Tanzania Summer 2009

This morning was heralded in by another storm, which was nice, because it made it a bit cooler out. We went into town to buy meat (nyama) and onions (kitunuguu) at the market. The meat is sold hanging from hooks with no protection from flies landing on it, with nothing to keep it cool – we were pretty grossed out, actually. We purposely bought our nyama in the morning so that we could get it home while it was still fresh, and promptly put it in the freezer until we were ready to cook with it. James and Jenna made it into a delicious stew which we’ll eat for dinner tomorrow!

We also went watch shopping for Laura (she doesn’t have a phone here and didn’t come with a watch, and not knowing what time it was was driving her crazy!). After going to four different shops, we finally found one that sold watches. Some of us went to the internet café again today. We also sat out on the beach and relaxed, which resulted in some crazy sunburns! We’ll be smarter about the sunscreen next time.

For dinner we went out to a famous restaurant located near the hospital for chips mayai, a delicious Tanzanian dish, essentially an omelet with french fries inside. We plan on making chips mayai for ourselves sometime!

Posted by bwb at 4:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We woke up this morning to an awesome storm, with wind and rain and fantastic lightning. We managed to collect some rainwater, which we later filtered and boiled. Alas, we still had no running water, but continued to make do. We filled buckets with lake water and used them to fill the toilet tanks so that we had useable toilets inside the house! We also did laundry with the lake water today. A few of us were sitting outside on the back porch just reading and relaxing when a resounding cry emanated from inside the house – “Water! We have water!” I’d never realized just how nice it is to be able to have water flow freely from a faucet! We ended today by having a beach bonfire in front of the bandas, which was very nice.

Posted by bwb at 4:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today was supposed to be our day to really get things done in preparation for our time in Bukoba, but we’re all growing accustomed to African time and learning that things don’t always actually happen on the schedule we’d like! We had a meeting with Hussein, the president of the Bukoba Lions Club and a man that BWB had met in previous trips to Bukoba. We discussed our future plans for diabetes screenings with him. Some of us also got to go to the internet café today and get in touch with the USA. Other than that, some of us got to do laundry, which awesome, because most of us were starting to run out of clean clothes!

Around noon, our water shut off. We thought that maybe we had a water ration and were only allowed a certain amount of water per day, and that maybe we had already reached the limit for today. After talking to William, the man from whom we were renting the house and bandas, we learned that the entire city of Bukoba was having a water problem, and that nobody had water. He assured us the water problem would be fixed… but couldn’t tell us when that would be! We weren’t too worried at first, but the implications grew as we realized that no water meant no showers, no cooking, no drinking water, no washing dishes (which meant ants), no cleaning anything, no flushing the toilets, etc. We spent quite a bit of money buying bottled water, but it was more appetizing than the thought of filtering and boiling the water from Lake Victoria! We went to bed very dirty, but it was okay.

Posted by bwb at 4:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is interesting….left Dar at 3a.m. and have to say it was a shifty a business as shifty business gets. But it was fun, got to watch the sun rise and see Tanzania come to life. Nothing interesting happened today since we just drove but we did get to pass through some villages and beautiful scenery. We spent the night at a town called Kahama as we had been told that traveling at night in a van full of Wazungu was probably not an intelligent thing to do. We checked into our hotel at 8 p.m. had dinner and promptly went to sleep, guess everyone was tired today after traveling for 17 hours. We started our journey to Bukoba at 8 this morning. However, at this rate some of us are wondering if this Bukoba business isn’t just a concoction by Andy and Jenna………we have been traveling for almost a whole week now and still haven’t gotten to our final destination, is there a final destination? Well Andy and Jenna are the only ones who seem to think so. The scenery has been beautiful so far with rolling hills and dirt roads in bountiful. Interestingly enough a police officer rode with us for an hour or two, we seem to be attracting a lot of police officers on our trip, but its all fun and plus it makes for an interesting journal entry for Mitch.

Well what do you know….. after close to 50 hours of traveling, we got into Bukoba at 4 p.m. Everyone is excited to finally get here but at the same time after spending that amount of time en route, it feels weird not to be leaving the next day!

Our house is right on the beach of Lake Victoria! It is very charming and our living room is decked out in animal print! However, the bandas are a group favorite… they’re little tiki huts with grass floors in them. We’ve been doing all of the cooking and eating inside the house, so the bandas are mostly just for sleeping. The bandas and the house are right next door to each other, and have a restaurant and bonfire pit between them, which are owned by the Kiroyera tour company (who we are renting from). They also are letting us use their charcoal grills, so we hope to take advantage of that and the bonfire pit soon!

We went on our first tour of Bukoba town this evening, and picked up some food and supplies. Thankfully, the market was about to close so we didn’t have to deal with a large crowd. It started to get dark so we headed back to our house and started dinner. Our first meal was very good! We boiled and mashed potatoes and topped them with butter and sautéed vegetables. It was about a $2 meal for all ten of us!

After dinner, the UEFA soccer championship was on TV. A fundi (repairman/handyman) came to fix our cable so we could watch the game on our TV instead of going out.

