Emily's climbing things...again (safari part 2)

So the 3rd day we travelled through the Serengeti and back to Ngorongoro. This day was mostly more of the same thing we've been seeing (but it was still kind of novel so we cared). By far the most interesting was the leopard we saw eating a dead gazelle up a tree. Kind of gory, but we were far enough away it didn't really look all that bad:

he's totally staring us down.
probably cuz we interrupted his nom fest...whoops

The funniest moment this day was probably the hippos we saw. We had seen them earlier, but they were either mostly in the water or just not good photo opportunities. We pull up to the water and my first though is "oh hey look hippos! oh cool and there's an island in the middle of the pond too!" Well, I did a double take, and this is the island:

Yup. That island turned out to be more hippos. These things are massive as well. I guess everything looks bigger in person than on the TV screen watching the Discovery Channel. I was waiting for such a long time for one of them to yawn that my battery almost died (but thankfully it didn't).

We stayed that night at a campsite along the edge of Ngorongoro Crater where we went the next morning. The campsite was FREEZING the entire time. Even though not having a hot shower didn't help, we had every piece of clothing on at night and we were still cold. I unfortunately had forgotten my sneakers so i was stuck freezing my toes off. I finally caved in the morning and put socks on with my flip flops so I was definitely the coolest person at camp rocking this look:

oh yeah. hot stuff right here.

Supposedly there was an elephant at our campsite late at night hanging out around the water tank but I too busy being cold inside my tent. It's pretty believable though since the campsite was covered with what I assume was elephant poop. It was definitely from some very very large animal, or someone with really bad stomach problems.

The final day we spent roaming around the crater which is pretty cool. We woke up early to get a head start since we still needed to drive home and wanted time to see things. There also happened to be a gigantic tree at the campsite that I decided to climb. It was number 3 of the fun things Emily has climbed on the safari. The first was a rickety ladder in Lake Manyara:

I was trying to climb on top of the bathrooms
to get a better view =)

The second was a tree at the gate to Ngorongoro (which I don't currently have a picture for...it's coming soon). But this tree was gigantic and I truly couldn't resist.

I'm the little, indistinguishable green and
grey blog halfway up the tree

The sunrise from here was pretty spectacular too since it rose right over the crater. You couldn't really see the crater in the pictures with the sun, but it's still pretty nonetheless:

The day was pretty slow and this was the point where we were sleeping as zebras are trotting by our jeep. Partially because we were so exhausted (who knew driving in a car all day could make you so tired?) and because we had seen thousands already and had photos. The only thing we really stopped for were lions. We had seen a few in Serengeti and Ngorongoro but they weren't in good positions for taking photos. We must have waited at least 30 or 40 minutes for these lazy-ass cats to move. They literally sleep and lay about all the time (I mean, they are cats). Finally, just as all of our cameras were about to die, one of the male lions (which is all anyone wants pictures of) stood up for about 3 minutes to stretch and yawn and then go back to sleep.

 

After that we had lunch and tried to take a jumping photo in front of the hippo pond in the crater (none of them have everyone in the air lolz).

After that we headed home! We truly slept most of the time except for when one of the cars broke down and we had to stop and people came to talk to us (more often than not to sell us stuff) through the jeep windows. 

So if the pictures themselves aren't reason enough, I STRONGLY SUGGEST that people put it on their bucket list to go on a safari at some point in their life. Whether you're a cheap college student like moi and choose to stay in tents the whole time or if you're rolling in the dough and can afford to stay in lodges, it's completely worth a trip to Africa.

Hell yeah we played "The Lion King" soundtrack!

So I truly haven't updated in forever, which isn't so good considering so much happens while I'm here....whoops. So instead of update you on everything that's happened, I'll stay up extra late and write a bunch of different posts on the whole bunch of difference things that have been going on.

