How I learned that I should NEVER feel safe...

Imagine finding this in your mosquito net:

Now see how I reacted (I know you've been waiting for this video...  I fully realize how ridiculous it is, but this is for hilarity and raw-ness' sake).

Week Four

June 16^th – Elijah peaced out really early, which was kind of funny.  I worked out, showered, and walked twenty minutes to New City Church, which belongs to the Presbyterian Church of Uganda and felt a lot like the service at my home church in New Haven.  I got there early because I’d gotten the time wrong, but I just sat there, journaling and singing as the praise team practiced the worship songs.  The instant I walked in and heard a song I knew playing, there was a sort of immediate release, a feeling of being home with a covenant people that I hadn’t felt since being in New Haven.  Though it was a pretty muzungu service, about half white people and half Africans (including the 20 school boys all sitting together), it was good to be there.  I met the country head couple of Mission to the World, which is the PCA’s international missions sending organization, and a couple that had taught my friend Luke at Christ School Bundibugyo.  Again, it was kind of crazy but cool to intersect with friends of friends halfway around the world.

After church, I decided it was a good idea to go to the office to have some alone time in a cool, quiet place with Internet.  Even though it was only supposed to take 20 minutes to get there, it took 40 minutes to get there, and it was a lot warmer in the afternoon than it had been in the morning.  Little did I know, the whole building was closed.  I should’ve known, but I guess I’d thought that Elijah’s considering going to the office on Sunday meant he knew it was open.  Oh well.  That was fairly disheartening and I was sweaty and hungry, so I got a boda to the Oasis mall.  I felt safe because not many cars are on the road on Sundays, and despite it being really unclassy, I hiked up my skirt and let my spandex show because I refused to ride side saddle.  Funnily enough, Lily and Saga were at Café Java, and they gave me their last two bites of quesadilla and a sip of their milkshake, which was exactly what I needed to hold me over until I finished grocery shopping and went home.

I bought some “minced” aka ground beef, frozen chicken breasts, yogurt, and some cereal at the store, then walked home, sent a few emails, and took a nap.  I woke up to a call that pretty much implied that I was supposed to have dinner ready for the hiking crew when they got back, which annoyed me on principle and because I hadn’t really gotten to sleep.  One of the things I’ve been processing is what it really means to have a servant’s heart, and why I’m so happy to give sometimes and do it very begrudgingly other times.  Anyway, I washed the green beans, skinned the potatoes, made the beef, and was joined by Lily and Connor, who helped unpeel the ridiculously tiny garlic cloves (NEVER AGAIN) and snap the ends off the green beans.  Titi boiled the potatoes and mashed them to perfection as I finished cooking the beef.  It was kind of an odd dinner, but it tasted pretty good.  We then managed to get through about ten minutes of the West Wing pilot that had been streaming for two days and gave up to watch a movie.

June 17^th – I meant to work out in the morning, but that failed because I got up a little late and had planned to Skype my parents for Fathers’ day, which was good.  Work was pretty boring, but I enjoyed listening to my audiobook.  I also realized that it really exhausts me to not talk to people all day—I need human interaction—so I was pretty tired coming home, but I hung out with Lily, who’s awesome, and we went to the gym.  I made some mediocre chicken, Titi and I had some delicious pineapple, and we went to bed around 11:30.

June 18^th – I slept in for my birthday, went to the gym, made some really good [yellow-yolked!] eggs with tomato, bell pepper, and cheese on toast, and headed to work.  I met the new girl at the office, Leah, who grew up in Korea, goes to RISD, and is researching “poverty porn” this summer.  Elijah took me to lunch in Kisementi for my birthday, which was really lovely.  We talked about family and life aspirations and other things while enjoying some tasty Indian chicken curry.  I waited for 45 minutes for Moses to pick me up after work, and then we spent a lot of time in a traffic jam on the way home.  I headed straight to bed for a nap before my birthday dinner at Prunes, which I chose because it’s close, has fresh and healthy food, and, most importantly, is reputed to have a great bakery.  Lily and I shared a chicken curry wrap and house salad that had chicken, avocado, and mango, both of which were really good.  I finished my obligatory Smirnoff Ice, which hilariously said not for consumption under 18 (whooo becoming “legal” in a country where you’ve already been legal for three years!) and ordered a really yummy frappe.  Elijah and Bwana Scott, a grad student in my Swahili class who’s doing research on radio and the LRA in northern Uganda and the DRC, joined us for dinner, and it was great to get to see Scott while he was in Kampala.  We went to karaoke night at the Centenary BBQ Lounge, where we were disappointed to not be able to sing Beyoncé and Saga, who’s married, got pretty heavily and awkwardly hit on by the emcee over the microphone.  Connor, Saga, and I sang “A Whole New World,” which was hilarious because Saga totally went for it without a care in the world whereas Connor, a bass, and I, an alto/tenor, kind of conservatively tried to sing what we realized was a soprano/tenor song.  Oh well.  We stayed out about 30 minutes too late, but overall it was a good day.  In general, I think of birthdays as excuses to show someone how deeply loved they are, so for me, they’re a pretty big deal, but I’ve realized that not everyone sees them that way, so I’ve changed my expectations in the last few years.  My birthday was just what I wanted it to be: a good day spent with friends.

