home!

I can't believe my semester is over! I just got home last night after saying goodbye to most of the students in NYC. I had a busy last few weeks and I look forward to sharing my pictures and stories with you all, thanks for taking part in my adventure!!! Talk to you soon!

November 2008!

Hi everyone! I can't believe I only have one month left in Kenya - this semester has gone by so quickly! So, this past week I moved from Nairobi to Mombasa (a city on the coast) for my month long independent study. This part of the semester is for the students to use all that they have learned so far to be able to live and work on their own in East Africa. Each student chooses an African organization to work with and they experience what it is like to have a job in Kenya and how the different organizations work. I am living in Mombasa with 2 other girls from the program, Laura and Jessie. We are living in the center of Old Town Mombasa - an area full of Muslim culture. Our apartment is in a house on the waterfront and right next to Fort Jesus, a famous historical tourist attraction. It is very cool being in Old Town and seeing a different side of Kenya. The architecture in our neighborhood is very old and traditional and we hear the Muslim prayer on loudspeaker many times each day. Our first morning there we were surprised to hear the prayer echoing through our apartment at 4:50am!

I am working with KESCOM, a Sea Turtle conservation organization in Mombasa. I have to commute on my own to work everyday. I take matatus, which are the cheap and most common travel option in the city. They are 10 passenger vans that fly around the city and pick people up almost anywhere. They cram people in and it can be very uncomfortable - basically anything goes as long as they can keep making money and picking up more people. The drivers are also crazy and drive so fast - you always think your matatu will crash but somehow it doesn't. The KESCOM office is located in an apartment complex on Bomburi beach. It is a tease that I am so close to the ocea each day as I sit and do work, but the scenery is amazing! This past week I got to know the people in the office and worked on compiling data on a large spreadsheet for a big project KESCOM is doing on all the sea turtle nesting sites along the coast. Hopefully this coming week I will go into the field and do less office work. Although at this point I am not crazy about the office work I am doing at KESCOM - being on the coast for this month makes the work worth it!!

This weekend Jessie, Laura and I traveled about 45 minutes south to Diani Beach and stayed at the Galu Sea Lodge for 2 nights. This is the same place we stayed at for our mid-semester break - but this time there were 3 of us in 1 house instead of 17 in 2. I called the owner mid-way through the week and he was so happy to hear from SLU students again - he gave me a reduced price for our weekend stay. It was crazy - we had a beach front house to ourselves and I don't think anyone was staying in the other 4 houses next to us - we had the place to oursleves. It was really nice to get out of muggy Mombasa - it is so hot all day - you can't escape the heat!! We met up with our friend Chelsea, another SLU student, who is doing her work on Diani Beach with the Colobus Trust, a monkey preservation organization. All weekend she was caring for a 2 week old monkey that she had helped save during the week. I got to hold it, it was so tiny and it fit in my hand and was so human like! Friday night we went with Chelsea and her co-workers and other friends from the beach community to a local bar / club right on the beach called Forty Thieves. It was fun to meet other people our age and from all over the world. There were 2 girls studying abroad from Norway and a guy from Switzerland who just got of the army and is traveling around the world for a year. Everyone was so nice and it was a lot of fun to also meet the locals who were also very nice to us. Saturday we spent the day on the beach and by the pool and Chelsea took us to a local swimming place that toursits don't know about. We went to where the ocean meets the river. You can jump in at the mouth of the river and the current takes you right down into the river as you float. That night we went to an amazing Italian restuarant with a bunch of the people we met the night before and then went back to Forty Theives. Today we relaxed by the pool and in the evening we will catch a taxi back to the city for another work week. We are already thinking of coming back here next weekend!

I have 3 more weeks of work in Mombasa and then all the students meet back in Nairobi for our last week together. We get back to the compound on a Saturday night and then most of us leave Sunday morning for our trip to climb Mt. Kenya. We get back from the hike on Wednesday and leave Kenya that Saturday, December 13! I have a busy few weeks ahead!!

