happy birthday america!

no really, fourth of july without fireworks is like christmas without presents. hope you’re all having a wonderful time celebrating, because I haven’t heard or seen a firework all day, and it’d be a little depressing had we not spend the day on an incredible adventure to mt. kilimanjaro. you know that saying, something about, it’s not the destination, but the journey that counts… I think I got the meaning of that today. we woke up early, hoping to catch breakfast before the 20 plus 16-18 year olds who are here on a mission trip and staying at the hostel, no luck. I now know what it feels like to be a part of a large family, where the last piece of bread can literally be snatched from beneath your outstretched hand, and the butter is gone by the time it’s passed to your end of the table. we’ll be glad to have them leave today. the past two days they’ve been up before six noisily chatting away as they wait in line for one of the two shower stalls. we’re up at six all week, we were hoping to get to sleep in this weekend… I suppose there’s always next weekend.

a couple hours later and I’m sitting on a bus. I lucked out with the window seat. thu is next to me and the lady sitting beside her looks like she might vomit at any moment. I don’t blame her, the bus is packed. I counted 24 seats and 36 people. doesn’t quite add up… at the time I thought we were doing a pretty decent job of exceeding max capacity, but africans have an impressive ability to fit in small, cramped spaces, and so as we drove, we periodically stopped to take on more passengers bound for moshi. crowded - the bus was very crowded and I was glad to have my window.

in front of me sat anthony, an ortho nurse from australia, 10 years traveling and working, and after this trip (he’s been here at a maternity hospital for the past four months) he plans to head back to australia to open a skate shop – his true passion. on either side of him, two younger girls, both from england I believe, claire and I don’t remember the other’s name, but they had scabbing on their shoulders that I kept trying to examine, until, unable to explain the round burns, I asked brian, a texan born in jersey and here doing service work. brian, who fortunately had decided to carry a large american flag with him on this day (our only celebration of the fourth here was taking photos with the flag), said they were burns from a maasai village. apparently the maasai people have figured out how to brand tourists, and they do so with scalding metal in the shape of a circle that they use to decorate the arms and legs of any willing traveler. no thanks. the burns were deep, I examined claire’s when she was asleep on the bus next to me… those scars will be with her a while, if not for her whole life.

brian’s friend tiffany was also along with their program (I can’t remember the name of it, but it recruits people from around the world to come do service work in schools and orphanages). I watched today as she wandered obliviously across the street (you never wander obliviously across the street in tanzania unless you have a death wish), sucking on a juice box, only to the look up just as a bus slammed on it’s breaks, stopping about a foot from her face (for once I am not exaggerating, there was a moment where I saw her getting plowed over like that scene from mean girls). she is from jersey, and from the time that I knew her today, the definition of ordinary (aside from the whole bus incident). graziana was far more interesting to me. born in poland but living in england now, her accent was adorable and she is the one who had arranged our guide for the day (more on that later). she sat in the back of the bus with eli, a canadian who I thought looked remarkably like scarlet johansen, and who really never stopped talking (this coming from a girl who rarely shuts up, you know she must’ve been a chatter box :) I can tell you the date of her parent’s anniversary, their ages, how they met… I know stories of her grandmother, who she married, where she lived, how many kids she had… I know her favorite sport to watch, who she watches it with and what type of beer she’s drinks during… I know who will be picking her up from the airport and why her parents won’t be there when she arrives… get the idea? it was so extreme that I’d call it comical. in contrast, lenny was a dark, quiet guy from the UK, who decided to sit in the front of the dalla dalla (tanzania’s version of the filipino jeepney) next to the driver when we all sat in the back. because he never really talked, I didn’t learn much about him. evan though, I know lots about… for one, his name pretty much says it all (no offense to any evan’s out there ;). imagine the male version on eli. between the two them there was never, ever a lull in conversation.

these were my travel companions for the day. by a stroke of luck we missed the street to the bus station this morning. just as we were starting to look lost (something you never want to do in arusha) a group of mzungu’s (white people) approached from the other direction. it didn’t take long to figure out they were english speakers and headed to moshi as well. we tagged along with their group to the bus station, and the rest of the day for that matter. we had left the hostel this morning with absolutely no plan beyond wanting to see kilimanjaro. having been warned it’s a bit dangerous to travel so far (about three hours of travel each way), just us three girls, we were happy to be adopted by this diverse group of nine.

back on the bus. I’m taking in everything. I’ve got my headphones in and I’m listening to phoenix. the songs are a perfect soundtrack to the movie playing out my window. I smell car exhaust, so thick I can feel my lungs turning black, or at least my boogers turning brown :) the sun is beating in my window. brain has the flag hanging over the window behind me, blocking the sun, calling more attention to us, as if we need it. cow. locals staring and I’m staring back, smiling. I wave at a little kid who frantically returns the gesture. we’re picking up speed and the cars coming the other way are so close I can’t help but blink as they whiz by. even when I’m expecting it, blink! so close to my face. please keeps your arms, and especially heads, inside the window at all times. the dust kicks up and I prefer how it smells to the gasoline. old woman roasting cord beside the road. a man walks his goat. another cow, the rope tethering it to a patch of grass is tied through it’s large nostrils. fruit and vegetable stands – buckets of tomatoes and potatoes and oranges (though I don’t know why they call them that here, they should be called yellow and greens because that’s the color of them, not orange). pile of trash. blink! a bus passes us, far too close. I smell the diesel again, now we’re passing a car. I’ve never felt so nervous driving in what I know to be the correct lane. I still get confused about crossing the street, right then left, right then left! obama poster on a truck. pile of burning trash- probably the closest we’ll come to fireworks here. a maasai man on his bike, his herding stick over his shoulder. the reds and purples of the fabrics he wears are billowing in the wind behind him. usher poster on a dalla dalla. lots of corn fields but the problem is they look very much dead. there are sunflowers too, huge and towering over the dead corn fields. dry river beds. that might explain the dead corn. a woman herds two donkeys, the three of them are weighed down with colorful buckets of water. we go in and out of the shadows of the clouds. I smell the distinctive body odor of the people here. it doesn’t matter if I’m leaning down to talk with a six year old girl, if I’m walking through the labor ward, or if I’m following our guide for the day too close, everyone smells the same and it is the kind of smell that makes me want to hold my breath. people back home stink too, but this is a different stink, a characteristic smell new to my nose.