June 19^th – I slept in because Elijah told me I could show up however late I wanted (I think in anticipation of me being hungover, lol, because I had two and a half drinks over six hours, but Connor had done 21 shots plus a few beers on his birthday a few weeks ago…).  As I walked to work, which I envisioned being really nice but which turned out to be a little long and a little warm, I listened to several of Paul’s epistles on my iPod.  I felt kind of inadequate at work, which was a bummer, and I came home tired.  After a nap, Lily and I went to the gym, Titi made some really good spaghetti sauce from scratch, and we hung out in Saga and Lily’s room.

June 20^th – The lowlight of the day was Africa Cry #3, as I feel like Amara would call it, which was sparked by some transportation issues… I worked at the office alone in the morning and then went down to the taxi stage as usual, asking for Mulago, and was told to get on a matatu which ended up going the complete opposite direction.  When I asked for clarification, though I’d already paid, the conductor looked at me like I was an idiot and told me to get off, cross the street, and get on a different matatu.  He was the one who told me the taxi was going to Mulago, so I was pretty frustrated and felt a little humiliated and taken advantage of because he so unapologetically had taken my money despite taking me in the wrong direction and quadrupling my transport time as a result.  Because so many people got off the taxi at the Wandegeya stage, we had to wait for another eight people to trickle in (the drivers rarely leave a stage without a full car), which took a while.  I finally got off at the Mulago stage 50 minutes after I’d left the office, when the previous day, it had taken 13 minutes.  Walking toward the hospital, I broke into sobs and texted Connor to ask if he could step out for a second to give me a hug, then sat on the gate outside for a few minutes trying to regain my composure.  I think it was a combination of the inconvenience, hatred of disappointing people (in this case, Elijah, by being late), hurt that I’d been manipulated, and shame at having been so confused that made me so emotional.  This is the kind of little day-to-day thing that I can imagine really taking a toll on someone doing missions in Africa.

The highlight of the day, though, was Connor’s “hometown.”  I’m a Freshman Outdoor Orientation Trips (FOOT) leader at Yale, and on FOOT, we share short versions of our life stories, which we call “hometowns.”  I proposed last week that we all do them so that we could know each other better and enrich our time here, so Connor went first, and I think we all enjoyed it a lot.  I’m looking forward to the rest of them and thinking about the most relevant things to share in my own.

June 21^st – Basically, I finished A Thousand Splendid Suns and began The Kite Runner as I worked, Carole cooked us a fabulous family dinner, and we all watched a stupid movie.

June 22^nd – We went to explore Kampala a little bit today with a couple APP interns.  First, we waited an extra twenty minutes at the taxi stage for two of them to show up and  headed to Nakawe market.  My understanding is that we thought there would be crafts there, but it was mainly just used clothing, and it was actually a different market that sold traditional crafts.  Jo hated that everyone was yelling at the wazungu to come buy things from them, so she and Macey went home.  Saga and I took a quick look around and then crossed the street to get her some food because she was hungry.  There was cilantro in the beans, which made it really tasty (with the chapatti, too, of course).  Then, a Ugandan APP intern who was supposed to meet us much earlier showed up, took us to where the craft market used to be, and then found out that it had moved to the mall where the Shoprite, a large South African grocery store chain, was.  We made our way there, browsed the store, which had beautiful things that were a decent price but expensive for Uganda, and, after much longer than I felt like it was necessary to be there, left to get on a taxi.  We also learned that they have a branch at the mall a ten minute walk from us… As you can probably tell, I was fairly annoyed that I’d spent the first two hours of my Saturday waiting for people I didn’t know and going to markets I didn’t care about instead of sleeping and working out.

We eventually got on a matatu headed toward Nakasero market and the Gaddaffi National Mosque, which was the main attraction for me, and my spirits lifted a bit.  Titi, who had slept in, and Lily, who was trying to get her broken MacBook Pro fixed, would both be joining us there, so that was something to look forward to as well.  Unfortunately, DK actually got robbed on the taxi, and all eight of us sort of confusedly got out.  In hindsight, it’s so clear that the three guys in the empty matatu had been planning a scheme.  First, they moved Connor, who originally was in front, to the back and DK to the front, and they put Saga in the middle of the first row, when normally people fiercely protect their seats.  Saga said one of them was reading a newspaper and “accidentally” dropped the fare he was handing to the conductor over her, at which point the two of them looked expectantly at her for a while before deciding to pick it up.  Her boss had told her just the previous day that people pretend to be engaged in reading their papers while planning to steal from you, and that it’s a fairly common trick to slip their hand in your bag as you’re leaning down to pick up change they dropped on the taxi floor.  In the back, we didn’t really know what was going on, so when there were mutterings up front about getting out, we all did, and DK told the conductor that her camera was missing.  He apparently responded that he’d seen her drop it at a previous stop but thought she didn’t care—yeah, right.  Connor also said later that the guy had felt all his pockets as he climbed in, but because his hands were on his phone and camera, and his wallet was in a pocket with a button, he got moved out of that prime front seat from which DK got robbed.  She was mainly disappointed about the many photos she hadn’t uploaded, but again, that feeling of betrayal also really sucks.

They felt scarred by the matatu ride so wanted to get on a boda to go the rest of the way to the mosque, and we had a rather lengthy discussion amongst ourselves about what mode of transportation to use in light of not being able to bargain down a special hire rate as much as we wanted.  The group settled on bodas, but as I felt uncomfortable about it, I spoke up and told everyone that for my parents’ sake, I wouldn’t take a boda while the streets were busy, so I’d pay the difference in the special hire price (which was 17,000 shillings for all of us, or 7 bucks total).  I knew that my father would find it ridiculous for me to not pay up for safety, even if it were more expensive.  It was nice that everyone agreed to split evenly, too, rather than have me pay.  As Saga mentioned, offering to pay for things is a slippery slope here—I’ve definitely paid for way more than my fair share of groceries.

