Pole F*cking Sana

Pole sana literally means "very sorry," but it is also used very commonly for expressing sympathy and in both cases today warrented many pole sanas.
Yesterday I left CCS and boarded my plane, the whole time I was worried about how they would react to the masai spears in my bag, luckily nothing happened and tomorrow I'll be shipping them home. When I got to the check in desk I couldn't seem to find the boarding pass that I had spent half of the day trying to print out, but thankfully the woman at the desk didn't even ask for any codes or anything, she just looked at my passport and then printed out my boarding pass.
During the flight I talked to a man in his 60s who had quite the story to tell. He apparently moved from the Netherlands to Kenya when he was 18 because at that time it was compulsory for every Dutch citizen to serve two years in the military. Apparently he told them that he ws going to make toruble for them so it would just be better for everyone if he just was sent away and so he ended up volunteering in Kenya and he fell in love with the country. He also fell in love with a woman there but she ended up using his Dutch citizenship to somehow run off to Canada, I'm not exactly sure how that works but I didn't feel like pressing the subject. Anyway, he found another woman he fell in love with and married in Tanzania and they had several children together before she tragically died, again I don't know how because I didn't want to press the subject. This man was certainly a seasoned traveler and I gave him my email when we got off the plane because he said that there might be a place for me to stay in Amsterdam at his son's friends place.
So then for the next few hours I sat around with the other volunteers who had the same flight as me, they were all waiting for their connections and I was in no rush. It wasn't until about two hours after we had gotten off the plane that it occured to me that maybe I should go pick up my checked luggage (i.e. my humongous backpack) but I also felt that since it had already been two hours that another two hours couldn't hurt that much. I was glad to relax and just have some last minute chats with my friends before they left to be seen again at an unknown time. Then I finally go to pick up my backpack, it obviously wasn't going to be on the conveyor belt by this point so I just went up to the service desk to pick it up from storage. But then they couldn't find it, after a few minutes of stressfully searching around the baggage claim room to see if it was lying around anywhere I began to fill out the form for where they should send my backpack when they finally find it. I had just one more line of information to fill out when suddenly one of the attendants popped out of no where with my backpack, I was so immensly relieved, it turns out that it was just hidden behind some other luggage.
So I've finally got my backpack strapped on and I'm ready to start my Eurotrip. I take a train into Amsterdam Central Station and then I'm lost. Dutch public transit for the most part is totally void of English directions. After a few minutes of wondering around, not sure what I was doing and frequently refering to my euro hostels guide book, I find a info booth where I'm able to buy a tram ticket. I follow the directions and get off at the proper stop for my first attempt at finding a hostel for the night, but it turns out those directions where a little hard to follow once I got off the tram. It wasn't much of the fault of the book, it's just that there aren't too many street signs here and so it was hard to figure out which street I was walking down exactly. After walking in circles a few times I finally come to a place that I had stopped at before but for some reason didn't think it was the one I was looking for, which it turns out it was. The hostel is freaking awesome and I'll be enjoying the next three days here.
Then I got some directions from the person at the desk in the hostel on where to get my camera fixed. They directed me to a really nice, professional place, but unfortunately they themselves don't do repairs and they would have to send my camera to the Fujifilm base in the Netherlands, which they predicted could take from two weeks to two months. Fortunatly, they directed me to a place that does their own repairs and could possibly repair it sooner.
So today was crazy, but I was lucky on multiple occasions and I'm excited and optimistic for what is to come. I've already met two Slovaks who have invited me to come visit them in Slovania, which I think I might just take them up on.

