Dar meetings and adventures--and Kenya!

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ' I can take the next thing that comes along.' -- Eleanor Roosevelt

Ah already only 2 months before I have to come back home, how time flies, and how ironic it is when you finally feel comfortable somewhere is often the time when you must move on. Ah cest la vie!

Well I write to you after a few weeks back at work in Dar. I’m surviving and I suppose thriving. I feel like the first few months before I left for holiday I was just so scattered and trying to get my bearings, also a lot going on trying to live in the present and future simultaneously doing many things within the job I have and the jobs I’m looking to get! Well I must say not much has changed, it just gets easier to manage as you develop yourself into a stronger person and become comfortable navigating around ;)

I must say that all my applications to these fellowships I have not received any offers to date. Meh, I’m a tad tiffed about it but I still have a few pending offers out there, and it may likely be that I get none of those either, so my questionable future plans are a constant thought in my mind, but let’s see what happens. I’m plugging away at my paper and making headway, everything is due at the end of March and I’d say I’m at least halfway done, if not more!

Regarding what’s been happening with me in the workplace, I went back out to Morogoro, Tanzania for another 3 day conference on maternal mortality and srhr advocacy. It was a good experience because I took the bus alone and navigated my way around very successfully. I was a good conference and I think our next quarters activities of meeting with law makers and community groups to bring awareness to the issues at hand is important. It’s been great listening in and learning more about what’s going on. I even got to present on WGNRR’s past quarters work. Good experience I think. Everyone is nice to me, as I’m the only non Swahili speaker present they are kind enough to conduct the majority of the meeting in English too.

A picture of the coalition together at the end of the meeting.  Can you spot me?  Haha.

I also went up to Morogoro a few days before the meeting so I could do some tourist activities as well. I had looked online and found a cool tour company--Chilunga tours that arrange hiking tours in the nearby mountains. It was a great choice! I spent 8 hours hiking through the mountains with a guide and we saw a lot of amazing things. Granted my legs were dead after that but oh the beautiful views and the interesting culture I witnessed. I also shouldn’t be complaining as I hiked up the mountain one day and there were a lot of people coming and going up and down that do it everyday! Just amazing!

The initial ascent of the day's 8 hour hike

Along the way there were lots and lots of villages and people going about their daily business, I ate one of these!  These are soil cakes that the villagers in Morogoro make and sell for eating (literally dirt and perhaps a few other ingredients--they were ok, pretty gritty, they are supposedly very good for pregnant women to get their vitamins and nutrients)

Me on a bridge at the beginning of the hike up the mountain!

a traditional method of breaking stones to sell, the heat slices them right up!

About a quarter of the way up the hike, we stopped to visit a traditional healer, she lived on the side of the mountain and showed me all her ways of traditional healing- hexes, love potions, spells to find people or lose people, ah I find this stuff so fascinating.

A cute puppy at the healer's house

Here is the traditional healer we met with on this side of the mountain, in her bag she has a lot of different potions and items to cast her spells, both good and bad.  The hat is made from monkey fur and she wears it when doing her magic, also she can talk to the dead!

Me enjoying my chat with the healer lady, what an experience

And the hike went on!  Resting every 10 minutes was rather essential!

In awe

beautiful waterfall during the hike!

Here was my awesome tour guide, Atha, basically he looked like the Tanzanian Chris Brown, he was really fun and he does this 8 hour hike a few times  a week, can you believe it!?!

The climb continues and the views keep getting more beautiful

Stopping along some villages throughout the day.  The way they build their mud houses is so neat!

Along the trail, I only fell one time!

The weather would change so

Some epic views of Morogoro below

After reaching the peak of the hike we began to walk down the mountain and view an old German settlement, as Tanzania was briefly a German colony.  It was an area called morning side and they built a Lutheran church and a retreat  house for the weekend at the beginning of the 20th century.  They also introduced strawberries to the area and they are still grown there today

The old German Lutheran church, over 100 years old

Front view

Here is the old Morningside retreat area, its in a lot of disrepair but this is where the Germans used to come for holiday in the mountains one hundred years ago

In its dilapidated glory!

