turn it into a run

i forgot to say please ignore the terrible punctuation and grammar and spelling, and writing in general, these things are not important when the internet is so spotty it's a miracle i'm able to post anything at all... onto a great adventure:

today was a day! ready for this adventure? roger’s been talking to us about hiking to ‘the waterfall’ since the first day we arrived, so at breakfast we decided, why not?(also, the length of this blog is probably some indication that we have some serious time to kill as we are hostel-bound as soon as it gets darks here between 6 and 7, so get ready for a novel)...

while applying bug spray in the hall in preparation for the hike I made friends with a new neighbor, a canadian guy traveling with a buddy. they’ve been traveling since september of last year and they’ve got a few months still to go. apparently they’re petroleum engineers and their european country went under, so they decided to forget work and go experience the world. Their advice for here in arusha is that a taxi pretty much anywhere in town will cost you 3,000/- (tanzanian shillings, obviously), and do NOT go out after dark, even for a stroll down the street in front of the hostel. everyone has emphasized how important it is to stay in after dark or take a taxi, so far we’ve had no trouble abiding by this advice (except tonight, we’re hungry but under house arrest as usual, so a cliff bar for dinner it is).

our bags packed with power bars and water, slathered in bug spray, and camera in hand, we met roger in front of the hostel and started walking. it was 10:30am – we had gotten a late start waiting for daaimah (a girl my age staying at the hostel and working for her friend’s non-profit he started at their college, ASU), who had gone to church with a local and was not back as early as she had expected. we ended up leaving without her, but she did the hike last weekend so it was hakuna matata (no problem : ) the lion king has taught me so much about swahili, who knew?! we walked past the clock tower, an important landmark we’ve become very familiar with, then down past the hospital and on to the outskirts of town. we used the crosswalk at one of arusha’s two whole traffic lights, and then it was all dirt road from there. but not the kind of flat dirt road they sing about in country songs, more like the bumpiest, pot hole filled, rock covered, garbage ridden road ever… it looks impossible to drive on but they do… I struggled enough walking on it. decided to title this blog “turn it into a run” after ashley’s valuable advice that if you trip or slip you should just turn it into a run and no one will know : ) there was a lot of that today. .. annnddd I think we just blew out the fuse in the wall despite using a power converter – what the heck?!

roger and I had an interesting conversation about HIV as we walked. I’m not sure how we got on the subject, we talked about a lot of things on our hike today. we’ve decided that in exchange for the swahili lessons he gives us we’ll teach him french and spanish, both of which he wants to learn. now when we speak it is a mix of four languages and often make believe words I use because learning languages is not my niche. I even spent a while telling roger about my dog, dakota, and the tricks he used to do. roger was getting a serious kick out of it, he laughs at me a lot, I think because he likes to kid and I kid back. I tried to teach him that phrase today, to kid a kidder, because when we were almost back he stopped and goes “I think I left my phone at the waterfall, we have to go back” and I was like “ok, let’s go!” and immediately turned around and started walking as thu and amy stood there mouths open hoping he was joking. he thinks it’s funny I joke back. but wait, I was talking about HIV and I got off topic, amy says I write how I talk and think, very stream of consciousness and constantly getting distracted, this is very true. so roger is telling me about all of the education that goes on about HIV in africa because it is such and big killer, along with malaria, the top two killers, he tells me. but he says that people don’t want to hear about it, even with the doctors and volunteers and radios and televisions talking about it, people just don’t want to hear about HIV. here was some interesting insight from this local: he says drinking is the problem, or at least a contributing factor… that you drink too much and the girl is there and you forget to use a condom, it simply doesn’t cross your mind. his english is pretty good and he is mostly easy to understand but every once in a while we get confused. that is what I gathered from his rambling as we hiked passed stray dogs, women selling peanuts and children in their sunday’s best. he thinks it’s funny that I get so excited about these things, about everything we see. plants, animals, people, I think everything is interesting and he doesn’t understand, just laughs at my amazement.

interestingly, or maybe not, the farther we get from the city the safer it feels. as we make our way up between mud huts and fields of crops, we are gaining altitude fast and I’m not sure if it’s that im out of shape, or that arusha is at nearly 4,00oft above sea level that explains my heavy breathing. we finally turn, sweaty and panting, to see an incredible view of all of the city. I’ve got pictures, don’t you worry. (did you know that the potatoes they grow here have purple flowers? really beautiful. and they do some polycultures, which is cool, and environmentally sustainable : ) we even learned a little about crop rotation and the timber they grow and harvest and replant. I miss my envi sci classes.)

after an hour or so we make it to roger’s house, a circular mud hut with a thatched roof and a view that any american would pay millions for. so simple: corn kernels out drying in the yard, grandma doing laundry and draping it over bushes to dry, mom cooking inside the hut. our legs are tired so we sit. a little boy approaches us. he is very hesitant. some of the kids are that way, others come running up and grab your hands. some smile and wave, others remain stoic (those are the ones I usually make funny faces at, it sometimes gets a smile out of them). I pat the ground next to me and the little boy comes over and sits. I stick my tongue out at him, he does the same to me. I curl my tongue like a taco, he copies. I do fish lips, he tries and fails (i love winning... no im kidding! we werent competeing... we continue this game for a while. he points at a bug on my shirt and I try to flick it away, it lands on my pants and as im trying to flick it again, trying not to squeal, he reaches over and picks it up and saves me from the bug. I was grateful, im pretty sure if he could speak english he would have said something along the lines of “stupid girl, afraid of bugs”. thu got out some peanut m&ms and gave them to him as a thank you. we were pretty much best buds after that.

