From Majengo to Meru to Marurani

Wow, it really feels like I haven't been to a computer in forever. If I miss one thing from home its being able to spend 2 hours a day on the computer/internet...instead of 2 hours per week. Ok, I guess that's not what I miss the most. But you guys should consider yourselves lucky right now, that's for sure.

In other news, I'm coming home, like, really soon. 4 weeks left of the program. less than 5 weeks left in Tanzania. More than 9 weeks down. Can you believe it?

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The second half of SIC Volunteer Program 3, 2007 is now officially under way. This Monday, all 21 volunteers and 12 teaching partners, in addition to the coordinators and our new Field Officer for the new ward, moved to Nduruma, a relatively urban and relatively green area about an hour out of Arusha. We are divided into 4 villages this time - the smallest group is 6, and the biggest is 10. And guess what? I'm in the group of 10. Going from a group of 5 (the smallest) to a group of 10 (the biggest) has been quite an experience so far. Because of sheer size, we have potential to be extremely productive in our community. However, because of sheer size, we also have the potential an extreme amount of conflict, stepping on each other's feet, and just general frustration. We'll see how it turns out.

My village is called Marurani, and we have the biggest group because our village has the largest population in our area (roughly 2,000 people). The other villages are Nduruma, Mzimuni and MajiMoto (which literally means "Hot Water" - how awesome is that). All 5 of the homestays in my village are pretty close to each other, which is nice, and we are also fairly close to the center of town. Yes, this village actually has something you could call a town center. Weird, I know.

In addition to a change in terrain and weather - it's rained every night so far, hence the green - the people here have a different feel about them. Because Nduruma is closer to town than our last wards, people are more urbanized in their slang, their day to day mentality and, of course, their obsession with alcohol. My village hasn't been too bad, but we've seen more drunk people wandering our villages on an average early afternoon, than I've seen at most college parties. Times are hard, people say, so they drink their sorrows away.

Plus, people are quite religious. We met a man who speaks very good English on our first day in town while wandering the main strip. Laura happened to mention that she hadn't really chosen a faith yet - a perfectly acceptable answer in most Western societies. However, the rest of us lied and said we were Christian, of course. The man began to attack Laura for being undecided. She argued that to be a good person, one does not have to believe in God, or a certain God, and one can be a good person and feel successful in his or her life without necessarily finding God. He wouldn't have it. However, he does believe strongly in HIV education and happily welcomed us into his community. We haven't completely discovered the response to condoms, though. When Shujaa and I attempted to do a condom demonstration for our Baba, he wouldn't even let us take it out of the package.

So I'm living with Shujaa again, but this time sharing a 6x6 bed (we were spoiled with separate rooms last time), in a good size room, in a good size house, electricity at night (run from solar panels), our Baba and Mama who are both really, really young, a few kids, 2 cats, a few dogs, and an uncomfortable number of lizards, frogs and cockroaches. We live pretty close to Laura and Joyce (yep, so far, all from my last village), whose house is practically on a mini-orchard. The variety of fruit available in this village is awesome compared to the constant doses of banana with every meal during the last homestay. We've gotten mango, papaya, avocado, orange, banana, and some Tanzanian fruit I can't remember the name of.

The other three homestays are:
Gaby (UK) & Nelea (TZ)
Alex (UK) & Stefanie (UCLA)
Dustin (U of A) & Jonas (TZ)

So we have 6 volunteers and 4 teaching partners, which is a very comfortable ratio for getting as much done as possible, considering we foreigners can't exactly get along very well with our work without our Tanzanian friends.

In Tanzanian style, we arrived in our village this week to discover that there were exams scheduled for our students during the first 3 days of teaching, a few trench buildings that prevented community leaders to meet with us until Friday, and there were some ultra-important can't miss, more-important-than-HIV/AIDS soccer games (have I ever mentioned how big of a deal soccer is here?). So we didn't actually get that much done this week (and you all know how hard that can be for me). However, on the positive side, we were able to completely immerse ourselves in our community, and we did a few community teachings, including one with 50 village leaders.

Next week, the Tanzanian school year ends. So we have exactly one week to get through most of the curriculum. After that, we request that the kids come back to school on certain days for extra "seminars," but we have no way of knowing if they'll show. It's like saying to you, when you're in 5th grade "So I know we promised you a winter break...but how about if you come back to school every other day instead of just taking the time to play at home. What do you think...?)

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Arusha is becoming less and less safe, so we're spending less and less time here. Apparently the holiday season is the worst for crime rates in this area because well...people gotta get their family presents, and stealing is much cheaper than buying. No one from SIC has gotten hurt yet, but we have had some incidents. So to ensure our safety our weekends in town are going to be 24 hours ish.

