South of the Equator in East Africa

Okay so this is a long awaited blog, I know this and I am sorry! Let me first start by writing about the week leading up to my vacation in East Africa....

Mike and I planted 100 moringa trees at our hospital in Bibemi in July. These trees got planted over the course of 2 days but the hole digging and spacing took the whole week prior. Then, after we planted each tree we put some prickly bushes around each tree to protect them from the goats and cows that graze on the hospital grounds (what? you're local hospital isn't also a lifestock grazing ground?). Then, the next day I had my site visit from my APCD (in Peace Corps lingo that means the person who is the head of your specific program, which for me means the associate Peace Corps director for health). Silvie (my APCD) and I talked about my ongoing projects, my upcoming projects, etc, etc. It was nice to have her visit. She was also very impressed with my well behaved kitten. Well done Lulu, way to impress the boss! The tree planting was Monday. The site visit was Tuesday. Wednesday I headed down to Ngaoundere (where I catch the train) but there were no tickets for that night. So, I tried again the next morning and spent the first 4 hours I was awake on my 24th birthday waiting in the world's most chaotic line at the train station and they finally found me a first class ticket reservation. After the train station, I ran back into town and had my birthday lunch - beer with steak and cheese sauce - YUM! Then, packed my stuff up and grabbed an omelet sandwich for my birthday train dinner and headed to the station. Well, I was in first class, kind of. I was in the dinning car. My seat had no cushion on it - well actually that isn't true. The women who was sitting next to me, her seat had no cushion and she had gotten there before me, stolen my seat, and refused to move. I asked her to move and she ignored me. So, I went a got the train attendant and told him the situation and he told me to find another seat and just take someone elses. Lovely advice right? Well, some grande (important person) got on the train at this point - realized that his first class was really the dinning car and refused to sit there. He gave me his seat and demanded they find him another. 16 hours later I was in Yaounde. Ever sat at a picnic table in a moving train for 16 hours (6pm - 10am). I have. Be jealous. But, when I arrived in Yaounde I allowed myself to eat all the beautiful foods that I could find. I had chinese food, strawberry sorbet, black forest ice cream, and eggplant parmesan (that my friends and I made from scratch). I went to happy hour at the Yaounde Hilton (twice!). I attended a 5 hour VAC (think Peace Corps student council) meeting and a 1 hour PSN (peer support network) meeting. I got to wash all the clothes I had with me in a washing machine and then dry them in a dryer! I got to take a hot shower! To top it all off, one of the other volunteers had found seasons 3-7 of West WIng on DVD and I was able to copy it onto my external hard drive (a God send in Peace Corps). My last task before I left for East Africa was that I need to find US dollars. My visa for Tanzania cost $100 and you had to pay at the airport for it in USD (odd I know). Well, I asked around trying to figure out the best way to get USD in Yaounde, Cameroon and I heard that the Hilton had them (who the hell knows why). So, I headed back to the HIlton in search of dollars. I walk inside and one of the doorman asks if he can help me. I said yes that I was looking for USD. He guided me back outside and over to the corner and introduced me to a Nigerian man who had a WAD of cash in all currencies that he was willing to exchange for me. I handed him 100,000 CFA and he handed me 200 USD (a 100 dollar bill, a 50, and 5x 10s). It was quite entertaining to experience this situation. I was glad to have the money for my visa even if I was a bit sketched out by the process :) The next morning I headed to the bus station to go to Douala (where I was flying out of to go on vacation). I didn't leave until midnight but I was worried about arriving at the airport after dark so I was going to get to the airport 8 hours early. Woot. Well, of course, I couldn't get to Tanzania that easily - something had to go wrong. As I was getting off of the bus at the airport in Douala I fell (really complicated 15 seconds of things going wrong that ended with me falling) and I face planted on the pavement with a great deal of force - enough to cut up my face and chip my front left tooth. Lucky me right. The people at the airport were really nice and everyone was asking me what happened and telling me they were sorry about my face. It was a bit embarrassing but lucky after 11 months in Africa I was use to people staring at me and the added stares didn't faze me too much. So, with that accident under my belt I bored the plane to Tanzania.

