Hi
again!
I
am working to finish off all of these blogs before returning back home to the
US, so I am sorry that this one is so long!!!
So after working and working and working on our DR research collections,
we had another day off that I was so excited for! Our first stop was this farm/lodge that is
completely self-sustaining!!! They have
a huge farm that grows vegetables, fruits, coffee beans, wood for energy, and
they have their own barn that they raise a lot of different kinds of
animals! Everything they grow and raise
there is to feed the guests that come and visit the lodge and they do not rely
on any other resources from the towns nearby!!! They are seriously an
inspiration compared to the other lodges that seem to ruin the environments
around them. When we arrived at the
lodge, we were greeted by our tour guide for the day, who immediately started
us on our tour around the grounds.
Our
first stop was an overlook where you could see all of the coffee plants that
spanned far into the distance!
Literally, their farm lands were so huge and kept going and going that
it seemed like they would never stop.
They went over rolling hills and almost all the way back into town! It was so gorgeous and green and healthy and
it made me so happy that they were making the efforts to conserve the
area! The next place we were headed was
the barns where they had tons of huge pigs.
One of the pigs was by far the largest pig I have ever seen in my
life! The cages came up to my shoulders,
and this pig was looking over the top of it while still standing on all four legs!!!
It was literally comparable to the size of a donkey, accept with a lot more
meat on its bones! All of the pigs were
so friendly though and seemed like they were posing for our pictures. The smell was terrible, but it was excusable
because they use all of the manure to do the same sustainable natural gas
collection from the manure fermenting that we had seen on our field lecture a
few weeks before!
Next
we wandered through their fruit and vegetable garden! They were growing everything from mangoes and
papayas to huge peppers, beans, onions, and tomatoes. And on top of all of the healthy veggies,
they had huge flower plants growing everywhere in between. They were every color from red and purple to
blue and orange and yellow and every combination in between. It literally felt like I was in the secret
garden and I would have loved to get lost walking around through all the rows
of plants. Finally we came to this big
concrete bench area, and when I looked up to one of the large trees nearby, it
had a really cool tree house in it! Of
course, I ran up to the top and overlooked the entire farm and all of my
friends down below! It was so pretty up
there and I am a huge fan of tree houses, so I couldn’t have been happier.
We
had to keep walking, but I was excited to what awaited us at the end of the
tour. They had fresh roasted cups of
coffee for us and coffee beans that we could buy that were roasted that
day! We got to see the entire process of
how they were peeled and processed and roasted to become the coffee that we
were being served. We all sat down on a
huge couch and enjoyed the first good cup of coffee that we have had in Africa
since we arrived. The smell alone was
amazing and I was happy to get a bag to bring home with me! I enjoyed just sitting with everyone and our
coffee and didn’t want to leave.
When
it was finally time to get out of the way of the lodge staff and coffee makers,
we headed into Karatu town again to walk around, explore places we hadn’t been
before, and get snacks and other things we could find! I decided to stick with Patrick the whole
day, and our main mission was to find some really cool hand woven baskets made
out of the palms here. We walked through
the fruit and veggie market in Karatu that I had no idea existed! It is enclosed from the outside by walls and
is slightly lower in the ground than the rest of the town. Its like a little secret market, but as soon
as you find the entrance, it seems bigger than you could have imagined. It opens up into 10 rows across and 10 rows
wide lined with vegetables, beans, herbs and spices, fruits, and other random
food items. They had tons of baskets
too, but the problem was that I could have fit inside of them, and that was not
quite what Patrick was looking for to take home on the plane. On top of all of the colorful items in the
market, everyone in there was so happy to see us and say hello and ask how our
day was. I swear that 95% of the people
we walked by said hello, which is not very common in this area, and I was
loving wandering down every row and meeting all of the shop owners.
When
we finally had wandered down every possible row in the market, we ventured back
into the sunlight and decided to head to this café called Bumpz that our SAM
had told us about when we arrived in Tanzania.
It was about a 25 minute walk to the other end of town, but it was
absolutely worth the effort in the hot sun.