The mosque was really pretty.  All the girls had to get completely covered before entering, and it was a little unclear whether the 10,000 shillings we paid was just for the clothes while entrance was free, or whether the clothes were free and we paid for the ticket.  The view of the city from the top of the minuret was beautiful, though, and my day was made instantly better when Lily’s bright shining face showed up a few minutes after we’d reached the top :)  After Jada and I accidentally used the men’s bathroom (which I think was actually a pretty serious mistake on our part, and I felt bad about it, for cultural respect’s sake), we looked inside the actual mosque.  There was also a wedding that was ending, which was cool to see.  If was disheartening to hear the guide’s speech about how Islam was the way to salvation.  Saddened, I prayed that people seeking to know the divine would be met by the one true God.  I looked at a translation of the Koran and prayed for the second half of his speech, my heart breaking for him.  When the tour was over, we bought some disappointingly room-temperature chapatti and headed back home, where we hung out and listened to Macey’s hometown.  People headed out to Cayenne, I think, but I wasn’t really feeling in the mood, so I had some refreshing time with the Lord in my bed.  Then the bat incident happened.  If you haven’t already, check out my (ridiculous) video reaction…

Week Three

June 8th – Though I was exhausted from my travels and staying out til late (ish... definitely late compared to Amara and my bedtimes!), I still woke up at eight, settled back in, boiled some water, journaled, read, and went to the gym.  After showering and having a little to eat, I headed to the farmer's market up the street with Connor, where we got a delicious cinnamon pretzel and some produce.  We decided we'd have to come earlier the following Saturday so that we could get the TORTILLAS that one woman makes—Johanna, Lily, and I seriously miss Mexican food—and have our pick of all the goods.  Later, the whole crew went over to Nakasero market to get a lot more produce, then we set to making a yummy salad and cooking some carrots, green veggies, and mashed potatoes for dinner.  We headed to Big Al's, a fairly upscale bar on Acacia Ave (about five minutes away, in Kololo, the neighborhood where we live), to meet up with Omar's birthday party.  Omar is Saga and Macey's supervisor at African Prisons Project (APP).  We got there about half an hour before they said they'd arrive, but we were just hanging out there for a good two hours until they showed up, by which time I was ready to go to bed, but instead I stayed for another hour and a half or so and then went home around 12:30.

So many white people in one place!

June 9th – We were out the door by 7:45 on Sunday morning to go rafting on the Nile with Adrift Adventures.  It was a blast, including the two times we flipped—the right amount of fear of drowning and exhilarating fun because we trusted we'd be fine anyway.  Writing this from three weeks later, only one of us has show signs of schistosomiasis, but I should still probably get the preventative meds before I actually need treatment...  Schisto seems like no fun.  Though the rafting was fun, the highlight was probably the INCREDIBLE Mexican food we had for lunch, including guacamole and accompanied by delicious juice and fruit kebabs.  There were also meat kebabs at the take-out.  The breaded and fried hard-boiled egg in the morning wasn't as great though...  After we got home, we cooked and ate, then I skyped with the fam, which was really nice.

June 10th – Basically, the day was a struggle to make myself productive and respond to the many emails that required responses.  I (somewhat productively) procrastinated by rearranging the kitchen then actually sent some emails.  I read another chapter of A.W. Tozer's The Pursuit of God, went to the gym, journaled, and then hung out with people when they got home from work.

June 11th – I did a little gym action, a lot of email action, a negligible amount of blog action, and read and journaled some more.  It was really life-giving to get in touch with several friends, many of whom are doing missions, and to think of the ways in which the Lord will use them.  A member of the Yale faculty who was checking in on the Bulldogs International programs treated us to our weekly "family dinner" (which Yale sponsors and takes place with our in-country contact, Carole, who, by the way, happens to work for MAF, who flew the Myhres when they lived in Bundibugyo – what fun connections!).  It happened at a place called Fang Fang, but apparently there's a restaurant and a hotel that has a restaurant.  I didn't know beforehand, so I didn't tell Elijah which one to go to, and I also chose to leave my phone at home, so basically my first African impression on my "boss" (He insists on being called my partner, but let's be real - he's Walimu's Executive Director as a rising junior.) was that I was totally out of communication and leaving him to wait for us alone outside a restaurant for 45 minutes.  I actually felt horrible about it and struggled to focus on our conversation around the table.  I called him later that night though and he was very gracious.

All day, every day, for two weeks.

June 12th – My first day of work was good, but fairly uneventful.  Elijah and I spent the morning in our shared office space at Hive Colab, trying to finish up entering the content for the chapter with which we're piloting the app.  As a recap, it’s called the mIMAI, or mobile Integrated Management of Adult and Adolescent Illness, and it takes the WHO’s guidelines for clinical care in resource constrained settings (the IMAI District Clinician Manual) and turns it into a mobile app that will work on phones and computers so that all the vital information in the IMAI is easily accessible at a clinician’s fingertips.  Basically what that means for the content entry phase for me is that I get to copy and paste things from the pdf of the manual into documents in Agile Diagnosis' online software and then reformat it, which sometimes means actually looking at the html and channeling my hacker little brother.  But if you're in Africa and the internet isn't all that awesome, you spend a lot of time looking at error messages and not as much actually programming...