I'm Leaving On A Jet Plane, Don't Know When I'll Be Back Again

Well today is the faithful day for my departure from Tanzania. Soon I shall begin the next leg of my journey, backpacking through Europe for two months. Yesterday was my 21st birthday and I couldn't have thought of a better send off.
Last night all the volunteers at CCS went out to dinner at Indoitaliano (a resturaunt that served Indian and Italian food and local haunt for most CCS volunteers). Of course, because it was my 21st birthday everyone was trying to get me as drunk as possible, but I held my ground and am happy to say that I only had three beers and a glass of wine that night, I was definatly a goofy person but drinking to the point of having a hang over the next morning is never something that seemed appealing to me. After dinner we all went out to the Glacier bar. Glacier is mostly a wide open field sprinkled with occasional tables and chairs, then there is an open air bar and a stage for live bands that come to play every Friday. Seeing as how this is Tanzania the live band is always, ALWAYS regea, but I've never had "Happy Birthday" sung to me in a regea style before so it was pretty nice.
When we came back to CCS popcorn had been made by the cooks, a regular occurance late at night, and we all sat down and chatted while munching on popcorn. Then without notice everyone started singing "Happy Birthday" for what must have been the fifth time that day, but then they handed me a birthday card signed by everyone. In conclusion though I dearly missed celebrating my birthday with all my friends back home, my 21st birthday was a wonderful and touching moment with the best gift ever, backpacking in Europe for two months.
So I'll be arriving in Amsterdam airport April 26th and for the first few hours I'll be enjoying the city with my friend and fellow volunteer, Deveny, who has a seven hour lay over in the Amsterdam airport. Then I plan to look for a hostel and then who knows. I've tried to plan only to the point that I'll be prepared, but flexible enough for me to do and go wherever I want. The basic structure of my plan is to go from Amsterdam to Berlin, to Hamburg, to Prauge, to Vienna, to Salzburg, to Munich. I might also possibly pass through Amsterdam again to cross the English channel and go visit some friends I made here at CCS in England.
If anyone has recommendations of something I should do or see, please let me know. I'm hoping that my camera, which broke two weeks into being in Tanzania, can be fixed in Amsterdam. I'm also quiet happy because instead of paying an arm and a leg to ship out my Bushmen bow and arrows, one of my masai spears, and a hand carved wooden bowl from Kilimanjaro the safari company that I went on safari with, Bushmen Expeditions, is going to pack them all up and I can just check it as my other piece of luggage and I can ship it all out of Amsterdam, which will be much cheaper.

I Told The Witch Doctor You Didn't Love Me True

I realized that my last post ended mid sentence, so please look over it again so that you can read the exciting conclusion which I've just added.
So on Saturday I called my friend Justin with no idea what was in store for the next day. I woke up Sunday thinking it would be a slow relaxing day much like most of the other weekends I've spent here. I walked over to have breakfast, which is where one of the volunteers, Aubrey, asked if I wanted to go to see a witch doctor. To be fair, this wasn't totally out of the blue, three other volunteers had gone to see the witch doctor on Saturday and I hadn't gone because I thought it would cost too much money, but when they came back talking about their amazing experience I knew I had to go. That night I was talking with Aubrey and Scott who ended up telling me that they were heading over to see him on Sunday, but they didn't think I'd be able to join in on such short notice.
So when I woke up on Sunday I had no thought in my mind about going to see a witch doctor that day. But sure enough, I did, we took a safari jeep to his house because it was up in the foothills of Kilimanjaro. Now when you think of a witch doctor you probably visualize a man in a loin cloth with all kinds of crazy jewelry on, maybe some shrunken heads or skulls, and a chicken head on the end of a staff; but when we got there the witch doctor was dressed in normal western clothing, with a decent grasp on English and living in a home free of chicken blood sprayed across the walls or any disembodied limbs of animals hanging from the ceiling.
First thing he did was take us around his large herbal garden and tell us the different properties of various plants. Then we walked in to this small, modest building with colored glass windows and we sat on reed mats and he told us what he did and why. He told us how he no longer uses the various magical divining tools that most witch doctors use because he found that people begin to have more faith in the tool than the actual healer. Afterward he told us to go out into the garden and find a place that seemed to call to us and sit there until he came to talk to us one on one. When he came to me we had a great discussion about my life, my spirituality, who I want to be, and who I want to love. Some of it he said was based off of where I was sitting and what direction I was facing, but also I knew that part of it was just that he was extremely good at reading people. But also I found that witch doctors here in Africa function more like a therapist than some man who uses his mojo on you to make you better.
Maybe people may think that the stuff that the witch doctor practices in mumbo jumbo, but I say that it should be something that you listen to with an open mind and then follow the advice that sounds right to you, sometimes you already know what to do to make your life better, but you need someone else to tell you before you'll actually do it.

