Getting Settled

2/1/12

Jambo!

Habari gani? 

I have now been at the Moyo hills camp in tanzania for a few days, and am starting to get adjusted to the time zone, the schedule, the heat, and the general daily life here. And guess what! My luggage came! Yay! Life is good. I wake up at about 6:45, as breakfast is at 7, and surprisingly I have no problem getting out of bed in the mornings. The nights are cool, perfect temperature for sleeping with a blanket, and the mornings refreshing. We wake up to roosters crowing, cows mooing, and numerous beautiful and rhythmic bird calls from the trees around us. Very similar to any rural area you would see in wisconsin, so its interesting to see that rural is pretty much rural wherever you are. At night I often wake up to the sounds of hyena talking and howling, not in a particularily aggressive way but simply being active. The sun begins to rise after 7 and the camp is illuminated in bright sun yet cool enough to be extremely comfortable. I crawl out of my mosquito net from the top bunk and the breakfast bell rings to signal food is ready. During the day it gets really warm around 2pm, and luckily I havent gotten sunburned yet(a lot of people here cannot say the same!).

The food has been great so far; for breakfast we have eggs with peppers, bacon or sausage, toast, pancakes, fruit, and cereal if we so desire. For dinner we often have noodles, sauteed veggies(sometimes in curry), rice, fruit, some kind of meat, and some sort of bean or lentil dish. I usually try a bit of everything and its generally very delicious! For dinner today we had chapati which Is probably my new favorite food here, it’s a sort of flatbread, thinner than pita and naan but soooo delicious. We all sit in the dining hall with two large tables, and chat with the staff and professors. 

The staff are all really amazing. We have cooks, gaurds, drivers, assistant professors, professors, student affairs managers, and a few other people who do other tasks around the camp, like maintaining the safari trucks which are the most expensive things on camp. A lot of the staff only speak swahili, and all of us mainly speak english, so its an interesting language barrier that we work to overcome. One of the staff members likes to communicate by making animal noises and its really entertaining, he makes us all giggle. Today he taught us a popular song in swahili, and its pretty simple. People have clearly had it stuck in their heads all day, as you can hear us singing it all around the camp. It goes like this:

Jambo/ Jambo Bwana/ Habari Gani?/ Mzuri sana!/ wageni/ mwakaribishwa/ tanzania/ hakuna matata

Hello! / hello sir / how are you? / very good!/ our guests/ all are welcome/ tanzania/ no worries

If you want to hear how it goes you can google the jambo song, im pretty sure that’s what it is and its very popular!

Today was our first day of class, and im really excited for the academic part of this experience. We have a wildlife ecology class with John Kioko(everyone is named john by the way, its extremely popular), wildlife management with german Christian(I cant remember his last name), and socioeconomics and policy with professor John Mwamhanga. Unfortunately our swahili class wont start for another week, which I am dissapointed about because I really want to learn how to communicate with the staff more easily! Its kindof interesting to get used to their accents during lecture, the two johns have thick swahili accents and Christian is SO german. Classes are at different times each day which it’s a little strange, and are generally about an hour and a half. Between classes we have time to do homework or nap or read, whatever really. I layed in a hammock for about an hour today in the shade and read--bliss. 

Yesterday we took a tour of the town we are in, Karatu. I felt SO touristy walking in such a big group with our cameras and looks of amazement, I was a little self concious. I am actually looking forward to going out in a much smaller group, two or three people, so we don’t stand out AS much, although we will always stand out. I kept accidentally lagging behind as everywhere I turned was a photo op I couldn’t pass up. Its really great, everyone in the community knows who we are and where we stay, and are very welcoming because the SFS has such a great repuation in town. When we leave the camp we are a reflection of the SFS, so we have to be respectful and well behaved. There is a school about  5 minutes away from our camp, and the first time I left the camp to go for a walk three kids literally RAN towards us, arms outstretched, and I braced myself for the most sincere, enthusiastic hug ive ever received! THEY ARE SO ADORABLE. They couldn’t speak much english and we couldn’t speak much swahili, so it was mainly hello’s, how are you, smiles, and playing with our cameras. They loved to be in pictures and see them on our screens afterwards.They giggle seeing themselves in pictures.  At one point a little girl pointed at my glasses, took them off my face and then started walking away with them! No, no, no! I swept her up and took them back, laughing and trying to communicate that I needed those! I think glasses are just so rare here that she wanted them as her own. 

Walking through the town is very interesting, people sit in the shade, hangout with livestock, or work on separating these purple beans from their stalks. These beans are scattered everywhere on the dirt walking path, as they fall out of bags as they are being transported on bikes to be sold for food. Everyone says “jambo!” as you walk by and smiles, recognizing that we are so clearly not locals. At one point a lady motioned to one of the other students and so she walked up to see what she wanted, it was as if she wanted to give her something. Then she started motioning like she wanted to give her a piggy-back ride, it was so strange, and her face became a bit aggressive so we quickly said have a good afternoon and left. Im still not sure what she was doing. Also, sometimes people will motion to you to give them money, and at first I had no idea what the hand gesture meant. After someone told me it became pretty obvious, and I felt a bit sheepish as I had smiled broadly and waved back thinking it was some welcoming gesture. 

A HUGE locust just flew into the room, oh my gosh its like 5 inches long and literally flies!! So crazy! Havent gotten to see any big animals yet, but we are taking a trip to the manyara lake ecosystem on Saturday. I cant wait! There are a few cats that roam around here but you don’t want to go near them really, even if they would let you, cause they are pretty much feral. The dogs and cats here are not treated the same way you treat them in america, you generally don’t want to touch them because they probably have fleas and really arent that domesticated. 

Well, im going to go watch the lion king, its playing on the projector right now and its so cool to see the opening scene with all the animals when we are so close to actually seeing them in real life!!

Hope all is well, and if I don’t respond to emails its because my internet is really sloooowww at loading wiscmail.

Lots of love

Natalie