speaking of candy, such terrible teeth here! we need to get the OHSU dental school coming on missions or something, because I’ve never seen so many black teeth and caries in my entire life! we hike more and the next surprise we hear before we see – singing! beautiful voices echoing across a huge field up on this hillside, church! it’s sunday after all. the church is small, and on the edge of the hill, with a view like you wouldn’t believe, and a simple green cross over the door that matches the faded and chipping green paint around the windows. just as we get near, people begin to flood out of the church, still singing. the women in their dresses and head wraps of colorful fabrics and prints gather on one side of the field, the men in their slacks and dress shirts that don't fit quite right on the other, and in the middle a singing choir of both women and men. we listen and they soon finish, then church is over and everyone shakes hands and the men turn around because we already caught their attention when we approached and they want to shake our hand or give us a pound (which thu much prefers as it seems less germy : )and ask us where we’re from. one boy even pulls out a map so we are able to point to portland, OR! home sweet home, so far from this hillside village somewhere outside of arusha, tanzania.

we pass a hut covered in corrugated metal sheets, bob marley echoes from inside “every little thing is gonna be alright” – we all sing along as we hike on, further up the hill, toward the jungle… we’re joined by two men for a stretch, they want us to tell everyone back in America hello when we return, and tell them how nice it is up in the hillside. we promised we would, I think im following up on that.

Two random things, roger says the dogs here love avocados and they will sit under the trees waiting for the fruit to fall, i found this amusing. also, saw a little girl, maybe 4 years old (though who knows, she might have been older and just small for her age from what we’re used to in the US), carrying the most giant load of corn stalks on her head, it literally looked three times her size and she was just making her away along like it was nothing. everyone carries stuff on their head here, there’s obviously something they know that we don’t and I think I might practice so that I can carry my book bags to lecture this way once I get back.

so eventually we make it to the jungle, hike down for far too long, make it to a steep muddy trail that roger danced down while we struggled to stay on our feet. I’m thankful I was doing some rockclimbing before I left, my hands feel stronger and I would grab onto little cracks in rocks and knots on tree trunks and use them to catch myself and we slid down the slippery mud. not the best hike when you have a bum ankle, but it did alright considering. we saw blue monkeys on our way down, flying from tree to tree and making crazy monkey noises. lucky us! finally made it to the valley floor where we found the river we planned to hike to get to waterfall. roger left us there alone, in the middle of the jungle, with an ambiguous explanation of where he was going and when he would be back. we chilled, had lunch (also known as a clif bar) and tried to avoid getting bit by the HUGE ants that swarm in paths across the trail (and have a fairly painful bite judging from amy’s screams). at this moment i pretty much wanted a hammock, or google earth so that I could zoom out on our position in the world... wild.

20 plus minutes later roger was back and the hike up the river began. this was like oneotna (a hike in the gorge) on steroid, plus serious growth hormones, and then like times 1000. we were trudging through the water, weaving our way back and fourth trying to find the best path, and coming upon waterfalls and huge plants... super-size me plants!! - why is everything bigger in tropical places? leaves as big as mattresses, ferns taller than buildings, and im guessing some big ole bugs, which luckily we did not encounter. not sure how long we hiked up the river, i was in jaw dropping awe the whole time, feeling miniscule among the jungle surrounding us. we finally made it to the huge waterfall, shooting out from cliffs hundreds of feet above. the water plummeted into the hole in the jungle where we stood and apparently the mist from the waterfall shoots above the trees and looks like a permanent cloud over the jungle so they call it cloud waterfall - original ;) it was incredible.

the hike back out we went a different way. as we were walking a trail, just recovering after possibly the steepest, longest, muddiest, slipperiest trail I have ever climbed (i never exaggerate), we encountered a group of young girls walking the other way. one approached me, more bold than most women here, and shook my hand and got in my personal space and asked my name. her english was excellent and she was delighted when I told her this. the catch is, she was carrying a foot long machete, (probably longer), and she was pointing it at me, then amy, then thu as she asked us our names in turn. it was… terrifying? naw, but I’ve never had a knife that big and rusty so close to my guts.

good news is we’re getting better at the standard greeting here, a sort of banter of words back and forth with appropriate responses depending on which greetings are used. it is so strange to me that so many of the people we see stop what they’re doing to stare. they want to come shake our hands and talk to us, and they use us to make their babies stop crying… no really, this small child was crying today and his dad sees us and turns him around and he just stops, staring at us… I smiled and waved, I think that kid may never cry again. I had asked roger at the beginning of the hike what people think of us… do they think our skin is a weird color? because everyone seems to have something to yell at us, or to yell to him about us… he said we’re all people and I agreed. I asked if they thought our clothes are funny and he said people can pretty much wear what they want. I appreciated all of this, but despite his reassurance, during the hike, as we would approach, the young children would scatter, peering out from around trees and from behind fences as we walk by, and then reappearing once we pass to follow us for a while or just stare.

post-hike we’re tired and so happy to have a warm shower (did I mention we get warm water? well, at least some of the time, if you flip the switch by the shower on and wait like 30 minutes, and if you’re the only one showering, otherwise the shower on the left steals the hot water, I think). roger refers to thu as chai now because we call her “t”, like the letter, a nickname, so when she gets introduced to people here as t, they say “like chai?”, and we say yes, and so roger has taken to calling her chai, it’s pretty cute. after yesterday and today amy has earned the nickname pigpen because no matter what we do she seems to get substantially dirtier than both thu and I. and apparently leading our workout two days ago, the run yesterday, and the hike today has earned me the nickname coach. I’m thinking a few more weeks together and we might have some other nicknames for each other as well ; ) no no, we’ve been getting along well and plan to keep it up. now it’s not even 8pm and we’re exhausted, ready to sleep, but should probably stay up a bit longer. tomorrow is our first day at the hospital and while today was physically draining, I think tomorrow will take a toll on the emotions more than anything. stay tuned. miss you all!