Last weekend was a 3 day weekend in between villages, so, like any good SIC volunteer, 5 of us decided to climb Mt. Meru (may-roo), the second highest mountain in Tanzania, 5th in Africa, the hardest hike/climb of my life.

Mt. Meru is almost 15,000 ft., which makes it a hefty feat to conquer in 3 days. It's apparently possible to climb it in 2 days, but most climb it in 4. And besides the difficulty of the actually physical exertion, the reason for a longer climb is that as the air gets thinner, we get tired more easily, and the faster we climb, the more of the chance there is for altitude sickness.

We started planning for the climb about a week ahead of time. Gaby, Jess, Jenna, Dustin and I rented some gear from a safari company, including a gas stove which was RIDICULOUSLY huge...pretty much not carriable. We were kind of taken aback when we got it from the company. Wait. It would take TWO people to carry this. And we're planning to take this up a mountain. So, you see, most people use a company when they climb Meru, and spend a good $400/person doing so. However, we, in volunteer/student style, managed to spend about $250 each by renting our own gear, buying our own permits, and cooking our own food. And it ended up working out. We just rented a few porters to help us with some of our stuff (local villagers who cost a very small amount conisidering how much help they are), including the stove.

Most of us, though, carried our own backpacks. Which I guess is part of the experience. It certainly made our backs sweaty as we first trudged up sunny grasslands with views of zebra, buffalo and giraffes, which were soon followed by torrential rains, and then the next day, below freezing temperatures.

The guidebook says Day 1 is a peaceful winding road up the first third of the mountain. STEEPEST HIKE EVER. Then we stay in a cabin-type complex, which they call a "hut." Of course by this time everything we have with us is soaked because of the rain. So we huddle in our cabin and make our quick noodles and chomp on our peanut butter, raisins, bread, and protein bars (at least we tried to be healthy).

Day 2, the guidebook claims, is much harder. NOT. Much more windy, still tiring, but only a few hours. Some of us are beginning to feel slightly light headed. We decide to rest instead of taking a small hike in the afternoon to "Little Meru," which is one of the mountain's 18 false peaks.

Day 3 begins at 1 a.m. And, of course, seeing my luck in Tanzanian so far, I get pretty extreme altitutude sickness. Similar to when I had malaria in terms of my aches and pains, diziness, nausea... But I decide that I'm already so close to the summit, that I can just grin and bear it. I do pretty well on the way there, which involves hiking completely in the dark, often on walls that are somewhat vertical. We figure that part of the reason they take you at night on the way is so that you don't freak out when you realize that a few missteps and you'll probaby die. By the time we're almost at the top, it's below freezing, it's sunrise (you can see Mt. Kilimanjaro rising over the clouds, with the sun behind it!), but I feel so, so horrible. I feel like my head is going to fall off. But, once again, I take it slowly, and all 5 of us make it to the summit!

By the time we got down the mountain (via a "rescue" vehicle for the bottom 3rd of the hike...thanks to me), got back to Arusha (by the way...we took a TAXI all the way into and away from Arusha National Park, that was quite a sight), and had dinner...it was about 9p.m. So after behing up for 20 hours, my body wasn't too happy. But with a good night's sleep, the sickness was pretty much gone by morning.

I know it sounds like I've been pretty active, but I doubt all the running and climbing means I've lost wait, or gained muscle...because I've consumed more sodas and snickers bars in the last month than I've had in the past 2 years. Yea, and these mediocre ice cream bars with "vanilla" ice cream and chocolate coating. They don't use preservatives or artificial anything here, so we consume a lot of sugar. However, I do avoid it in my nightly tea. They think I'm pretty weird.

UPDATE: [Sunday morning.]

I went to the orphanage again on Saturday morning. The kids remembered me! I took a few pics this time. We only hung out for an hour or so, but it's a nice feeling to know that you're loved by little kids who hardly know you.

Last night we had Thanksgiving Dinner, SIC style at Erica's house (the Volunteer Program Manager). People started cooking mid-afternoon at 3 different staff member's homes. We made hand turkeys as decorations, ordered loads and loads of fried chicken (turkey is kind of hard to get), made mashed potatos, candied yams, stuffing, tomato/cucumber salad, and corn bread muffins. Erica's house was the first time I didn't really feel like I was in Africa for the last 2 months. We just hung out for 5 hours like it was someone's apartment in Westwood, played music from someone's ipod, and drank sodas (and some drank alcohol I suppose), and just chatted. Definitely not the typical Thanksgiving dinner. But it was really, really poa.

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Next week we have another long weekend (a 4-day), and a bunch of us are going to Uganda. Which means, once again, I'm not really sure what my Internet situation will be next week.

And the Saturday after that is WORLD AIDS DAY! So get excited.