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.