In the afternoon, we went to Mulago, the national referral and teaching hospital, and set up in the MU-UCSF Mind Study Office, from which we sold the diagnostic kits to excited SHOs (residents) and interns.  Makerere University and UC San Francisco have had a partnership for several years, and Walimu is kind of a child of that.  These diagnostic kits, which cost $75, are subsidized by American donors to be available to SHOs and interns for about $20.  They're super excited about this not only because of the amazing price but also because somehow these tools aren't readily available in Uganda for reasonable prices. Each kit contains a blood pressure cuff, a portable pulse oximeter (to measure heart rate and blood oxygen saturation), a thermometer, an exam light, and extra batteries, all packaged in a nice small bag from eBags. The pulse ox seems to be the really exciting thing for everyone. It's very rewarding for us to see the energy and gratitude these kits are stirring up.

Just me, chillin' with the kits...

When I got home, we had dinner at Nawab, a fairly classy Indian restaurant, and were joined by Nikki, a girl who interns at the Infectious Disease Institute at Mulago with Connor.  We then went over to the Boda Boda Bar, which had salsa night, except that a few songs after we arrived, the music totally changed.  The emcee (yeah, they had an emcee in addition to the DJ...) started talking a lot and then they did this weird goodbye to some muzungu girl who was really good at dancing salsa, in which she switched off dancing every few seconds with fifteen different men, who pretty aggressively cut in. It was impressive but I couldn't help thinking that I'd feel assaulted if I were in her place.  We soon left and stopped by the Nakumatt grocery store, where I bought some milk in a bag...


 June 13th – My second day looked the same as the first, and I listened to some sermons as I entered content, which was nice.  I made a pretty good salad for dinner, made a brief appearance at our pool party with Titi and Lily, and then went with them to the gym.  Afterward, we hopped in the pool and hung out with the others in the hot tub.  Gregor, a German guy who also works at APP, brought some Haribo gummies that we ate while in the hot tub, and I thoroughly enjoyed them.  I showered, had some leftover Indian, read Galatians, and went to bed.

June 14th – I did a lot more coding, this time listening to Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns, and Elijah and I waited a while to get picked up.  He came to the Chinese place with us at Centenary Park, and we later met up with Omar, Aimee, Matt, and DK, at the Centenary BBQ Lounge for a drink.  Dancing was failsauce because the stupid DJ talked literally every five seconds, so it wasn't really like music was happening, but at least we got the Ugandans dancing and provided them with some entertainment.  We relocated to the Kyoto Lounge, where I said I’d stay for ten minutes before leaving because I was tired, but it was really chill and people were just sitting around with sheesha and talking, so I hung out.  We eventually hit the dance floor and the DJ played a bunch of American top 40 songs for us.  Again, we were kind of a spectacle, but I think the locals enjoyed it and we definitely did.  The [very young] owner even got Lily’s number so he could give us the details on his house party the following night.  We never did get the deets, but it was a funny exchange.

June 15th – I slept til 8:30, wrote some emails, went to the gym with Connor, and then went to the farmer’s market (TORTILLAS!).  We sat in Prunes, the very muzungu restaurant/café in whose yard the farmer's market takes place, and had smoothies while failing to access their wifi.  They whole crew went to the Uganda-Angola football (soccer) game in the afternoon, which was quite the scene and a lot of fun.  We got some kebabs on our way out, showered when we got home, and ate the guacamole I made.  Watching Game of Thrones was fairly uncomfortable for me, so I left halfway through and journaled about holiness.  People started pregaming and I didn't think I'd go out, but since Elijah said he'd go out if I did, I agreed.  We went to Gattomatto to meet the old and new APP interns, several of whom were from London School of Economics, and and it was really chill.  Somewhat embarrassingly, I got a cappuccino, but it was really good and exactly what I wanted.  Most people left because they were getting up early for a hike, but the seven of us who stuck around played "never have I ever."  Obviously there were very few things mentioned that I had actually done, but it was a relaxed way to get people to open up.  We all took boda bodas home – our first time!  Lily and I ended up getting a night tour of Kampala because our boda driver didn't know where we were going.  It was more funny than annoying, actually, and beautiful to see parts of the city at night.  We convinced Elijah to sleep on our couch because it was past 3am, and we all fell asleep pretty fast.

Connor and Saga had way too much fun with the noisemakers...

The cranes won!!!  It was a nail-biter—they scored twice in the last few minutes.

From Zanzibar to Kampala

Wow.  What a long day.  We slept in until 8am, packed a little, and headed upstairs for breakfast (I don’t know about Amara, but I was really hungry).  The black instant Africafé was decent, the egg and toast good, and the fruit sweet.  The rooftop really had a beautiful view of the water on three sides and the skyline that showed no streets because they’re so small. 

We spent about ten minutes talking with Usna, the woman who had served us breakfast and cleaned the hostel.  She was born in Arusha but has worked in Zanzibar for a year and a half without going back to see her family, though both sides miss each other dearly, because money is tight.  She said she’s not ready for a husband and kids yet, but someday, and she encouraged us in our ability to speak Swahili, which was characteristic of the generosity we experienced while in Stone Town. 

After finishing packing and checking out, we went back to a boutique Amara really liked that had well-made pieces that incorporated tasteful amounts of kanga fabric such that it wouldn’t be totally weird to wear them in the States.  She was considering buying a small bag but decided she could probably find a similar one in Mwanza and not have to pay the “American price” of $15 that the shop was charging.  The dresses were really beautiful though and I’d love to be able to add some kanga flair like that; maybe I’ll have more ideas while in Kampala.