So first up is the safari. And it was the most amazing thing ever! I bet a lot of you have seen my pictures on Facebook but I only posted the best 58 pictures out of the 285 that I kept. That's after I sorted through them even. I probably took around 700 or 800 pictures before I went through them and deleted a bunch of doubles and extras and bad ones. When I get home come find me and I'll show you the awesome 227 other photos I have of my trip =)

I do have to say though, I am SOOO glad i splurged for a good camera. For those who don't know, I decided to buy a new camera before I left. I do have one but it was getting pretty old (for a camera) and if I was going to be taking a lot of pictures of a beautiful place, I figure I had better do a good job. If you want the details it's a Panasonic Lumix DMC ZS40 (not too sure about those letters at the end) but it's been awesome so far.

A good example is when we saw our first giraffes. I happened to spot their heads poking out of the trees and they were a decent ways away:

So I decided I wanted a closer shot and zoomed in:

After looking at it on my camera, I made the off-hand comment "jeeze they have such long eyelashes!" The rest of the people in the jeep proceeded to be stunned that my camera could zoom enough to see the giraffe's eyelashes. So yeah, SUPER glad I got the good camera. I pretty excited to see my pictures in Zanzibar but that's for a different post. =)

Anyways, starting from the beginning, we left for our trip early Friday morning. There were 10 of us going- 8 from the volunteer house I living in now and 2 other girls from a home stay, so we managed to go in 2 jeeps. We also were able to pay the discounted resident price because of our work visas. In order to volunteer, we needed to pay for a work visa so we didn't get fined or deported, but it also gives the status of a resident of Tanzania so you can get the cheaper prices for safaris, flights, bus tickets, and tons of other things. It was also pretty cheap because we chose to stay in tents.

I really can't escape camp ever since living here is basically so similar, especially on the safari. I'm living with all girls, we have little to no personal space, we lived in tents, we're always dirty, at our placements we're surrounded by hordes of small children, more often than not those kids are just as dirty as us, and yet we're always having a blast. Yep, still sounds like an average summer.

We traveled with two guides who were our drivers and two cooks. There's an area for cooking (not sure it qualifies as an actual kitchen) at each of the campsites so depending on where we were, we would drop off the cooks at the campsite so they could chill until we got back from driving around all day. The food was pretty incredible too. That's not to say that the food we normally have isn't awesome, (cuz it is) but it's just become familiar to us and it's not anything special. It was a nice break and at least something to look forward too after being tired from driving around all day and getting covered head to toe in dust.

Our guides were also equally if not more awesome. I swear they must have some sort of hawk heritage in them because they could see things and identify them that we wouldn't even see, let alone think are animals. The best example was the first cheetah we saw. From the road, we're just bumbling along staring out in the endless grass (side note: I think I finally have an idea of what it feels like to be on open ocean because at some points on the road there's nothing but grass until the horizon) and all of a sudden we screech to a halt and our driver points out the window and says "There. That is a cheetah out there" So of course we're all excited like "WHERE. I NEED TO SEE THIS" but as we look around there's nothing but a tiny little speck really far away. Yeah, it was the speck he was talking about. We're straining our eyes and even through the binoculars and it just looks like a dot, on a slightly larger dot. On the amazing zoom of my camera, this was as close as I could get:

see? a dot on a slightly larger dot!

We eventually ventured off the road (which is technically not allowed) to get closer and boy was it worth it. We were pretty close:

Little did we know that later on we'd have cheetahs walking alongside our jeep but it was still worth it.

Our first stop on the safari was to Lake Manyara National Park. The campsite was really schwanky and we stopped there for lunch before leaving. The area outside the park where we were staying was swamped with storks. Like, the big huge baby-carrying birds. They're cool to look at...but their poop is definitely not. The town is covered (as was part of the campsite) with bird poop. Some areas its not too bad, but others we had to hold our noses as we drove by. The worst were actually white- the trees, the rocks, the road was just all white.  They also have such huge wings it's rather startling if one takes off near you. It's a great WHOOOSH WHOOOSH WHOOOSH-ing noise and you're just spinning around like "holy....what the hell was that noise?"

