the distance. It was a little scary but I had my pocket knife and pepper spray so we felt safe....

The next morning we got up at 5:30 and drove down into the crater while the sun was rising. It was a beautiful view that our cameras could not even begin to capture. As soon as we got to the bottom we saw two cheetahs laying in the grass. They were brothers because they were laying together, apparently enjoying some early morning sun tanning.

As we drove to our the lake to have breakfast we passed many zebras, wildebeasts, and gazelles. We also saw a rhino, and rhinos look a lot like dinosaurs. This is when Amy asked our tour guide if we will be seeing any woolly mammoths. He didn't understand her questions....

The lake was full of hippos, which pretty much just lay around in the water and make loud noises. Right beside the lake was a very large, cool looking tree. Right when Amy climbed onto the tree so that I could take her picture a HUGE python dangled itself above her head. Being the good friend that I am I didn't want to tell her for fear that she would freak out, jump, and fall into the lake of hippos, which would also be a bad situation to be in. So I told her to just come back over to me and right after she did the python slide off the branch and dropped into the lake. I have a picture.

Right after breakfast we found some lions, which was perfect timing because we had just gotten my ipod out and were listening to the "circle of life" from the lion king as we pulled up. There was one very pregnant mom and three of her children. Two of them walked right up to the trucks and did some modeling for us. We also saw two other sets of lions throughout the day, which apparently is very rare so we are lucky. The crater itself was beautiful. There were huge fields of flowers and gigantic elephants frolicking through them and mountains of every side.

We have many more stories but I they are ringing the bell which means its time to go learn about the education system in Tanzania.... More to come soon.

Well it is Thursday and we are back at the cafe because our house internet is down.

We have been at our placement for three days now. It is really fun but also exhausting. We get there at 8 and we sit in one big room and play with the kids until everyone has arrived. After this we stay in the room to sing songs and they also do a chanting thing and then they pray.

The songs they sing are all in English and familiar but they are hilariously reinterpreted by the teachers. For example, "old macka donalda" and "brown cow, brown cow have you any milk? Yes sir yes sir for jack and jill" haha. It makes me laugh.

The chanting I mentioned is sort of like

teacher: "Who is our father"
students:"God is our father"
teacher:"Who is Satan (said saaaaatane)
students: "Saaaatane is bad!"

This goes on for awhile then we pray. During this time the kids are just surrounding and playing with us. Touching our hands, holding our hands, playing with our toys, and hair, and eyes, and nose, and really anything. The teachers started yelling at them and making them move away from us for playing with our hair-I did not care they love playing and touch it but I for some reason we are still unaware of that is very frowned upon at Bridge.

The kids are really sweet, they all wear uniforms and they all love to take a big lick off their hands or wipe their snotty, snotty noses and then hold our hands! This is something I am still getting used to, of course we let them do it but it definitely doesnt settle well in my mind. I have decided showering will commence after we get home from the placements.

The teachers at our placements are sweet and seem happy to have us there but a language barrier is something we are struggling a little bit with. While we can understand what to do to help they sometimes just will say "teacha, teach!" I am assuming that they think because we are volunteering and that CCS put us at a school, and because we are american that we are teachers.

Welllllll little do they no I have NO idea what to do. They always ask me for songs, the only ones Kasey and I have come up with are the baby shark song (and they dont know what sharks are-I drew them for tomorrow art lesson so they can see) and Jesus loves the little children.

I guess I need to clarify. The shchool actually has three rooms-little, medium, and big sized kids as they explained. Kasey has been in the little room where she says the teacher has no clue what to do with the kids but she helps feed them poridge at the approrpriate times and her class plays a lot so she is good at playing soccer wtih them and she has also tried teaching a bit too.

I am in the big classroom. My main job is to walk around during lessons with the eraser and a red pen. The kids will scribble on their page and all at the same time be screaming "teacha arahaba" which is for eraser. I was more stern today about hte scribbling and yelling. I also do one on one with them during this time because they are all actually very intelligent they just sometimes need an extra bit of help.

The two favorites-if I can say that- are in the front row at the table in front of my chair (like my desk haha) Gerald and Sabra. They are the smartest in the class and I love working with them to teach them other ways. For example, the kids add with bottle caps. So if the equation is 5+3 they put aside 5 bottle caps and then 3 bottles caps and then combine them and recount to get the answer. I taught Gerald and Sabra to count on their fingers like that. Small steps!

After our placements we have cultural learning in the afternoons-like when we went to the hospital. Yesterday we went to an orphanage. Heartbreaking. We mostly played with the young ones (under a year) but even then they just seemed so excited to be playing wtih people.