Then we headed over to the ferry terminal on our way to grab one last cup of chai and check email at Zenji before we left Zanzibar.  The process of getting two tickets for us somehow took about 20 minutes.  The woman said she was going to get change for me and then disappeared for 15 minutes.  Amara and I talked about good books and reading, so we were happy despite our puzzlement.

Tickets finally in hand, I got my last spice tea at Zenji while Amara had a fruit and yogurt mix (thinner than a smoothie – I wasn’t the biggest fan but it’s also nice to get some form of produce in your body, and the days are hot so it was refreshing).  We stopped into Adam’s Exchange, our favorite ForEx Bureau, for the third time in as many days, so that Amara could change money and we could shamelessly grab a handful of the free candy they had on the counter. 

The ferry terminal was an interesting scene.  We were told to be there by noon for a 12:30 departure but showed up around 12:15.  For some reason, they had us fill out immigration forms even though we weren’t leaving the country, and as Amara chatted with the officer about why she was going to Mwanza (“Utafanya kazi?”  “Ndiyo, hospitalini.”), we ran into a little problem.  On her visa application forms, she clearly wrote that she was a student doing unpaid medical research and included her recommendation letter from the Cornell professor with whom she’s working, and apparently the appropriate visa is one that says, “employment prohibited,” just like my visa did.  You can see how there might be problems with saying that you’re ‘working’ if your visa doesn’t allow it.  He told her she could either pay the $600 fine for her federal offense or pay $200 to buy the appropriate visa.  She said both that she was clear about what her activity would be when she applied for the visa (true) and that she didn’t have enough money to pay (false).  He argued back a little, and she offered that since our ferry was leaving in seven minutes and she really needed to go in order not to miss it, she could do it right when she got into Dar.  Thankfully he let us go without paying anything.  He definitely underestimated how willing and able she’d be to reason with him instead of simply paying the money out of defeated confusion.  She was definitely disturbed by how he could irrationally demand $600 from her with a big smile on his face.

That was the least of our problems though.  We wondered for a while why our ferry wasn’t even at the dock despite it being past departure time, and around 13:30 the man who had left his seat next to me returned with a ticket that said 15:30, so I attempted to listen to his conversation with a few others, finally asked him, “Nini kinaendelea?” (“What’s going on?”), and he explained in English to me that the ferry had been cancelled and we needed to go exchange our tickets.  I asked if there were any earlier ferries than 13:30, but he said there weren’t. 

Amara and I then decided that I should go out alone to exchange the tickets to that the angry immigration man wouldn’t try to get her to pay again.  I went outside the terminal and looked around to see where the crowd was going in order to follow them, but there was no real direction.  After walking back and forth, confused, for a minute, I spotted some wazungu that I’d seen in the ferry terminal.  Their purposeful walk turned into a frantic but directed run, so I figured that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to jog after them. 

I found a mob of Africans pushing forward against one another and the ferry office window, trying to shove their tickets inside in hopes that once the tickets were removed from their hands, a refund would be placed in them.  I waited a bit more patiently than the two frantic German women and the Dutch woman before finally reaching the window and having $70 returned to me for tickets we purchased for 124,000 TSh ($77).  My explanation that I had paid in shillings and wanted my money back in shillings was to no avail because the tickets had “$35” written on them despite that being neither the correct amount nor form of currency of our payments.  Oh well.

Then, after fully realizing that this was not just a simple exchange of a 12:30 ticket for a 15:30 ticket, I went to a different company’s window, waited with the mob there for a while, and was rather quickly fished out by a man with broken English who wanted to help the mzungu.  They told me I needed $80, rather than the $70 I had, which was both frustrating because I didn’t want to pay more money and problematic because I only had a few $100 bills tucked into my money belt, underneath my shirt tucked into my cool African pants, and I wasn’t about to dig into that with everyone around. 

We went back and forth a few times about why I couldn’t just pay $70 because it was all I had and still so much more than the local price, but he wouldn’t budge, so I left to find somewhere to get into my money belt and was followed by the guy who fished me out.  Finally after making a complete circle around a small office building and telling him a few times, “Thanks, bye,” I lost him, and I went into a nice hotel around the corner.

After getting $100 out, I returned to the window to find that now only VIP was available since it was a full boat, and I needed to pay $90 for our two tickets.  What a joke.  I firmly told him that I would pay him $140 (the hundred, a twenty, a ten, and two fives – I had received small bills from the other company, which get a lower exchange rate) if he could give me a fifty back.  I explained that a few times before I was told that they had no fifties and I should just give him the hundred so he could go get my tickets.  Thankfully I was able to just give him our names and nationality, without needing Amara’s passport number, which was lost on the back of the ticket I returned.  I pleaded to be allowed to follow him to wherever he was going because I didn’t want the $100 bill to just leave my sight and never come back.  After my request being declined multiple times and a nicer man who spoke better English saying something about “no cheating,” I gave in and sat in the tiny chair in the tiny office and just hoped and prayed the man would come back with tickets and change.  There were a few tears shed in the overwhelming stress of the situation, and how I had to go it alone without Amara (those 45 minutes were the longest time we had been apart in 7 days), who spoke better Swahili than me.  I did laugh inside at the fact that my parents would find my “cultural experience” very interesting, though.