The park itself was very different than what we expected of a safari. It was pretty much forrest that we were driving through most of the time until we got closer to near the lake where it opened up. The first critters we saw (besides the baboons eating garbage on the side of the road in town) were vervet monkeys...otherwise known as blue-ball monkeys. I have to say, that name is much more accurate than vervet. They are cute and adorable despite the fact that they don't care about their brightly coloured junk just hanging out for the world to see.

After cruising a bit more we finally got to the lake and into more open area like what your think of when your hear safari. This is where we saw our first zebra:

not all that impressive. i bet you were expecting something like this:

Thankfully, this was our next view and the more common one through out the safari. People who had been on safari the week before warned us that by the end of the trip we'd be bored of zebras and wildebeest. Of course were like "pffft that would never happen! how could I not want to see a zebra?" but I have to admit that it's true. They were super stunning at first, but by they end of the trip they were only mildly intriguing since we already had loads of pictures of them.

We also ran into our first elephant which was pretty cool (not the coolest) since it came right in front of our jeep:

I have to say I was truly surprised at how GIGANTIC they are. Our guide said they were easily 3 times the weight of our car (with us in it) and i totally believe it. Even in the picture you can see how it dwarfs the other jeep. We saw a few others while we were here and I got some awesome pictures:

And the babies are so cute!

 

After we went back to the campsite I finally got to have my first hot shower in over two weeks. The house I'm staying in doesn't currently have a water heater so I've been freezing my butt off in the shower. On the plus side I've never taken quicker showers in my life!

The next day we drove a long way to get to the Serengeti.  We had to drive through Ngorongoro Conservation which was a nice (but dusty) ride. Everything here is dry because it the dry season (captain obvious here) but things are dusty and dirty everywhere we go. I actually have not been completely clean since the beginning of this trip. 

Since it's a conservation, the Maasai people are allowed to live inside so literally, we'd be driving and there is NOTHING around except for grass and the every present dust, and all of a sudden we'd pass a couple of Maasai boys with a herd of goats on the side of the road. Where did they come from? no clue. Where are their villages? no clue. Can we even see them? nope. They just pop up randomly. 

so pretty....and so accurate.....

So we finally get through to the Serengeti which is a national park so the Maasai aren't allowed in. This is where all of the typical animals are  in the typical settings when you hear "safari". Lots of grass and dirt (duh) and acacia trees which are the scrawny flat ones that look cool and my personal favourite the baobab trees. Right now, none of them have their leaves so they actually look like upside-down trees with their roots in the air. I personally prefer the name "rafiki tree" since its the type of tree rafiki lives in in the Lion King. =D

see the resemblance?

so i dont have a good picture myself
so this one is just offline...

It was this day that we came across two young cheetahs that our guide said has recently been "kicked out" of the home. We had seen a female lounging on a termite mound at one point and it seemed like the other 2 cheetahs were looking for her. They actually have really weird calling noises, we first mistook it for a bird chirping it was so high pitched. We got some really awesome photos of them just strolling around.

 

Another notable moment was when we saw a herd of elephants just plodding along the road. These got even closer than the first ones we saw in Manyara, but the biggest one just so happened to be the one that came closest and it was indeed rather frightening seeing an animal that's bigger than your car come lumbering towards you. 

but again, the babies are adorable!