After landing in Dar and getting in the taxi I fell asleep on the way to Nicky's apartment. The driver had a bit of trouble finding the place but luckily Nicky had told me it was the tall orange building and so I could find it in the sky line. It was odd to see a big city with apartment building and multi story buildings. It looked nothing like Cameroon. Oh, did I mention they drive on the left side of the road and car in Tanzania. Again, somehow I missed that memo. I should have figured that an African country who's currency is the Tanzanian SHILLING still had some of those British colonialist roots in them and they probably drove on the other side of the street but I didn't. Once again I almost sat in the drivers seat. Note to self - more countries than England, Ireland, and Australia drive on the left. I know Thailand does - learned that this past summer - and now I know Tanzania does. I leave for South Africa in a few days, I bet they do there too!

So, I arrived at Nicky's rockstar apartment and shower and then we began the best of Dar self guided tour (that was to be conducted in one afternoon). We got to drink Savanna dry cider (absolutely delicious) and go into lots of neat shops. We went to the traditional wood carving market and I bought a traditional Tanzanian wood carving of people working together (you have to see it) off a guy as he was carving it. It isn't polished or anything and I need to take it to the wood guys in Garoua to have them make the bottom smooth. Oh, did I mention that I couldn't stop speaking French to people. Apparently in my head now all Africans speak French. Well, clearly this is not the case and people in Tanzania speak English or Swahili. But, I wouldn't stop with the French thing. It was an unconscious response to people. I did learn a few words of Swahili while I was touring the city. White people are muzungus. Elephants are tembos. Lions are simbas (way to be creative in your naming of characters Disney). Friends are rafikis (again, Disney!). It's cool is poa. Hello is jambo. Thank you is asante san. Nicky was pretty good at the Swahili thing and with my mad bargaining skills and her skills and Swahili we were a good team. I had a lot of fun running around Dar in one day. OH, and I found Obama pagne. Well, of course it wasn't called pagne cause we weren't in francophone Africa but still, I found it. I bought the 4 the lady had and brought them back to people here in Cameroon. Speaking of pagne, everyone I encountered in East Africa (Nicky, her friends, Emily, her friends) was jealous of the rocking West African pagne (which I sported most every day). So yea, East Africa might be more developed but West Africa has the cool pagne and the tailors to make them into clothes.

My second day in Dar we spent the morning on a great bike tour of the city (we biked 24km in a few hours) and got to try to local cuisine and see parts of the city most tourists don't venture out to. Seeing those parts of the city made me feel much more like I was still in Africa - up until that point I wasn't convinced that somehow I had been transported back to Europe or America. That afternoon we flew on a 15 minute flight to Zanzibar! Oh, have I mentioned yet that Tanzania (and Zanzibar in particular) has a lot of Indian influence? Yea, so we got to eat some delicious foods that night in zanzibar. We spent the first night there on the south side of the island at a place called Dolphin View Village on a part of the island called Kizimkazi. We did this because at 6am that next morning this hotel had us booked to go swim with dolphins in the Indian ocean. So, we got up at the crack of dawn, literally, and got in bathing suits with dresses and sweaters and towels and headed out in a wooden motor boat to go find the dolphins. They knew where the dolphins would be because of the tide of something. About 10 minutes off the shore we saw them! Dolphins just swimming near our boat! Nicky and I were each given flippers, goggles, and a snorkle and told to jump in. It was cold and woke you right up but then again you were swimming around with dolphins in zanzibar so you couldn't think much about the cold. It was amazing. We jumped out and swam with dolphins about 6-7 times and the last time we ended up swimming with a family of about 20 dolphins! So cool. Oh, did I mention that my face was all scratched up though - so that mask and salt water felt interesting. But, after about 4 jumps into the salt water my face stopped pussing and must have gotten all that infection out. It was probably really good for it. It healed very quickly and quite nicely after that!

