Fallout Africa

Okay, just an update on my life first. I finally got my camera back from Arusha and it didn't cost me anything, but that's because they didn't fix it. For some odd reason they couldn't do the simple repair that I was able to find on Google. I came to the shop and the man tells me, "There's something wrong with the lens." I thought to myself, "Yeah I know, that's why I brought it here." Then he just handed the camera back to me. I've now decided that, unless there is an extremely simple way for me to get my camera fixed, I'm just going to wait until I go to Europe to get it fixed and just ride off of everyone else's pictures of Africa that they put up on the web.
And now the main topic of this post; my time here has started to remind me of a video game I like to play back home, Fallout 3. Fallout 3 is a video game that takes place in a nuclear wasteland. The game is also supposed to have a setting of the 50s, back when people were so afraid of nuclear war. It's kinda sad that Africa would remind me of a nuclear wasteland, but let me explain. Most of the buildings here are built from rusted scrapmetal. In the game the currency is bottle caps and you can't walk five feet in any direction in a city without seeing a bottle cap on the ground. Every form of authority, from the bank gaurds to the traffic enforcers, is carrying around an AK-47. Not to mention the vast open desserts can sometimes look like a wasteland, especially when a dust storm is blowing through.
The reason I bring this up is because it's a sign of two things; Africa is a pretty desolate and desperate place and that I'm home sick. Maybe I miss the technology of home, but still there are times I wish I was back in the states and yet this place is still amazing and I'm still enjoying myself.

Arusha I Curse Thy Name!

Today I was going to get on a bus for Arusha, since going to Arusha yesterday didn't work out. So I get on the Dar Express bus that will take 45 minutes instead of the hour and a half I spend on the buses that are more like large vans. I show up five minutes before two, ready to board the bus. I see a Dar Express bus down the road. I had been told by Mama Grace that all I needed to do was climb on and pay in the bus. The bus starts moving and that's when a man asks me, "Do you have a ticket," before I can answer I realise that this bus was coming from Arusha and was headed for Dar Esalam. I got on the bus going the wrogn direction!
They let me off the bus as soon as I relaize I'm headed the wrong way. It's pouring rain, but luckily there is a taxi right behind the bus. I think I might still have enough time to get to Arusha before the shop closes so I tell the cab driver to take me to the bus station. I get into the large van bus, but these buses don't leave until they are completely filled and after sitting there for twenty minutes I gave up.
So now the new plan is to get on a bus right after placement at juvy and get over to that camera shop and get my camera. Unfortunatly a local who is a friend of mine informed me that it was bad that I did not negotiate the price for getting the camera fixed before I gave it to them, because now they can demand any price. I'm really starting to get fed up with this place. But it will pass, Tanzania is a beatiful place and this is all great learning expirences for me, but I've also decided that after this I'm probably not going to come back, at least now for a few years.
Wish me luck! (I'll probably need it.)

Tanzanian Flexible Time

I just ate gazelle at a nearby resturaunt, I still have some ugali caked under my finger nails, and I'm currently typing this at an internet cafe because someone screwed up the internet at home base.
This brings me to the topic of today; TFT, also known as Tanzanian Flexible Time. This phrase basicly explains how people in Tanzania don't live as much of a fast paced, scheduled life like Westerners. This can be nice becaus it helps people like me relax, but it also can be really irritating when you're depending on other people. Recently I've been feeling like TFT is an excuse for irresponsibility. I know that part of this is just me going through my resistant phase of culture shock, but recently I've had muliple occasions of frustration mostly caused by TFT.
Isaac is a local and friend of mine who also volunteers at juvy. He had a job interview Friday and today, which is good for him, but he also didn't let me know so I had to stumble through working with the kids who don't understand much English, most of them were also asking for Isaac. Then there's the deal with the internet at home base, somebody screwed with the computer and now it can't remember the password for logging on to the internet and apparently no one at home base knows what it is and we have to call a technician to come over to type in the password for us and he hasn't been avialable since Friday. Next, there's the issue with my camera. On Saturday I went to Arusha again, this time all on my own and in one of the buses they have here, to get my camera fixed. I was in luck, they said they would have it fixed by tomorrow at 4. I show up on Sunday at 4:30 and everything is closed up. So today I now have to go again to pick up my camera, hopefully I'll never have to ride in those buses again since the drive is an hour and a half to Arusha.

