Salama
Dear Everyone,
So I am officially in Tanzania. Everything went well to get here. Our flight from Minneapolis took off a little late so we had a lot of down time on the plane but otherwise it was good. Everyone from the trip flew out of Minneapolis besides Zach and Amy (she missed her connecting flight and had to come a day later). All the people are really nice so far.
For the next week or so we are going to continue to live at the Danish Center in Tanzania. It is really nice. We have running water, flushing toilets, showers, our own mosquito nets :) and the food is amazing. We are busy for basically 14 hours a day we figured out. Which is good because we stay busy but by the end of the day, everyone is exhausted and I think that's when the homesickness starts to kick in for everyone.
We have done a lot of stuff already. Yesterday we visited a coffee shamba (farm) and we watched coffee being made from the seeds being picked from the bush to the coffee grinds being boiled on the fire. Then we got to taste the coffee too. It was pretty sweet...even though i don't really like coffee :)
We have also been to the markets a few times. They are crazy. It didn't feel real. I felt like I was watching a movie or staring at a picture. There are so many people around and everyone is yelling and coming up to you. In one of the markets we had guys telling us they loved us and one asked our leader Terry if he could marry one of us for 100 cows. Luckily she said we were all engaged :)
Yesterday we also visited an AIDS clinic. It was interesting. We didn't get to hang out with anyone there which was disappointing but we are going to another clinic today, so hopefully we will be able to interact more there. We also watched a graduation ceremony for 10 orphans who graduated from tailoring school. That was amazing! The girls would dance and sing and they had three rappers who would rap in Swahili.
Today we went to church in a local village and then to some houses to visit with the people. It was amazing. The family I went to was the most amazing family I have ever met. They were so generous and sweet. They made us an entire dinner (even though we had just ate) and it was made from everything on their farm. Then the mom said she was going to make Wendi and me dresses as her gift to us. We were like..no..thats okay you don't have to go to all that trouble but she insisted. It was a lot of fun. They had some young children we played with, we saw a baby lamb that was born yesterday, we toured their house, and we talked politics for an hour or so.
To say the least, everyone I have talked to in Tanzania hates President Bush. What is amazing about it is that they have amazing reasons to support that belief. They aren't just crazy people who say I hate Bush but can't say why. The father talked about Bush being similar to Sadam and how he has ruined the world and he uses religion like opium. The man was so intelligent it was crazy. He made Wendi and me feel stupid about our own country because we didn't know all the stuff he was talking about!
It was also really interesting because the father works at the place that the Rwanda war trials are being held and he told us all about that and said that if we have some free time he would set it up so we could come to a trial. Everyone in the group is really excited for that but we don't know if we will have enough time to come back.
The driving here is CRAZY. No joke. We have decided we can't look at the rode when we are driving somewhere because it is too scary. Cars are always passing each other and honking and the roads are filled with bikers and walkers. We are pretty sure we are going to hit someone before we leave. We drive around in these little buses/cars. We fit 11 people in the backseat! It is crazy. The roads are so bumpy with potholes that we fly around in the backseat. But it is an adventure!
Yesterday we ate at a local restaurant. It was funny, because they had American music playing on the radio station so we listened to some Jessica Simpson and some other people and we were like..WOW..we know this stuff :) It is like we are back home!
Then it was really funny cause one of the girls went to the bathroom and she came back pretty quickly and she was like..yeah..so there is just a hole in the ground. So we had our first experience with drop toilets. It wasn't that bad though and we all had to take pictures! To say the least, it is pretty obvious we are tourists still :)
I miss everyone a lot :) (That should make you all feel very special:)) but things are good here besides that. It is still a little weird though to have people treat us differently because we are white. Everyone likes to move over for us and talk to us and its hard. At the graduation ceremony an entire row of people stood up to let us sit down because we were white. We want to be friendly and respectful but at the same time we don't want any special treatment because we all know white people are not better then anyone else. But everyone was right, the people of Tanzania are amazing. They are so down to earth and generous and they are teaching us a lot about life in general.
I was going to try and keep these emails at a longer distance so you guys didn't have random emails taking up your accounts :) but i will probably write a lot in the next two weeks because apparently this is going to be our best chance to email for the whole 5 months! Hope everything is well with everyone in America.
