Mwisho (The End)

"Though she was young, she was no timid child. She was curious about things. She liked to ask questions... She had a quick mind and she paid attention, picking up phrases of the language, learning how to cook rice and eat with her hands... It intrigued her, the land and the mystery. She loved the thatched roofs and the naked children, the wonderful simplicity of village life. Her eyes seemed to glow; she couldn't get enough of it. She wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty, in fact sometimes she seemed fascinated by it. Not blood and gore so much, but the adrenaline buzz that went with her job, that quick hot rush in your veins when you had to do things fast and right. She didn't back away from ugliness; she was quiet and steady. There was a new confidence in her voice, a new authority in the way she carried herself.

Her stare encompasses everything around her, the mountains, the villages, the trails and the trees and rivers and deep misted-over valley, the hurt and the hunger, and the joy. She said, " I know what you think, but it's not... it's not bad."

"You just don't know," she said. You hide in this little fortress behind your stuff and your comfort and you don't know. Sometimes I want to eat this place. Just swallow the whole country, the dirt and the death, I just want to have it there inside me. That's how I feel. It's like... this appetite for life. I get scared sometimes - lots of times - but it's not bad. You know? I feel close to myself. I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving, my skin and my fingernails, everything, it's like I'm full of electricity and I'm glowing in the dark - I'm on fire almost - I know exactly who I am. You can't feel like this anywhere else."

She said it just like that and they all just looked at her with those big round eyes, not believing a word. They don't understand zip, it's like trying to tell someone what chocolate tastes like. That's the thing. You gotta taste it. She was there. She was up to her eyeballs in it.

She came over clean but she got her hands dirty and afterwards she could never be the same. It was like an unnamed drug. The needle slips in and you know you're risking something and though it hurts, you can't stop. The endorphins start to flow, and the adrenaline, and you become intimate with the danger and the devastation. Not bad, she said. It made her glow in the dark. She wanted more. She wanted to penetrate deeper into the mystery of herself, and then that wanting became needing, and needing became craving and she had to go. She couldn't pretend she was the same.

She could look at you with this little smile in her eyes and she was lost inside herself. Lost inside the country and the people and the sadness and the joy. She was the poverty. She was the land. She was still that innocent bright eyed girl from a land far away. But now, she was on fire."

-Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

Meow Much Longer to Zanzibar?

Such the TIA day. We drove from Ngorongoro Crater to Moshi, TZ and what our tour guide Moses told us was going to be a 5 hour drive still had us on the road 15 hours later. Africa time took on a whole new meaning. We became marginally delirious, and it led to some interesting antics. I reminded my parents of the scene in the movie SuperTroopers where they ‘meow’ at a lady during a traffic stop, daring each other to say meow 10 times. Long story short, we started meowing at Moses. All of us.

‘Meow much longer ‘til we get to Arusha?’... ‘We’ve been driving a long time meow!’... ‘Hey Meowses, will you turn up the music?’

His grasp of English isn’t the best, so he honestly had no idea what was going on. So stellar.

The next day we were off to Zanzibar. Unfortunately we had another day of being on Africa Time, and we missed the last ferry at 4 o’clock. This turned out to be kind of awesome though, because it meant we got to fly to the island. We took off on a chartered 3 passenger plane (needless to say I felt like Angelina Jolie). The flight was surprisingly smooth and we finally made it to the tiny little Zanzibar airport. Customs consisted of giving a friendly wave to a sweet old lady, and security was nonexistent.

We spent our first day on the island just relaxing at our resort and enjoying the beautiful beach, delicious Swahili food, and warm weather. The next day, we ventured to Stone Town, Zanzibar’s heart and soul. I felt lost in time as we wondered the streets of old buildings and narrow alleyways. Old men playing mancala, little girls skipping home from school, and painters depicting their surroundings filled the streets. We had to work hard to shake off a few touts (or “ticks”) who tried to sell us tours or get us to come to their shops—it was a fun opportunity to practice my sassy Swahili though… “Tafadhali niache!” (the Swahili equivalent of “You best be stepping off.”)

It was so hard to leave the little paradise of Zanzibar after just 2 days, but I’m so glad we had the opportunity to experience it.

Calling a Vacation Audible

Greetings from Tanzania! Nothing about travelling/life in Africa is ever simple, so in retrospect we should have expected something like this to happen. Kezza Besigye, the opposition leader of the FDC party in Uganda, is under house arrest. He has been leading protests in the country lately over cost of living, and with Museveni being sworn in for his 4^th term as president last week, things have been tense. There were several riots protests scheduled for the time we were supposed to be in Kampala, so we decided to call a vacation audible and head straight to Tanzania.

We were heading to Ngorongoro, Tanzania, a beautiful national park that is home of the largest unflooded caldera in the world. Our new Tanzanian tour guide, Moses, told us it would be about a 5 hour drive from Nairobi to Ngorongoro. Fourteen hours later, after bribing negotiating with the gatekeepers of the national park because we were there after they closed the entrance, we arrived at the beautiful Ngorongoro Lodge. As we pull up to the front entrance, our trusty driver Charles laughs, “Oh, there is an elephant there! We can not go there!”. Assuming he’s kidding I don’t think twice until I feel the car quickly reversing. An elephant had climbed up the crater to the lodge and was standing in front of the huge glass entrance doors, just hanging out, so we couldn’t get into the hotel. I later found out that the elephant comes most days to get a drink of water, and the hotel gatekeeper politely opens and shuts the gate for it each time. What can I say? TIA.

