Kwa heri Tanzania

Has it really only been a week since Easter? I can’t believe how much has happened in the last few days, how many good bye’s I’ve said, and how much my world has changed. My last few days in Tanzania went out with a bang, and then I found myself back in the first world!

So, a recap of the end of Tanzania. On Saturday night, Christine and I spent the night with some friends in town because the missionary community does an Easter Sunrise service, and trying to get to town for something that early is very difficult. We had a nice night though, got up early, and headed off. The missionary who lead it did the whole service as if he were one of the twelve disciples going through the passion story. We sang hymns throughout the service, and it was nice. Afterwards we had breakfast and fellowship together, and the kids had an Easter egg hunt which was adorable! Eventually we had to head back to town for our church service. Surprisingly, Good Friday is bigger than Easter Sunday. On Good Friday, they had a three hour service where Pastor preached three times; Easter Sunday was a relatively normal Sunday. The service got lengthened because of other things. For example, the new members got inducted, and it happened to be my last Sunday so the church said good bye to me and presented me with a kitange. By the end of it all, the service went three hours, but it passed quickly.

This week the kids were still on break, so we just had a few open days. Monday, we made plans to visit the orphanage where many of our kids live. First, since two of them take piano lessons with Christine, they came over and did that, and then the four of us went to town. We even met up with another missionary who wanted to see the orphanage too. When we got there though, only one of the other kids was there. Apparently, someone in their church, who is very important to the orphanage, had gotten sick and the other kids went to visit him. He lived kind of far away, so the entire time we were there the others never came back which was a bummer. We hung out with the three that were there, showed them our pictures from our safari, watched some movies, and greeted their grandmother. The next day was especially lazy; we stayed home all day. I just did schoolwork, packed, sewed up the holes in my net one last time so that it was ready to go for the next missionary, etc.

Wednesday was my last full day in Tanzania, and my last day to really do anything in Morogro, so we made it count. We went to town to go kitange shopping one last time. I printed a large photo of me and class V and got a frame for it because they had asked me to; I won’t get to give it to them, but I know they’ll be excited. We ate lunch with a few friends. We bought handmade paintings from some vendors in town, something that had been on my list of to do things and it had never happened. It felt like we ran all over town, but I think it was a very successful day. It’s been several days since, and I haven’t thought of things I meant to do and forgot, which is really nice. Finally, that evening was my last prayer service. Most of those last few days passed normally which made me really glad. I actually didn’t understand for the most part that I was even leaving. I got to spend my last few days enjoying my life there as I knew it. I said good byes obviously and other than not being in school, things were quite normal. I liked that a lot. Thursday was quite busy. It started at 6 am with saying good bye to Christine, Pastor, and his wife as a member of the congregation was going with me to DAR. We got to the airport, and I had to wait for a few hours outside. I had some problems getting my bags checked, but eventually I got everything through, flew to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, spent a few hours there, and then flew to London.

I’ve had a number of interesting experiences with reverse culture shock already, and I expect them to continue for some time. I know life won’t just go back the way it was, and after having done this, I don’t want it to. I know I’ve changed, and I want this experience to be a part of me. Time will tell on how that will play out exactly. I plan to write a blog after I actually return to America about how the culture shock is going because I suspect actually being back in America will affect it even more so. I have one more day in England left to just hang out and enjoy. I’ve had a wonderful time with friends so far, but I’m getting ready to come home. It’s time. Please pray for me as I travel back to the US. I’ll be flying out at 9 am central time on Tuesday. I should be back to Deuel county late that night. : )

God bless (and see you soon!),

Kjirstin

Safari!

Interesting fact, safari is a Swahili word. Kusafari is the Swahili verb “to travel” meaning that a safari is a journey. Very appropriate for what we did.

I posted last time from the hotel we stayed at in Arusha the night before we left. We’re so far from this part of Tanzania that it’s a minimally 10 hour bus ride from Morogoro to Arusha. Arusha is a whole other world though. It is a strange mix of western influence and Tanzanian culture. Usually Tanzanian buildings are very simple structures, but we started seeing these great big beautiful buildings that were American, not Tanzanian. So many signs were in English, we even saw restaurants advertised that served pizza and Japanese food! Neither of us knew where we were anymore, and quite frankly, for the rest of the trip, we realized we were in wazungu Africa. The hotel we stayed at that night was actually the plainest of the entire trip, but coming from our situation, we found it amazing! I’m sure anyone coming from Europe or America would have found it a little rustic, but we were quite enthralled. But, as I said, that was just the beginning.

The next morning Damas, our guide, came to pick us up. We tried to join another group, but there weren’t options available for our dates and the sites we wanted so we had one guide for the two of us. The safari vehicles you see on TV are quite real too- I assumed that was just a stereotype. Nope, he pulled up in a huge safari truck, and we got in. That day we were going to Tarangire National Park, which is a smaller park on the way to NgoroNgoro crater and Serengeti National Park, which are two of three sites that Tanzania’s most famous for (Kilimanjaro being the other). On the way to the park we stopped to buy some Tanzanite. I had been told about this from a hospital patient last summer actually; I just knew it was a very pretty blue gem that could only be found in Tanzania. However, we learned that it will soon be entirely mined, so we got some very, very, very small gems because the prices were crazy! I’m glad I got some though, and it is very pretty.  We got to Tarangire around 11 that morning and started a game drive. The basic set up of the game drive portion of the safari is the guide drives around at a reasonably slow speed through the park/conservation area and you try to spot animals. Any time you want to stop to just watch or take pictures of the animals and scenery, you can. When you’re done, you keep going. It does mean that you basically sit all day in the vehicles. That got a little long, but the roofs actually open up so you can stand up. Also, because there were only two of us and we had a big vehicle, we could walk around inside it. You can even move around while they’re driving.