After swimming with dolphins we got back, showered, ate breakfast and got driven to Stone town. We ate a local lunch there in Stone Town, which was quite good (again, that Indian influence means the food is well spiced!) and headed out to our spice tour! The spice tour was interesting- we literally pulled up to this guys farm and got out and he took us around to all the trees and made us try to guess which spice they were - I got about half of them correct. We got to see vanilla bean pods, cinnamon bark, cumin, pepper, lemon grass, ginger, coriander, and a few others I am sure. We also got to taste them from the tree/ground. That was fun. Then, we bought some spices from this guy and headed out to see the slave caves. That was about a 15 minute trip - we arrived, climbed down the steps into the caves, walked around with flashlights and then I saw about 100 bats and said I was going back out. I don't do bats - they carry too many killer diseases. After these slave caves we headed to Kendwa on the north side of the island - which was our final destination point in Zanzibar. Kendwa is paradise. I got to meet lots of Nicky's friends - Kilimanjaro (the massai man who sold jewelry and danced for us), Tarloch (who owned the hotel we stayed at), Rodger (who worked at Duniani Lodge - where we stayed), etc. It was so amazing, pictures cannot do it justice. Oh, also, apparently Zanzibar is like the Bahamas for the Italians. There was a whole resort next to us that was exclusively for Italians and you could only stay there if you booked this all inclusive vacation from Italy. Very odd. But, Duniani had happy hours in the evenings and we arrive just in time (well planned us) and so we got to drink Konyagi (the local moonshine type drink) and local beers (Tusker, Kilimanjaro, Serengetti, or Savanna dry cider) while watching the sun set in Zanzibar. Nothing to complain about at all. My face healed more and more every day and was healing really fast - everyone was amazed by my healing abilities! Nicky and I staked claim to the 2 beach chairs that were outside Duniani and maintained them for the week. Tourism hasn't ruined Zanzibar so the hotels are small and don't ruin the ambiance or view of the island and so there aren't 1000s of beach chairs covering the beach. These were two woven wooden chairs with a thatched umbrella protecting them. I was careful to keep my face and knee out of the sun so that they wouldn't scar and Nicky, like Courtney, put on sun tanning oil and went out to get tan. I bought lots of local jewelry and other artisan work from Kili that were made to order (apparently I have larger wrists then most Africans). I every night Nicky and I ate sea food that was caught that day in the ocean. I got to listen to my favorite African group P Squared who are popular apparently everywhere in Africa (I think they may be from Uganda). The power in Zanzibar oddly enough went off every night from 7-7:10ish like clockwork (pun intended). Every night as Tarloch would start walking to turn on the generator the power would come back on. It was hilarious. Then, soon enough, it was Nicky's 25th birthday/the full moon/the lunar eclipse. We started the morning by going to a place called the Aquarium which was really just an ocean water lagoon where like 20 sea turtles lived. We got to feed the sea turtles and then get in the lagoon and swim with them - this I have pictures of but the swimming with dolphins I only have pictures of dolphins not me with them. Then, we walked along the beach to a bar where the driver from Duniani was suppose to meet us and we found ranch flavored pringles and twix at this boutique and promptly bought them and ate all the pringles on the spot. While sitting at the bar we found a super brave local girl who came up to us and was sitting on our laps and stuff - it was adorable. We needed some hair of the dog as we had gone to a party down the beach at Kendwa Rocks the night before and drank like college kids! We got back to Duniani and met some of Nicky's friends from that states who were flying in to see Zanzibar and climb Mt Kilimanjaro with Nicky. Tarloch had found a way to make Nicky a birthday cake and we all sang and then headed out to a bondfire party down the beach to celebrate the full moon/lunar eclipse/Nicky's birthday. We danced the night away to odd songs requested by European tourists and then came back to the hotel in time for me to grab two hours of sleep and get up to get in the van and be driven to Stone Town to head to Rwanda. The two girls I ended up in the van taxi with had no more cash so I ended up paying for most of the 3 of us (the had a little bit of money). All the ATMs in Stone Town were down that morning so they couldn't get money. All 3 of us were flying to Arusha (northern Tanzania) where they were going on safari and I was going to Mt. Kilimanjaro airport to fly to Rwanda. They promised to get me the money in Arusha. And, when we landed in Arusha the driver who picked them up had brought me my money!! Then, I had to figure out how to get from Arusha to Mt. Kilimanjaro - there was suppose to be a shuttle, but their wasn't. So, I went and talked to the airline that I had just flown with (Precision Air) and convinced the driver to bring me and my stuff with him from the Arusha airport to downtown Arusha and then from there for him to drive me with the pilot and flight attendants to the Mt Kilimanjaro airport. He agreed and I got an interesting tour of the city. I could have taken a taxi but that would have cost like $50 so this making friends with the airline staff was much more economical :) Needless to say, I did arrive 3 hours before my flight to Rwanda at the airport and sat down to wait. My face was healed almost completely and I was headed to Rwanda. Tanzania, check!