Kwaheri!
amanda
So I am officially in Tanzania. Everything went well to get here. Our flight from Minneapolis took off a little late so we had a lot of down time on the plane but otherwise it was good. Everyone from the trip flew out of Minneapolis besides Zach and Amy (she missed her connecting flight and had to come a day later). All the people are really nice so far.
For the next week or so we are going to continue to live at the Danish Center in Tanzania. It is really nice. We have running water, flushing toilets, showers, our own mosquito nets :) and the food is amazing. We are busy for basically 14 hours a day we figured out. Which is good because we stay busy but by the end of the day, everyone is exhausted and I think that's when the homesickness starts to kick in for everyone.
We have done a lot of stuff already. Yesterday we visited a coffee shamba (farm) and we watched coffee being made from the seeds being picked from the bush to the coffee grinds being boiled on the fire. Then we got to taste the coffee too. It was pretty sweet...even though i don't really like coffee :)
We have also been to the markets a few times. They are crazy. It didn't feel real. I felt like I was watching a movie or staring at a picture. There are so many people around and everyone is yelling and coming up to you. In one of the markets we had guys telling us they loved us and one asked our leader Terry if he could marry one of us for 100 cows. Luckily she said we were all engaged :)
Yesterday we also visited an AIDS clinic. It was interesting. We didn't get to hang out with anyone there which was disappointing but we are going to another clinic today, so hopefully we will be able to interact more there. We also watched a graduation ceremony for 10 orphans who graduated from tailoring school. That was amazing! The girls would dance and sing and they had three rappers who would rap in Swahili.
Today we went to church in a local village and then to some houses to visit with the people. It was amazing. The family I went to was the most amazing family I have ever met. They were so generous and sweet. They made us an entire dinner (even though we had just ate) and it was made from everything on their farm. Then the mom said she was going to make Wendi and me dresses as her gift to us. We were like..no..thats okay you don't have to go to all that trouble but she insisted. It was a lot of fun. They had some young children we played with, we saw a baby lamb that was born yesterday, we toured their house, and we talked politics for an hour or so.
To say the least, everyone I have talked to in Tanzania hates President Bush. What is amazing about it is that they have amazing reasons to support that belief. They aren't just crazy people who say I hate Bush but can't say why. The father talked about Bush being similar to Sadam and how he has ruined the world and he uses religion like opium. The man was so intelligent it was crazy. He made Wendi and me feel stupid about our own country because we didn't know all the stuff he was talking about!
It was also really interesting because the father works at the place that the Rwanda war trials are being held and he told us all about that and said that if we have some free time he would set it up so we could come to a trial. Everyone in the group is really excited for that but we don't know if we will have enough time to come back.
The driving here is CRAZY. No joke. We have decided we can't look at the rode when we are driving somewhere because it is too scary. Cars are always passing each other and honking and the roads are filled with bikers and walkers. We are pretty sure we are going to hit someone before we leave. We drive around in these little buses/cars. We fit 11 people in the backseat! It is crazy. The roads are so bumpy with potholes that we fly around in the backseat. But it is an adventure!
Yesterday we ate at a local restaurant. It was funny, because they had American music playing on the radio station so we listened to some Jessica Simpson and some other people and we were like..WOW..we know this stuff :) It is like we are back home!
Then it was really funny cause one of the girls went to the bathroom and she came back pretty quickly and she was like..yeah..so there is just a hole in the ground. So we had our first experience with drop toilets. It wasn't that bad though and we all had to take pictures! To say the least, it is pretty obvious we are tourists still :)
I miss everyone a lot :) (That should make you all feel very special:)) but things are good here besides that. It is still a little weird though to have people treat us differently because we are white. Everyone likes to move over for us and talk to us and its hard. At the graduation ceremony an entire row of people stood up to let us sit down because we were white. We want to be friendly and respectful but at the same time we don't want any special treatment because we all know white people are not better then anyone else. But everyone was right, the people of Tanzania are amazing. They are so down to earth and generous and they are teaching us a lot about life in general.
I was going to try and keep these emails at a longer distance so you guys didn't have random emails taking up your accounts :) but i will probably write a lot in the next two weeks because apparently this is going to be our best chance to email for the whole 5 months! Hope everything is well with everyone in America.
Kwaheri!
amanda
posted by Amanda | 12:03 PM
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