Saturday 6/20

Hey everyone, sorry I haven't posted since the safari but there really hasn't been much going on and it felt monotonous to be repeating most of what happened in the first week. My host family is still awesome, and they took us to a tailor on Thursday to get some dresses made which is pretty exciting. It only cost about $12 for the fabric and about $25 to get two dresses made especially for me! I'm not sure if I mentioned it earlier but this week I got assigned to a new service learning agency called Dream Center where they treat patients with HIV/AIDS for free. I did the filing and the pharmacy log number adding for the past two months (just going through and totaling how much of each med was dispensed then carrying the totals over to the next page and so on). On Tuesday, instead of doing this I went to a different orphanage to tour and they showed us their new center (which opens at the end of the month) for older children who have been kicked out of the system at the age of five. It was really amazing and if I didn't have strong roots at home I would seriously consider moving here to be a part of their new staff. Thursday afternoon, before the dress maker and after the service learning and lunch, in the place of our normal OU class time we went to tour one of the agencies that the boys have been working at called the Watoto foundation. It's a home and training center for street boys. They take in up to 64 boys from the ages of 13-18 and put them through primary school onsite in the mornings, then in the afternoon the boys train for jobs like carpentry, metalwork, etc. They also have their own cows, pigs, chickens, and rabbits (the rabbits are kept just as pets and to sell rather than for the boys to eat) that the boys care for and a garden and farm that they maintain. It was a really excellent place!

Friday after school (our last day of classes!) we went home and on the way picked up a hairdresser who was a friend of the family and it took six long hours and a lot of pain but I now have an African hairstyle (temporarily of course).

Today we shook things up a bit because we left for our trip to Zanzibar and Dar Es Salaam that will last all week. We were supposed to leave at 10 am this morning but our flight got delayed and moved to a different airport so we had to wait at TCDC until 6:30 pm to leave for the airport. The flight was short, only an hour, and we made it safe and sound. The hotel is pretty nice:

Also here's our tiny plane and what I had for lunch:

Sunday 6/21

So today was the best day I could possibly imagine, probably equal to safari day I'd say. We started out by having breakfast on the roof of the hotel which had a beautiful view:

Then we got on a boat called Mr. Bean and rode for maybe 40 minutes to just off the coast of another of Zanzibar's islands and put on all of our snorkeling gear (which by the way was a huge challenge with this hair) and got to go into the water and see all of the coral reefs and fish and it was sooo amazing! I saw so many different kinds of fish including a lot of the kinds of fish from Finding Nemo lol. I don't have any pictures of this part of my journey because I was paranoid about getting my phone wet even when we were in the boat, but I know some people got some pictures so if they put them on Facebook I'll put them in here later. We snorkeled for quite a while and early on I felt like the flippers were being more counterproductive than helpful so I took them off and put them in the boat, which turned out to be a mistake because it was so much harder to make it to the beach which was quite a ways from the boats, but I did eventually make it waayy after everyone else. Then I collected some really beautiful shells and thankfully the boats came to pick us back up so that we didn't have to swim all that way back with our shells. Next we rode to yet another island and it was so beautiful too and I will have other people's pictures to post eventually. Here we got to see some of the biggest turtles I've ever even imagined possible, the oldest of which was 198 years old! I got to hold one of the younger ones and will get that picture eventually. 

After this we headed back to the hotel and changed for lunch, then went to another hotel for that. It's Ramadan though and Zanzibar is 95% Muslim, so we all had to go to the one hotel which was the only place serving food because Muslims can't eat or drink anything during the day during Ramadan, so we kind of overwhelmed the hotel. Next we went on a tour of stone town, the area of the city where we're staying. This is the museum, which the guide said was at one time the biggest building in East Africa (it was one of the first Sultan's palaces):

Then we went to the site of the Zanzibar slave trading center, which now has a church built over it:

We got to see the slave chambers in the underground area which had been preserved and it was incredibly sad. The guide told us that 75 women and children were kept in the teeny tiny room for two days without food and water and that 50 men were kept in the other even smaller room for that long before the sale. They frequently died of starvation, heat stroke, and other ailments and the other slaves just had to stay in there with the bodies. Then they were taken to a whipping post located where the church is now and were whipped mercilessly and if they cried the price was lowered because they weren't strong. It was truly terrible.

Next we saw the other main Christian church here:

And this plaque about Freddy Mercury, who was born here:

After this we went on a sunset cruise and it was amazing:

Lastly we got henna done and went to dinner at a street vendor place:

I really love my henna and want it to be permanent, but I know that that will make it very difficult to get a job in the future.

Saturday 6/13

Today was the most amazing day ever! We got up at 5:30 to have breakfast by 6 am and leave by 6:30, but there was a girl who was sick and they wanted to leave a van behind so that if she felt better she and the professor staying with her could join us, so they had to rearrange everyone else to fit in the other six vans and we didn't end up leaving until 7. We drove to the Ngorangora Conservation Area which is 8,300 sq kilometers in area (265 sq kilometer of which is the Ngorangora crater where we saw all the animals, and the crater is 600 m deep). First we saw some cute baboons:

In the conservation are we visited the Olduvae gorge first and the archaeological site where Lucy was discovered (Google Lucy remains discovered by Leakey to read more about her):

Next we went to the shifting sands, which is a huge hill of magnetic volcanic sand that moves across the plain because of the wind and magnetic forces:

Then we went to the crater and this is what we saw:

The elephant walked right up to our jeep and then walked off and the lion weaved in and out between the jeeps before wandering over to the other lions. 

Also there were thousands of flamingoes on the crater lake:

Here are a few more beautiful pictures:

Friday 6/12

Today we started out as usual, with breakfast at our host families and then a bus ride to TCDC. Then we had Swahili lessons and tea. After that, when I would normally go to my service learning project, they hadn't found a new one for me yet so they just let me hang out at the center (but it was like 2 in the morning your time so I couldn't use the time to call anyone lol). Then we went to lunch and had some good food:

After this we went to the busses and headed out for our safari! It was an beautiful but long drive to the hotel where we're staying (4 hours), but when we finally arrived it was totally worth it! Here are some pictures from the journey (more will eventually follow when I get them from the other people):

The hotel and room are amazing, definitely like 5 star! Here are pictures of the view from the reception area:

  

 

And of our room:

And here's a picture of the definitely five star fancy set up dinner we had at the hotel:

And here are some random pictures of me and Bria throughout our trip that I took from her Facebook:

Update: they literally came in and turned down the bed and net and closed all the curtains while we were at dinner: