Arusha and Beyond

So just a quick update on how I plan on spending the rest of my time here. I spent all of yesterday running around and arranging things and am glad to have almost everything done. I am staying in Arusha until Monday, March 16. I will be staying in the Njiro area at the house of Uday, the guy that I met in the Serengeti. It's an amazing offer because its an empty house and the housegirl will get all my food and cook for me. Tim leaves this afternoon and I have a meeting with the manager to take me to the house and get me settled in. Starting Sunday, March 8 - Sunday, March 15 I will be volunteering at the Lohada Orphanage, specifically Camp Moses. This is for children younger than 7. I will be doing a lot of organizing and gathering which is perfect for me. Happiness took me to this storeroom and asked if I could organize it in a week. I was kind of like "do you know about the Korsak women? Of course I can do it in a week." The orphanage is a great place. They have 25 children there right now, most of whom have at least one surviving parents. They take in children who have been abused, who are orphaned, or whose parents are prostitutes. The goal of the orphanage is to return the children to their families within a year, so they have a lot of support programs to fix the problems at home. So I will have to take two dala-dalas to the orphanage one-way and I am a little nervous about that, but I should be okay. I know how to get there on foot so if anything bothers me I can just get out and walk. So after my time at the orphanage I have a shuttle bus up to the Nairobi airport on Monday, Mar 16 where I will catch an early evening flight to Mombasa and will stay in Mombasa until Sunday Mar 22. Then I will fly from Mombasa to Nairobi, spend one night with the Chelangas and then on the 23rd begin to fly home.

I still have some arranging to do with my trip to Mombasa, but I hope to just relax and get some sun before coming back to a cold US. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know! I am not sure about how much internet access I will have this week, guess I will know more later today when I see about Njiro. I hope everyone is well!

Love
Ann

Safari Pictures II

Okay . . . so Tim heads home tomorrow and its been a really nice trip. Definitely different from the rest of my time here so far. We basically followed the same itinerary I posted last week, spending nights in lodges and spending the days driving and going around. We saw SO many animals and I think we were very lucky to see as much as we did. I have a lot of great picture (over 1000 now) and can't wait to go through all of them when I get home - though some are posted below with explanations.

As for me, well according to my Virgin Atlantic website I have 17 days and 30 minutes until my next flight, which will be the beginning of my journey home. I had thought about climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in the remaining time, but the costs are so expensive PLUS its the start of the long rains here. We experienced a storm on our trip and I have no interest in experiencing that storm on a mountain! So I've decided to stay in Arusha for a week and then go to Mombasa, then finally return to Nairobi and head home.

So for Arusha - I decided that I want to find a school or orphanage to volunteer at. I have enjoyed all of my time with children here and figured it would be a nice way to end a trip. I am meeting with a woman sometime today that runs a program called Lohada. We'll see how that goes. I also met a guy in Ndutu that has a house here that he only uses occasionally and is empty right now - so he offered it to me to use! So I also need to call his manager today and check out the house! So a lot of things to do today before we get kicked out of the hotel tomorrow.

I hope everyone is doing well and see you all so soon! Happy Bday to my mom and Will. And a special thanks to Glen for that great email!


I can't quite remember where I took this picture without looking at where it fell in my camera, but I think I took it at Ndutu. This is a small area between the Serengeti and Ngorogoro Crater where we stayed for one night and did a few hours of drives. It was super dusty the first day but in the morning it was cool and really nice.

Neither Tim or I really liked the monkeys and baboons that we ran into, but sometimes they made for nice pictures or it was fun to see how they interacted. In fact, we heard stories from a lot of different lodges where the baboons become extremely aggressive and attack guests or lodge workers. The state usually comes in and 'removes' the aggressive males. This black velvet monkey is found in most of the areas and they can get to be quite large.



These are some hippos that we saw in the Ngorogoro Crater. We saw many hippos in the Serengeti, sometimes up to 15 hippos at a time. They are interesting creatures. They graze all night, for up to 12 hours, and then spend the entire rest of the day in the water.