Here are some pictures I have on my computer - I have a few more I want to put up, but they are on my camera and I don't have my camera cord this weekend. The 1st is from Halloween. I was a Fanta bottle - Fanta is super popular in Kenya, along with Blueband, a brand of butter that my friend Meg dressed as. The next is of me holding a chameleon I found on a late night walk we went on earlier in the semester at the campsite we stayed at in the Rift Valley after our rural homestays - can you remember back that far? It seems like such a long time ago - my friend just gave me that picutre. The others are from our first trip to Galu Sea Lodge. There is one of myself and my friend Wendy riding a camel on the beach, the tiny plane we took to Mombasa - we were the only ones on it, a few from our snorkeling trip, and the rest are of Galu. I stayed in the house that you can see right behind the pool, and the pictures of the ocean is the view I could see from my house.

AMBOSELI !

Hi everyone! I am back at the compound in Nairobi and finishing up my last 2 weeks of classes - it's going to be a long few weeks because we all have so many projects, presentations, and papers due all at the same time.

Anyways, we just got back from a weekend on the beach in Mombasa - it was amazing - we had a house right on the beach with a cook who made us lots of meals with the local seafood. We had time to relax and enjoy ourselves. One day we went snorkeling and went on camel rides on the beach. The rest of the time we spent in the ocean and pool.

Before Mombasa we spent 9 days in Amboseli where we lived at the Maasai Study Center near the Amboseli National Park at the bottom of Mt. Kilimanjaro. The trip was incredible - we really got to see how the Maasai live - and it wasn't a tourist experience at all. The Maasai land has been decreased over the years by the governemt, now the land is broken up into a handful of community ranches. Each ranch has a council of members that make decisions for everyone living there. Each person owns their own animals (they are traditionally pastoralists - but now some are converting to agriculture) and they share the land they use for grazing. Some of the ranches are now trying to sub-divide so that each person will own a separate piece of land - it was very interesting talking to different kinds of people about this matter. We stayed in the study center which is on the Kuku Ranch. The study center has a main open-air lodge for eating and lectures, and we all slept in separate tents. The tents had screens on all sides - I felt like I was literally sleeping outside - it was a little intimidating after realizing that all the animals of the area roam freely at night - the parks do not have fences at all!!

One morning we walked to school with local children who have to wake up at 4am and walk many miles to school that starts at 7:30am. It was rough getting up at 4:30 - but I learned so much walking with the kids to school and then talking to more of them once we got there. Another day we played soccer with them - they had their best players play against us - so naturally they won. We also spent time visiting the village market and talking with local farmers who constantly are annoyed with wildlife from the parks (especially elephants!!) getting into their crops. Towards the end of the week we split into groups of 2 and went on a home-stay with a Maasai family. This was probably the biggest challenge I have faced so far on this trip (besides my ankle). Jessie and I stayed with James, a man who works at the study center, and his family. He (38) has a 22 year old wife named Grace and 4 girls. Jessie and I followed his wife around for 2 days doing all the things that a 'real' Maasai woman does. MEN JUST SIT AROUND! We collected wood one afternoon - which involved climbing all over hills and through brush collecting sticks that had thorns all over them. We strapped all the wood into a bunch and hung it over our backs by holding the bundle with a string attached to our head like a head-band. We also cut lots of veggies, washed dishes, helped Grace cook, collected water from a nearby stream, watched the goats, made jewelry with the other women who live near James (all the homes together in one area make up a Boma) -and SMEARED THE HOUSE WITH COW DUNG! One morning James told us to follow Grace into the area where the cows slept. We had to pick up the freshest cow dung we could find WITH OUR HANDS and bring it back to the house and make a huge pile. Then we had to mix the pile with water and smear it all over the house to fix the cracks in the walls. At night Jessie and I slept in a hut by ourselves with 8 goats. James said some of the goats come in the huts at night because it is too dangerous / cold for them outside. Picture this though - each hut is only the size of a big car! I couldn't fully stand up in it. We slept on a bed of sticks and cow hide and tried to sleep as we listened to goats making noises and peeing all night. The huts are very warm all the time because they have no windows. It was a rough night - but I made it and I am really glad I got to experience Maasai life.