Politically Charged Day

So much happened today that I can't wait until tomorrow to update you about what's going on in this neck of the woods. Before my placement I emailed my mom talking about the huge support Obama has here in Tanzania. There's been a Reggae song written about him, I saw a truck with his face decaled on it in red, white, and blue, plus one of my friends, a local here, is making t-shirts that say "Tanzania for Obama." (If you want one let me know, they're ten dollars and I'll buy them and you can pay me when I come home.) Little did I know how the rest of my day would go.
I went to juvy were we began to till the soil in the backyard so that tomorrow I can go out and buy some seeds for them and then we can start planting crops that will help feed the kids there (the government doesn't supply the juvenile hall with much money for food and the children usually go without lunch, one of the children has a type of fungus that grows in your hair when you are suffering from malnutrition.) As I left juvy a motorcade drove by, apparently the prime minister was coming to visit the secondary school across the street from juvy for some kind of graduation.
Once I was back at CCS, after lunch we all loaded into the vans to go to Arusha. When we gotthere we attended the Rwanda trials. It's was very intguiging to see all this going on, but I also got tired of the sheer beauracy of it all. Some much time was spent on trying to decide whether or not to use a document that had just been presented or whether or not to play an audio clip. At four o'clock I leave the court room because our driver and a good friend of mine, Simmon, told me that there was a camera repair shop in Arusha. Simmon is told there isn't enough time to go to the camera repair shop because most of the people decided to skip going to the market so they could stay and watch the trail until 4:30. That meant we would still have at least a half hour to go to the camera repair shop after everyone gets out at 4:30, but instead everyone decides to stay until five and then we end up having to head straight back to CCS, so I waited around for an hour doing nothing when I could have been getting my camera fixed. Needless to say, I was pretty pissed; here it's what we call TFT, Tanzanian Flexable Time, which I don't always like. If I had known that we would have to wait until 4:30 I wouldn't have left th courtroom at four and same goes for if I had known it would carry over to five. Luckily, Simmon told me that he heads home for Arusha on Friday so I can catch a ride with him there, he'll take me to the shop, then take me to the bus station afterward and set me up for a bus back to Moshi.
So today was pretty crazy and tomorrow we get to make this cool African painting called a batik. Please be sure to also check out the pictures I was finally able to post of my safari, the internet here is very slow and we only have one computer to share with all the volunteers here so it ended up taking me about two days to finally finish the whole post. Plus I had to condense the pictures to make the upload on this slow connection faster, so if the quality is bad I still have the CD so I can show you a better version of the picture once I get home. Also, a lot of people are telling me they are having trouble posting comments; you can comment if you have a gmail, livejournal, or AIM account. If it's not a gmail account then you need to click the bubble for open ID, plus remember to type in the verification word to assure the computer that you're not a robot. I'll let you know soon about progress with the camera repairs and growing crops at juvy.

Safari Animals Finally Released

Finally got the pictures on a CD and the time to put them on the blog. And just a side note, the title does not mean that the animals were caged and then release for our photographic pleasure, it simply means I finally have the pictures to release to my blog.This is Ngorongoro. It's a caldera created by tectonic movement, meaning that tectonic plates moved apart from each other creating a crater and since it can support life it's called a caldera. Ngorongoro collects a large amount of water and has a cooler temperature due to it's lowered elevation and surrounding mountain range.
We're pretty sure that the vultures are eating the baby wildebeest's mother. Its very sad but that's how things are in the wild.
Me chilling with the lions in the background. Within the safety of the safari jeep of course.
A flock of ostriches. The males are black and white while the females are gray.

I have no idea what these are called by they are a brilliant, shinny blue. But they also crowd around you while you're eating outside, similar to pigeons.

This is a puff adder, a highly venomous snake. Also a snake that was right in the middle of a hiking path at the visitor's center.

This bird is about three feet tall and looks like it should be hanging out with dinosaurs.
The Swahili word for hyena is Fisi. In America you hide your food from bears, here you hide your food from hyenas.
You can't see it, but there's a leopard up in that tree. It was scoping out the land trying to find prey. Once a leopard catches a meal, they're strong enough to be able to pull the carcass up into a tree, thus keeping the food for itself and away from hyenas and vultures.


Sunrise on the Serengeti.


We found this lion, still panting from recently killing a zebra. She was dragging the carcass to a rock formation that was likely how to her pride, much like Pride Rock in Lion King.

Rock formations like these. Not only are these home to lions, but occasionally they can be home to large pythons.


Of in the distance are five cheetahs, one of my favorite African animals.
This was a herd of migrating wildebeests that ran right in front of our jeep. The sight was just breath taking.
A family of warthogs. Everyone on the safari kept calling them pumbas, you have no idea how much you think of Lion King while you are here.
This was a very touching scene. We came upon a dying elephant, the one you can see lying down on its side in the middle. When elephants are dying the rest of their herd and some times even elephants not in the herd will gather around and comfort it as it dies. You can see in the picture there is a young elephant stroking the dying one with its trunk.
I have no idea what this thing is called, but it looks so cute and goofy. It reminds me of a wombat and is about the size of a small cat.



So we came to this pool that was absolutely filled with hippos. The whole time there were sounds of hippos grunting, blowing bubbles in the water, and farting. If you look very closely you can see some alligators in the back of the pond near the rocks. Hippos and gators have a symbiotic relationship; hippos come out of the water at night to graze and while they do so the gators help prevent any other animals trying to move in and the gators feed off of the hippos waste, which as you can see there is a lot of.

These elephants walked right in front of the jeep ahead of us, it was crazy how close they were.
The view as we descended into Ngorongoro, right before it started to rain.




Wildebeests and zebras live a symbiotic relationship as well. Zebras eat the top of the grass, while the wildebeests eat the bottom half. In addition, zebras have better eye sight that wildebeests and so they can get a heads up when danger is near, plus wildebeests are easier to catch than zebras which is an added security for the zebras.


We found yet another hippo pool, this one not nearly as crowded, plus I got a great picture of one of them yawning.
This male lion is sprawled out from what would be a lion's equivalent of a honeymoon. He had apparently recently finished with mating with the female of his pride every few minutes for six days straight.


I absolutely love monkeys. I would love to have one as a pet some day. But they're also the reason you always need to close all the doors and windows to the jeep.

These are my absolute favorite pictures. You think the other elephants were close, this elephant was just on the other side of the road, couldn't have been more than five feet. Not to mention this is the oldest elephant in Ngorongoro, a seventy year-old male. You can tell the age by the length of the tusks. Only males go down in to Ngorongoro, there isn't enough shady areas for females to protect their young. We started to refer to Ngorongoro as the "elephant resting home."

This bird was just an amazing shade of yellow and it had a song that was almost like sound effects for a science fiction movie. But like the brilliant blue birds they were just as much trying to get the scraps of whatever you were eating, much like pigeons.
Water buffaloes are highly aggressive, so it was a good thing that we had plenty of distance away from him.
One last look at Ngorongoro as we drive up and out of the crater.
And as we left the wildlife preserve, we were lucky enough to see a family of baboons playing in the parking lot.