We had seen a number of lions throughout our trip but this was one of the most exciting sitings. We came across three female lions with four cubs. The one female was dragging a dead wildebeast, trying to get it into the shape. The cubs were oblivious to how hard she was working and would just chase her around and climb on top of her.

We spent some time in Ndutu watching a whole group of vultures go at a wildebeast corpse. It was so interesting to watch them fighting each other for the remaining meat. These huge vultures would swoop in and peck at the others. Feathers would fly, things would settle, they would eat, and then another fight would start.

Safari Pictures I

We saw this a lot. In the afternoon when the sun is very hot and the animals are too tired to graze, zebras pair up like this and rest their heads on each others backs. It's a trust relationship where each zebra keeps a lookout behind the other for predators.


In the Serengeti we were able to witness the annual zebra and wildebeast migration. The animals are continually on the move for food and water and this time of year are heading south. There are literally THOUSANDS of animals and if you are in the middle of the migration, you can be completely surrounded for as far as the eye can see. Pretty amazing.

At one point we came around the side of a boulder and saw one male lion and three females all lying around the base of a rock, hiding from the sun. We watched for awhile and eventually the male got up and I took this really great picture.



We saw Cheetahs on several occasions in the Serengeti and Ngorogoro Crater. They are pretty beautiful animals and can just blend right into the landscape making them very hard to see.




This is a picture of the Ngorogoro Crater from a viewpoint on the road. It's really beautiful and green. Animals live on the rim of the crater and in the crater. Here we saw rhinos, hippos, cheetahs, lions (and cubs), elephants, zebra, hyenas, wildebeast, buffalos and more.

Extraordinary Times Call for Extraordinary Measures

This is a very unusual and maybe unnecessary entry for me to write but it is something that has been bothering me over the last 24 hours and I want to settle it. Last night I received angry messages from some women who had come across my blog and read a few entries. Though the messages were somewhat confusing, I assume they were angry with some of my comments, how I had described things, or information I had revealed. It was hard for me to get such angry comments from people I had grown to love so much and I wanted to address their comments.

This is my personal blog. It’s a blog about Ann in Africa and it’s about my whole trip. This is my way of communicating with friends and family at home and it’s a way for me to document my travel, my feelings, and what I am learning. Sometimes I do get annoyed and angry and those times are apparent in my blog, but I also know that it is clear how much I have loved this entire experience.

I went through my entire blog last night and there are some parts that are very critical of specific people or places. I am very sorry if anything I have written has hurt someone’s feelings. That was NEVER my intention but I certainly understand how it has happened. Understand that entries are just tiny moments in a whirlwind learning experience and specific stories do not do justice to my entire experience or the people I encounter. I am also sorry if I have not done a good enough job to show the people I have met how much I have appreciated their hospitality and kindness.

That being said, I absolutely stand by my blog, by the experiences I have documented, the conversations I have had and stories about the people I have met. I want to thank everyone who has read my blog and supported me through this trip. I have received amazing feedback and I would appreciate it if you kept it up.

SOOOOO, an update about where Tim and I are right now. We just arrived in the Serengeti Sopa Lodge and checked into our room. It's been a really nice trip so far and I will have so much to report at the end, including pictures. We did Tarangire Nat'l Park first, which was just okay for me. I thought it was too dusty and too hot. At lunch the first day a monkey attacked us for food. Tim ran like a little girl and got all scrapped up by a tree. I reacted by covering my face and neck and rolling into a ball. All he really wanted was some of our lunch (I think!!) but it was scary nonetheless and a good lesson that we are in animal territory now and need to be respectful of that. We did a night there and then want to Lake Manyara. I thought Lake Manyara was absolutely beautiful. It has natural ground springs so there is a lot of green and its like an open plain. Today has been the Serengeti and that has also been amazing. We have seen lions, hippos, zebras, impala, tons of species of gazelles, elephants, birds, giraffes, serval cats, cheetahs and so much more. It's been really exhilirating and our guide Thomas is really great. I doubt I will be able to give any good updates while we are traveling, but expect something good on Mar 6! I hope everyone is doing well!
Love,
Ann