How do you respond when the person you sit next to on the airplane tells you his wife and 4 children were children during the genocide? I don't know but it was a heck of an introduction to Rwanda. He was a really nice guy and we were talking about Rwanda and he just casually mentioned this information. I told him I was sorry and I didn't know what else to say or what the appropriate response was. He accepted that answer. Crazy. Sad. So, after this flight on Rwandair Express I landed in Kigali and immediately felt more of this "this isn't Africa" feelings I had in Tanzania. There was a coffee shop in the airport! Some friends I had made en route stayed and waited with me while I bought a sim card (the company MTN exists in both Rwanda and Cameroon but you need to buy a new sim card in East Africa - of course!) to call Emily with. Emily's post mate is dating a South African who picked me up in his car with Em and Ali. From there Em and I got dropped off at our hotel and then walked to a delicious dinner at a place called Soleil et Luna where I got to try to famous Rwandan beer Primus and eat some delicious pizza. They weren't kidding when they named Rwanda the land of thousand hills - Kigali was full of them and we trekked up the hill back to our hotel. Also, despite the fact that English is now Rwanda's national language, French was very helpful while I was there. It made the fact that I want to speak to everyone in Africa in French kind of useful. Emily kept telling me not to talk to people she knew in French because she had already laided the NO FRENCH policy down in stone. Woops. My bad.

First morning in Kigali we went to this fabulous little place called Bourbon Coffee where I got a latte and a cinnamon roll and ate some crazy amazing food. It was so good we shopped around in the area and ate lunch there as well. The food at Bourbon Coffee was fabulous beyond words and Kigali has this pleasant "external spring" weather that I just loved. I met most all of the Rwandan PCVs (Peace Corps volunteers) and they were very welcoming and very curious about what my West African Peace Corps experience was like. Where we went to dinner was even more ridiculous. We went to a new place called Shokola and when we walked in me, Em, and the two other PCVs we were with all stood there with our mouths open. It was NOT Africa. The place didn't serve alcohol and we knew this and had brought our own (shhh, don't tell). So, I ordered a fresh squeezed orange juice with hummus and guacamole has appetizers for our group. The rest of the dinner was equally ridiculous. We had tilapia with mango salsa, moroccan style cous cous with roasted veggies, salad with grilled chicken and something else that I cannot even remember. I know this might not shock all of you in America but it meant the world to all of us here in Africa to eat that for dinner. Then, we spent the rest of the evening being driven around to different hot spots by one of the embassy marines in the armored car that the embassy staff drive (they have drivers). Kigali has quite the posh ex-pat establishment in terms of night life. One of the bars we went into was legit like Perkins Park in Stuttgart and had flavored Absolut. Crazy.

The next morning I got to see the Peace Corps's new office in Kigali. I left my bag of gifts that I had bought in Tanizania at the office (no use lugging those around Rwanda with me!). Then, post office and sans stuff, Em and I went over to this mall called MTN center and went to yet another Bourbon Coffee (there are 3 or 4 in Kigali and I think one is set to open in DC soon) and had more delicious food. I had to try to cheesecake there but it was rather disappointing. Mom, yours is seriously not beatable. The MTN center also had a GERMAN grocery store. It wasn't super German but it was fun to walk around in and they did have Aquafresh Extreme Clean toothpaste - my family will know what that means to me!!

There are tons of white people (aka muzungus) in Rwanda - way more than Cameroon. Also, some of the cars are British (steering wheel on the right side of the car) and some are "normal" with the steering wheel on the left. That took some getting use to and I swear was just that way to keep you on your toes. Also, for a country that has so many white people - they have no international ATMs. All their ATMs are local banks only. So, getting Rwandan Francs was an interesting process. So, I had to take my VISA to a bank called AccessBank in Kigali and they ran a charge on my credit card in Euros and then gave the the corresponding amount in Rwandan Francs once the charge successfully went through. Sound complicated - it was! But, it also worked. AccessBank was convienently located in the other (that's right there are two) mall in Kigali called UTC. There was also a large Kenyan grocery store their called Nakamat where you could check your bags while you shopped. Well, Em and I would check our stuff there and ask if we could leave it while we went places in the city. Sounds risky I know but we couldn't very well lug our suitcases around Kigali with us. But, it turned out just fine.

The second afternoon we also went to the co-op. This is where you can buy all the local handcrafts in Rwanda. They are big into baskets and paper necklaces and carved wood items so I picked up a number of those for myself, friends, and family and had fun with Em speaking Kinyarwandan and me speaking in French. As we left the co-op we bought tickets to go to Em's post the next morning - it is in the south of the country near the DRC border. Post shopping and ticket buying it was time for dinner again (eating is a favorite travel habit of mine, as is shopping) and this time we went Indian. Ice and Spice, an Indian restaurant in Kigali is where we ended up for dinner with a group of other PCVs and I had some fabulous dinner. Stupid East Africa with their Indian influence. Not fair.