After we had about 10 minutes with the older children. They swarmed us and we played but leaving was hard.

We are both having amazing experiences. I am trying to post more pictures as we speak. We have one of the school room and kids from Bridge, one of our room at the home base and if the third and fourth work or I have time it will be of our Mount Kilimanjaro view (its not always visible they say "the majesty is shy she only shows herself sometimes", the little girl Brenda-the little girl from across the street, and one of Kasey with some of the children from Bridge. She is full of life and always there to play and greet us. Beautiful.

But that is all I have for now. Hopefully the internet will be working at the home base again soon.

quick post...

...because I only have five minutes left on my computer time.

We are in Moshi at another internet cafe because some of the other volunteers didnt get to go yesterday. I dont think these trips to the cafe will be so frequent the longer we are here.

We just were on our way back from a hospital "tour". You can definitely add this to the website about what white americans like to do. It was awful. They took us into all the different wards and it is the first time I have just felt like I shouldnt be. Not because of the people, they all greeted us and continually said welcome to our country. But it just wasnt right to be healthy, blessed foreigners walking around staring at these poor sick people trying to do what they can to save their children, save themselves, or their family. It was terrible.

There was one ward for pregnant women to wait for labor to start and here there were three to four women per bed. They said that this ward was a crowded one. I found throughout the rest of the tour that this was true for every ward.

It was an eye opening experience. There will be more to come but for now I am at 29 minutes of 30 so I will just say thanks for reading my blog and keep checking back. I have lots to say about our first day at the school!

Amy

From an internet cafe in the town Moshi

Finally got my hands on a computer that works long enough to type out a blog I am currently in the town Moshi and it is a hustle and bustle sort of place. It is so different from any other place I have been. If you look around there are all sorts of people. There are people wearing bob evans hats and boy scouts of america shirts, but then there are traditionally dressed people, and a few wandering tourist. There is a local market across the street that we made a visit to yesterday when we came into town, the market is packed rows of fresh produce, this is their equivalant of a grocery store.

In the market yesterday someone was killing a live chicken while we were there and there was also an incredibly smelly meat row with carcuses just hanging around. I couldnt stand the smell so I stayed away from the isle. While in town yesterday we also got a bus tour of Moshi, there are always people moving around town but most are walking. I love seeing the occasional woman balancing a basket of bananas on her head. Today our country director, mama thea, showed us how to wrap up a head rset for the basket and proceeded to set a ceramic platter on another volunteers head. As Marci started struggling to even take a step keeping it balanced mama thea chimes in, "what is wrong with you! Walk normal!" The people at CCS are always joking around and their laughter is contagious.

Yesterday was our first venture out. First, during the day, we walked around the area by our home base. This area is full of houses made of mud brink and tin...but the people within the walls and area are so incredible. We walked around and I felt so safe. Every person we passed by would say "Karibu" which means welcome! The children around the rural area of Karanga are just adorable, I mean I cannot even describe it. There is a family that lives across the street from CCS and their little girl comes running out dancing with a HUGE smile on her face when she says that we are coming out of our gated community. She will follow us down the road singing and giving us "tano's" which is a fist pound or high five.

Around the corner is a small store and another amazing family. They talked to us for a while and there were too 12 year old boys that were interested in Kasey and I asking us our age, where we are from, if we had siblings, and what our mothers names were. We asked them all the same questions. Another young girl living there, Anita, was beautiful. Her smile made me melt as she picked up her little sister and showed her to me, trying her best to get the little one to interact but she was very shy. Their store sells drinks, and kangas (which are the traditional wraps worn by tanzanian women), spices, other miscellanious items, and Obama gum.

This brings me to my point..I am pretty sure Tanzanianas love Obama more than Americans! Just now I was in the van when a boy named Sam approached me. He spoke English really well. He greeted me by saying Mambo (whats up!) and then asking, are you from Obamas country too? haha. He was very smart, he told me about his town and the waterfalls there and then about a bar near the Moshi CCS location called the Mzunja (foreigner) bar. That made me laugh and he said hed hope to see us there.

The people here are so genuine. They make you feel welcome and safe. Sometimes they will approach you and say, salama, which means peaceful or safe.