The campsite for this night was much more what I was expecting, otherwise, basically nothing. There was still an area for cooking and for eating and it had to have lockable doors since animals do come to the camp at night since they smell food. I did actually wake up at one point an hear something growling and scratching at the doors but the guides said they don;t bother the tents and I was too tired to actually care so I just went back to sleep. (in the morning i heard other people talking about it being hyenas)

I was on the other hand, so super excited for the stars. Being the nerd I am, I was almost as excited to see the night sky as I was the animals during the day. And I have to say, it was with good reason. I have NEVER seen anything like it before. There's no cities, or pollution around to block anything and the campsite itself is fairly dark so you can look up and you can see so much! I was hoping to even see the Milky Way but I didn't even need to worry. It was so clear that it looked like clouds across the sky. The view in the early morning was pretty cool too with the moon and what I assume are Venus and Jupiter (they were really bright). Unfortunately, I don't know and constellations in the southern hemisphere, but our guide pointed out the southern cross to us (which was all he knew). That still didn't stop me from getting a crick in my neck from looking at it so much.

The next morning we were scheduled to wake up early (like super duper 5:30 early) to see the sunrise. We were all grumbling and moaning about how early it was as we were bumbling along the roads at 6 in the morning, but oh boy was it worth it. At first we didn't think we would be able to see it since it looked fairly cloudy but the second we saw it peak over the horizon we skidded to a halt. Although Disney did a good job, they are not exaggerating but cannot ever do it justice. It was AWESOME. It actually does rise that fast too we could't believe it. We did indeed have speakers and my iPod playing the circle of life as we watched and took pictures. One person even took a video of it it was rising so fast and you can hear the music in the background.

ooooooo......

ahhhhh.....

ooo lala!

So yeah definitely worth the irritation of being tired the rest of the day. The 3rd day we spent making our way home, but since it was a long way off, we had lots of time. I'll write another post for it though since I seem to be writing more than I thought. I guess this is a good time for:

I don't have snacks for you though. You'll have to get them yourself.

Sorry it's been a while!

Everything here goes so fast I can't believe that 2 weeks have gone by already. Unfortunately for you guys, it also means I don't realize how long I go without updating. I guess it's a good sign in a way that I'm so busy and having fun =)

My volunteering is going okay so far, but it will probably be changing. The school is very well off for a school in the area; the kids have books and supplies, they have classrooms (three floors of them), and all of the teachers speak english well and a well educated. While I am helping them there, I feel like there are other schools that could benefit from my being there so much more. I talked to the person in charge of placement though and explained the situation so she said I'll probably be switched by Tuesday.

....Which won't be a problem since I'll be on a safari all weekend! I am SO FREAKING EXCITED =D We actually leave in 45 minutes so I'm trying to update before then. TVE, our volunteer organization organizes safaris for people and we get it for a fairly cheap price. Part of that is because our work visa that we needed to get gives us the rights of a resident of Tanzania. One of those is getting discounts on things like flights, entrance to tourist sites, and safaris! It 4 days and people that have gone already rave about it which makes me even more excited.

Most people have probably already seen my pictures from the adventures last weekend. Our group visited the home village of one of the secutiry guards who is Maasai. It was an awesome experience! The pictures definitely show more than I could write about but it was amazing.

 One of the big parts of the visit was buying a goat to have it killed. It's kind of like paying them twice because they get the money for the goat, but since most westerns will not take the goat home with them (I hope), they get to keep the meat and skin to sell. A bunch of us split the cost and got to watch the whole process. It seems I go from one extreme to the other; from being a vegetarian to watching a goat being killed and gutted. Ironic much?

Another huge aspect was the dancing. It not what we would necessarily call dancing, but it was still fun nonetheless. The most notable thing about it is that they can jump SO high. It's not even like they wind up for it or bend their legs they just spring up. When they brought us into the circle to try with them it was pretty pitiful for most of us since we couldn't jump very high.

So because of the time, I can't add photos in this one but here's the link for my facebook album which has all of my pictures so far. Enjoy!
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151019797300138.447474.538050137&type=3

Even celebrities don't have as strange names for their children...