A favorite thing to do in Cameroon is oversell buses. If the bus is a 15 passenger van you can guarantee there will be no less than 25 people in it. This was not the case in Rwanda. They only sold the number of seats that the bus had. So, I got to ride the 6 hours to Em's post in my own seat - it was quite nice! Also, people don't try to sell you stuff off their heads out of the windows of the bus. That was nice but I also kind of missed it to be honest. It is nice to have all the food come right up to your bus :) As we were pulling out of Kigali the scenery was great - green hills and little houses and all that good stuff and I told Em how pretty it was and she looked at me and said, "this, this is ugly for Rwanda". Well, she was right that the drive did get prettier and prettier. When we got to the big national park en route to Em's village of Mwezi called Nyungwe National Park we had about 30 baboons along the side of the road when we entered the park. It was great. Em said that she hadn't seen that many. It was great. Then we got off the bus before the ride was over and stood on the side of the road waiting for the mottos from Emily's health center to come pick us up. We then took mottos up the mountain for about 40 minutes to her city of Mwezi. For dinner that night we went to visit the nuns who live next door to Emily and Ali (they are post mates who live in the same house - odd set up for Peace Corps) and we brought two instant muffin mixes that they had received in the mail and wanted to make in the nuns oven. So, we had muffins for dinner and I sat and talked with the nuns in French. One of them was from Chad and spoke some Fulfulde as well. It was great fun getting to talk with them and she complimented my French (which I swear isn't very good). That next morning we went to see Em and Ali's health center. It was beautiful and well stocked and nicer than Bibemi's hospital. It was insane to see. They have a computer at their health center where they track the AIDS statistics for their health region, the had a pharmacy that had Coartem (the malaria treatment Peace Corps gives us). It was very interesting to see. Their health center works with Catholic Relief Services AIDS relief project though and is much more well funded than Bibemi's is. Still, the dfiferences were astounding. Then, we went on a walk through Mwezi to see the sites. The town in beautiful and situated up in the mountains and surrounded by tea fields (I learned that you only pick the top few leaves each time you go tea leaf picking). It was about this time that my tooth started to hurt, a lot. But, I tried to ignore it - nothing I could do from rural Rwanda.

That night we had a pagne fsahion show where they took pics of my pagne made clothes for inspiration for their clothes in the future. I had one of the health center staff by my ticket for the next morning back to Kigali and we settled in for our last night together in Rwanda. The next morning I headed out to catch my bus. The bus had been told that there would be a white girl waiting in this small town about 20 minutes from Cyangugu (the closest big city). I got there and the motto driver waitied with me until the bus arrived. When the bus got there I was told they had saved me my seat - I was sitting up in the front right window seat - the muzungu seat. When I arrived in Kigali I was tired and my tooth was hurting so I went to the hotel and went to sleep. The next morning I woke up to find that my tooth was turning brown. I was less than pleased. I called the PCMO (Peace Corps medical doctor) and he told me not to worry that I had a dentist appointment Monday. I enjoyed a last breakfast at Bourbon Coffee, checked by bag and the Nakumat store and went to the Genocide Memorial Center in Kigali. I only had about an hour to spend there but that was enough to get a feel for the museum. The bottom floor told the story of the genocide, complete with personal accounts, clothes, and random bones from Kigali. It was horribly sad. Then, the top floor was dedicated to other genocides that had occured - Cambodia, Bosnia, Armenia, the Holocaust, etc. It was very moving. There are about 250,000 people burred at the Genocide Memorial Center in Kigali. I was glad I got to see the museum before I left. From there, I got back to Nakumat and grabbed a cab which I made stop at the office to grab my other bag and then go right to the airport. I got there plenty early (I hate being late to airports) and checked in.

On the flight to Narobi I sat next to a women who worked for International Medical Corps who was talking to me about their work in Uganda - most of the white people in Rwanda are NGO workers or rich people coming to trek the gorillas. It was a nice close to the East Africa experience, a talk with an NGO worker. The trip to East Africa was fabulous, pictures are already up on picasa! I am about to head out to South Africa for a root canal (hence the painful brown tooth I got last day in Rwanda) so I promise stories about that whole situation will come soon!