20 ACM students
19 people who have scabies
18 interviews with the Maasai
17 weeks of the program
16 cents to ride the bus
15 minutes to take a bucket shower
14 speed bumps on one street
13 minutes waiting for change
12 hours hiking a volcano
11 days on safari
10 goats in our campsite
9 Nipe kids
8 standard greetings for every interaction
7 cases of malaria
6 people who got locked in bathrooms
5 Maasai translators
4 national game parks
3 marriage proposals
2 baboons in our back yard
1 awesome semester
Well, this is it – my final week in Tanzania. My
only responsibilities are to finish my research paper and prepare for our
presentations on Friday. I have already written a draft of my paper…but it
definitely needs a lot of work. Last week we had our Ecology and Human
Evolution finals, which I thought went well. Seeing as how you only need a 70% to get an A I don't think I will bad-fail. We were tested primarily on
things that we learned in the field.
I
have spent the majority of my time hanging out in my bed this past week –
working on my paper or vegging out. The director of ACM came to
visit for a few days so we had a group discussion about what worked and didn’t
work about the program, and we went out to dinner to a wonderful Ethiopian
restaurant. Other than that…yeah I didn’t do much.
This weekend I went
on a couple of excursions, and it was a blast.
On Friday our Baba and Mama were out of town again, so my home-stay sister and
I took the opportunity to go out on the town. We were invited to a barbecue in
Oyster Bay, and it was a bizarre experience. The barbecue was on the patio
of an apartment owned by a South African guy who we met a bar last weekend. The
apartment was…woah. First of all, we used an ELEVATOR to get to the fourth
floor, and I realized that it has been a long time since I’ve been inside an
elevator. The apartment was air conditioned, and was equipped with a really big
fridge and a flat screen TV. There were only about ten guests, and we met an
interesting crowd. Most of the people there were ex-pats from South Africa,
Kenya, or various European countries who are now living and working in Dar. I was
with two other girls who are both vegetarian, so in the context of a barbecue
the issue of our diet was brought up more than once. As a life-long vegetarian,
I am used to people being curious and/or critical about my decision not to eat
meat. It was particularly interesting in this scenerio, however, because we
were surrounded by a crowd of game hunters. Most of the people at this dinner
were either hunters themselves, and/or worked for hunting safari companies. (The
rest worked for oil companies or uranium-mining companies). I don’t think I saw
eye-to-eye with the majority of the people I met, but I think there were some good dialogues going on. They were very hospitable and friendly, and I didn’t really know how to
feel about them.
On Saturday our group had one
final field trip to Kipepayo beach, which is about two hours away from campus. The departure time was "8", which of course meant that we left at 9:30. We
took boats over to a near-by island and spent the day lounging on the beach and
snorkeling. There was a giant yacht also on the island, which incidentally was
owned by a beer company. They gave us a lot of free beer and items like hats
and beer cozies, which made some people in our group very happy. We spent the
night at a beach resort on the mainland and had some group discussions about
reverse culture shock, and just reflected on the past four months. The next day
most people left in the morning, but a group of five of us decided to spend the
day at the beach. It was an amazing day. We rented a ball and spent the whole
day playing beach volleyball and then swimming whenever we got hot. The day was
almost ruined by two incredibly mean-spirited Russian men. Our interaction with
them made me more infuriated than I have been in a long time. When the ball
bounced near their table (which was RIGHT by the volleyball net), they started
cursing at us and when we apologized they screamed “DON’T SAY SORRY! THAT IS
ALL I HEAR IN AFRICA IS ‘SORRY’!” and then proceeded to pick up the ball and
throw it as far away as they could. Anyway, they were huge assholes. I really
wanted to tell them that if they felt threatened by our game they could just
get off their fat butts and move, but something told me that wouldn’t go over
well. Other than that, the day was perfect. We made friends with some Danish
guys who are here working on a bio-waste project, and we played some intense
matches of volleyball with them. Around 5 pm we pulled ourselves away from the
beach and all five of us squeezed into one pijaji all the way back to campus.
It was the perfect way to spend our last weekend together.
Hmmm... you'll have to elaborate on the marriage proposals!
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