After successfully getting the tickets and not quite enough change, I thanked the men, returned to Amara, and read Acts for an hour until we boarded.  The VIP seating was fairly classy, but the showing of Madagascar wasn’t…  After we left (around 25 minutes late) the young man next to me noticed that the book I was reading was the Bible, and he asked me about it.  I was starting to feel sick but focused on breathing deeply as I explained a little about what it meant to me to be Christian.  He seemed to feel the need to justify himself to me, rationalizing that his belief in a god and regular attendance at church without a full commitment to Christ was the best way for him to go, especially because of the fun-sucking rules and the hypocrisy that all too often characterizes those whole claim to be born again. 

He got a phone call and I really didn’t feel great, so the conversation ended there.  I proceeded to throw up four times in the course of the following hour and a half, sat on the floor in order to lower my center of gravity, and despised the stupid company for playing Home Alone.  Seriously, a Christmas movie in June?!  It was really quite miserable, and no fun for anyone involved.  Amara was such a trouper with me for our last few hours together!  After the hellish ride, we sat for a few minutes to let my stomach calm down a little and then proceeded to take cabs to the airport (me) and hostel (her). 

My driver said that it would take at least an hour and a half to get to the airport given the traffic (about which I will write – it’s rough).  We left the ferry terminal in Dar just before six, which is when the airline told me to arrive, and managed to make it there by 7:10.  Because I had switched my flight to be a day earlier than originally planned, it took a little longer to check in, but I think my use of Swahili made them a little more patient with me.  I got through immigration and security, which is such a breeze here, in no time, and ordered tea, an omelet, and toast, using up my last ten thousand shillings and one US dollar.  It took a while to come and I was a little concerned about whether my flight was boarding, but I got to talk briefly with a businessman from Myanmar in the electricity industry.  He was in Dar for some conferences and headed to Nairobi then Kampala. 

My food finally came and tasted delicious after my stomach had been emptied on the ferry.  I wrapped up half of it as an egg sandwich and boarded the shuttle to our plane.  There, I found the frantic but purposeful German women I’d met earlier, who were much calmer now.  They’d ended up getting their ticket refunds and getting on a flight (paying $70 each rather than the $45 ferry ticket) because they were worried they’d miss all of their flights.  As it turned out, Philip, the sisters’ 21-year-old son/nephew, is volunteering just outside Kampala for a year and is about ten months in.  We shared a cab from Entebbe and talked about lots of stuff, but mainly on Kampala nightlife, philosophy, and faith. 

When I showed up at Mish Mash (backpack and all…  Classy, I know.) for Connor’s 21^st birthday celebration, I was on the phone with Titi so Philip’s attempt to give me his number failed because it didn’t save.  I still feel badly… but hanging out at Mish Mash was fun!  Several of people’s coworkers were there and it was great to be with a big group for a change.  Lots of expats.  We got home around 1:30, I think, and I was totally exhausted.  

Week Two

The trees on Mt. Meru were all really cool!

June 2nd – We got up around 7:30, feeling very well rested, and had a couple pieces of bread, one with avocado and one with peanut butter.  It was pretty delicious.  We started the really difficult incline around 8 and steadily made our way up with a few breaks in relative silence for the next three hours, stopping briefly around 11 to have a protein bar.  We were about ready to collapse before we stopped!  It took another hour and a half to complete the 2.5 miles to Saddle Hut (at 11,700 ft), but it felt like longer.  We took a break, had some peanut butter on toast, talked about all kinds of good stuff while lying down on our bunks, and then set off to the summit of Little Meru (12,500 ft) with David, the porter.  He didn’t speak much English, and we even struggled to understand his Swahili, so we didn’t chat much.  It took us about an hour and a half to get up, despite the Bradt guide telling us that it was an hour and a half round trip, but it was totally worth the beautiful view.  Since the wali and lentils had failed the previous night, we settled on more protein bars and peanut butter.  

The guide didn’t comprehend how that was our dinner and kept asking us if we were going to cook.  We went into the kitchen to boil our water (which took FOREVER), talked about Tanzanian news after looking at the paper in Swahili, and were offered lots of delicious chai.  My stomach wasn’t feeling awesome, but the chai was good.  They kept saying that warm things are good for you, and for altitude, which we thought was funny.  Apparently it’s an African thing to think that only warm food counts as real food, so they were very adamant about us eating a lot of their ugali and veggies, which also might have had some beef or goat or something in it too… there was a non-veggie piece I couldn’t chew.  Amara loved it, and I felt okay about it but also was like hey my stomach hurts, but I left to lie down and eventually Amara came with some hot water bottles that made it feel better and made my toes warm!  I was a little colder than the previous night since I didn’t have Amara’s puffy rental jacket stuffed in my sleeping bag, but we were tired so we slept well.

Headlamps are the bomb.

June 3rd – Sunrise day!  Ha, it would have been summit day except that we decided not to summit because that would’ve required a) waking up at 2 in the morning b) 5 more hours to hike up and 4 more to go down…  Instead, we hiked from 5am-6:15 to Rhino Point, hung out watching the sunrise and then started to hike back down after half an hour because it was so cold – but SO BEAUTIFUL!

