Part Three

I'm back to give you updates...

Saturday, 4/19

Safari day! Our fees with GSC include a one day safari to Lake Manyara National Park. The fact that I had never heard of this park and that it is only about an hour away from Arusha led me to keep my standards quite low for the trip. However, I ended up LOVING it!

Even excluding the animals, the park itself is beautiful. It is in the Great Rift Valley, and about 2/3 of the park is covered by lake. Therefore, as you drive through the park, you have the huge ridge of the valley on one side (all covered in green), and the lake on the other side. The portion of the park that is land is partly forest area and partly open fields. Adding to the beauty of the park was the fact that it was such a glorious day. Sun shining, not too hot, very few clouds, and no rain. As for the animals, we saw: giraffes, zebras, monkeys, hippos, flamencos, antelope, wild hogs, buffalo, ostriches, and elephants. We also saw a lion, but it was really, really far away and could only be seen with binoculars.

A couple cool things:

1. A lot of them are in mating season, so almost all the animals had little babies in their herd (3 weeks, according to our guide)
2. We were able to see pretty much all the listed animals close-up, only a couple meters away; which made the safari that much better.
3. We saw SO many of each animal, especially monkeys, giraffes, and hippos.
4. Even the birds in the park are cool, because they are really colorful
5. We had a picnic lunch by the lake, with a herd of giraffes strolling along about 10 meters behind us.

All and all, a really glorious day!

Sunday, 4/20

On Sunday, my mama had planned for me and her to go to a village called Moshi to visit her various relatives. I was, to say the least, not too excited about this plan for several reasons:

1. We would have to get up at 5:30 AM
2. Moshi is about 3 or 4 hours away, and we would be traveling by dala-dala (the overly-crowded vans)
3. Visiting relatives did not sound too fun to me
4. We would be sleeping there, and leaving at 5 AM the next morning so that i could be back in time for work.

For all these reasons, I decided that it was imperative for me to come up with an escape plan. When I woke up that morning, I had a bit of a stomach-ache; so basically I just exaggerated my pain and pretended to be really sick and I was free! Mama Chaula went ahead without me, and I went back to bed.

Most of the day was spent hanging out at home, but at four I took my "brother" Kevin and his little cousin Papi (who is now also living with us) to a futbol game in town. Sumeet brought his own homestay brother as well.

Despite there being a lot of people, most of the game was pretty calm. However, when a team scored in about the 70th minute, there was MAYHEM! The whole team ran around the field, took off shirts, screaming, dancing, the bench ran onto the field as well. The crowed yelled, cheered, ran around, played drums. It was pretty cool. When the game ended 1-0, the same celebrations happened again, and many of the fans ran onto the field.

When we arrived home, there was a black-out. The kids got bored quickly (we were all just sitting in the living room, doing nothing), so I decided to liven it up by moving my flashlight around quickly, dancing like crazy, and yelling "disco!". The kids loved it, and we were all dancing around in the living room. I think my uncle Edward thought I was ridiculous, but anything to entertain the kids, I suppose.

Later, the power came back on and then it stared pouring rain. Kevin and Aunt Kayrn took buckets outside to collect the rainwater. I noticed them carrying in bucket after bucket of rain water and putting it away in the kitchen. When I later asked Mama Chaula why they did this, she said told me that it is the water they use to clean clothes and dishes.

A couple random remarks that don't belong in any particular day:

1. One of my neighbors has an extremely loud cow that starts moo-ing around 5 Am. It is quite an unpleasant alarm clock and I have yet to get used to it.
2. Papi and Kevin will find absolutely anything to play with. Kevin found a piece of plastic that looks vaguely like a video game remote control. When futbol games come on the tv, he holds this and pretends he is playing a futbol video game (pressing down on imaginary buttons and everything). Kevin also used 4 bottle caps, tapes, two tooth picks, and a piece of cardboard to somehow make a little toy car. I continue to be impressed by their creativity.
3. Movies are sold here not individually, but in a collection. A single CD will have anywhere from 5 to 48 movies on it. And there are sold for $4-10 each. These movies are clearly pirated, but the quality is actually pretty good.
4. Megan, one of the volunteers who arrived at the same time as me, told me an amazing story about her first day with her host family. The family had prepared a special sausage dinner for her arrival. Unfortunately, Megan does not eat meat. When her "dad" asked her what she ate for protein, she said that sometimes she eats chicken. At this point, the whole family and Megan got into the car and started driving to the market. They bought a live chicken, put it in the front seat of the car (no cage), drove back home, slaughtered and prepared the chicken, and had it for dinner that night.

