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.