When we were not learning about the Maasai, we were out on Safari. We went on 2 day long safaris in Amboseli National Park, and another evening drive in a sanctuary near the study center. We saw so many animals - and it was so much more exciting to see them in their natural environment and not in a zoo. We saw elephants everywhere (the park has an over-population problem), also wildebeest, zebra, warthogs, cheetah, hyena, ostrich.......so so many animals. On our second Safari day we really wanted to see a lion - and my safari truck was the only one that got to see 2 male lions up close right next to the road. We watched them for a few minutes and then they walked off into the grass to stalk prey - it was unbelievable! I never got tired of seeing all the animals! Everywhere you looked there were more, and many of them co-exist peacefully together.

Here are some pictures:

* My Maasai host family + more + Jessie

* Making jewelry

* Mixing the cow dung with water - almost ready to smear the house

* Vultures eating a dead animal

* LION!

* Me with giraffe

* Giraffe

* School we walked to and also played soccer at

* School kids

* Me with Maasai women after dancing with them

* On a hill overlooking Amboseli National Park

* Cheetah

* On top of safari truck

* Hyena

* Wildebeest

* Mt. Kilimanjaro

Hope you are all having a great fall! Talk to you soon!

A little more from my week in Tanzania...

While the internet is working ok at the compound and I continue to procrastinate because I have a paper due tonight, I decided to upload a few more pictures from my Tanzania trip. Here are some simple descriptions starting from the top: view of the sunrise from the big rock we had class on and spent a lot of time on, me kind of climbing the Baobab tree ( I couldn't go all the way because of my ankle), having breakfast at camp with my 2 tent mates (Jane and Amelia), a week of being DIRTY, learning how to shoot our bow and arrow from a Hadza man (I am right behind him), drinking the goat blood after the slaughtering!!, a cool lizard we saw on a hike over the mountain and into the valley to the Hadza camp, sitting on the rock at camp watching the sunrise at 6am, and all of us carving our arrows under a Baobab tree with the Hadza men - hope you like them!

Here are some more pictures - 2 from the park - the lions and a picture with the boys along the path - also a few family pictures - my mom is in the blue shirt sitting down with me standing up and there are fun pictures of the boys - enjoy!

