My New Home in Rubya

And the adventure continues. I arrived in Rubya on Tuesday of this week. It’s a very small town/village. Before I came here I tried to Google Rubya several times with no success, all I found was information on Bukoba which is the closest real town and is about 70km away. Well, just before I left Dar es Salaam to come here I gave it one final Google and guess what? I got a hit! I have a feeling that someone at Google noticed that they were getting a higher than average number of inquiries (all from me) about this place so they decided to have someone look into it. The description that I found was accurate – it is truly beautiful here. It is green and mountainous and at night the stars are just gorgeous (you can see the Milky Way, it’s awesome). Also, I do not think that the aliens know about this place yet cause I have yet to feel any sort of presence from them (for those of you who don’t understand what I mean in saying this, please disregard and continue to be of the impression that I am NOT crazy).

It’s a new local and there is also new animal life that I have to get used to. I was washing my hands in the bathroom the other day and I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. It was a lizard. Now normally I really like lizards, but the thing is, normally, they are not in my bathroom. I was not really sure what to do so I just looked at him and he looked at me. I thought about trying to catch him, but lizards are really quick so I didn’t expect to have a lot of success with that. I then thought, maybe shoo him with a broom? But the problem with that is I would have no idea which direction he would run to. Although a lizard in the bathroom is not the best scenario ever, a lizard in my bed or in my shoe is a far worse scenario. After staring at each other for about 2 minutes I decided to take action (while the lizard did nothing). I called home. My brother answered and to my surprise he was less than helpful. He generally knows stuff about just about everything, but he does not know anything at all about lizards in the bathroom. After hanging up a quick check confirmed that the lizard was still there. Still watching me. I decided to call my neighbour who is also a VSO volunteer and has been here for a few months. She was more familiar with my situation than my brother but she was about equally as helpful as him. She laughed at me. So it seems that this is the sort of thing that I will have to get used to. As an optimist I guess I have to look on the bright side.... lizards do eat other pests. 

I’m sure I will speak more about the actual work I am doing in a future post when I am more settled in my job. One thing that did make an impression on me on my first day of work was something the hospital administrator said to me. He told me that although the government would like employees to work 8 and a half or 9 hour work days, the hospital has opted for a 7 and a half hour work day. He explained that if he had people work anymore than that then they would just be tired and unhappy. It took quite a bit of effort to keep from cracking a smile. REALLY????

Well just a couple of days later and I see that he just might be right. At home when I get home from work I might make a quick dinner, or maybe watch some TV, perhaps have a drink. Not here. After work here I have to start boiling water. Once I boil the water I have to wait for it to cool before running it through my water filter and then boiling some more water. Also, I do not have a washing machine. So if I want to wash my clothes I must do it by hand and if I want to wash them in warm water then I have to boil even more water. Oh yeah, did I mention? I do not have hot water. So in addition to all of that water that I just boiled, if I want to bathe in warm water then I have to boil even more water. It’s a good thing that they do not sell wine in the village because I do not think that I would have any time at all to drink it (this is again the optimist in me..... in reality I REALLY want a nice glass of wine, or maybe even the whole bottle). 

I’ve included a couple of photos for all of you who are curious as to what my house looks like. I’m sure I’ll post a few more at a later date.

Miss you all.

V

Safari in Mikumi!

My training is all complete and I have arrived at my placement safe and sound. I think I still need a bit of time to digest my new surroundings before telling you all about them so I will tell you a bit about last week for now and will fill you all in on my new home, job, etc. in a later blog post. For now though, I will say that Rubya is located in a beautiful region of Tanzania and the people here have been very welcoming.

Last week I was in Morogoro for language training. I am still not anywhere close to fluent in Swahili and I really think I would have benefited from a remedial class of sorts. On a much more exciting note, I went on a Safari in Mikumi national park on Friday! It was really great and I’m very happy to report this, because it was not without effort! Margaret (my roommate) and I were appointed head of the entertainment committee for the week and as such, it was up to us to arrange the safari. Previous groups of VSO volunteers who were in Morogoro for language training chose the more economical safari option which was to travel by daladala. Even though the daladala would have been a private one for the group we really were not happy with this option for 2 reasons. Firstly, this is the beginning of the short rainy season and if it happens to rain then only cars with 4 wheel drive are allowed into the park. Secondly.... well.... it’s a daladala. Who wants to go on safari in a daladala? If you would like to know more about what the daladala experience is like, please check out Peter and Debra’s blog at http://debra-peter-martyn.blogspot.com/2011/10/theres-no-dilly-dally-when-you-ride.html .

One of our Safari cars

So, Tanzanians and Canadians do business very differently and we learned this very quickly. I’m sure many of you will end up hearing the long version to this story, but in effort to keep this blog post a bit shorter I will just say that it seems like the common business strategy here is to confuse people until they are so frustrated that they just agree. Luckily we were on the ball with our negotiation and we ended up with a great set of guides at a reasonable price and ended up having an excellent time overall.

