Safari!

"Safari" in Swahili means "trip" or "journey." In English, it has come to mean "sweet animal-viewing adventure." So, we did the latter! We went on a day trip to Tarangire National Park, about 2 hours west of our home in Arusha. It was fantastic:

Elephants along the Tarangire River, which hardly exists during the dry season.

Above, the baobab (baa-oh-bab) trees that can hold up to 1000 liters of water in their trunks and live for nearly 3000 years! African legend has it that baobabs used to walk around the countryside on their roots, until God got tired of them and replanted them upside-down, rooting them permanently in the soil. (They do sort of look like upside-down trees!)



The baobab has myriad uses in Africa, including making water containers from the seed pods, using the leaves for medicinal purposes, and pounding the bark into paper and cloth. One of the seed pods, below, that we cracked open:

The fruit inside tasted like freeze-dried ice cream, and is supposedly rich in vitamin C.



The elephant families were adorable. The mama elephants were very playful with the babies. Below, a mother with her three children, digging for water:

Love this elephant strut.



Turns out zebras and wildebeest travel together to help each other out; the zebras are able to detect predators, while the wildebeest are good at finding water sources. We saw lots of big zebra/wildebeest herds, grazing for food and trying to stay cool:





I loved the zebras! They had such personality, and came right up to our jeep:




The giraffes were hilarious, and surprisingly graceful!




Doesn't seeing the acacia tree, below, make you think of the song "Africa" by Toto?

"I bless the rains down in Africa..."
(Look at those crazy bird nests, dangling precariously like Christmas ornaments!)

There were randomly ostriches throughout the park too...which p.s. are huge! I had no idea, they were way taller than me!

Before heading back to Arusha, we stopped for a drink at the Tarangire Safari Lodge -- a posh hotel where tourists can relax and enjoy the view:

Frank, in the middle, was our awesome driver/tour guide.

Overall, a fantastic safari!

Plaster House

The Plaster House is a rehab facility for children who have had orthopedic surgery. It is part of an outreach project through Selian Lutheran Hospital; basically, their orthopedic surgeons go out into villages and find children who have bone deformities, take them in, and send them home a few weeks later all fixed up! Lots of the kids from the area near the mountains have too much fluoride in their bones, leaving their legs too soft to support their weight. The kids end up bow-legged or with pretty debilitating ankle deformities. As you can see from the picture above, after surgery, the kids will have casts on both legs for several weeks. Occupational therapists come to Plaster House to do exercises with the children, especially since they can't run around with those casts on! The kids also have "house mamas" who live with them while they are away from their families and tend to some basic medical needs. Despite this set up, the kids still sleep 2-4 to a bed, and don't get any schooling while they are there (often times over a month).The kids are fed nutritious food and safe water while they stay at the facility, and they all wear these cute little T-shirts that say "Plaster House" (above). They are great kids with tremendous personality, even while hobbling around with casts and crutches! Below, a group shot of some of the healthier children and Katie, Maiken, and me.

The first two weeks

(Check out the trees!)


The past two weeks have been wonderful; this place is really starting to feel like home!

For starters, I moved into my house:

The hospital rents the house to its medical volunteers. It is nice and clean, and reminds me a lot of my grandmother's house in Kerala, India. The front gate, the furniture, the grills on the windows, even the salamanders on the walls and the little bananas in the kitchen! It's awesome, and it all seems so familiar. Katie and Maiken are arriving tonight, so then we'll have a happy full house.





I ran into a college friend last weekend! I bumped into Sam from Yale (far left) while at a popular bar called Via Via. It was quite random, and so fun. The picture is at what we called "African Toads," aka our college dance club transplanted to Tanzania.






This past weekend, Brandon and I visited a primary school about three hours away from Arusha, in a small town called Kisangara. It is a boarding school that is supported largely by volunteer teachers from Germany and the USA. The children are fantastic:

Above, Brandon and another teacher playing soccer with the kids. These kids are GOOD at soccer!


For 108 children, the entire selection of toys is one soccer ball, two frisbees, five jump ropes, and a rubber hose that they talk to each other through like a telephone. But they're still just happy kids!

Arrival and first impressions

Hello! I arrived safely in Arusha two nights ago. The journey was very easy, with only one connection in Amsterdam. Much to my surprise, over half of the flight to Tanzania was full of tourists, both European and American. Brandon and I thought this might mean that Arusha itself would be full of tourists. However, having now been here two days, it's clear that we are pretty rare in the town itself. I guess everyone from the plane went straight to safari... The locals here are very friendly, smiling and greeting us as welcome visitors. It's funny because one of the only Swahili words I knew before I arrived was "jambo," but I have quickly learned that this greeting is only reserved for foreigners that are presumed not to speak Swahili! I am trying to learn a couple of words every day, but certainly most people in this town speak English, so it has been very easy to get around. Everywhere we walk, Brandon and I acquire a few friends that walk a few blocks and chat with us. They especially love to talk about Obama.

Lots of things about this place remind me of India:
--There are school girls in their bright uniforms holding hands on their way to school.
--Women balance huge loads of vegetables, laundry, or whatever on their heads as they walk from the market to their village.
--There's lots of good Indian food! I've already made friends with a nice Indian man named V.K. who owns this popular Indian restaurant in town. They have some seriously tasty food, and I plan to frequent his place (called Big Bite) often.
--The power goes out here without warning. In fact, we've arrived during Ramadan, so the power is out as a rule for the whole day. This has made doing anything during the day quite a production, but it's a nice change of pace. My head lamp has become my most prized possession, because otherwise I'd be sitting in the dark after sunset.

Another funny comment about Ramadan: the muezzin have been preaching from the minarets both nights that we've been here. The first night they started at 4:30 and I thought, let's just wait to see what happens tomorrow. Well, last night, the hollering started at 3:30am. Remember that scene from My Cousin Vinny, when he asks if the train comes through at 5 every morning, and the guy says no, but then the next night the train comes through at 4? Definitely last night I woke up and felt like I was in that scene, and thought, "we've gotta move." Seriously it felt like the imam was chanting from inside our room. It finally stopped at about 5am, but this certainly hasn't helped us to get over the jet lag!

The people here wear a great mix of tribal and Western-style dress. There are lots of bright beautiful African dresses, as well as a nice mix of Masai tribesmen who come into town. The Masai men wear these shoes made of tires, they look super uncomfortable, but I guess help when they are herding their cattle on inhospitable terrain.

That's all for my initial impressions. More to come later!