We also ventured out into the night last night with some of the men volunteers. We went to a local bar called Kili View. The CCS directors have a network of taxis that they trust and so we can call those taxi drivers who pick us up right at the gate and then will either wait with you or come back at the time you tell them. Our taxi driver last night, Imma, had such a good heart. The whole way there he taught us fun things to say in Swahili..for instance, akunah matatah is considered slang here. Instead you should say akunah sediah. He was 24 years old and had a fiance. I joked with him a lot and while there was a language barrier we definitely understood much of what we were both trying to get at. I drank an African beer, Kilimajaro, and it was good. We paid in tanzanian shilings and it was confusing but we got it covered.

The staff at CCS is incredible. I love them all already. Mama Lilian is wonderful. The first night there she walked us outside and showed us the tanzanian stars and told us that this is our home for now and that she was our mama.

Baba Flugence is hilarious. From the start he got along with Kasey and I and our oh so hilarious humor. He pronunciates all his words very clearly and is really animated in the way he talks. He does the Swahili lessons and today was our first. He directed the lessons like a choir director and I laughed the whole time.

When Kasey and I first got there we got to spend 6 hours with them alone and the conversation was awesome. We all sat around the patio tables and just laughed and laughed. They made me feel at home immediately.

The rest of the staff are the guards (three walking around from 6-6) and then the kitchen staff. They are a bit shy but always greet us and are happy to serve us.

The accomadations are really nice. Kasey and I have our own room for now until the next group of volunteers arrive (we will be here long enough to see the transition) we have very comfy beds with treated mosquito nets and our own toilet and shower. We also have wardrobes and drawers where we can lock up our valuables.

We start our placements tomorrow. We are both at Bridge school right outside of Moshi. We will work from 8-1230 monday-friday. We met our director from the school today. She said the school was started in 2008. There are 60 children ages 2-5 and she said we can get there and decide where we think we should fit ourselves in. She was very sweet and we are both excited to meet the kids. A lot of them want to touch our hair and while they wont understand english phrases they know some words and I believe communication will be alright.

Sorry for the broken thoughts but it is crazy here! Lots of people in the internet cafe and I have so much to tell! It is hard to keep everything straight and remember all the great stories to tell. As the people here say often, "this is life" haha. They say that phrase for everything.

Well my time is running up. I hope that this fills you in more and hopefully I can get back to a computer sooner than later.

Missing you all and NiNaKuPenda (I love you!)

--Amy and Kasey

In Africa and safe!

Jambo! We arrived after a grueling some two days of traveling through crazy airports and countless time zones. When we got to the airport a cute little man had a "KIA lodge" sign. We went with him and it seemed relatively safe...dont freak out parents...this is us typing...we are alive!
The lodge is adorable and as Kasey describes it, "african" lol. Kasey slept the whole night through with a make shift blanket...wait she did wake up once to have a small snack, thanks Grandma Jan! The bed was a huge king size bed with flowers waiting for us..how romantic! haha.
I however, did not sleep because oddly I was feeling scared. Usually I am so brave because I know I always have my ninja skills but last night lying in the hot in a little lodge hut in the middle of Africa just didnt settle well. I finally fell asleep around 6 am African time and when I woke up everything seemd much better!
We went to the cute cafe where we hesitantly chose food that fit the sayings criteria, "hot food or fruit peeled by you". We had our first banana too! If you dont already know, apparently there are 120 different kinds of bananas in Tanzania and we plan to try all of them, also we both do not like bananas that much, but hey it makes for interesting blog updates.
So, banana number one conquered: Sugar banana!
We have no idea how to treat the people or how much to tip them but they are all extremely nice and either think we are too or that we are rich dumb americans...either way they are treating us well.
We are about to go sit in the lobby to wait for the CCS people to come get us, we are exctied to meet the other volunteers and get aquainted with our "home away from home"
Writing with tons of love and excitment!

-Amy and Kasey

The 411...as they call it

Just a short introduction to what is going on with my trip to Africa! I am going to be leaving from Tampa, Florida on May 13th to fly to Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. We are staying in a village, Karanga. The village is right outside the city of Moshi.

Both Kasey and I will be living with 13 other volunteers from around the world. We will be staying for 7 weeks and will be traveling through an organization known as CCS or Cross Cultural Solutions.

We will be working everyday at a specialized placement site. They are supposed to be sending us our placements today so I will post soon on what exactly I will be doing during my 6 weeks with CCS.

Here is a photo of the CCS home base that I will be staying at. There is more information about the program and where we will be staying at,

http://www.crossculturalsolutions.org/countries/africa/volunteer-tanzania/kilimanjaro.aspx

I hope this is a good start to get everyone on board with exactly what is happening. I will be trying to post at least once a week, and hopefully more than that, so keep checking back!