It’s low season for tourism in East Africa (high season starts in about 2 weeks, so we’re just in the knick of time) so we basically had the amazing Ngorongoro Lodge to ourselves. We also visited the nearby Olduvai Gorge, the “cradle of humanity”. The lava rock layers there contain various human ancestors’ remains, and because the rock can be easily dated there it gives a nice little timeline and essentially proves human evolution. My dad and I were really into it and had a lot of fun learning about the history of the beautiful gorge.

Next up: Moshi, Tanzania at the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro, then off to Zanzibar!

Ngorongoro Crater

The front of the lodge where the elephant blocked our path

Olduvai Gorge

The Mara, Revisited

My parents and I headed to the Maasai Mara so they could experience a Kenyan safari. It was awesome—we saw the Big Five (elephants, leopards, rhinos, buffalo, and lions) along with all sorts of other cool animals and wildlife. I can tell I’ve been in Africa a while though; you know you’re getting jaded when you don’t even turn around in your seat to see a herd of zebras anymore.

The most interesting part of the Mara to me was visiting a traditional Maasai village. To put it delicately it was a tourist trap, but to go deeper it felt so disheartening. They tell the tourists what they want to hear (“We don’t get many visitors” “The money you give us goes to the school” “My grandfather made this bracelet [with a ‘MADE IN CHINA’ inscription on the inside]”). With so much revenue coming in from tourism, you’d think they would live in decent conditions, but unfortunately that’s not the case. The manyattas they stay in are cramped (understatement of the year), filled with smoke from their cooking fires, and dark. When you go outside to catch a breath of fresh air you’re thrown by the smell of cow dung, which litters the whole village due to their cattle sleeping in the center of all the houses every night. The dung also attracts flies, which cover the faces of all of the children. Female circumcision is a traditional rite that is still practiced despite its danger (women who are circumcised have much more difficult childbirths) and questionable regard of basic human rights. Some of the children go to school, some stay home and herd the animals. Almost no one goes to high school. Traveling to Nairobi is practically unheard of. There are no trash cans—garbage is simply thrown on the ground.

We visited the Maasai primary school, and the children were such lights. They were shy at first, but when my mom, a retired teacher, chatted with the first graders a little bit she was able to get them to open up. They showed off their workbooks and sang the ABC’s for us. It kills me that these kids won’t get to go to high school. That they return home every night to cramped houses and parents who are so bent on preserving their culture that they’ve morphed into caricatures. That they don’t have a choice.

All Together Now

My mom and dad are finally here! I was so excited to see them at the airport that as I peeked through the glass pane windows into customs and finally saw them among the pack of white people I shrieked, “It’s them, it’s them!” and jumped around in a circle. One of my finer moments.

I loved having the opportunity to show them around Nairobi for our first couple of days. We went to an elephant orphanage our first morning (my mom left wanting to adopt one...seriously) and then went to Masrawy and the National Museum in the afternoon. The next day we went to Nazarene Primary School in Kibera in the morning to drop off some books for the kids. I’m glad my parents got to see Kibera; it gives them a better sense of my experience than just doing the fun touristy things. After seeing the slum we went to the top of a conference center to get a view of the whole city—so beautiful! We ended our time in Nairobi with a trip to Carnivore, the famous exotic African restaurant. They used to serve zebra meat until bushmeat was outlawed in Kenya, but even with the new restrictions they don’t disappoint. We ate camel, ox balls, and crocodile. It was a beast of a feast!

Now off to Maasai Mara on safari :)

My Journey-- a movie

I have nothing to do here except write my papers while I wait for my parents, so that has led to new and beautiful forms of procrastination :)

Here's the story, in pictures, of my journey in Kenya.

Nursing School and Nairobi

I have exciting news to share—I got accepted to the UW School of Nursing for next fall!! I’m so excited, this allows me to follow my dreams and do the work I’ve been learning so much about during my stay in Kenya. It will allow me the opportunities to return to Africa (and Vietnam!) many times during my life, and I feel so blessed. Now my grades for this semester don’t matter as much, so I’ve obviously had just tons of motivation to finish writing my final 2 research papers… haha oh well, I’m just as happy as can be :-)

I can’t believe I’ve been back in Nairobi for a week already. The first few days were filled with joyous MSID reunions/shenanigans and our final exams for development, country analysis, and public health. Now I’m finishing up the final papers and tomorrow I’ll start working at Jukumu Letu for a week. Jukumu Letu means “our responsibility” in Kiswahili, and one of my infectious disease nurses from my leg saga in Wisconsin has been to Kenya and worked there before so she set me up. It’s a free daycare center for slum children so that their parents can have an opportunity to go earn income, and when I went and visited a couple of months ago it seemed so great; the children are adorable of course! My parents come in just under a week-- after leaving the comfort and love of my Mama and Baba in Msambweni last week I'm definitely ready for my Mom and Dad to be here. I'm so excited to show them the country that has been my home for the past few months.

I can’t believe the rhythm I have in Nairobi. It’s a city that feels so familiar to me, despite only living here for 6 weeks during classes. I have familiar journeys, comfortable places, friends from different walks of life than myself, and adventures on my list.

Msambweni Movie

The henna tattoos are beginning to fade, but I'm holding tight to the memories of Msambweni.