They had the most amazing chocolate chip ice cream that I have ever had,
and Patrick had some amazing chocolate cake.
We were both sitting back, happy with our purchases and enjoying the
nice, cool, and very modern décor of Bumpz.
The owner was even from Colorado and came to Tanzania after marrying a
Maasai man! She had quite a story of all
the places she has lived, but she was very busy and we didn’t want to keep her
too long. We paid and walked back to
where the car was.
We
decided to take a different way though, and see what other stores we could find
off the beaten path. Suddenly, Patrick
ran into a Maasai Mama that he knew from Rhotia and wanted to find our other
friend Becca and introduce them. I was
suddenly on my own in the middle of the main market. At first, I was scared to be completely
alone, but after the initial shock of not having a buddy, I was so excited. In this program, we don’t really get a lot of
alone time. We all eat together, live
together, have class together, and enjoy our days off together. Don’t get me wrong, I love these 25 other
people more than anything, but it was kind of exciting to be by myself in the
middle of town! I went into a few stores
and was greeted kindly by all of the owners.
Before I knew it, it was time to leave and I walked back to the cars at
Paradise Café and loaded up.
I
decided to join the group that was going to Happy Days for a little bit. When we got there, one of the big soccer
games was on TV near the bar, so I sat with my friend Karen, ordered a Tusker,
and we decided to split some Macaroni and Cheese! I didn’t even pack a lunch that day in
anticipation of getting food at Happy Days, so I was happy to find someone to
split it with! I loved sitting with
Karen and just watching the game and talking about what it was going to be like
going home and what we both would be doing in our awesome internships this
summer. Karen has this awesome research
position in New York City and I cannot wait to hear about everything she will
do this summer. We even met some
Americans that had come to this area to start a lot of primary and secondary
schools. It was so funny to hear people
speak English with no accent whatsoever.
It was such a relaxing day after the hectic Karatu town and I enjoyed
the one on one time I had with Karen!
After getting back to camp, I worked on our data a little bit, and then
finished watching the Bourne series with Chelsea before heading to sleep!
The
next six days in a row were dedicated completely to working on Data Analysis
for DR and writing the draft for our huge DR paper that makes up a huge
majority of our grade! We all worked on
the raw together to make sure it was clean and nothing important was
missing. After that, we were on our
own. My partner, Jen, and I got the data
and deleted everything that we didn’t need for our study. We worked with Christian a lot because our
paper will be published and we wanted to make sure we were doing everything
right! Its so great having a professor
here that understands Excel and SPSS and knows exactly what he is looking for
in our research. I became more and more
thankful for this as time went on and I heard about all of the issues others were
having in the other two DR groups.
These
six days were literally filled with a combination of working on data, writing
the paper, and doing anything else that would give us a mental break in
between. The rainy weather didn’t really
help either. Every morning we woke up,
it was cloudy and rainy and it made me never want to get out of bed. I think I watched more movies in these six
days than I had the entire trip. I tried
to find any excuse to get out of camp, and would join anyone that was leaving. I had to force my rain boots over my swollen
feet to walk anywhere though because the mud was so intense everywhere we
went! I went to the girl tailor for the
final time to get another pair of pants made and a beach tote for this summer. I almost fell five different times in the
nasty mud at the bottom of the hill, but it was worth it for the things I got
back! The best part about the pants I
had made was that a week before, I had a hoodie made out of the same
material. AKA I now have a FULL Shuka
outfit. I was so excited to wear it to
dinner that night and it was quite the hit as soon as I walked in the room
hahaha.
These
six days really started to get me in a slump.
I was so sad that we weren’t out exploring Tanzania in the little time
that we had left here, and my days revolved around lots of work, working out,
and watching movies. It got so
repetitive and at one point, I thought I was going to go crazy if I walked out
of my door once more and it was raining.
Luckily we had a few things in between to keep that from happening, like
Chelsea’s birthday and skyping my lovely parents! At the end of the six days, I had worked so
hard and finally turned in my 17 pages draft.
It was such a relief and I was counting down for our day off the next
day!