* Urban Homestay in Nairobi *

Some pictures from my urban homestay in Nairobi. I lived with a family for 3 weeks while I took classes at the United Kenya Club in the city with the rest of the students. Some people lived in pairs with families, but I was alone, which was nice, I got to know my family really well. Every weekday morning my mom would drive me into the city for my first class, Swahili, and then she would go to her job at the International Committee of the Red Cross. My 2 younger brothers, 7 & 8 would be driven to school by their dad, who works at a big insurance company in the city as well. We would all eat breakfast together and then leave the house by 7am to try and beat the morning traffic. Traffic is a big problem in Nairobi - no one follows traffic laws and cars are everywhere on the road. During the day in the city I would take classes and in between I would go into the city for lunch or shopping, swim laps at the YMCA pool near where I took classes, or do work in the library at the UKC. Mom picked me up each day at the UKC around 5:30pm, and we would drive home or stop on the way to do errands. We all ate dinner around 7:30pm and then I would play with the boys or do homework. I had my own room in the house and the boys loved to come in and play with all my things or watch me do homework. The first few nights I was attacked my mosquitoes and woke up with huge welts on my face and arms, so the 3rd night I asked for a net over my bed, which made the rest of the stay a lot better. I lived with the Ouma's for 2 weekends. One Saturday we went swimming at a beautiful hotel pool in the city and I helped the boys with their front crawl. Each Sunday we went to Church and then spent time with my mom's sisters who live around the city. We went to her sister's for tea one Sunday and another day we went shopping with 2 of her sisters for clothes. One Saturday night I took a taxi by myself from the house to meet up with the rest of the students at a popular club called Galileo in the city. It was so much fun and we danced to a live band who played songs we all knew by Paul Simon. It was a little scary at first to take my first taxi alone into the city, but once I was there I was fine. As long as you are aware of your surroundings in the city and be smart about what you do at night, you can keep yourself very safe. Another Saturday I went to the Maasai Market with my mom to buy small gifts and souvenirs and I bartered for everything I bought. The sellers are so pushy and grab white people who they assume are tourists with lots of money. I used some of the Swahili I have learned and bartered their prices way down. Sellers would start with ridiculous prices, like 5,000 shillings, and I would get them down to 100. Mom said she was very impressed with my bartering and said that she usually gives up with sellers and gets too impatient to barter. Later that day I went with my mom to the wedding of a woman she works with. It was amazing to see how Kenyans organize weddings and the different traditions that take place. Everyone was dressed in bright clothing and there was a lot of dancing and singing - I felt very lucky to be able to see a Kenyan wedding. I was the only mzungu (white person) there. One Wednesday I didn't have classes because the government of Kenya issued a national holiday (October 1) to celebrate the end of Ramadan for the Muslim community. The whole month of September is spent fasting, and October 1st is usually announced as a holiday for Muslims to get together to feast and spend time together. That day my family took me to the Nairobi National Park to go on the nature walk. I was surprised when we saw all kinds of animals - rhinos, zebras, leopards, and lions! Each Friday all of us students only had Swahili class in the morning and then we did "urban activities". One Friday we went to Kibera, the biggest slum in Africa, which I right outside the city. There we split into groups and got to visit community development projects that are taking place there. I visited a business called Smolfish which is run by a young man from Kibera. Smolfish produces kikoy cloth products and weaves all the cloth by hand and sells everything to shops in Nairobi. The business helps Kibera by employing people from the slum and giving money back to the community. There are 2 pictures from Smolfish - one of me using the pedal machine to wind yarn, and another with all the workers and my group with our finished products that we got to take home that day. Another Friday we went to the UN delegation in Nairobi and we visited with people from a section of the UN called UN Habitat, which is working with the youth of Nairobi (especially the ones from the slums) to improve employment and education rates and provide them with options for their futures. It was interesting to see the connections between the trip to Kibera and to the UN - both trips worked to show us how change is taking place in the city for the less fortunate.

During the 3 weeks I ate great food - every night was something different. I was given a cooking lesson one night . I learned how to make chapati and ndengu, and I was surprised when she let me do most of the work. I can't wait to cook the meal at home - delicious!

On my last night we got take-out Indian food - my mom said I couldn't leave without having it - Nairobi has amazing Indian!! I gave the family the gifts I had brought for them and also a chocolate cake. When I left after my 3 weeks I promised the boys I would write to them and we would be pen pals - they were so sad to see me leave - very cute. I look forward to keeping in touch with the family.

I have included some pictures from my 3 weeks - enjoy!

Today is Sunday October12 - I got back to the compound on Friday and we all spent the weekend catching up and relaxing - and also writing a big paper that is a culmination of our 2 homestays - rural and urban. Tomorrow, Monday, we leave early for Amboseli, where we will stay for 9 days learning from the Maasai people, who are pastoralists, and going on a few different game drives (safaris!) to see all the animals of Amboseli. Amboseli is known for awesome game viewing and is a beautiful location at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro. When we return to the compound next Wednesday - we pack again - and then Thursday we leave (just the students by ourselves) to fly to Mombasa for 4 days to stay on the beach and relax for our midsemester break. Talk to you in a few weeks!!

