Beautiful places and beautiful people

Hello from Tanzania!
What an amazing four days this has been! I spent Sunday night/Monday on the plane and in the airport in Nairobi continuing to get to know my group of people and playing a lot of card games in between napping. We flew to Kilimanjaro on Monday night, but we got in too late and so we stayed in a hotel. We then left for our camp in Rotia (a tiny village). We drove across Savannah and grass land with acacia trees. We saw two giraffes, a few zebras and buffalo, huge termite hills, some baboons and many people with their livestock! It was overwhelmingly beautiful, shocking, and hasn’t completely sunk in. We then arrived at the most beautiful new home I could have wished for. We have hot water for showers, delicious food, a beautiful garden, and gracious and smiling Tanzanian staff and faculty. I am blown over! I am also amazed because this entire place was built in about 2 months. Many things here don’t work or are forever being fixed, but it is not an inconvenience, merely a reminder that this place is new, and is a work in progress in an African country.

We have spent the last two days doing orientation and today we began class. We have four classes; Wildlife Management, Wildlife Ecology, Swahili and Social Culture, and Socio-Economics and Environmental Policy of East Africa. Learning Swahili is super challenging and as it is the official language of Tanzania (Kenya’s is English) you need to speak it to communicate with the people here, including some of our staff. Yesterday we learned some greetings and were then sent out into Rotia to greet people and walk around a bit. You can imagine that this was pretty intimidating, but also exciting.

Two other students and I went walking with one of our staff, Elias, who took us on quite an adventure. We were walking down a dirt road greeting people we passed when we heard drums and people singing. Elias told us in broken English that it was his tribe’s dance and took us to see. We came upon a small group of people, four elder women who were drumming on one drum with sticks, and a group of mostly men who were doing a bouncing-jumping dance and singing (very different from West African dance, but very interesting). One of the women gave us sticks and sat us down in front of the drum without any direction or a moment to think or watch or take the scene in! We did the best we could while Elias laughed and laughed and everyone continued to dance and drum. It was an overwhelming and hilarious situation. I found myself trying to keep up with the elders in a jumble of rhythms and song, and as soon as I thought I might have the rhythm, it would change! After that, Elias took us by the two churches in town, a Lutheran church and a Catholic church, and then visited the local clinic. He took us into each room with sick people and we greeted them and smiled and told them we were sorry they were there… as best we could in Swahili. Well, it was more than we had bargained for on our first day in town I can tell you that, but it was also a humbling and exquisite experience.

It is still sinking in that this is my new home… this beautiful place with yellow birds and fuchsia bougainvillea and smiling people (both students and staff). I am trying to remember to breathe and take time to slow down so that I can let everything sink in.
inspiredandexhausted,
Sara!