Posted by bwb at 6:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Today was interesting! We had to pay for the trip to Bukoba thus had to change $2000. If you think that’s a lot, it was worth 3.2 million Tanzanian Shillings! So for one brief instant Mitch, in who’s name we had to change the money in by virtue of him being the one a passport at the time of exchange, was a millionaire!! ( He was worth 3.6 million, way to go Mitch). The other group that had gone shopping at shoprite got lost and took two and a half hours to and from when they should have taken just 30 minutes, way to be Mzungus. Had grilled goat meat and chicken for dinner today, but that took two and a half to get ready, apparently they make the food when you order it and boy is it fresh and tasty. Thuy, however, being hungry chickened out and ordered buffet before going to bed at 6 p.m. whitney on the other hand decided to have rice and vegetable curry instead of the grilled food we were having; why anyone would have vegetable curry on a trip to Africa buffled the whole group! Couldn’t sleep tonight since we leave at 3 this morning so played some apples to apples then decided to make our own version of it; with our names and catch phrases from the trip. We left for our trip at 3 a.m. this morning………..

Posted by bwb at 6:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We left for the safari at 6am but this time we had two open jeeps/range rovers. We drove around the park and saw pretty much the same animals as the first day. Our drivers tried looking for lions but with no luck. We definitely saw a lot more animals the first day than the second day. But we did see a beautiful sunrise over the park. We came back at around 10am and had breakfast (banana, watermelon, papaya, eggs, hot dog, baked beans, toast, tomato, and some juice). We then left for Dar Es Salaam at around 12pm and as we were passing the national park, we saw a bunch of baboons hanging out on the side of the road. We had lunch/snack halfway through the trip at the same hotel restaurant that we stopped at the first time. There were really tall hills on the way there and back, with some as high as the clouds. There were also a lot of small villages off the side of the road. The car’s brake disc broke and so we had to stop at a gas station to get it fixed which only took about 15-20 minutes (really fast!). On the ride back, the van picked up a police officer and gave him a ride a couple of miles down the road. That was definitely interesting.

Posted by bwb at 6:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We left the hotel at 7am for the safari at Mikumi National Park, which was about 3-4 hours away from Dar Es Salaam. We stopped for breakfast at a hotel about halfway there and had chapattis, chicken, and juice. There were random speed bumps along the way in order for people to not drive really fast seeing as there are no stop lights or stop signs here. As we got closer to the motel, we saw giraffes, elephants, and baboons. We stayed at Genesis Motel which was also a snake park. At the snake park, some of us were brave enough to hold a snake. At 3pm, we left for the safari. Some of us were in a van and the rest sat in an open jeep/range rover. We drove around the park and saw a lot of cool animals such as giraffes, elephants, elands, impalas, hippos, zebras, and a crocodile. We actually got close to some of the animals. We went around the park for a couple of hours, until it got dark. The sunset was amazing! We drove back to the motel and had dinner. Some of us tried grilled goat meat with ugali, rice, or chapatti. Afterwards, we played Apples to Apples and then went to sleep.

Posted by bwb at 6:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We took the dala-dala (which people had to push to get started) and then walked to Coco Beach. There was a lot of students there hanging out and swimming. We stayed there for a few hours and then started walking back to the bus stop. On the way to the bus stop, we stopped at Thai Village for refreshments. We then stopped at Noah’s Ark Pizza for some pizza and apparently there are two different menus, one for white people (where the prices are more expensive) and one for the locals (cheaper). James asked the waiter about it and he said that we should just order the pizzas now. The bus ride back to the hotel was crowded and some of us had to stand. When it was time to get off, some of us got off of the bus while others stayed on because they didn’t realize that it was our stop until they saw some of us on the street as the bus drove off. But the bus stopped a couple of feet away, so it wasn’t too bad. That night, we dropped off our luggage at Cathy’s (James’s friend) house since we were going on the safari for two days. For dinner, we ate at this amazing restaurant (Angel House) on the beach. It was a clear and beautiful night. Most of us ordered fish which was actually a whole fish (head, tail, and guts) and it was served with fries and a salad. They also have soda here which was nice.

We then went back to the hotel.

Posted by bwb at 6:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We arrived at the airport, went through customs, and got our luggage. We met with the hotel manager/driver and took us to our hotel (Cathetery Hotel). The hotel rooms themselves were really nice (i.e. air conditioning). The hotel is located by the market, which is always busy and crowded with people. After we got settled, we went on a dala-dala (the bus) and went around the route. There are no “real” bus stops, just wherever on the road…but usually where there is a crowd of people standing on the side of the street. Pedestrians do not have the right of way and the drivers here are crazy!

Posted by bwb at 6:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Left to right: Thuy, Sarah, Andy, Aaron, Mitchell, Whtiney, Jenna, Anh (not going), and Laura.

Missing: Betty and James

Posted by bwb at 7:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Hi, I'm Mitchell Balding. So I feel like we were planning this trip just yesterday. We were deciding what exactly what we wanted to do and what kind of fundraising we would have to get started, and today we get on the plane!!! I feel like everyone's effort and time has finally paid off... Thanks to everyone for your dedication, we are going to ROCK in TZ!! Despite my crazy excitement I had all this week, earlier today I did get some "pre-flight jitters" but after packing my bag and getting everything all together I'm pumped up again. We are going to have such a great time you guys!!!! See y'all today!!

Mitchell

Posted by bwb at 7:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hi, my name is Aaron Crosby. I am super excited and nervous! I am a Microbiology Major, so I have spent a great deal of time in my classes learning about ways that you can get sick, so that is probably what I am most nervous about. I am excited to learn more about the culture of Tanzania, and to hopefully do some good in the process! And I am excited to dye Andy's hair red.

Aaron

Posted by bwb at 7:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)