Week with the Hadza in Tanzania!

Sorry it has been awhile... I just got back late Friday night from a week in Tanzania. It was amazing!! We left at 6am on Friday and drove all day towards a town called Arusha in Tanzania. We crossed the border around lunch time and our driver, Njao, simply told us to take our passports and get off the bus and cross the border. He said he would see us on the other side. We went through immigration and customs - walking from building to building - very different from the US / Canadian border. Every time we came out of a building we were surrounded by hawkers (people trying to sell things / beg for $) and as soon as they see Americans they run to you. After walking across the border as a group we found the bus and Njao and continued on our trip. We stopped for lunch on the side of the road - completely in the middle of nowhere - it looked like the desert. We arrived in Arusha around 2 pm at the Dorobo Safaris base and as soon as we got off the bus we were told to get into the Safari trucks with our bags. Our group had 2 big trucks, German trucks from WW2, and we waved goodbye to Njao and took off with our new guides. The Dorobo Safaris is run by the Peterson Brothers (3 of them). They were born in Tanzania after their parents came from the US in the 1950s as missionaries. They all started the tour company about 20 years ago because they needed to find a job in order to stay in Tanzania. Even though they were born in the country, they still have US passports and can not get a Tanzania passport unless they give up their US ones - and they don't want to do that because then it would be very hard to travel outside the country. The brothers went to college in the US, but loved Tanzania, and now they work together doing many different kinds of Safaris all over the country. Thad, one of the brothers, was our main guide and told us all about the business and their many adventures in Tanzania as we drove from Arusha towards the Yaeda Valley. We stayed the first night in a gorgeous campsite at the base of the mountains that we would cross the next day. Our camp was at the bottom of a waterfall where we saw baboons playing on the rocks at dusk and in the morning. We set up our tents under a huge tree - Thad said you couldn't get closer to the "Cradle of Human Life". Every meal was delicious and the Dorobo team with us was so good to us. The first night we had rice, veggies, a great sauce, salad, and mango crumble. We sat around the fire for awhile after dinner and Thad told us about the rest of our week. We would spend the next day climbing the mountain range in the trucks and then go down into the valley where we would find the Hadza people in their many camps around the area.

Some information on the Hadza: The Hadza or Hadzabe, are an ethnic group in central Tanzania. They live around Lake Eyasi in the central Rift Valley. They now number under 1000. 300-400 of them live in the area we visited. They live as hunter-gatherers and have lived like that for tens of thousands of years. They are the last functioning hunter-gatherers in Africa. They are not closely related to any other people and their language, with many click sounds, does not resemble any other African language.