So I'm finally at my placement for volunteering! The first day we were taken there by someone from TVE (Tanzanian Volunteer Experience) so we didn't get lost. There are a grand total of 3 ways to get around; taxis, motorbikes that act like taxis, and the every crazy and perilous daladala. Daladalas are vans that are kind of like busses. They're supposed to fit about 16 or 17 people but it's not a true experience until there are so many people they're hanging out of the doors and windows and someone, whether you know them or not, is sitting on your lap.  Your personal bubble is left at the door. I have yet to get a good picture of the inside of one but by the end of this trip I'm sure i'll be able to upload one. This is the closest one I have so far-

far too many people squished into this vehicle.

My school is about a 30 minute ride from where I'm living so that means leaving bright an early at 7:20. The first day we got there just fine, but yesterday posed more of a problem getting there on our own. We ended up missing our stop, not understanding that the conductor is trying to tell us we pasted our stop, and riding for 15 minutes....in the wrong directions. We eventually got there but on our way home we had the opposite problem and got off too early and ended up walking 2 miles to the correct stop.

Our first day wasn't all that productive considering the headmaster didn't really have a plan for us at all. We ended up playing with the kids for about an hour before realizing there was nothing for us to do and left early for the day. The schools days are pretty short anyway and end at 1 pm for kids to go home for lunch.

Our exact jobs thus far haven't been very clear. I'm pretty sure we're the new "sports" teachers but we've also been doing odd jobs helping in the classroom (sometimes more distracting than actually helping) and organizing in the office. From what other people say of their schools though mine seems veeeeeery well off. The fact that they even have computers and most kids have pencils and notebooks shows that the school is better than many others.

The "sports time" we're in charge of is usually more chaos than sports. Each class begins with the children steaming out the school building and swamping us. It's a close tie between the children hanging (literally) off of me and a ride in a daladala for which is more invasive of my personal space. They fight to hold my hands, fingers, arms, there's always a couple of hands playing with my hair, and a few more squeezing the breath out of me with hugs.

This is pretty much the greeting I get everyday...
Except instead of creepy hands it's cute children.

 Despite the fact that I can barely move there's so many of them, the kids are pretty darn adorable. The kids speak English fairly well so there's not very much of a language barrier, just with the little ones who probably wouldn't know what to say if I spoke to them in Swahili anyway. They do have some whacked out names a few of my favorites being, Imaculata, Gift, Ebenezer, Brightness, Heavenlight, Godson, Godlight, and Witness. Not so sure what some of these parents were thinking when they were naming their child. Or indeed if they were thinking at all.

They like pictures. Can you tell?

Other than that things have been going great. There was a quasi- 4th of July party yesterday at the other volunteer house the really ended up being everyone drinking and chilling. The one excitement of the night was people getting Maasai burns. The Maasai are a local tribe and part of their tradition is getting burns on their face. They're supposed to be on your cheeks with guys having circles and girls having 3 vertical lines but I've seen different combinations. The security guards at my house and the other volunteer house are both Maasai and have them. They also can give the burns to people who want them but thankfully, most volunteers who get them don't get them on their face.

To give you an idea of exactly where I'm living...

It's bigger than it looks in this picture i promise.

 And here are the crazy people I'm living with...

There's only 12 people staying here plus the house mamas, and since IVHQ gets so many more girls applicants than guys, we are one big estrogen-fest. It reminds me a bit of camp which simultaneously makes me miss it and not miss it all at once. Side note: hope everyone at Hoover is having a blast!

Hope everyone at home is having a good summer!

Mambo!

For those that were not on the email list, I am indeed alive and well in Tanzania! the flights over here were grueling as expected with lots of jet lag, weird airplane food, over smiling flight attendants,and funny safety announcements about how I can't wear my high heels during a water evacuation because they will tear the escape slide. The fact that they had to include that one is just ridiculously hilarious in my opinion.