Monday, 4/21

Monday we stared giving classes to a new group. Whereas last week it was just me, Sumeet, and Rita this week we had many more people. GSC is currently training new translators, so two of them came with us. Also, Michelle, who had been volunteering in a different village, has now joined the HIV program, so she was with us. One last guy had interviewed for a translating position, but had not been hired. He, however, showed up on Monday and asked if he could sit in the class and volunteer. We found this to be weird, but had no objections. So there were 7 of us in total.

The class was given to students in a vocational school. Specifically, our classroom is usually used as a sewing class, so the "desks" were actually sewing machines. The group was all girls, aging from 15-18, 8 girls total (in the following days, this number would grow to 12).

The class ran pretty smoothly, despite the fact that the new translators are not nearly as good as Rita.

Once we finished lecturing, we opened the floor for any questions. After some pretty standard questions, one girl asked what masturbation was. Sumeet, who had been answering all the questions, struggled for a moment to decide (1) how to describe this in words, and (2) how far to go in detail on the subject. He explained pretty well, however; and when the girl translated, she actually added in the hand gestures (had to stop myself from laughing at this point). All of a sudden, the random "volunteer" guy, stood up and started addressing the class in Swahili. When i asked the translator what he had said, I found out that he had told the girls that masturbation is discouraged because (1) it is bad for your muscles and makes them weak, (2) it makes it harder to get turned on during regular sex, and (3) it hurts you psychologically and makes you not want to get married.

I pretty much became furious at this point and had one of the translators say repeatedly that none of this was true, that masturbation does not hurt you, that it is normal, and that it is a personal choice. Random guy sat down quietly.

Tuesday, 4/22

Happy Earth day! Tuesday morning I went to the craft market in town. The craft market is basically a bunch of tiny stores that sell wooden carvings, masks, drums, paintings, sculptures, and other souvenir-like things. Despite the constant hassling of the shop keepers for me to buy from them, I enjoyed the craft market a lot.

After the craft market, I met everyone at the school to give the second day of class. For me, the most interesting part of teaching is the questions, comments, and rumors we get from the students. Here are some of them:

1. Why do people perform oral sex?
2. Why are girls at higher risk to contract HIV?
3. Why does Africa has such a high rate of HIV compared to the rest of the world (not exactly the easiest question to answer).
4. Rumor that condoms stop all pleasure during sex
5. Comments that only men say I love you first
6. Comments that saying I love you is equivalent with having sex with that person
7. Comments that only men initiate sex in a relationship

After class, me and Sumeet went to town for a bit, and then I went back home.

Wednesday, 4/23

Today was a pretty slow day. I spent the morning at home, playing cards and watching A Series of Unfortunate Events with the kids. At 1 PM, I went to the GSC office to meet up with everyone, and then we headed to the school to start class at 2:30.

We took the dala-dala to get to the school. For the four of us (Rita, Michelle, Sumeet, and I), the ride costs $1000. GSC had given Rita money to pay for the ride in a $5000 note. Once we got off the dala and started walking into the school, Rita realized that she had forgotten to get her change. I went back with her to try to find the dala-dala.

To put things in perspective, trying to find a specific dala-dala in Arusha is kind of like trying to find a specific taxi cab in New York City. Additionally, the $4000 that she had forgotten to get back is equivalent to about $3.40. However, 4000 shillings is also half of her weekly paycheck; so you can see where her concern came from. If the lost money comes out of her paycheck (as I imagine it will), it will be a lot to lose. Of course, we never found the dala or got the money back, and Rita (who is usually very cheerful and light hearted) was visibly upset.

After class, I had lunch and am now in the internet cafe. That's all!

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