I couldn’t believe what a difference being on a bike
made in the way I was seeing things. I
no longer took advantage of all of the really cool plants and trees and all of
the shoats and dogs resting along the side of the road. The kids would run out of everywhere like the
munchkins in the Wizard of Oz and it was almost like an obstacle course to
avoid them and all of the chickens crossing the road hahaha. We had to be careful to avoid the grass
because of the huge acacia thorns that would be sure to flatten our tires.
After making it out of the thick woodland with lots of mud, we flew out into
the clearing of the huge open grassland.
We quickly turned off of the main road and headed straight toward the
hippo pool. On our way there, we got
amazingly close to zebras and wildebeest, and it was crazy to think that there
was no car in between us and them!
We stopped for a minute while they gave a short
lesson about the hippos and the area we were in, and then we continued to the
edge of Lake Manyara! There were a ton
of bikes lined up from all the fisherman that were out on the lake, but no one
to be found. The best part of stopping
right by the lake was all of the flamingoes!!! When we had stopped there two
weeks before, the Flamingoes were too far away from the shore for us to really
see, but this time, they were within 30 meters of where we were standing. It was so funny to watch them walk through
the water and catch fish. Their body
proportions still amaze me and I have no idea how those tiny little legs hold
up their awkward bodies and necks. We
took tons of pictures of course and then hopped back on the bikes to the next
place. It was at this point that I
realized how badly the bikes hurt and I was dreading all the bumps that I knew
were to come on the bumpy road back.
We took the same main road back through the woodland
and the bananas and town and turned out on the paved road toward the escarpment
of the rift valley. We kept going along
the road, and then turned near a curio shop to see one of the local spots that
all of the wood carvings are made. As we
got off of our bikes and walked into the little shop they had set up, we saw at
least a dozen guys sitting on the ground with all these carving tools. They were making some of the coolest carvings
I have ever seen and I wished that I had more money at that point to buy some
of the things they were carving at that point.
It was really neat to learn about all of the woods they use for the
carvings and the process they use to get to the final product. They even had a
really cool little shop with all of the best carvings that were some of the
shiniest things I had seen. They
literally reflected the lights back at you!
It was fun to look around, but no one really had the money at this point
to buy anything because we didn’t know we were going there.
We loaded the bikes back up and took off back into
town to another stop in the tour. This
time was to a local families house that brews their own banana beer! They use this huge process that goes through
a lot of similar steps as regular beer does, but the beer looks completely
different. It has all of these pieces
that lay on the surface of the cup that when drinking it, you have to blow them
out of the way. These pieces are
important for the beer to have its flavor, but it looked so weird. We all tried a tiny sip, but I was not a big
fan. It was super bitter and I got a lot
of those little pieces in my mouth. You
could definitely taste the banana in it though and I was glad I gave it chance!
Our final stop was a local factory that they make a
lot of the paintings in the marketplace at.
It’s sort of hidden behind the main road, completely surrounded by a
thick fence. There were two people in
the middle of paintings when we arrived and I was amazed at their use of oil
paints and how they looked when they hit the canvas. Some of the pictures were so vibrant in this
place, and I completely fell in love with one that had a gorgeous blue sky, the
Maasai, and Kilimanjaro in it. I should
have just bought it right there because for the rest of the day, it was all I
could think about! We got a quick lesson
about the types of paintings, and after looking around for a bit longer, it was
time for us to take the bikes back to the shop and meet up with the rest of the
group!
When we arrived back, we found one of the cars that
had brought the other students and we asked them to take us to the pizza shop
one last time! No one else wanted
anything but a soda after the long bike ride, but I loved the pizza so much and
hated packed lunches enough that I was all for getting the last pizza
here! When we all finished up, we took
our picture with the owner of the pizza point that was so welcoming to us
throughout all of DR. I hate saying
goodbye to everyone here, but I am so happy to have had the chance to meet so
many people in so many different areas.