Swept Away

So I woke up this morning and there was no power, no water, and a big chunk of our fence missing. And now I shall explain why this all happened.
Last night was a night like any night. Some volunteers and I headed across the street to Mzungu Bar to get some drinks and meet up with some local friends. We were excited because that night we were heading out to watch a football (soccer) match between Liverpool and Chelsea. Tanzanians are crazy about football and quite a few are huge Manchester United fans, don't discuss football with them unless you really know what you're talking about. As we were at Mzungu Bar it started pouring rain, so we called a cab. But the cab wanted to charge way too much because they felt like they could hike the price since it was raining. But we showed them, we walked, which went fine but man was it muddy. We got there and enjoyed the game, professional soccer players have inhuman skills out there on the field, but some of us were saying how we would like it a lot more if they wouldn't flop all the time, faking an injury to try and get a player carded.
We walked back from watching the game, got rained on, got even more muddy, but for the most part it was fine. But as soon as we had stepped inside an absolute torrent started falling outside. So afterward the power went out. Later on many of the volunteers were woken up by an odd chanting, is was the nearby police academy doing their daily march, something which is usually drowned out by the sound of the fans in our rooms which weren't working due to lack of electricity. Some of the volunteers had also been awakened by the sound of a part of the CCS fence falling over, though not many because the rain was so hard and so loud against the tin roof that something like a fence falling over could be drowned out by it's sound.
To understand what a force of nature this is, you must first understand the nature of the CCS fence. The fence is comprised of huge bougainvillea bushes that have grown around chicken wire that is held up by wooden beams, so these things are pretty sturdy and a commonly used form of fencing in Moshi. But essentialy in the middle of the night a flash flood had torn through our compound and in the process totally downed a part of our fence. When I walked to placement today there were small uprooted trees on the side of the road, the terrain had completely changed by the amounts of sand that had been displaced, and the mud was rediculous. One of the volunteers who goes to juvy, Nicole, lost here sandals to the mud and had to go back to get rain boots. Later that day I found that businesses had been flooded, crops and homes washed away, and generally many lives were shaken and/or ruined by the rains. To try to lighten spirits I said, "maybe people were praying too hard for the rain."

Face Scars, Bushmen, and Waterfalls, Oh My!

Hello everyone, so my face injury has healed nicely in a cool scar that makes me look tough. Some of you may be asking right now, "Wait, face injury, what face injury is this," well about three weeks ago I cut up my face pretty badly, I didn't say anything in my blog because I was thinking of not saying anything so that I could come up with all kinds of exaggerated stories of what happened to me. But now the truth is out, I was working at the Tuleeni orphanage and I was giving one of the orphans a piggy back ride. I was chasing after a chicken while I was carrying the child on my back and everyone was getting a real kick out of the whole thing until I lost my footing and fell. I didn't want to put my hands out to stop myself because then the boy on my back would get hurt, so instead I ended up breaking the fall with my face. According to my friend and fellow volunteer it looked like in the cartoons where there's a cloud of dust and a scramble of legs. When the dust settled the child was fine, but I had blood running down my face. I didn't know how hurt I was but I could feel something warm on my face so I turned to Graeme and asked, "How's my face," to which he responded, "It's not nearly as bad as it looks." I cleaned up the cuts on my face and, with much pain, rubbed them with an antiseptic wipe, but when I was done with that the boy I had been playing with was nowhere to be found. He ended up being in one of the bedrooms hiding from me because he apparently felt it was his fault. I told the women working there to make sure he knows he did nothing wrong as I was leaving. So now, fast forwarding back to the present, my face is fully healed and I have a cool scar.
So I'm sure you're dying to know about my Bushmen bow hunting expedition. The first day of the safari we didn't spend any time with the Bushmen because they hunt in the morning and it was too long of a drive to try to get to them in the morning of the first day. So instead of seeing the Bushmen we visited a blacksmith tribe that melts down broken padlocks to make jewelry, knives, and arrow heads. The Bushmen buy these arrow heads for their arrows, so the visit was still related to our Bushmen trip, plus I got to work the billows and I bought a brass bracelet so it was definitely worth while. Afterwards we visiting an onion farm, which made no sense to me at all, but the children we saw along the way were adorable. There were also these super tiny puppies eating from a trash pile and just in front of them was a hen with a group of chicks, third world cuteness at its finest. We then arrived at a lake as the sun was setting, the view was absolutely breath taking and we got some amazing pictures that I'll have to show you at a later date. We went back to the camp ground which we had all to ourselves and sat around the camp fire for a long time talking about anything and everything.
The next day was the anticipated Bushmen hunt. We got up early in the morning and our guide, Abbas, kept telling us to wrap up even though it must have been only around 60 or 70 degrees Fahrenheit. We got to the tribe, they handed us bows and arrows, and before we knew what was happening next they were off into the bush. We tried to keep up with them, but those guys move fast, not to mention there were four Spaniard women with us from another safari who were really slowing us down. There were a few times were Graeme and I almost got something, but no luck, only the Bushmen caught anything and they only caught some squirrels and birds. The Bushmen started up a fire and didn't even skin the animals, they were too small, the just threw them on the fire and then ate the meat straight off the bone when they were ready. When we got back to the Bushmen village we bought the bows we used, sorta, on the hunt and then the women laid out jewelry on a donkey skin that they wanted us to buy. The girls who were with us wanted to buy some things, but before they could get to it the Spaniards bought nearly everything that was on the skin. Then chaos ensued, suddenly everyone picked up the left over jewelry and rushed up to us, all of them trying to sell us their stuff at the same time. They would put their wares on us no matter how many times we said "hapana asante" (no thank you), but in the middle of the commotion I went of to the side where I saw the men tanning the hides of their kills. Apparently another group had gotten an antelope and then I saw a pair of horns on a nearby tree branch, which I bought for 5,000 shillings (less than five dollars). It wasn't until one of the men turned it upright that I realised how freshly the horns had been removed from its owner because then blood started to drip from the bottom of the horns. Needless to say, the drive back to the camp sight was a smelly one, but our safari group salted the horns and properly wrapped them so that the rest of the drive home was much more pleasant smelling.
And now for what happened today. Today I went with some other volunteers to a waterfall, the one I mentioned before that you could jump off of. Today the newest group of volunteers was going on a CCS programmed trip to Marangu, which ended up being the same area that our waterfall was in, so it was fun to see the puzzled looks from the volunteers as we waved to them as we drove by. Later, the dalah dalah (a large van which is the primary mode of public transportation here) that we had rented out had to stop before we came to our destination. It had rained the day before and the road was too steep for the dalah dalah to be able to drive up it, so we got out and walked. But it was well worth the walk when we came to the waterfall, it was absolutely beautiful and surrounded by stunning tropical plants. Once again, some wonderful pictures were taken which I will have to show you at a later date. The jump into the pool below the waterfall must have been about thirty feet up, but I did it and it was amazing. When I jumped for the first time, I wanted to do a cannon ball, but I slightly uncurled from my ball when the thought struck me, "holy crap, I'm still falling." When we were done at the waterfall we walked back to the house of the person who apparently owned the waterfall and had lunch. As we ate our lunch the rain began to pour outside, we had to wait for a while once we had finished our lunch because our drivers were out for their lunch. Then they called us to say they were on their way and we should start walking. We walked through the rain to the place we were supposed to meet the dalah dalah, the only problem was that it wasn't there. We took cover in a nearby bar as we called them to find out where they were. As we waited the locals at the bar warmly welcomed us and offered us large amounts of mbegae (locally brewed banana beer which is served in a cup the size of the mega gulps at seven eleven).
So it goes without saying that the last few days have been pretty exciting.