Tarangire is famous for its Baobab trees and elephants; they were everywhere! By the end of the day, when the guide was stopping a group elephants kind of far off in the distance, I was at the point of saying “Eh, whatever. We’ve already had better sightings.” We even got to see a lion! It was far off, but it was a surprise! The best part (other than multiple times being within a twenty foot radius of elephants) was our encounter with two cheetahs! It was at the end of the day, and we drove over to where they had sighted them, and there were two adults walking around. At first they were sort of far from our car; my camera was struggling to get good pictures of them, but then they started coming closer to car. At one point, one was about ten feet from my window! They crossed the road where we saw some cheetah cubs, which were so cute!

Every night we stayed in the parks which was quite the experience too. It’s amazing when you stop to think about it; these are national parks where animals are the number one priority, so they can’t run water or electricity to the sites. Despite this, they have managed to not only provide adequate housing, but beautiful lodging for the trips. Two nights we stayed in tents, but don’t think for a second we were roughing it or camping; the tents were nicer than our house in Morogoro. Since you were out in the middle of the wilderness more or less, each site had its own restaurant, and we were very curious as to what the food would be. We thought it would be a western/Tanzanian mix, and honestly, as long as it wasn’t straight ugali, it would probably be ok. We’ve adapted to Tanzanian food enough we could make that work. Quickly though we realized that they were catering to their European and American guests, so we got to have quite a treat in eating delicious Western food we hadn’t had in a while. The only potential hazard was because we were in the parks, we were sharing our night with the animals around us. The sites were not allowed to keep back the animals in any way, so we were thoroughly warned to stick to the prescribed paths and to not have food in our tents so we didn’t attract a midnight guest. No worries, the only guests I know of were some antelope the next morning in Tarangire and some giraffes in Serengeti.

After Tarangire, we drove over to Serengeti, which was about five hours away. However, the path goes by the NgoroNgoro crater, so we had a gorgeous view on the way. We also stopped by the Old Dupai Gorge, which is where some of the oldest human remains have been found. We made it to the Serengeti around mid afternoon; I think the Serengeti is what the Midwest looked like before settlement. The name actually drives from the Masai word “Siringit” which means “sea of grass.” That’s exactly what the Serengeti is; unlike the lush, green, and hilly Tarangire park, Serengeti is plains for miles and miles. Occasionally a tree or pile of rocks pops up. We did a game drive for the rest of Sunday afternoon, all of Monday, and we did a specifically early morning game drive Tuesday morning. We passed lots of grazing herds of wildebeest, zebras, antelope, and buffalo. We saw so many lions! Our guide estimated that we saw 100 lions throughout the safari. We drove by whole prides of them, and one afternoon we had a lion cross back and forth twice in front of our car! One day we also found a pride of lions by a fresh kill; we drove by the next day to see a hyena eating the last bit of the skull and spinal cord that was left. Nature at its finest : ) We got to see hippo pools, a couple crocodiles, ostriches, more elephants, giraffes, warthogs (which our guide called ‘pumbaas’, which means stupid, not warthog), so many birds, and two leopards. There’s a list of the big five with safaris: lions, leopards, buffalo, elephants, and rhinos. These are animals that at one point or still are in danger of extinction and are difficult to sometimes see on safaris. By the end of our time in the Serengeti, we had seen all of them except the rhinos which don’t live there, so we were very successful!

Our last night we stayed near the NgoroNgoro crater. Surprisingly, the crater formed from an ancient mountain that was bigger than Kilimanjaro but collapsed in on itself, creating the crater. Down in the crater, there’s a very unique ecosystem. There’s actually a small rainforest, a lake and plains, so there’s a great mix of animals. The crater is quite large, but I was still shocked when the guide told us that over 30,000 animals live in it. We did get to see some rhinos, which was really exciting! None of them were that close, but there are only 17 black rhinos left in the world. They all live in the NgoroNgoro crater, and we saw three of them! Also, there are other rhinos in the world, but they’re not black rhinos. We also got to see the flamingoes that live down in the crater, which was fun to watch. After checking out the crater, we headed back to Arusha town, said good bye to the guide, spent the night, and took an 11+ hour bus back to Morogoro the next day.

We definitely had quite the trip, and it was great! Seeing God’s handiwork so close and the landscapes was breathtaking and wonderful. I’m really glad I got to do this during my time here, especially now that I’m truly in the final stretch. I’ll post about that separately, since we got to have some good Easter fellowship, and these last few days have not and will not be boring. There’s a pleasant amount of activity happening, which is probably for the best. Without school, I am getting antsy, but at the same time, I’m getting a few more days to soak up my last memories of life here.

God bless,

Kjirstin

 

PS: I do promise to post pictures from the safari; when I return to the US and have more reliable internet, I shall make a few posts just of pictures from the end of school and the trip! : )