Nature taking its course at Morningside

All in all the mountain adventure was amazing!  I was sore and sweaty but it was a great decision and I am enjoying more and more traveling and adventuring alone :)

Back in Dar I have done a bit of socializing here and there. There’s a group of expat type peeps in Dar and they’ve been kind enough to welcome me into their circle (lots of embassy interns etc.) so I’ve had a few fun nights out and about around town.

Me and some other interns enjoying a night out on the town

It’s definitely a different social sphere for sure, fancy restaurants and clubs etc. I like having the option of going and spoiling myself a bit but I also enjoy chatting with the locals around my neighborhood and seeing what life is like as a Tanzanian is what I've come to really enjoy. I get the best of both worlds! But as many know, I’m not one to stay in one place for a long time nor within one social circle ;)

Lukkman (the laundryman supreme) and I, hanging out at the house, he has been teaching me a lot of Swahili!

Checking out University of Dar es Salaam campus, it was huge!

Me and my coworker Leah, she gave me a tour of her Alma Mater!

Then the excitement really began I hopped on board a flight to Nairobi, Kenya where I was visiting my schoolmate Lynn who visited me last year. It’s only right to return the favor, ha! Another schoolmate, Ebube is also there doing a practicum so it was really fun to see the both of them and what an adventure we had!

We started out in Nairobi and it was quite a trendy scene. Much bigger than Dar with quite a lot of industry there! It was truly amazing to see the huge expat scene along with all the international NGOs and everything that goes on there! Quite an amazing culture.

Having a little fun in Nairobi

Anyway after a fun night out, we decided to take a road trip around Kenya to see a few things near the great Rift Valley. Lynn had a friend of a friend who had an SUV that we could use, it was actually a UN registered vehicle so we thought we were in for a real treat!

We began the day by picking up the SUV and heading to our first destination lake Elementita a few hours away, the lake is what is considered a “Soda Lake” filled with lots of sulfur and red algae where flamingos from all over the world go to eat the algae (thus making them pink!). Little did we know that we would not be making it to the lake just a few hours away as the car we had was a complete lemon!

As we were cruising along, about 30 minutes in the car simply stopped. At first we thought maybe a belt fell off or it had something to do with the battery. So we pulled over to the side of the road and checked out what was happening we couldn’t find anything that was glaringly obvious or wrong. Lynn called the guy we rented the car from and he nonchalantly said, oh I think it’s out of gas. We told him that this simply could not be. The dashboard said we had a full tank of gas! Well it turns out that the gas tank was wired wrong and actually the opposite of what was the situation. We were pissed! He made no mention of that before we got into the car or anything. Ugh. So there we sat between the side of a highway and a cliff on a narrow road in the middle of rural Kenya, this guy said he was coming to see if there were any issues and to help us. We were there for roughly 3 hours! We saw lots of sketch people and lots of cars were pretty close to hitting us! Yikes! After about 2.5 hours we decided to hail down a boda boda (motorcycle) driver and pay him to get us some gas, we pulled our money together and as collateral he gave us his large machete so we knew he would come back. Ha! It was really fun playing around with that, and we felt pretty safe with it. Finally the car owner came and we proceeded to yell at him and ask for our money back! He did a quick check and left, he wasn’t much help at all! We began plotting to find a way to get reimbursed for the long time we sat on the highway...after filling the gas tank to empty (ha, ha).

Machete as collateral turned into some entertainment for us while we were waiting ;)

We did get to see some beautiful views after we finally got going again!  However, there was A LOT of dust, so anytime we got out of the car we were covered in dust!  What a day...

Great rift valley!

Pano of the valley!

Happy to be finally on the move again!

The adventure continued and as the day was already half gone, we had to hurry to get to our destination and that is when we realized we had another issue on our hands.  The wheels of the car began to wobble shortly after we filled up with gas and so we had to stop again, this time in a small village town with gusts of dusty wind blowing through constantly.  It turned out that both of the two front tires were bothmissing a lug nut!  Therefore if we kept driving the wheels might just come off.  So again we had to wait and find a mechanic who could fix everything.  Both wheels had to come off and it took a few hours, we were certainly a sight for the locals to see as by this time we were PISSED that our day was going by so quickly on all these car problems, that we had to pay for nonetheless.  After finally getting that fixed and haggling for a decent price we left again as the sun began to set.  

