Tanzania (Or, Why My Life is Like The Lion King)

LWe spent this past week in Tanzania, exploring Arusha town, Maasai land, and going on safari in Ngorongoro crater. To help all you 'Muricans understand my experience, I'll explain it in a way we can ALL understand: THE LION KING. 

Although they currently do not look very wild, never underestimate the wildebeest. Irony: Lions actually prefer to hunt wildebeest because they're so slow. Mufasa = fail. 

Pumbaas: Not as cute in real life.

This haughty-looking thing reminded me of Zazu.

Rafiki means friend in Kiswahili! (Baboons in the parking lot before safari.)

 

One day, Simba, all of this will be yours. (Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania)

Giraffes on the rim of the Ngorongoro crater

Trip to Kisumu

First, I just need to show you this. Prawn-cocktail-flavored chips.

What the what?

Moving on.













So, here's the thing. I thought I didn't love Kenya. But, after my 9-hour road trip west to Kisumu, I decided that I just didn't like NAIROBI itself! Kisumu, a smaller city, is located on Lake Victoria, next to gorgous mountains, nested in a lush, green valley.

 The scenery, in a weird way, reminded me a little bit of Ireland -- kelly-green farmland divided haphazardly by dark hedges. Or maybe it's because the only two countries I've been in outside of North America are Ireland and Kenya. Still, I'm going off of what I know.


I'll be living in Kisumu during the month of November, so a couple friends and I took a trip to check out apartments and to see the city. Nairobi is bustling, crowded, polluted, and full of trash. Kisumu seems less urban, cozier, cleaner. I think it's because I'm a midwestern girl at heart, but I love the quieter feeling of the town.

The tea plantations outside the city

The city itself

Gorgeous, no? I met a few incredible people on my trip, too. I'm now conducting research with the Chief Public Health Officer in Kisumu about the prevalence of parasitic worms in bovine carcasses in Kisumu slaughterhouses. Awesome? Yes. Disgusting? Absolutely.

I also met the Assistant Director of the CDC Kisumu offices, who invited me to conduct research there this summer and after I graduate. Tempting...

Headed to Tanzania this weekend for a 10-day trip. I'm sure I'll have lots and lots to say when I return!

My Weekend, in Pictures

So. I'm mildly obsessed with Instagram and Hipstamatic, iPhone apps that make your pictures look much cooler than they actually are. And I'm all about trying to make myself look cool.

I'm going to take a different approach to blogging today, and give you some snapshots of my weekend! Enjoy.

Eric and I went shopping for pancake and cupcake supplies.

 Ever wonder where those clothes you donated to Goodwill went?

My first baking experience in Kenya. 

I would consider it... a partial success. For more pics, check out my other blog: www.n-omnom.blogspot.com

 

Still went out and bought a muffin anways. 

Friday Futzing

Today, I'm asking you to indulge me.

I've been trying so hard to fully engage in Kenyan life, and I haven't allowed myself to fall into dreamy reminiscences of American culture.

Well, until now.

When I was in the hospital, there wasn't much to do. I watched a lot of crappy American movies, finished a few books. Most of the time I slept. But sometimes, I let myself think about American food. And once I started, I was lost.

Today, dear readers, we're going to explore a small sample of things I miss about America. A futile exercise, perhaps, but next time you partake in any of the following, just think of me and savor it a little more. Send me the yum vibe thousands of miles away.

THINGS I MISS (A PARTIAL LIST)

When I was in the hospital, I fantasized about cheese. CHEEEEEEESEEEE. You don't know what you got til it's gone, Americans. I wanted a grilled cheese so hard. I wanted my mom's Brie with fig jam spread on top of it. And the first meal I had after I was discharged? Pizza. 

Was it good pizza? Not really. 

Am I still craving cheese? Of course I am!

Cereal. Oh, dear god, cereal. Those of you who know me well know I am obsessed with cereal. I eat a hearty bowl of Kashi GoLean Crunch, or GoLean Crisp, or Total, or Cracklin' Oat Bran, or Frosted Mini Wheats, every single day of my life. Many times, I eat two. I've been known to eat three bowls of cereal in one day. 

They just don't really DO cereal here. It breaks my little heart.  I feel like : ( 

For breakfast, every day here, we have PB and J. EVERY DAY! And what's our snack during chai time? PB AND J! Have you ever lived on a diet of 50% PB and J? I have, actually, but that was in elementary school. My taste buds have grown up.

