“Once there was a way to get back homeward…”

This will be my last post for probably about 2 weeks.  Ya know all that stuff that we were talking about with all the dung huts and the living with virtually nothing, and drinking cow blood all the time? Yeah.  That starts this week.  I’m in Moshi till Monday and then we move in to Maasai land.  I’m so excited but supposedly its going to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done…its a little trippy to be told that ahead of time.  This last week in Moshi has been good fun.  My professors are absolutely wonderful.  Smitu, my Comparative Social Movements teacher rocks my world.  He passed back some papers that we wrote yesterday but apologized if they smelled like whisky.  We got them back and the ink had completely run off of all the pages and the corners were soaked.  Aside from liking the whisky, he is brilliant and has a giant beard. 

Today we learned about the Tanzanian coffee economy and toured a curing plant and a coffee farm.  This was nice until we got into this giant wherehouse full of women sitting on the floor on sisal sacks with mounds of raw coffee beans all around them.  They were paid $1.50 per 60 kilo bag to go through one by one and pick out which coffee beans were slightly greener than the others, i.e. which of the pile was higher grade.  They can pick through a maximum of two bags a day but usually it takes two days to do one bag.  The wherehouse was hot and dark and they stared at us like aliens when we walked in.  I felt so uncomfortable just standing there watching them.  I’ve noticed since being here that it doesn’t seem like a lot of the men are ever really doing any work.  The women are really driving this economy.  All you see on the streets are women with huge loads on their heads, or women cleaning and cooking, but the men stand around on the streets talking or spacing out, and occasionally they try  to sell some cheap trinkets to non-locals.  You become a lot more aware of your gender here.  We are not allowed to show our legs or our shoulders in public despite the scalding heat, although I was playing some soccer on the street with these kids that live near our college and my kanga (flowery skirt thing) flew off!  I was wearing normal shorts underneath but the kids laughed hysterically.  I scandalized all of Tanzania.

I have so many stories to tell about all the people I have met and things I’ve done but I just can’t tell them all.  African children are so freakin cute.  Meeting kids here has been the best part of my experience.  I went to this Catholic school the other day and met about 400 of the sweetest brightest girls ever.  Mom don’t be surprised if you start getting lots of letters from little african kids. =)  I’ll be getting any mail sent to Tanzania when we leave the Serengheti for the coast so send your letters now!  I will really need them when I get back! 

-NB

I’m in Moshi,Tanzania! It is a small town at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro.   It’s hot as hell but there aren’t too many mosquitos.  We are living in a dormitory which is actually pretty nice, but power outages are pretty common.  The power went out in the internet cafe I’m in just a minutes ago. There is no hot water in our bathroom so I just bend my head into the stream.  My roommate Elizabeth and I find that singing in extremely high octaves is a good way to get through the pain.

Getting to Moshi was a nightmare but also one of the coolest things that could have happened to me.  We had a short layover in Nairobi, Kenya but when we got there we found out of flight was cancelled so we went to go get Kenyan visas to go into town and hang out until we got another flight, but after 6 people had gotten their visas, they said the flight was on again.  I was one of the 6 people.  So we had to wait for the airline to pay for the  visas while the rest of the group got on the flight.  When we got there the plane had left without us, even though we were checked in for the flight.  THe gate agents seemed unnaffected.  We said, oh well, free day in Nairobi, and went to this hotel, got free lunch from the Airlines, which was good (although i think mine had a piece of glass in it).  We spent the rest of the time walking around the Nairobi city market.  I have never been so overwhelmed.  I was being pulled left and right. “come  look at my stuff..no buy..no buy..just look!”  i actually got to talking to a lot of people there.  you just have to keep cool and stay  confident.  i learned the key swahili phrases and have been doing pretty well.  I got in to moshi late on saturday and then we have been spending our free time before classes tommorrow hanging around town and meeting people.  everyone here is very friendly and helpful.  im seeing and feeling so much but i’m not quite sure what to do with it all.  There are tarantulas in my room the size of freakin dinner plates.  And some of the kids on the group went to the woods and saw monkeys!!! (Mon, make sure to tell James that I’m on gaurd.  I don’t think these monkeys bite!)   Everything is going well and I am actually pretty comfortable here.  we are in moshi for a week and then we head to arusha and then we stay with the Masaai i think.  Who knows…nothing in Africa happens when you think it will.  Excellent lesson in patience.   =)  Love you all!

Hakuna shita!
Andie

Tonight is my last night in Withiel. The bus leaves for Heathrow at 8am tomorrow and we get in to Kilimanjaro sometime Saturday morning! Tonight Daphne, (my housemate) and I are gonna drink a bottle of wine and bake cookies to celebrate our host parents being out of the house. Last night was the IHP End of England bash. We had an Eastern European folk band come in and we all danced the night away. It was like the event of the century in Withiel. A lot of the community came. We had 70 year old farmers on the dance floor tearing it up. It was amazing. The Village Hall probably hasn’t seen that much action since the 20’s. Earlier in the day we went to the Eden Project which is like the Biosphere only with lots of cheap and taudry cafes and giftshops. The tropical rainforest biome was pretty sweet though. They are in these huge pods like the catapillar community on I-35 only a LOT bigger and made up of hexangonal solar panels. We also had a local woodsman take us out in to the woodland where we had to lay down on the forest floor (while it was raining pretty hard) and use all of our senses to experience everything that was happening in the forest. I couldn’t stop giggling for some reason. I think I ruined the experience for everybody. The last few days here have been a lot of fun. I’ve really loved having Daphne as a barn mate. We have such a good time together and we can speak in Spanish when we don’t want our host mom to know what we’re talking about. I start my $600 malaria medication today! I’ll probably get malaria anyway. Our ecology professor officially left the program today because she has a bacterial kidney infection that could possibly kill her. I am really upset about this. I liked her so much. She lives on an abondoned farm in the Hudson Valley and she composts her own poo. Not to mention she is an excellent teacher. A week from now I’ll be living with the Masaai. I don’t think I know what I am getting myself in to. This could be my last post for a while. Everything is going to get a lot less predictable from here on out. I think about home a good deal. The barn is really cold at night so more than anything I miss my BU sweathshirt and flannel pj pants..oh and those super hot lacy long underwear that I lost. I’m ready to leave England though. Its too freakin expensive here. I sure do like this little farm though. Time to go pack! I think I’m gonna try to learn some Swahili on the plane. Wish me luck out there! It’s gonna be wild. Sub-Saharan Africa in T-26 hours! Andie