An update . . . on the future

I have arrived safely in Arusha and have found a decent internet connection to be able to upload some pictures. I guess I should be reflecting on my time here so far, considering I only have 4 weeks left . . . but I don’t think I will. It’s hard to always remember the small little things, like the man that shared his homemade chiapati with me on the bus yesterday, or the way Rose’s face is so beautiful when she smiles, or the way Yona would laugh when I shuffled a deck of cards. This has been a really crazy and amazing experience for me so far. Today someone asked me why I don’t just go home early after Tim leaves. I was kind of bewildered . . . ‘For what?’ was my reply. So yes, I am enjoying it here a lot. Sometimes I need to be reminded to smile or take a deep breath, but generally and typically it’s so great. Tim arrived last night and it was nice to have someone from home visiting, someone that I can show around a little bit and impress with my small Swahili vocabulary. Plus in the hotel last night I sat down on a toilet for the first time in a LONG time and it was amazing. I also found that I have not lost my tendency to take long hot showers . . . some things never change. I have no idea what kind of connection I have for the next 10 days OR what I will be doing after that, but here is my general itinerary:

Feb 25 – I arrive via bus from Dar es Salaam and Tim arrives to Kilimanjaro Airport. We meet at the African Tulip hotel.
Feb 26 – free day to walk around Arusha and let Tim get used to the time change
Feb 27 –Tarangire National Park
Feb 28 – Lake Manyara
Feb 29 – Mar 2 Serengeti National Park
Mar 3 – Ndutu Area
Mar 4 – Ngorogoro Crater
Mar 5 – descend Crater and return to Arusha
Mar 6 – rest
Mar 7 – Tim leaves and for me?????

I hope everyone is doing well. And Maddy, no, I have NOT forgotten about you. Is that even possible? I miss everyone and hope you are all doing well. Please don't miss the 10 pictures I just posted in previous entries.
Love,
Ann

Pictures Part Deux

This is a picture of a traditional Arab door in Zanzibar. They have African doors and Arab doors, with differences related to the shape, design and decoration. The Arab doors, for example, are all curved at the top, have some kind of Arabic phrase and have a decoration of chains meant to ward off bad spirits. As with anything culturally and historically significant, these doors are being sold off on black markets around the world.



This is the one hand that I had henna done to. I also had the palm of my right hand done. I love it and think it is so decorative and beautiful. Traditionally it is done right before a wedding.




I took this picture at sunset in Zanzibar. The water there was so stunning, all shades of turquoise blues and greens and perfectly see-through. I had a really nice time at the beaches there, but it was definitely the most touristy place I had seen so far. The beaches only had white tourists. It’s a Muslim island so you definitely have to be aware of how you are dressing and behaving. One woman was topless and it seemed so stupid and careless, considering all the Zanzibari women were walking around fully covered with headscarves.

This is my dear little Irene. She is the 6-year old daughter of Gasper and Rose. She would just sit next to me for hours and chatter in Swahili, regardless of whether or not I understood her. She NEVER stopped talking or touching me. Sometimes she would get out a pick and do my hair. I loved her so much and cried when I left her.

In Morogoro the TAWE women took me up to one of the villages to visit a sub-chapter, a group of women making pottery by hand. I always enjoy my short visits to the village because I get to see how most people are living and I get a better sense of ‘real life.’ Children are my favorite people to watch and they are always so curious and sweet.

Pictures

I took this picture in Morogoro while visiting the women in the village. These are tools used for making pottery, including a corn cob and piece of a calabash for smoothing out bowls. I liked how the light was hitting it.



This is also in Morogoro at the village. We stopped at one woman’s house and I liked how her items looked hanging outside.





This is a view of Morogoro at sunset from Rose and Gasper’s house. It was so breathtakingly beautiful, but once the sun goes down here it goes down so quickly. I had to hurry to get these pictures.




This is a picture of Rose and Christine. Rose was my host in Morogoro but I spent a lot of time with these women and really loved being with them.








This is a picture of Morogoro. It is very beautiful there with the town located at the foot of the mountains. It is raining season so it always looks like the clouds are kissing the mountains. I think this is one of the most beautiful places I have seen in Tanzania so far.