We thought we were home free as we had just an hour drive to the ecolodge we were staying at right next to the Flamingo lake.  As the night set in and we switched on our lights we realized there was only one high beam light working on the car, third time is the charm, ugh!  We decided to push on although we only had 1 light and maybe people thought we were a motorcycle or something.  It was a scary drive but we finally made it to the turn off for the small town we were arriving at.  We turned down a dirt road into the bush and went a few miles into the nothingness when we realized we were lost.  As we pulled over and parked, thankfully the ecolodge we were at sent someone to collect us as we sat in darkness after the LONG DAY's drive.  As the hotel staffer arrived we turned the car on and had no lights at all.  Thank goodness we were nearly there and on a small road, as we inched along with nothing but our flashers on.  OMG we were cursing the guy who gave us this car!

Anyway that night we were so happy to finally arrive and although we lost an entire day we prepped for the next day's flamingo watching!  It was totally worth it!

The situation after arriving to the ecolodge, tired and cranky, thankfully the staff took pity on us and gave us a whole cabin for the price of a single tent.

The next day we woke up and walked down to the lake a few minutes away from the ecolodge.  You could hear the flamingos squawking the whole way down!  This lake was truly amazing! It was a hot day but a beautiful walk nonetheless, we even were accompanied by a dog from the lodge named Skipper.  

Beautiful trees along the way to the lake

Lynn and Ebube making the trek!

Our first peek at the lake!

Flamingos!! They weren't yet pink because they travel to the lake to eat the algae that makes them pink

Thousands of flamingos!

Ladies day out!

Skipper!

Enjoying the flamingos

The crew

The mud situation that we were walking on!  It was dry and also somewhat muddy, we couldn't actually get very close to the flamingos or the water because of this

It was an amazing day that I'll never forget!  On the way back we had to get the lights fixed too which slowed us down a bit, but we made it back to Nairobi to Ebube's house pretty easily.  The next day Lynn and I said goodbye to Ebube and trekked over to the giraffe center where I fell in love with these sweet animals!  You could even feed them pellets and get a kiss from them with their big tongues!  I loved it!

Feeding a giraffe for the first time!  Best experience ever

In awe!

Giraffe selfie!

Gimme some food!

After that wonderful experience it was time to move on to our next destination of the day Kitengela Glass blowing!  Located just a little bit outside of Nairobi, it was a magical wonderland/artisan community/complex that had some really beautiful handiworks, and of course hand blown glass!

One of the many unique buildings within the complex!  This is where they did the glassblowing

Got to see the masters in action!

That's hot!

One of the many beautiful glass artworks - this one was going for $30,000 USD

Ladies day out

They had swings and a lovely overlook too

Enjoying the view

The great wide open at Kitengela

Like a magic wonderland/playground

Mirrored glass floors!

Swimming pool right next to the cliff

The main attraction, a hanging bridge going back and forth over a large pit!  A little terrifying but totally worth it!

Lynn on the bridge!

Taking the risk!  It was shaky...

Oh also there was a camel there!

After the day's excitement we trekked back to where Lynn was living in Machackos a small city outside Nairobi.  She is doing her practicum at an organization that works with street children and tries to teach them technical skills for income generation etc.  It was neat to see her practicum site and hear about her important work :)

The classroom for the students

Got to sit in on a meeting with the staff!

The last stop before heading back to Dar was the tallest building in Machackos to check out the beautiful view!  It was a great trip, even with the crazy car situation.  Now back to work for a handful of days before my next adventure with my family!  The following week my Dad and my Aunt are coming to visit and we’ll be doing a full Serengeti safari followed by a few days in Zanzibar enjoying the beach. I can’t wait! So stay tuned for interesting stories and photos of that adventure.

Oh I can foresee the end of my adventure here and I’m both sad and happy. Sad to leave a new place and an opportunity to work within a field that I truly love and happy to rejoin my family and friends and see the USA in a different light yet again (as it often happens when being away for a long time).  A few months left here!  Stay tuned for more excitement. :)