I’m sorry about not posting yesterday!!!! You should know that the internet here is not reliable! It just cut out yesterday and didn’t work the whole day (which would have been the middle of your day into the late night). I kept up my Microsoft Word “blog” though to post when it did start working so here you go:

Monday, April 30th

Today was an okay day. A lot of it was orientation which is why I say it’s just ok, but through any organized program you’ve gotta go through those. For one “activity” during orientation we had to do a scavenger hunt thing and go to houses in the neighborhood and ask for certain things like how many are in their family etc. This is when I really started to take in the poor lifestyle of people that live here. It is so sad. They barely have 4 walls standing, dirty water they use for everything but drinking, and absolutely no floors. It was really depressing. I bought a bag of sugar to give to them for their kindness and will be giving that to them. It’s a cultural thing. You give them a bag of sugar, spices, etc. to show respect for their generosity.

The only other interesting thing was after orientation we went into town. There were about 5 different men shaking their products in our faces for us to buy. They followed us to the store we were trying to go to, waited for us to be done, and followed us back to the van. Even when we were waiting in the van for our driver they were outside the window continuing their pointless effort. It rained as well so I was able to see real tropical rain! It rains hard!! Tomorrow will be a much more interesting day and I’m excited to tell you about it!

Tuesday, May 1st

Today was a crazy day! It is national Labor Day for all of Tanzania so nobody had to work. Therefore, we did not start at our schools yet – I’m really getting antsy to start. Instead, we went on a big trip. First, we went to a “batik” artist. Batik is a form of art that is done on a piece of cloth and they use wax and paint to create these amazing pieces. My favorite were silhouettes of African animals with the sunset behind them.

After that we stopped along the road to look at Baobab trees!! I got very excited to see those because one – it’s where Rafiki lives in the Lion King, and two – it’s in the play I was in “Little Prince.” They are known as the Tree of Life. It is easy to see why. I climbed up one and everyone was so impressed. The men who owned that land who welcomed us were so impressed they called me “koala” the rest of the time =)

After that we visited a Tanzanian blacksmith. It’s a horrible job. They sit outside in the blazing sun with one man pumping air into the coals to keep them hot and the other pounding down on the melted metal. They had me go over and pump air into the coals. The man I was pumping the air for suggested that I come back tomorrow too, haha. It was so hot though – I don’t know how they do it. They were making mostly spears. I tried asking if they make them for modern day use or if they were just for show but he didn’t really understand my question. I think they were souvenirs though because he explained the story about how in his tribe the men must kill a lion and take it back to the village to be considered a marriageable man. They were souvenirs…I’m almost sure.

Then we drove to the caves/waterfall hike. These caves were awesome. Most of the people around Kilimanjaro come from a tribe called the Chugga tribe, and they would have tribal battles with the Masai tribe, their enemy. So as a defense from the battles, the Chuggas dug this intricate set of tunnels and caves that they would hide out in. We toured those today. I love how in Tanzania they don’t have all the tourist safety restrictions they have to worry about. The tunnels were so small and hard to fit through, but then you’d come to a pod of a cave that the 6 of us comfortably sat in, but the natives would have 15 or more people cram together to sleep. They would also have to cut up the dead bodies to fit them through the tunnels and eventually take them to the ocean to dump – gross, huh?? After that we trekked to an amazing waterfall. The scene was something like you wouldn’t believe. It was so green and lush, vines hanging down the edges of the cliff…if the picture loads I’ll show you.

- Just so you know the Internet here isn’t great so it takes ages to load up pictures. I’ll only be able to put up a couple pictures at a time – if that. I’ll try my hardest.

After we had gotten home, a girl from my group and I went across the street to the poor ladies house I mentioned yesterday to give her the sugar and spices. She wasn’t there, but instead there were at least 8 kids there and ready to play. They are SO happy and all they want to do is climb all over you, play ring around the rosy, and call your name (our name here to little kids is “mzunga” which means “white person” in Swahili. Not a bad name by any terms) to show off a trick they know. It was so sad though, because right when we got there and started playing the first thing they asked was “do you have a futbol?” We said no, but I asked if they have anything that could work as a futbol and they looked around and said “no.” Which was true – nothing was round that they could substitute for a soccer ball. It made me so sad, comparing it to the U.S. Kids are so spoiled compared to these kids. The only toy I’ve seen them play with is a stick nailed to the lid of a bucket and they run around and roll it by holding onto the end of the stick and rolling the lid on the ground. I’m so happy I can start school tomorrow to at least attempt to do something for them.

Again, sorry about the internet. You’ll just have to go with the flow! I’ll tell you all about school tomorrow!

Pictures!!

Baobab tree ^

The waterfall - doesn't do it justice ^

Me pumping the air into the coals ^

^ A little boy peeking inside as we were learning about batik paintings. If you notice the background you see what kind of neighborhood it was. Very poor.

This is the family from the scavenger hunt from yesterday ^

Where is Michele?? ^