We hung out at Saddle Hut for a couple hours and then began our full descent at 9:30.  It wasn’t all that strenuous, but it was really hard on our knees.  Dominic, our guide, pointed out lots of monkeys, baboons, and other cool animals.  We took a half hour break at Miriakamba Hut, called the taxi to pick us up at 2:30 (“in three hours, at 2:30.”), and set off for the final stretch.  On our way down, we got to talk about friendship, relationships, career, and future, and we saw a herd of buffalo that was in the middle of the path.  We sort of hiked through a swamp to get around them, and one of them was staring us down pretty intensely...  The babies were really cute though.  Also, warthogs are so much smaller than we expected!

We got STARED DOWN.

We got back down to Momella Gate right at 2:30 but ended up waiting around until 3:20 for the cab, whose driver proudly announced that he was ten minutes early (again with the masumbuko to communicate…).  After arriving back in downtown Arusha, we began wandering to find the alleyway to return our sweaters.  After fewer than two minutes, one of the guys who helped us before found us and was like HEY I’ll show you where you’re going!  It was actually pretty hilarious that he just happened to find us.  We successfully returned the gear and then headed to the internet café to email family and friends for fifteen minutes and drink some yummy chai masala.  We then walked back to Ujamaa and decided it was more important to eat dinner than to shower first, so we chatted with the British med school students and SAB, showered, and repacked a bit.  Then we went to meet Kevin, a friend of mine from Swahili class, who is an African Studies grad student and spent a month studying voluntourism by volunteering in Arusha.  I discovered the deliciousness that is Redd’s, which tastes exactly like ginger ale, and it was awesome to catch up with Kevin.  Amara, SAB, and I had several cups of chai when we got back to Ujamaa, laughed a lot, and hit the hay.

David (the porter), me, Amara, and Dominic (the park ranger/guide)

June 4th – Breakfast was quality: fried eggs (I still don’t get why the yolks are white-ish…), toast with honey, and chai (obvs).  Amara, SAB, and I played the South Africa version of Monopoly as we waited to go to the airport.  Devon was joining us because he’s a helicopter pilot and was meeting up with someone there in regards to the possibility of a job.  We had some more communication struggles, a kind of weird goodbye, and plenty of time at the airport to read before we boarded our plane.  We both enjoyed our Precision Air Tanzanian cashews and the orange-apple-pear juice and found a cab driver in Zanzibar who drove us to the general region of the hostel where we wanted to stay and even walked us through the confusing streets to get us there.  Formerly called Bottoms Up, Zanzibar Dorm Lodge was only $15 per person per night for a double, and our room was pretty and had a gorgeous fourth-floor view.  Even though we were one of only a couple pairs staying at the hostel, we were put up there because of the view, for which we were thankful, but our sore legs were not very happy with us for the first two days in Zanzibar. 

We locked our stuff in our room and set off to explore Stone Town on foot, wandering for a few lovely hours, seeing the beautiful ocean, streets, and people, waving to children who enthusiastically cried, ‘Muzungu!  Muzungu!” and responding to many calls of “Mambo!” (short for ‘Mambo vitu?’ – ‘How are things?’) and “Jambo!” (the root of the standard Swahili greeting – literally, ‘Is there anything wrong with you?’).  People in Tanzania were SO FRIENDLY.  Tons of people said hi to us and told us that we were very welcome in Tanzana (“Karibuni sana!”).  Amara and I talked about how different it was from the States; there, it’s not really an okay thing to yell out “Foreigner!” or normal to say “Welcome!” to people because they have differently colored skin.  We’re also totally used to people being able to speak our language, so there’s no recognition of how cool it is that someone has taken steps to learn how to communicate in our mother tongue.  People got a real kick out of the fact that Amara and I knew Swahili and were very shocked that colleges in the United States would teach the language.  They figured that we must have been in East Africa for a while or at least studied there to be able to have such a command (Amara) and comprehension (me) of the language.  It was very fun for me in our time in Tanzania to be able to hear and practice Swahili so much—I wish that Swahili were spoken in Uganda!  (NB: There are many people who grew up in Kenya or Tanzania that now live in Kampala, so there’s some opportunity to speak Swahili, but English and Luganda are the national languages, and it’s primarily the military class that knows and uses Swahili.  They’re both Bantu languages though, so there’s a small amount of overlap in vocabulary.)

The Indian Ocean, just a few minutes from our hostel 

Zanzibar has a lot of pretty woodwork.  Traditional doors in particular are well-known.

There's a reason traffic is a nightmare in East Africa...

The football game looked like so much fun!  People were drumming and just hanging out.

After wandering for a few hours, and noting that the sun would set in a little over an hour, we started to try to make our way back to Stone Town, asking directions from a couple different parties, all of which essentially told us to keep going the way that we were going and eventually we’d get there.  Ha, false.  As we didn’t see anything familiar and it started to get a bit darker, we jumped at the opportunity to go into a gas station and ask for either directions or a private hire (what we’d call a taxi, but ‘taxis’ are 12-seater ‘dala dalas’ in Tanzania or ‘matatus’ in Uganda).  The people didn’t really seem to know where to point us, but thankfully a private hire vehicle pulled up about a minute after we stopped there, and he took us back the same route we’d walked for an hour.  All we could do was laugh at the people’s knowledgeable helpfulness and our lack of direction.  We really enjoyed our walk, and my general feeling about this summer is that it’s an adventure, so I’m totally down for fun (though safe) mishaps like that was. 

