I wrote this entry yesterday at home and I thought I'd be able to get all my pictures but the power went out so I only got Jasmine's photos on my jump drive. I'll put the link at the beginning so you don't actually have to read stuff. also there are photos on facebook for those who have it, i don't have an album but others have put a bunch up and i think you can access them.

My photos of cool things
photos of elephants and giraffes and stuff (from jasmine)

This past weekend I went on the coolest trip so far. My group went to Mikumi National Park and Udzungwa Mountains near Morogoro, both of which were amazing. We left Friday morning and drove to Mikumi to do a game drive, which we did in our bus. The road to Morogoro goes through part of Mikumi or right next to it so on the way we saw animals grazing on the side of the road. A couple times zebras and impalas ran right in front of the bus. Anyway once inside the park we saw pretty much every animal you think about when someone says “African Safari”, that is: zebras, elephants, impala, giraffes, hippos, crocodiles, lions, baboons, wildebeests, mongoose, and jackals, plus a ton of birds. All in all it was pretty impressive. A lot of the times the animals were maybe 20 feet away, minding their own business or just playing around. I won’t bore you with descriptions of all this stuff, instead I’ll put up all my pictures. Everyone took a ton of pictures, and a couple people have really nice cameras with good lenses so eventually I’ll have really professional cool looking pics, but for now, mine will have to do!

Scratch the not boring you all with descriptions, I really can’t help it, I mean it was the so cool to actually see all these things for myself! if you don’t want to read about the animals, skip this next paragraph:

I said I wouldn’t bore you with descriptions, The park itself is really big, and the scenery is beautiful. It’s mostly grassland and some trees and the park has been getting water for a month or two so the animals were not starving (unlike in other parts of east Africa right now. The whole water situation is really bad, Dar es Salaam is getting rain now, but farther north there still isn’t much, especially in Kenya. Pretty grim stuff, and even though I’m much closer to it all now, I’m still extremely sheltered from it because of my family’s wealth). In one part of the park is a hippo pool which sounds pretty exciting but it wasn’t that great, although it was nice to be able to walk around. Hippos sleep a lot and they don’t move too much and the only part of them visible from land is their backs and the tops of their heads. Not that I’m saying I want to see a hippo running after me, they are really dangerous and it would definitely chomp me in half. The other thing of note was the lions, which also did not do anything except sit around, but we saw about eight, 4 females and 4 cubs. They sleep a lot and didn’t even glance at our bus more than once.

Saturday we went hiking on Udzugnwa mountain which was awesome. We took the long, not so steep way up, which was not a very accurate description. It didn’t help that it had rained a bunch so it was pretty muddy and slippery. The weather was rather overcast, and it was pretty misty, but extremely humid. The guide also practically ran up the trail making it even harder and hotter. Every time he stopped we would all be panting and dripping sweat or water, you couldn’t tell what was from the mist and what was sweat. But it was absolutely gorgeous. There weren’t many animals, but the forest was so green and beautiful, I put pictures of that up as well, so have a look and I won’t describe all the cool trees and vines and stuff like that. Although a lot of the pictures didn’t come out that well because it was so misty and dark. Whatever, suffice to say that it was really cool and you all should be extremely jealous, especially of the next part I’m about to write about. That is the waterfalls. There was a series of waterfalls that were awesome and at the top one there was a pool that we could swim in! The water was cool, the first time I’ve actually been cold while outside here! And it was the most relaxing way to spend lunch after hiking all morning. Plus we got cheese on our sandwiches which was great, not too much dairy out here. Anyway, it was beautiful (on a completely random side note, I was watching tv yesterday and the Miss Tourism contest or something was on and it was a video of all the contestants swimming at Udzungwa falls. The video was pretty funny because it would show a couple girls in bikinis splashing water around while looking ridiculous and one of the contestants was an awful swimmer. I mean she was terrible, couldn’t swim in a straight line at all and well, it was funny. The best was when she stood up out of the water to talk to the camera and her swimsuit wasn’t really on very well which she did not notice at all, so for 5 minutes she stood talking to the camera with her nipples popping out of her suit). Back to my experience at Udzungwa… on the way down there were red colobus monkeys and black and white colobus monkeys which are really funny looking. At the bottom of the trail there was a great view of the surrounding farms also gorgeous.

The trail ended in a bunch of farm houses which was really interesting. The houses were made out clay and sticks, and I cannot imagine living in one at all. No running water, no electricity and completely succeptible to flooding and other natural disasters. And villages/homes like this are all over, we could see them the entire drive back, often miles from any store or town. Once again it was apparent how sheltered I am from the many hardships that most people face out here. On Friday night/Saturday morning it poured for quite a while, causing a ton of flooding all over. Houses, markets and cars were all flooded. It’s so strange to think that places close by are still having water shortages and around Morogoro there is more water than they can handle.

Sunday morning we woke up at 4:30 to do another game drive, again very cool, and you all should be jealous.

Okay… enough about the trip, the last two days have also been eventful and I’ll write about them knowing that only about 2 people actually made it this far in the entry (and for those two people, you probably should be doing something productive instead of reading about me in Tanzania). Anyway yesterday I played ultimate frisbee with the Baptist missionaries some Tanzanians and a few people from my program. The missionaries have been playing every Monday and Wednesday for at least a year, everyone else kind of cycles through, but most of them are here for 2-5 years or more. It’s pretty fun, I never played much Frisbee at home and I actually like it a little bit. People don’t take it too seriously which is also nice. After Frisbee I actually play mpira wa miguu a.k.a. soccer with a bunch of Tanzanian guys. It was surprisingly fun and they actually played me the ball which was exciting. I hope I’ll be able to play more often, but who knows. I also came to the realization that I am in awful shape. I eat mostly grease and hardly ever move faster than an extremely slow walk. But it’s not my fault, it’s just too damn hot! Yesterday I got more exercise than I have in about a month, and it didn’t end with the soccer! After that I saw a couple of my friends playing net ball with some Tanzanian women. I’ve never played net ball and I have no idea how to, but I tried yesterday. I still have no idea how to play except there are some lines you’re not supposed to cross and you can’t run with the ball. There weren’t enough people to play a full game, but it was fun just doing something and being able to meet actual Tanzanian women (it’s extremely easy to meet men, usually sketchy guys who ask what house I’m staying in and if they can visit immediately or later, to which I saw no the house has a guard and baba yangu would get angry. women seem to hide and not go out much). The netball team asked me and the other wazungu to go back today (Tuesday) and play. I don’t actually know if I like the game, it seems kind of boring so far, but maybe it will get better.

Okay, now on to the last little bit for those still reading. Today my Kiswahili class went to Tandika market and Kariakoo. Pretty excting, we had to go and speak Swahili to people selling stuff and maybe buy things. At Tandika I bought a couple of kangas, the all purpose cloth which is usally worn as a skirt, headwrap, upperbody wrap, or to carry children on ones back. Kangas are also used as towels, sheets, and picnic blankets. I am probably forgetting many uses, but you get the idea. All the women here wear them, and they are pretty cool. They all have sayings on the bottom, little proverbs often about god. The only saying I remember right now is “All good things come from god”. There was one design that I liked a lot but the saying was “only god can give a man a good wife” or something like that so I didn’t buy it, it was just too weird. But they were pretty cool and cheap too. There are other types of cloth as well, and I bought some kitenge as well (which have no saying on the bottom). Then we headed off to Kariakoo. I talked about that place before so I won’t go into the details now.

Congratulations on making it through the longest entry ever, sorry to bore you. But if it was a good distraction from those who are trying to procrastinate I’m glad. Enjoy the pictures! Hope everyone is doing well.