So, my first full week in Tanzania has finally come to a close and already I’m having a great time.

On Sunday I went on something called “Hashing,” where a group meets every two weeks and goes on a hike together. The group is primarily composed of white people who live in the local area, but they are from all around the world. There were French, Spanish, Dutch, white Africans (I know, threw me off too), Canadians, and people from all over taking part. Hashing is basically, every two weeks the group meets, and the person who is leading the hike goes out before everyone else gets there and drops handfuls of flour along a trail that they create. At each fork in the trail they make a big X, or hash (hence the hashing) on the ground and you have to decide which way the trail goes by seeing if there is flour along the path you choose. And then at the end of the hike there are coolers of beer and food for everyone to sit around and enjoy and talk. The local beer is not bad at all either, I had one called Serengeti. The scenery was beautiful though, we walked through farms where locals were out in the fields working and then down into a river basin where a bunch of cows and goats were being herded and all the while the mountains and Kiliminjaro were in the background.

In total the hike was about 6.4km, so I’m told. And yes, I have to learn the metric system since apparently the U.S. is the only place that doesn’t use it. Everything is in liters, Celsius, and kilometers down here. So, when I was told it was 22 degrees outside you can imagine how shocked I was at first. 

I was in the office Monday morning and into the afternoon before we went back to the house for lunch. The office is about a 30 minute walk from the house and we go through downtown Moshi to get to it, and I’ll say the first Swahili I had to learn was “Hapana Asante” which means “No thank you,” because everyone tries selling something to you as you walk through town. I did hear my first ever Muslim call to prayer on the way to the office too, since half the population here is Muslim.

We went to the orphanage though for the first time and I got to meet the kids and they are AWESOME. I was nervous when I first got there because I didn’t know what to expect, but they walked right up to me and introduced themselves very formally and politely. They were all smiles and energetic and after they saw me pull out a bag of Dum Dums they were even more so. At one point I used the word “y’all” when talking to Mwenda, one of the older kids, and he just stared at me dumbfounded. I forget not everyone says it, as a matter of fact, for the first time in my life I’m surrounded by people who never use it so that’s weird. We spent the afternoon with them and read and played in the yard and it was just a neat and humbling how excited they were over a new person and a few new toys they got from sponsors. I gave out a lot of high fives because hip kids deserve high fives. They also said pizza was their favorite food, but they never get it…you know what I’m getting at Mellow Mushroom. Mail it.

The food here, which will surprise my Mom, is actually really good. Each morning we usually have passion fruit (which is my new favorite fruit), avocado, eggs with green peppers and onions, and fresh whole grain bread with peanut butter and jelly. The coffee here is probably the best I’ve ever had. Lunch and dinner are usually local dishes, if I could remember the names I’d tell you, but it’s usually a lot of corn based things, rice, chicken, spinach, and salads. We’ve had banana stew a couple nights and one night we had Mexican, which was a surprise, but it was fresh salsa and beans with tortillas. It’s all very good and there isn’t anything I haven’t liked.

The two Canadian girls I live with, Hayley and Kate, are very nice and fun to live with, but I do feel bad at times when I talk about Chik-Fil-A and Zaxby’s and they have no idea what I’m talking about. They don’t say aboot, which is peculiar.

Cold showers are not as bad as I thought either, especially when it’s 90 degrees and humid outside. And not having air conditioning…. I’ll get used to it. I haven’t been sleeping that well lately though, just because I’m still adjusting to the time zone shift and I keep waking up throughout the night and only sleeping a few hours at a time. Oh, well.

One of the most surprising things that I’ve seen down here are the stars and how I didn’t think before I left that there would be different constellations than from back home. I haven’t seen the big dipper at all since I’ve been here, and you know what, I kind of miss the big guy, I took it for granted and now I’m sorry. You can see so many stars out here, especially out near the orphanage where there aren’t many lights around at all.

I rode a daladala for the first time, that was a cultural experience right there. Daladala’s are their form of busses here, and they’re basically just vans that stuff as many people inside of them as possible. While they’re driving down the road a person hangs out the window and yells out where the bus is heading, and if anyone on the side of the road waves them down they will pull over quickly, stuff them into the van, and be off again in a matter of seconds. Personal space isn’t as respected here as it is back home, so it’s not uncommon for people to be almost sitting in your lap when it’s really packed in tight. Before I actually rode a daladala I had no idea what to expect and was nervous about getting on one, but now I realize there’s actually a system and order to the entire operation, and it wasn’t as bad as I previously thought.   

Still haven’t ridden a lion…one day.

Swahili…let me tell you about Swahili. For some reason I keep wanting to speak Spanish to the locals instead of Swahili, and I don’t really know why. Every time I’m about to try and practice Swahili with them all that pops into my head are Spanish phrases and they just don’t know what any of them mean. Also, when I actually do speak Swahili it sounds Japanese to me, so every now and then at the end of a sentence I’ll quietly say, “Hi” (picture an Asian person saying it and it’ll make sense) to myself. I get a chuckle out of it. AND since I can’t speak Swahili, whenever a conversation is taking place in Swahili around me I make up my own conversation of what they’re saying in my head. I really get a kick out of that, too. I’m learning slowly though, I have lessons about twice a week with Ema and he helps me with a lot of the vocab and phrases.

Sorry for the long post, but it’s only because everything is new right now so I feel like I have a lot to tell. I don’t really know who I’m apologizing to specifically though, I guess it’s more of a general apology. It’s just out there. I don’t actually mean it, if we’re being honest here. 

…send Dr. Pepper