Friday, July 6th: Power strips, pizza, and paka

We had our second trip to Mt. Meru! Today was a little more relaxed than last week. There was less equipment around, so my friend Grace and I casually fixed a power strip, then took a nice little break ... the rest of the day! I explored the city of Arusha with some friends and got PIZZA for lunch! It was surprisingly good despite my snobbish New York Standards!

Also, there are these kitties that we found hanging around out work area! “Paka,” in Kiswahili means “cat,” which allowed me to make my title alliteration. I’m all about the titles. People here don’t keep animals as pets though. Dogs are kept as guards, and cats get rid of rodents. Therefore my cat at home, Charlotte, would be pretty useless because she’s just a lazy diva. 

Paka!

Wednesday, July 4th: Sokoni

This week, I’ve been assimilating quite nicely. Yesterday, I made African pancakes! Which are more like crepes than pancakes. So tasty. Raelyn and I try to help with dinner almost every night, and we’ve done dishes with our family while dancing to “Waka, Waka” by Shakira. I hear this song probably twice a day.

My teacher for the week is Mama Frida, one of THE CUTEST little things ever! She laughs at stuff that we think is funny, even if she doesn’t understand the reference. We’ve put “Take me to Funkytown,” and “I have 99 problems,” into dialogues, and she laughs hysterically without knowing any context.

Today we took a field trip to Tengeru Market. It was insanity; I was kind of pooping my pants at the prospect of haggling in a different language. TCDC gave us 2000 /= (Tanzanian shillings, Tsh) for fruit/vegetables to give to the school. For only about $1.25, you can buy 5 maparachichi (avocadoes), 3 mafungu mavizuri (heaps of potatoes), and 3 mafungu karoti (heaps of carrots). That’s a lot of produce! In addition, I bought myself a kitenge for a good price! Which will require some tailoring… 

Sunday, July 1st: IT'S A GURAFF!

Safari this weekend was absolutely incredible. On Saturday, we visited Lake Manyara. It definitely wasn’t as full of animals as we would’ve liked, but Ngoronoro Crater made up for it ten-fold the following day. We all wanted to go camping, but apparently that’s expensive.

Instead, the tour company put us in a “hotel.” When we arrived at our “hotel” Saturday night, we came to the realization that we were essentially camping! What a sick joke! Our “rooms” were tents housed over huts! They (kind of) provided us with sleeping bags and pillows, but we were satisfied because we had a beautiful view, food, drinks, and good company. Laughs were had, jokes were made, animals were seen, and sketchiness was avoided.

My only advice, tourists beware of deals! We found a 2-day safari for $200, which is SUPER cheap, but our experience getting home was really rough. The safari cars were not well maintained, and broke down, delaying our departure. But everything considered, I saw all the animals I wanted and had a great time. I posted an entire album dedicated to my safari on Facebook!

IT'S A GURAFF

Friday, June 29th: Getting our hands dirty

Every Friday, my class takes a field trip to Mt. Meru Regional Hospital in order to get our hands on some REAL medical equipment! Our first day was supposed to be pretty relaxed, ya know, get our hands dirty! [HEY! THAT’S THE TITLE OF THIS POST!!!!!!! It is indeed! Gold star for you!]

 So of course, me and two other colleagues dove right in. Ray, Daria, and I were able to put a surgical lamp back into working order. It looked really intimidating at first, but it wasn’t a difficult fix! Without getting too technical, we agreed that replacing the battery and fixing the melted wires would’ve been improbable, and perhaps impossible. Instead, we made a glorified wall lamp: input à switch à transformer à output. Other colleagues were also able to put 2 wheelchairs, an oxygen concentrator, and a hospital bed back in business today. How awesome.

From what I’ve gathered, there’s a type of hierarchy of hospitals. There are dispensaries, clinics, regional, and national hospitals. Mt. Meru is considered a pretty good regional hospital. However, we wouldn’t have known, seeing as we worked outside in the dirt, the office we worked from was dirty and disorganized, and some of my colleagues found dead and alive rodents in broken equipment.

In addition, we are experiencing Tanzania during a rough time for health care. There are typically either public or private hospitals. The private hospitals offer better care, but at a higher price that many can’t afford. The Tanzanian government funds public hospitals, including its doctors and employees. Rights for public doctors are severely lacking, and many public doctors, especially in Dar Es Salaam, are on strike. They’ve been promised a great deal, and seen little change.

Keep these doctors, and their patients who are not receiving care, in your prayers. This experience has made me even more appreciative for the availability of healthcare in our country.

Dead bug in plug!

Initial Insanity.

Ray, Daria, and I after our first successful test.

Thursday, June 28th: First week

I’ve already been in Africa for over a week… Crazy, right!?  

In any case, school this week was swell. For Swahili, we’ve split off into smaller groups and my teacher this week is Kisanji. Yeye ni mwalimu mzuri. Bomba bomba! I am learning quickly, and it definitely helps to have my Swahili reinforced at home. My engineering teacher is also pretty sweet. He is from Peru, and his manner of talking and accent remind me of Consuela from Family Guy (ahh… no…), but he is very funny and knows his stuff. In lab this week, Rae and I made an extension cord, practiced soldering, and did some supah fun stuff with multimeters and transformers. Raelyn, who already has her Master’s Degree, is surely a gift from God. I am learning so much from her!

Life at home gets better and better each day. In addition to ugali, we’ve also tried chipati, which is delicious African bread similar to Indian naan. Rae and I are definitely becoming part of the family. Typically, we pray before each meal, and occasionally we will sing from their Christian hymnbooks as well. We have a lot of fun. One night dinner this week, we were hanging out with Christina, and her friend Zebeta. They really wanted to “paint” our nails with henna, so they did. Henna isn’t a nail coating like we’re used to. It’s a stain that got all over our nails and fingers. It was a disaster when we washed the globs of henna off the next day. It definitely would look cool if we weren’t such Mzungu.

All in all, great week! Today, it’s official: we are going on our safari this weekend! 

The horrific aftermath.