Viva Africa!

I've wanted to go on a safari since before I can remember. I think when I saw the IMAX movie on the Serengeti at the Ruben H. Fleet Science Center in San Diego, I pretty much decided that I would be going there at some point in my life. A lot of people want to travel to Italy or France, but I always wanted to go to Africa. Funny how things turn out.

The town of Arusha, Tanzania (our home base for the program) is the size of Westwood. There are uncountable surrounding villages, in varying states of rural and urban construction, but Arusha town itself is walkable from one end to the other. As long as you walk during the day, and not alone. At night we take taxis, which cost between 2,000 and 5,000tsh (roughly $2-5), but we constantly have to bargain. For everything. Walking around Arusha we stick out like sore thumbs, but at the same time a lot of people know that the group of college-aged kids is SIC. People know we're here. I haven't been to the office yet, but apparently it's one of the bigger buildings in the city.

The roads are paved, and there are as many people walking and riding bikes as there are driving around. If this were LA, it might be the size of Westwood, but it has the look of the poorest of the poor parts of town. Everything is dirty. Security men with large guns hang around the entrances to all of the banks. Street vendors set up anywhere you can think of, either walking around selling random American T-shirts, or with small tables, all consantly asking you to buy their wares. "Hapana, Asante" (No, thanks) has become our best friend. It's a way of being polite. But many times you can't even afford to be polite. People in general are extremely friendly here. I have been greeted and waved to more times in the past week than I have in the past year of my life. But you can't help but think that everyone is also a bit sketchy. They know we're "tourists" to some degree. They call us "mazumgu" which means "white person" or "other person." In so many ways, just walking around the town, we want to help everyone we can. There aren't beggars on the streets like you would see in America. Instead, everyone is attempting to make some sort of honest living. They are still just utterly poor compared to us. And it makes us want to shet our clothes and cash and give it to the people around us. But giving gifts also perpetuates the notion that Americans are so rich that we can afford to give away as much as we want to the people around us at any given moment. We are here to give and share our knowledge as HIV educators. We are not here to throw our cash at everyone we see.

We are staying in a hostel called Centerhouse, which is also a secondary school. It's in a quieter part of town, and the hostel is decent. If you call a cold shower, disgusting floors, a small bed with a mosquito net, and bananas, toast and tea for breakfast decent. It's actually one of the nicer places in town.

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After being in Arusha a day and a half, we left for safari. Despite the cost of about $630, six of us decided to go on a 4 day safari. It sounds expensive, but as SIC volunteers we get discounts on almost everything in town, so it was a pretty good price. For example, my 3 hours of internet this beautiful morning cost me about 1,200tsh (Tanzanian Shillingi), which equals about $1. So it's about 30 cents an hour. Food in Arusha, for a more expensive end is about 6-7,000tsh, which is $6-7. It's kind of ridiculous, but great for a college student on a budget. Plus, the program starts this weekend, so all of our expenses (except for outside trips) are covered for the next few months.

We left early Sunday morning. Sarah H, Sarah M, Marielle, Stefanie, Carrie and I left in two safari trucks for the Serengeti. The drive there was beautiful, and it took about 8 hours including rest stop and viewing stops along the way. We traveled with three men from the Good Earth Safari company - Alex, our cook, and James and Yona, our drivers. All of them are about 25 years old, and hoping that this is only a temporary job to get them to a better place in the future.

The first day was phenomenal. About an hour after entering the Serengeti, which means "endless plain" in Swahili, we saw a pride of lions (simba) on a large rock. Pride rock for sure. We had a male lion, who was sleeping as a his baby played with his mane, several female lions, and a several other cubs. Most of them were sleeping, but throughout the next few days, lions became commonplace. We saw simba sleeping in the long grasses, we saw simba eating, we saw simba hunting. The closest we got to a lion was about 2 meters...it walked in front of our truck as a group of 20 safari trucks practically stalked a pride of lions on the hunt. We watched them as they chased away a herd of wildebeast, zebras, and then a few small groups of wart hogs.

Throughout the next few days we saw every African animal you can think of. Cheetahs, leopards (one eating a gazelle in a tree), gazella, elephants, impala, buffalo, hippos, giraffes, zebra, and every type of bird in the African sun. We spent the first few days (two nights) in the Serengeti and stayed at a small camp site in the middle of no where. You don't know real danger until you're in a camp site where a lion could literally wander in during the middle of the night and it wouldn't be an uncommon occurence. The closest we saw by our campsite was a buffalo, which is still one of the BIG 5, so named because these are the 5 animals that will fight back if you attempt to hunt them and miss. They are 1) Lion 2) Leopard 3) Elephant 4) Buffalo 5) Rhino. Technically, we saw all 5. But the Rhino was a speck in the distance. They are pretty rare to see.

We saw our first real African sunset on the first night of Safari. Think "Lion King" and every Africa photo you've ever seen. It was more beautiful than that. And then even more beautiful the next day. The sunrises were equally as beautiful. Our campsite had a perfect view of both.

We spent our days on safari getting to know each other, riding standing up in the top of safari trucks with the wind blowing in our faces, and seeing thousands of animals every where we turned. It was a paradise. And the long rides were not only picture perfect, but a great opportunity to take everything in and think about home and how I'm going to be away for such a long time.

Even though we are tourists also, our first priority is HIV education. Even on our safari, we were able to have talks around the camp fires with cooks and drivers interested in learning more about HIV/AIDS. We did a condom demo on a bottle of hot sauce, and answered questions that we take so much for granted as educated people in the US. Can you get HIV from kissing someone? Can you get HIV by sharing shoes or clothes? If I am HIV positive, will my baby be HIV positive? How can I get tested? What if I want to have a baby with someone who refuses to get tested? Answering the questions of these men who were clearly educated to some degree (actually many of them were high school graduates, which is pretty rare in Tanzania), was enlightening and refreshing and reminded us all why we were there. One of the good things about sticking out like sore thumbs is that people constantly ask us why we are here. And when one of the cooks asked why we came here to teach but weren't teaching them, we had to ask ourselves the same question. We are here as educators, and we should be educators all the time. So we were. And it felt good.

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We have a few more days until the SIC program officially starts, but most of the volunteers are here now. There are 4 from Stanford, 4 from Claremont, 2 from Arizona, 2 from the UK, and 9 from UCLA (go Bruins!). Of that group, if you count the two coordinators also (which would make 23), we have 5 guys and 18 girls. Meeting people and instantly being put in a stressful environment, like traveling through Africa toegether, spending 24 hours of every day together (we're never allowed to be alone. ever.) is definitely taxing on patience and tolerance. So the little things have started to get on my nerves. But overall, I still really enjoy everyone's company. It's going to be a great next few months.


There is so much more I want to write, but I don't have time. I'm trying to get pictures up online, but we'll see how that goes.

I hope you are all doing well. I'll probably be updating and revising this entry along with my next entry some time in the days to come.

Much love and peace from Africa,
Devon


p.s. In case you're wondering, I still don't have my bag. The saga continues. Hopefully I'll get it eventually.