We somehow managed to get a ride back into the main part of town and
went back into the market to look for any last minute things that we wanted to
take home with us. After learning about
all of the different kinds of wood they use in the wood carvings, I was on a
hunt for a small wood carving of an elephant made of rosewood because I love
the color of it. I finally found one I
liked and managed to trade one of my flashlights for it with barely any
problems! I was pretty happy with that
trade! Then I realized how badly I
wanted the painting I had seen earlier in the factory. We somehow managed to make our way back with
the help of one of the local guys that try to sell us necklaces, and I bought
the painting at a great price and was soooo happy that I was finally able to
get it. Now I just need to find a place
to hang them when I get home.
The next couple of days were once again dedicated to
finishing up everything related to DR, including our papers and our final
presentations that we would be giving to both the community and our
professors. The first day, we got our
papers back and talked to Christian about what needed to be fixed, but after
that, a majority of us decided to take another day off. I slept all morning to keep recovering from
the hot and tiring day before and having cook crew so early that morning. After lunch, we worked on this giant 1000
piece puzzle of random flowers. I don’t
know what it is about puzzles, but when you are avoiding doing other work, they
seem like they are one of the most fun things in the world. I literally couldn’t stop until it was done
and everyone else was in exactly the same boat!!! That day, we also went on a walk to the
tailors to pick some things up that other people had made. We were also looking for somewhere that sells
bows and arrows because a lot of people wanted to take one home with them.
The next day was so bright and sunny and I literally
didn’t want to do anything but sit in the sunshine. It seemed like I hadn’t seen the sun shine in
a month, so I spent every second possible outside. I worked on my paper outside, ate meals
outside, walked to the tailors again with friends, and took a nap outside. This day was actually a Tanzanian holiday, so
walking downtown was kind of scary.
Tanzania has a real problem with alcohol consumption, and this holiday
gave people all the more reason to drink.
At one point, we were being chased by a drunk guy through Rhotia and had
to take a secret way back to camp so that he wouldn’t follow us! It was kind of scary, but being with a group
of friends made it a lot easier to laugh at than it would have been if I were
alone. We got a big game of soccer going that night with Christian and Marta,
my favorite askari, and played until we couldn’t see the ball anymore because
it was so dark!
That night, we were all hanging out in the dining
hall, when Marta came in holding something in her hand. She told me it was a special present for me
and that I had to take it. It made me so
nervous because who knew what it could be.
She started to open her hand and I could feel little legs moving in my
palm. I assumed that it was a frog or
toad because it was raining out again and that is when they always come
out. I couldn’t get the courage up to
finally take it from her, and I am soooo thankful I didn’t. She dropped it on the floor and it was one of
the GIANT beetles that I am terrified of here!
They are literally the size of a computer mouse and make this awful
hissing noise. Plus they are stupid and
get stuck on their backs anytime the run into anything and fall to the
floor. I hate them so much and I couldn’t
believe that was what was almost in my hand!
But as a pleasant surprise after that, the other askari, Yuri, found an
adorable hedgehog and let us play with it.
I seriously want one for a pet so badly.
I cuddled up with it and kept it near me as I finished up some of my
paper!
The final day of work on our papers, we were
required to give a short presentation to our advisor about what we had been
working on and they could ask us any questions that they wanted about our
study. I don’t know what it is because I
can stand up in front of 100 people and talk without a problem, but talking
face to face with someone that knows my project as well as I do, made me so
nervous. I didn’t do as well as I had
hoped, but for the rest of the day, I kept working on my paper and tried not to
think about it! By 6pm, I was completely
done with my paper and thrilled to turn it in and be done with all 16 pages of
it!!!
That night, as a celebration for being done, we
played a huge game of Sardines, which is basically reverse hide-and-go
seek. One person hides and everyone
looks for them, but when you find them, you hide with them until one person is
left. I usually get so scared in those
types of games, but it was a blast playing with all my best friends here in the
mud and rain. I was laughing so hard
when I had to climb into a bush to hide from other people! It was a nice mental break from DR that we
all desperately needed!
Thanks again for reading! I know this is a long one so I apologize!
Love,
Mollie Ann
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