finally the landscape opens up and I can see distant hills, but the clouds are thicker up ahead and there’s no sign of kilimanjaro. I try not to be disappointed… yet. the cloud shadows speckle the plains and a dust devil spins angrily not far from the road. I’ve got the obs/gyn book I brought open on my lap. I read it for the first ten or fifteen minutes of the trip, trying to review, but then we left our familiar town and I got distracted with the new countryside. the rhythmic bouncing of the bus has put thu to sleep. half finished houses whiz by, made of brick with no windows or roof. the cell phone company logos are everywhere, and any sign for a business or restaurant has the same girl drinking coco cola on it. car accident. It temporarily slows traffic, just as in the US, only there is no fire truck, no ambulance, only a tow truck loading the mutilated frame of the tiny car. I remember what thu said about this being a very dangerous road. I can see why. it is narrow and the cars go too fast. we pull off the road periodically to let a passenger or two go and pick up a handful more. cars honk as they pass. when the bus stops boys walk up to the windows trying to sell candy, cookies, or eggs.

“hapana asante, rafiki!” I have found this sentence to be the most useful way to get them to leave you alone. that, or to get asked on a date. we’ve been on the bus for almost an hour now. I can hear the radio of the bus over my music, ranting about something. a woman sits by the road sewing on an ancient machine. we pass a tree so large ten people couldn’t wrap their arms around the trunk. I can’t remember how long ago I saw the sign that said 52 km to moshi. my window is on the right side of the bus. when kilimanjaro appears, above the clouds and perfectly snow capped, it is to our left. I crane my neck to get a glimpse. anthony says he’s been here four months and it’s the first he’s seen the mountain. we were hoping for a better view, because when we left arusha there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. graziana has taken the bus to moshi already twice in hopes of seeing kili and has had no luck. today she is thrilled. and by the time we are busing back to arusha, as the sun is setting, the clouds are gone altogether and we get an incredible view of the tallest mountain on this continent. I want to climb it. another time, another trip. for now I’m going to focus on mt. meru. they say it’s harder to climb than kili but you can do it in fewer days. the sun was just dipping below the horizon as we drove past meru on our home. It was just as magnificent as kili in my opinion. crossing my fingers that climb works out.

we are an hour+ bus ride, then another hour+ dalla dalla ride from arusha to the jungle around kilimanjaro. we are hiking, our group of 12, led by a guide who stops periodically to rattle of trivial facts, some of which I’m quite certain he makes up. the kids come out from their huts and brick homes to follow us, beckoning our attention with little “jambo’s” and “mambo’s” and raised hands in hopes of reciprocated high fives. I high five every kid, don’t want anyone to feel left out. our guide picks up a chameleon with a stick. I’m very excited, never seen a chameleon in real life before! photos to come :)

the hike to the waterfall is a mini version of our first waterfall hike. lots of down. the thing about waterfalls is that they require large cliffs for the water to fall over, and deep valleys for it to fall into. to see waterfalls from below, you must hike into those deep valleys. rocket science, I know. they provided us with walking sticks. what a relief! the neatly carved stairs and sturdy railing were obviously not enough… catching the sarcasm yet? this is a tourist trap! carved walking sticks for each person in the group, really?! good thing we had connections and the whole thing ended up costing us about $6 each for all of the transportation, the guide, the rented walking sticks (?), everything. awesome. the waterfall was well worth tolerating gerber feeding during the hike. though not as tall as our first waterfall, it was still enormous and much wider. with the sun out, the beams were shimmering in the mist. shimmering is a cool word. shoes were off and everyone was wading around, climbing rocks, taking pictures, enjoying the refreshing mist. our guide would literally toss you over his shoulder and carry you from rock to rock if you didn’t want to get wet. again, we find ourselves in the middle of a jungle, in the middle of nowhere tanzania, (somewhere near kili, I know that much), and this time on the fourth of july. put a sparkler in my hand at that moment and I couldn’t have asked for anything more.

on the way back, and I don’t know how this happened in the half an hour or so we spent at the waterfall, a nest of fire ants was disturbed and the little guys were having a frenzy on the trail. the creepy thing about them is that you can hear them before you see them. creepy, or maybe fortunate, it serves as a good warning. just thinking about them makes me shiver. they are large and black and fast and hissing and have a bite to match how menacing they look. I contemplated staying down there at the waterfall until the trail cleared up because the only way to get past them, all running frantically in different directions, was basically to step right in the center of the swarm real fast then once you’re past, stomp a lot and hope they come off before biting. no thank you. Ill just hang out here until they leave. africa is not a place to hate bugs, if I could help it I would. I got past but don’t doubt there was some squealing involved.

all in all a great adventure – seems to be the theme of arusha. work week starts tomo and my friend andrew will be on a bus here by midweek to visit for a few days. he is a peace corps volunteer in southern tanzania. should be fun to have a semi-local around. happy fourth everyone!!