We reached our 2nd campsite late Saturday afternoon. The ride was amazing though - we crossed the valley and saw beautiful views the entire ride. We also saw many small isolated villages along the road ways. Trucks seldom travel on the roads we were on, so people ran from their homes and fields to wave to us in the trucks. We reached the campsite, nothing special, just an open space in the middle of nowhere where the Dorobo team and our group got to work to make it a site. We set up tents, a big food tent, traveling bathrooms (basically a hole in the ground covered by a little square tent for privacy), and also made fires to cook food on and sit around. Some Hadza were already there to greet us and had set up their own small camp. Dorobo tours have many guidelines that they follow to be respectful of the tribes when they travel. One of them is to not stay too close to the Hadza camp and also to give them space we only visit their camps for a short period of time during the day. Dorobo, before trips, sits down with the Hadza and picks a few representatives from the tribe to stay with us and teach us during our stay. The few Hadza who stayed with us were quiet at first and kept to themselves in their camp, but eventually warmed to us and taught us a lot - even though we couldn't communicate with words, they would act out things to us or have Thad or someone else translate for us. We did so much all week - I can't begin to explain - but I will point out some highlights - we stayed in our first Hadza camp for 2 nights and then traveled for another day to a further site for another 2 nights before traveling 10 hours back to Arusha in the trucks.
Some things we did:
* We went hunting in groups of 5 with 2 Hadza men, we didn't catch anything, but one of our guys, Salami, came back a few times with bloody arrows - he explained by acting it out that he almost got a bird and a wart hog but the arrows only grazed them. Our group came back after 6 hours to camp with Baobab fruit and some other berries, but another group got a few small animals that they cooked over the fire and we ate. I think one was a sort of giant rat - delicious!
* We visited one of the Hadza camps at our first site and they showed us how to make porridge with the fruit from the big Baobab trees and also how to make millet from simple berries found while gathering. At the site I played with one of the little babies and had her walk to me - so cute! The men showed us how to make fire with sticks and they gave us porcupine quills to use in our hair.
* We saw many Baobab trees - the Hadza use them for many things. They eat the fruits that grow on them and they are supposedly very rich in nutrients and very good for you. They also get honey from the trees in the natural bee hives they find. They climb the trees using wooden pegs that they hammer into the trunk. They can get water from the top of the tree - it collects in the basin at the top and they can use the tree as a look-out to look across the valley. They taught us how to climb - it was a little scary. I didn't go to the top because of my ankle, but watching everyone go was fun.
* The Hadza men taught us how to make arrows and then helped with the finishing touches. They put the arrows in the fire to make them easy to bend with their teeth - they need them to be very straight to be able to shoot game. We each made our own arrows and later got to practice shooting - I wasn't very good, but it was fun to watch the young Hadza men hit the targets they set up.
* At our 2nd camp there was an amazing small mountain of rocks you could climb to look out over the valley. We went up there as a group a few times to have lectures and watch the sunrise and sunset. Looking out over the valley one night we saw a huge fire in the distance - Thad explained that the valley has been taken over (somewhat) by another tribe, the Tatoga, because the Hadza never stay in one place - so a lot of their land seems unoccupied - the Hadza don't mind at the moment, but they are trying to make it clear to the Tatoga that the land is still theirs. The Tatoga were burning the dry land to make it better for farming. If you are more interested - look up more information on the Hadza - the Tanzania government is trying to make them become civilized and many investors want to take over the valley for economic gain - the Hadza are trying to fight to keep their land, but it is hard when they are not fairly represented in government. Dorobo is trying to fight for them and helps the Hadza voice their opinions and concerns to the outside world. Dorobo is the only tour company allowed in the valley at this time because they are respected by the Hadza and practice responsible tourism - many other tour groups do not.
* One of the last nights we saw a young goat tied up near the site and we were told it would be killed for dinner. We all watched the goat get slaughtered - the hardest part was hearing it scream as it's neck was sliced open and blood gushed out. The Hadza men were quick with their work and minutes after the goat was killed, we were all handed a cup of the fresh blood to drink - I still can't believe I did it. The Hadza do not eat goat that often, it is expensive, so when they do, the whole goat is consumed, nothing is wasted. After drinking the blood, most of the group left, but myself and 3 other girls stayed to watch the rest of the dissection. We were offered small pieces of the liver to eat - fresh from the body. I tried to swallow it but ended up spitting it up - too bad. I think it was too hard because I was standing there trying to eat the piece while I looked at the rest of the body. Definitely an experience...
* The last night at the Hadza camp, after sitting around the fire for a long time listening to tradition music and dance - Jane, Amelia, and I (tent-mates) decided to take our sleeping bags up to the rock to sleep. We had to walk a bit to get up there - but we assumed we would be safe. People had talked about it that day, and we thought it was a good idea. The stars were amazing and it was nice and cool up there. We had been lying on the rock for awhile and then 2 people from our group ran up and were yelling at us to get off. They said the Hadza men around the fire heard we were up there and said to get off immediately because leopards were known to hang out on that rock at night. Thanks to the Hadza men for saving us that night - we had no idea!
* The week was amazing and I have many pictures, here are a few for now - it takes forever to load them here.