Blue sky and red dirt

Home stay:
On Monday we had home stays with different families in our village, Rhotia, from 8am-5pm. I went with another student here, Allyson, and we stayed with an Iraqw family (the local tribe, and yes that is actually how it's spelled. I think I spelled it differently in a previous blog post). There was a great-grandmother (~60 years old), a grandmother (~40 years old), a mother (23 years old), and some young children of the grandmother and the mother (a seven year old and a baby). We just lived with them for a day and did whatever they did. For Allyson and I the day consisted of making chai (milk tea with so much sugar it makes me cringe), lots and lots of ugali (corn-flour-thick-grits-like-stuff), cabbage with tomatoes and onions and more chai. We milked cows (we were both terrible at it/it was very funny and very difficult), carried sticks on our backs by tying them with rope that basically makes backpack straps, sorted and de-cobbed corn, cleaned the old goat house/pen by scraping all of the poop out into a big pile (yum!), visited some relatives and neighbors, took care of the baby, made rope out of a plants veins (?maybe I am not sure what they were), and spent a lot of time sitting and being as people cam and went from the house. It was very interesting to be in their houses (mud and stick built homes that were a few rooms large, and to learn many of the different things they did on a daily basis, but most of all it was interesting to be with them. I am noticing more and more how challenging it is for me to be, just be. I would consider myself of the more slow present Americans and yet still my being skills pale in comparison to Tanzanians. These Iraqw are professional be-ers. It wonderful to be around! You can see their be-ingness in the way they walk as well. Their entire energy stays centered in both their front and back of their body even as they are moving forward. I am so aware of how much our (American’s) energy is projected into our front space we are always going, doing, making, producing, but never being here. All day for different amounts of time we would just sit in our families house and drink chai or be with the baby or just sit, sometimes the women would talk and converse and sometimes not, but we would just hang out there. The part of the day that I liked best was making the rope. The grandmother (~40) picked some leaves of a plant that looks like a giant aloe plant but it is super tough and sharp on the ends. She then made a wooden tool with a stick and machete and stripped the tough leaves. This took away all of the tissue between the veins or some sort of fortified sting-like innards of the plant. Then while they were still wet and flexible we braided them together. It was totally cool. I was amazed to then make the connection between the rope that we were making and the rope that we had used this morning to carry the wood on our backs. It was a wonderful, overwhelming, exhausting experience.


Ngorongoro Crater:
Yesterday (Oct 1st) we went to Ngorongoro Conservation Area where we visited the largest caldera in the world. It was unbelievable! I was blown to smithereens with amazement at the natural world, the animals, the plants, the landscapes, the geology. The crater is 250km on the floor. The sides are super steep and 610 m tall which crates this little world in and of itself with animals galore. What a day full of lions! We saw lions stalking, lions pregnant, lions sleeping, lions playing, lions lazing around in front of the public bathrooms, lions resting after their feast of a buffalo they killed, mama lions, papa lions, teenage lions, baby lions. WOW. I am still reeling from the day. We also watched a hyena run around with a wildebeest leg in his mouth swinging from the knee. I must say they are very scary animals. We saw two more jackals and tons of zebras, wildebeest, gazelles, and buffalo. I think African buffalo are about the coolest things. They are enormous. If you look across the plains and see some dark things that look about as big a cars then you have found the buffalo. They are dark and huge and have enormous horns and move at about 0.00000001 miles/minute. We only saw two elephants because its very hard for them to get down into the crater as the rim is incredibly steep. There are no Giraffes for that reason as well. We also saw Kori Bustards, Black Kites, bee eaters, and crested cranes which were all very impressive. Whew it was quite a day that is still sinking in!


Tailor:
Here in northern Tanzania there is beautiful cloth that is sold and worn and used as blankets, table clothes, and anything else they can think of. I have bought two different kinds so far, one that is blue green turquoise and has birds on it and one that is bright green and yellow/tan it geometric patterns. They are soooo beautiful. We went to a tailor who lives just three houses down from our camp, and I had a dress and a skirt made. They are absolutely beautiful. They are so well made. The tailor lined them, reinforced areas prone to ripping, and finished all of the edges even on the insides. If I wear them together I look just like the women in town! It was very exciting to get them back and see how well they were made. I paid ten dollars for both the shirt and the skirt and don’t think I could have spent my money better!

Food:
Here we eat yummy food! We usually have rice and or ugali (corn/flour grits like stuff with less flavor that they use to pick up their food and eat it with their fingers), some kind of lentils/beans, pasta/potatoes, some kind of green thing or veggie, and sometimes we have green bananas in a sauce, usually fruit (watermelon, papaya, pineapples, bananas…) sometimes a super liquid-y soup that we then put rice or veggies or anything else in, and, if we are lucky, bread! Arthur, our head cook makes the best bread EVER. He makes soft hot rolls that are super moist and squishy and he also makes chipati (its like African version on nan. It’s a bit less stretchy/doughy and more like a fat thick soft tortilla made with some lentils. Sooooo basically amazing!). In other words I am completely enjoying eating at every meal!

Blogging is a funny thing because I never know who is reading this and learning about my life. Its like doing a performance but not knowing who's in the audience. Kinda fun, as well as bizarre! Hope you (whoever you are) are enjoying this and if you want to hear about anything in particular let me know!
Much Love and exhaustion (thank goodness we have a day off tomorrow),
Sara