Now onto the safari.... it was awesome! Before we entered the park I spotted a life sized giraffe statue on the side of the road just ahead and I thought ‘how nice, we must be getting close’..... and then as we got closer to the statue I realized that ‘holy shit – that’s an actual giraffe!’. He was just right on the side of the road munching on leaves! Before entering we also spotted several impalas and a baboon. Once we actually got into the park animals were plentiful. There were loads of impalas and water buffalo, lots of birds, including vultures, zebras, monkeys, more baboons, giraffe, elephants (more on that later), a few warthogs (look just like the guy from the Lion King), some antelope and.... HIPPOS :)

Water Buffalo

Giraffes

Warthog

Let me tell you a bit about the hippos since you all know I was really excited for them. Several of you warned me not to get out of the car when I saw one. This was a good advice as, for those of you who are not aware, hippos kill more people annually than any other animal in Tanzania except for mosquitoes. Seriously. Hippos are tough. Nobody messes with the hippos. So here is what happened as we pulled up to the hippo pool: the driver stopped the car, hopped out and invited us to do the same! I of course was quite eager to follow his instruction to do so as I wanted to get close to my hippo friends.... and if he was doing it then it MUST be safe. Right? It was tremendous; there were about 20 hippos in the pool and at least one crocodile. One of the hippos even had 2 babies! For the most part they were all submerged in the water so you could only see them (and hear them) when they popped up for air. Same with the croc.... and it was a bit unnerving that each time he resurfaced he seemed to be slightly closer to the shore where we were all standing.

From the hippo pool we moved on and spotted more giraffes and several elephants. I’ve got a pretty cool elephant story. There was a group of about 6 of them who had just crossed the road and there was one large male that was lagging behind. Our driver stopped so we could get some photos and we watched him cross the road right behind our car. Once he had crossed he turned and looked at all of us and flapped his ears. I thought ‘oh, how nice! He’s posing for a photo’. Those of you who know more about elephants than I do would know that flapping their ears is a serious sign of aggression and he quickly started to charge the car (picture at right). I was absolutely speechless and images of him flipping our car over and me tumbling out before the elephant stomped on me were flashing through my mind. Luckily our guide was not caught speechless and he shouted for the driver to GO! One of the girls got a great video of all this and I will post the link to youtube once she posts it. It was super cool.

We moved onto lunch afterwards. There is a great restaurant right at the entrance of the park that is situated right next to a watering hole. While we had our lunch we watched about 20 elephants come to have a drink and a splash in the water. There were even a few baby ones. A miniaturized elephant would make a great pet. Once the elephants left a few Zebras popped by for a drink as well. If you’re even in Mikumi then you should have a meal at this restaurant, it was a fabulous experience and the food was decent.

Our afternoon was not quite as eventful, but there was one more highlight that I would like to share with all of you. We made a stop at a huge tree and were invited to get out of the car and climb it. Against my better judgement I climbed up the tree with a few others. I knew I’d get up with little problem, but was nervous about the getting down. As I slowly made my way down someone pointed up... there was a monkey on the tree with us! He was quite high up, but still, he was on the same tree as a monkey? I have. That’s not the whole story though. As I was climbing down the tree I heard a chorus of ‘ewwwwwwww’..... yup..... the monkey pooped. It mostly got on the guide, but if you look closely at the below photo you will see that the monkey also pooped on me a tiny bit. I guess it’s not nice to get pooped on, but still, it’s a story I guess. 

That’s all for now. Miss you all.

V

Learning Swahili in Morogoro

The view from my room at the convent in Morogoro

It is week two in Tanzania and things are going well. I am in Morogoro with the same group that I was with for my first week of training (for the most part, a few of the volunteers went directly to their placements). We are staying at a convent and attending language training classes daily. You will all be happy to know that I did not spontaneously catch on fire upon entering the convent.

Morogoro is a beautiful place and the convent is a huge improvement over the Econolodge. Apart from the lively market, Morogoro is very green and we have a great view of the mountains form our room. It is much more laid back and peaceful here – I would have thought that these would be ideal conditions for learning, but I’m afraid I’m struggling quite a bit. Kiswahili is not easy to learn, for me anyway. 

The market in Morogoro

One of the challenges that I’ve encountered is that there are a lot of words that sound almost exactly like other words. As it turns out, many of my mispronunciations seem to mean things that I would most likely not want to say on a trip to, for example, the market. Allow me to illustrate this with a couple of examples:

• If I were to say “Ninataka toka” it would translate to “I want to go”. If I were to just mix up a couple of letters though and happened to say “Ninataka tako” it would now translate to “I want bum”.
• You all know that I enjoy a drink now and again. So it might be common for me to say something like “Nilikunuwa” or “I had a drink”. Once again, a slight mispronunciation can make a big difference. If I instead said “Nilikunya” it would roughly translate to “I had a poop”.

It seems odd, but when other people in my class mispronounce things, they just end up saying nothing. But when I mispronounce things..... Well you’ve heard how that turns out. Through my struggles I have also managed to come upon words for both male and female body parts. I’ll remind you all that I am only at day 3 of my language training....

Although I have continued to spot African wildlife (see photos), I am happy to report that I will be going on my first safari (or game drive) on Friday. We will be taking a car and heading to Mikumi for the morning/day. Especially exciting to me is the fact that the star of the show in Mikumis is.......... wait for it....... the HIPPO! It’s gonna be great! We should also see some elephants, giraffes and zebras among other animals. I will be sure to let you know how it goes and also post some photos!

This is roughly $100 Canadian dollars

And speaking of safaris – do you want to know who seems to be on permanent safari in this country? Mr. Credit. “Mr. Credit is on safari” is a common phrase to be seen on signs in hotels and shops, followed by “Mr. Cash is King”. You know how VISA is everywhere you want to be? Well apparently VISA does not think that you would want to be in Tanzania so you better bring some cash if you want to come here. And it better be a big wad of cash (please see photo inset). 

I hope you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving! 

V