My stay in Nairobi overnight went fairly smoothly. There were a few bumps with my reservations but nothing too major. The biggest problems turned out to be the freezing cold shower and my inability to fall asleep. At all. The shuttle I took the next day turned out to be a great way to see the country for the first time. Everything is so open and fairly flat. I would have taken pictures but a) the bus was SO bumpy the whole time even though it was a paved road and b) a lot of locals in Kenya and Tanzania, especially members of the Maasai tribes do NOT want their picture to be taken. While we were stopped at a checkpoint, one woman tried taking a picture of the locals and one of the officers told her to delete them or he'd take her camera, so they're pretty serious about it.

 The guy sitting next to me on the bus was probably the most interesting person I've met so far. He was Kenyan and his English was really good so we talked almost the whole trip. At first he was asking a lot about IVHQ and the whole process of how and why I came to Africa. I thought it was kind of creepy that he was asking such detailed questions, but then he started giving me really good advice about safety and cool places to visit while in Arusha. He also was super interested in American politics. This guy knew more about our politics and economy than most people who are actually register to vote. To finally realize how huge of an influence the US is in the world was pretty humbling, especially considering he could name all the candidates for this years and last years election and knew their political positions and I don't even know whether they have a president or prime minister or both. Kind of embarrassing on my part.

 There were two other volunteers with me on the shuttle by coincidence so once we were dropped off at our houses we were finally able to relax a little. I hadn't eaten properly for quite some time seeing as I actually managed to fall asleep on the plane when they were serving one meal and didn't particularly trust the chicken salad. I also didn't want to pay for breakfast at the hotel considering I still had a granola bar left (thanks for forcing that on me mom). So when I got there I pretty much was only interested in the food they had, which turns out to be AWESOME. Breakfasts usually consist of fruit, hard boil eggs, and some sort of carb. Yesterday we had something that was a cross between a crepe and a pancake and today was fried blobs of dough, kind of similar to plain doughnuts. Lunch and dinner are pretty similar with some sort of carb (they're pretty heavy on them here), a cooked vegetable, a raw vegetable, and a meat something. No matter what variation it is, all of it is pretty tasty.

 Where I'm living is technically considered the "new" volunteer house but the old one seems just as good if not better. There's only 14 beds in this house and I'm crammed into the tiniest little room with 3 other girls. This house is all girls (it's like camp all over again!) since IVHQ gets so many more girl applicants than guy applicants. There's also two "house mamas" who are the ones who cook for us and generally keep the house in order. All of th employees are local Tanzanians so they're really helpful from asking how to say thank you in Swahili or knowing how much a cab really costs.

 Tanzanian people are also super friendly and it's considered extremely impolite to not simply say hello to people. Een in the center of town with people you don't know. Contrary to popular belief, jambo, is quite formal and only really used with tourists who don't know better. The casual greeting is "mambo" to which you reply "poa". There are lots of other greetings that we get and keeping all of them straight are kind of a lot for the first few days. I've definitely said thank you to someone who is asking me how my day is but that's fine. It goes both ways as a lot of locals' English only extends to "hello! How are you? Thank you!" when we were walking around our neighborhood we had a gaggle of small children following us just repeating those same phrases over and over and over and over because that's all they knew. Must be what we sound like to them.

 One thing in particular that I realized was completely different than home (besides everything) was driving or walking on the roads. Everything is so much more dangerous, haphazard, rickety, and FUN. There's so much energy on the streets it's completely infectious...and good thing too because you need that energy to stay focused so you don't get run over by a dala dala, the public transit vans, or some sort of livestock running about.

 Since orientation was today, I get shown to my placement tomorrow to actually start volunteering and I'm super excited. There's only one other girl with me at that school so we probably will have a lot to do since there's not a hoard of volunteers trying to all help in one place. Internet access has been finicky this whole time (thus the long time in between posts) but I'm definitely working on trying to have better access. Which means more updates. And hopefully more pictures. Until next time, kwe heri!

 P.S. sorry if this shows up as a giant block of solid text (like it does on this iPad). I havent figured out how to format it from something that's not my laptop. Whoops.