We were taken back to the general area of our hostel and went looking for a good Indian restaurant (we both love Indian).  To cut the not-so-fun details of essentially walking back and forth along the same few streets for 30-45 minutes as we were getting increasingly tired, hungry, grumpy, indecisive, and annoyed with the people wanting to ‘guide’ us around the town, we finally ended up at the Silk Route, which had been mentioned in Lonely Planet.  We were so relieved to have found something we trusted, and then we looked up to find that we’d be expected to climb two full flights of stairs up to the restaurant.  We burst out laughing—so much groaning, pain, and laughter.  We decided we’d have to get old together to that we could find amusement in our bodies’ inability to function.  


The food was really good, though expensive for Tanzania (about $13 each), but for the convenience, taste, and comfort of having a really lovely time just sitting and talking together, it was definitely worth it.  It was only other white people there, of course, and we thought we were probably having the most fun of anyone there.  We also ended our meal with chai masala—what a surprise.  What actually was a surprise is the success with which we found our way back to hostel afterward, though.  We talked some more, laughed at our soreness, stretched, read, and went to bed.

June 5th – Such a hilarious day.  We headed out around eight to find a spice tour operator, signed up for one that left at 9:15, and sat down at Zenji Boutique/Café/Hotel (don’t worry about it…).  We got two spice teas with milk, at which the staff was very confused, as if we were ruining the tea or something, checked our email and talked for a bit, then headed back over to the tour operator’s office.  We met the trilingual French Canadian siblings (Julian, 23, was celebrating his graduation from med school with his sisters, Natalie, 21, and Yvonne, 18.) and Will and Joe, two geeky but sweet American guys who had probably just graduated from college and had spent the past four months volunteering in Gulu.  Will wore a large v-neck, basketball shorts, and flip-flops, and Joe was rockin’ the safari shirt and Tevas look, also with basketball shorts.  I could only think of my mother and how much social commentary would be happening if she were on the spice tour with us.  Other than the French Canadians and the volunteer boys, there was Katherine, the tan white girl with a very messy braid streaked with pretty severe highlights.  She was wearing a racerback tank top with a bright yellow bra and medium length jean shorts.  Zanzibar is largely Muslim and fairly conservative, notwithstanding the tourists.  There was also an Asian boy, about 20, with Beats by Dr. Dre headphones, an iPhone, and other picture phone.  The only time we heard his voice on the 6-hour tour was when he passionately explained how touch-me-nots work...

The crew eating oranges, silently — I really thought everything was SO funny.

I know it doesn't look particularly tasty, but it was!  I just wish they'd told us what spices were in it. 

We left the office around 9:30, walked to the van for ten minutes, and got out to the demo spice farms around 10:15.  We toured for an hour and a half, looking at and smelling lots of different spices.  Michael, one of the guys working there, who couldn’t have been more than 18, loved that Amara and I spoke Swahili, so we were the first ones to receive each of the many different pieces of jewelry he made for all the girls out of banana leaves.  



After we were awkwardly pressured to buy little bags of spices (only one was purchased), we then got served a DELICIOUS lunch before going to a beautiful private beach for about an hour and a half.  The girls laid on the beach in their bikinis, the boys swam, the Asian kid listened to his headphones, the guides talked, and Amara and I stood in the waves and chatted about life.  Unclear why a beach trip was part of the spice tour, but it was really pretty, so I’m not complaining.

We returned to Zenji for another spice tea and email, and then met up with the Canadian kids to look for a place that Katherine had recommended.  She had finished culinary school a few months ago and was travelling the world to collect recipes from many different countries, so we trusted her advice.  After failing to find it for a little while, we settled on Lukmaan, a different cheap Zanzibari place, where the food was pretty good and cost just over ten bucks for all five of us.  We compared the education systems in Canada and the US, into which Amara could speak a little more because she did her freshman year at UBC, and I learned a fair amount.  The elder sister seemed really intelligent, and it was fun talking to all of them. 

After walking them home and hanging out in our room for a little bit, Amara and I ventured out for “Zanzibar pizza” at Forodhani Gardens, which was really close to the hostel.  Zanzibar pizza is kind of like an egg on a thin pancake with other things in it – we got one with veggies and cheese and one with nutella, plantain, and coconut, but I don’t think the latter had any egg.  We also kind of casually got proposed to while we were waiting for our food to be prepared.  It’s a very common thing for people to ask if you’re married and is apparently socially acceptable to tell white girls about how much you’d love to marry a foreigner, or even ask if that’s something they’d be into...  I was glad I had my ixthus ring, which I’m calling a wedding band for the summer.  (I told the safari people in Arusha that my husband’s name was Aaron – my brother was the first thing to come to mind.)   Oh, they also totally ask about whether you have children.  I’m like, uh, no, not yet…

From the rooftop, we could see the skyline in every direction, which was awesome.

Yeah, scarring is the only way to describe it...

June 6th – We got up around 7:30 (I wish it weren’t so natural for me to wake up that early!) and I got pretty hungry before breakfast was served at the hostel at 8:30, but it was good when it was ready.  We read for a while on the roof, explored aka wandered with varying success at finding the things we were looking for,  and eventually found the lunch place where we wanted to eat.  It was a restaurant called Mama Mdogo, or Palm tree Café, because it has a Zanzibari and an American menu.  It was good and cheap, and we got a kick out of the mix of Pepsi and Coca Cola tables and chairs.

For dinner, we went to Passing Show, a Zanzibari restaurant that was cheap and mediocre, went to what we thought was going to be a cool local drumming / cultural show at the Old Fort which ended up being sort of scarring (no further detail required - just check out the photo), checked out another Taraab music concert that wasn't really happening slash worth the money, went home, read, and slept.