Old Chris Marten Had A Farm, Ee Ay Ee Ay Oh

So since the rainy season has finally started in Moshi we started planting the seeds for the farm in the back of juvy today, which ended up being more exasperating then I first expected.
My plans for the farm were that we would make rows of mounds in which we would plant the seeds and they would be planted in a pattern of corn, beans, corn, beans. This planting pattern, to the best of my knowledge, makes it so that the beans put nitrogen into the soil as the corn removes it and, in addition, the bean stalks can grow up the corn stalks, making it so that we don't have to put in anything for the beans to grow on. I told this to the people at juvy, Mr. Gumbo, Brother Toll, and Agnes, but they all brushed it away saying that we would plant everything seperate from each other. The thing that irritated me the most was how they seemed to treat me like I didn't know what I was doing and so my planting advice was irrelivent, obviously I'm not an experienced farmer but these people keep on asking me for help and in that moment it felt like they didn't want me to actually help.
And then there was the actual planting of the seeds. Once we finally got the kids out to work on the feild they just started making rows of holes in the ground with their hoes, no measurement or anything. As I said I was under the impression of us making rows of mounds, so that the water could collect in the space between the mounds and this better irrigate the feild. Once again, I'm not an expericened farmer, but I felt like this was some worth while knowledge that they were just brushing aside.
After planting the whole area designated for the corn, I was ready to move on to planting the peanuts and beans, but they said that I'd have to wait for tomorrow, yet another moment of exasperation for me. I go back to teaching the children in the classroom, but today a few of them weren't listening to anything I was saying. So in summary today was a day I felt contiually disrespected. Agnes ecspecially made me feel disrespected, when I told her how I wanted to plant the seeds today she laughed at me and said no. It's really hard to keep the enthusiasm to want to help people when they don't seem to appreciate it or want to accept it, but this could just be a bad day, we shall see.