Milk. I am almost lost for words on this one. Milk and I have a long and extensive history together. I drink milk at home instead of water. Cold, nonfat milk, every morning, afternoon and night. I am a discerning lactose consumer, as I prefer the freshly-delivered local milk to the store-bough organic milk. Kenyans do not drink nonfat milk. There is not a single bag (yes, they do milk in bags, like those Canadians) of nonfat milk in the Nakumatt. It's all WHOLE milk. And they don't even drink GLASSES of milk -- it's only used for cooking and for chai. 

There are few things in my life I would not give up for a glass of cold milk right now.

Well, we all know how I feel about cupcakes. Here are a few words: Obsession. Love. Passion. Addiction. I'm in a very serious and dedicated relationship with cupcakes. But Kenyans, although they're skilled at many thing, are just awful at baking. AWFUL. After three months of baking delicious noms twice or three times a week, it's been a difficult transition.

Sidenote: For those of you that don't know, I have another blog where I write about baking : www.n-omnom.blogspot.com. Actually, most of you don't know about this, because my mother is the sole subscriber to that blog. This seems to me like the epitome of "unconditional love," i.e. I will follow my daughter's blog even though it just spams up my inbox.

However, there are a few things that have quenched my cravings in Kenya. There are a few "American-style" restaurants here, which serve quasi-American food. I've had a fantastic brownie at one of these places, and there's an AWESOME fro-yo place in the mall. And today, I bought this:

And as long as I have Nutella, I think I can survive.

Kijiji Living

It’s been a ridiculously long time since I last posted, and for that, dear readers, I apologize. I’ve been all the way to the coast and back, spent 10 days in a village, three in a hospital bed, and one in Mombasa, and now I’m back in Nairobi. It’s hard to explain everything that’s happened; it’s been a whirlwind few weeks. Let me expound upon a few choice topics, and maybe that will give you a general idea.

ON HAVING NO TOILETS:

After a few days in the village, I decided I could deal with the heat. I could deal with the food, with eating from a communal plates with dirty hands, with drinking from cups cleaned with dirt and gravel. I could deal with covering my head in public at all times. The one thing I decided I could not live without was a toilet.

The technique for using a latrine, or “squatty potty,” is one that I developed over the course of a few days. I’m not going to lie. I peed on my feet more than once. I almost stepped into the hole. Buzzing black flies zoomed up into my hoo-ha. This happened.

ON FOOD:

Some strange proclivities of Shirazipeople: Spaghetti with sugar and oil for breakfast. White-bread and margarine sandwiches for lunch. Fried mandazi donuts every morning for breakfast. Milk in my tea that was in a cow’s udder about 15 minutes beforehand. Octopus for dinner. Watching a chicken get beheaded, run around headless for 5 minutes, be chased by my 7-year-old sister with a severed chicken’s head, and then eat that selfsame chicken for dinner. (It was delicious.)

ON SILENCE:

The language barrier did not really faze me at all. I suppose it’s because silence, in general, is something I enjoy. My family and I exchanged perhaps three or four sentences over a meal, and we spent a lot of time sitting outside and watching the world pass by. I really enjoyed the pace of life in the village. Everything gets done, eventually, but there’s no rush to do it.

ON BUGS:

I returned from the village with 32 bug bites. Oh, livin it. Also, I am proud to be the first person in the group who got a jigger in my foot. “What, pray tell, is a jigger?” you ask. Well. A jigger is a nasty-ass bug that burrows into your foot and lays eggs, and if you don’t remove it with a sharp pin, the eggs burst into your foot. MMM DELICIOUS. Anyways, I got mine removed when it was pretty small. I showed it to my homestay family, and my father returned with a 7-inch knife in his hand and offered to “kutoa funza.” I replied that I was going to “kutoa funza” with my first-aid kit at school, but thanked him profusely for the offer.

ON BABA YANGU:

My homestay father was hilarious. Here’s a choice pic of him that will tell you everything you need to know. And yes, he did wear a towel for the majority of each day. 

ON THE MOMBASA HOSPITAL:

My stomach has really great timing, apparently. I was fine throughout the entire village stay, but as soon as we returned to Mombasa, I got sick. Like… really sick. I was admitted to the hospital and spent the next three days watching crappy American movies: Fly Away Home, G.I. Joe, Transformers 2. Kenyan hospitals are not exactly comparable to American hospitals. For example, each time my nurse would take my vitals, she would write my pulse and temperature down on her hand. With a pen. But whatever they gave me worked, because I’m feeling much better now.

So now we’re back in Nairobi for a few weeks, preparing for our Kiswahili exam and working on group projects. It’s nice to be back; my friends and I went to a great concert featuring Eve and Shaggy (Yes, that “It Wasn’t Me” Shaggy), which apparently all the white people in Kenya attended. It’s good to be back.