PűBlog TZ

2010-05-18T18:05:00.001+03:00

2010-05-18T18:04:00.000+03:00

2010-05-18T18:03:00.000+03:00

2010-05-18T18:02:00.000+03:00

2010-05-18T18:01:00.000+03:00

PICTURES!!!

2010-05-18T18:00:00.002+03:00

My parent's have collapsed!

2010-05-14T20:58:00.004+03:00

Well, it's hard to sum up the remainder of our trip although yesterday (the return flights home) would be described as nothing less than exhausting, which I'm pretty sure after Venice my parents would say the following week was pure hell! I think they had a great time, don't get me wrong, it was just very hard for them, the walking, the long hours awake, the endless halls of museums, the Tour di Catholocism (aka - church death-march), the cobble-stones, the high winding stairs of the Duomo, absence of caloric intake (my lack of fore-sight to pack snacks), the lack of public restrooms and their disappointment that Benedict didn't accompany us on the Church Death-March. After 27 hours of traveling yesterday, we were laid up in Chicago longer than we were supposed to be, apparently they were having problems with the lavatory of which I don't think a single person used in the 35 minute flight!

Looking back at it though, as we were driving out of Rome, I think the "negative" aspects of the trip started to fade in my parent's minds, all they could talk about was how amazing it was to actually see the pope and to see St. Peter's bones (more on this later). It made me especially happy to know that everything didn't just "suck", as their initial impressions had led me to believe, and they had some really great experiences in between the "suck" periods. I think I may have made my Dad finally see the superiority of red wines... okay, maybe that's a bit far but I think he's able to drink them without the usual grimacing choke that usually accompanied his intermittent swallows. It was also interesting to see my Dad semi-intoxicated on a nightly basis, having grown up and been privy to him being drunk once in my life.

I think though, I owe my parents a large debt of gratitude for them being such good sports with everything that was thrown at them. It was long hard trip, of which they've never experienced before, I really did punish them for all of our summer family vacations. Jenny and Sarah can back me up on this, when we were thirsty from walking all day long, July in Orlando is hell, through the amusement parks of Disney my Dad would casually tell us to, "swallow our spit" instead of buying us a $2 bottle of water. Or when we needed to go to the restroom tell us that after the next three rides we would be closer to the bathroom; the ride lines were each an hour long! Or going all day with only breakfast in our stomachs until we finished with the parks around 8pm, finally going to a restaurant to eat only to realize that our stomachs hurt as the food re-stretched them to size.

Well, it was payback time, although I didn't plan on it, the trip in Italy was interestingly cruel to them. Now that they're older, going to the restroom is much more frequent, kind of like when you're 8 years old! Also, my parents and Betsy and I being the cheap-skates we are, tried our best to get by on breakfast in morning and have an afternoon treat of gelato before eating dinner in the evening, of which I didn't and probably will never hear the end of.

They did great though, just like Bill and Laura a month before them, they put up with whatever was thrown at them and, aside from a little whining and crying, dealt with it as well as any other 58 year olds would. It was great to stand behind them and see how excited they became as they saw the pope bless the crowds below in St. Peter's Square! Or to hear my Mom actually ask questions on the tour of St. Peter's tomb, it really showed her interest in the tour. Anyway, I feel this is getting long-winded, like most of my posts, so I'll talk about our experiences tomorrow, accompanied with our "best-of" pictures we took along our trip. It feels good to be back, thank god for real peanut-butter and pretzels, oh how I missed you so!
-Ryan

Venice, eh...

2010-05-04T17:38:00.003+03:00

We are now in Venice, my parents arrived safe and sound, albeit a bit wet. Venice has been less than comfortable, rainy and overcast most of the time. Luckily we do not plan on taking a gondola ride this trip so the driving rain will not be too uncomfortable, I also do not think the gondoliers are all that affiable during the rain anyway. Speaking of affiable people, the Venetians, as most already know, are terribly rude people. I should preface that comment, the people working hospitality are very unpleasant. The food has been questionable at times and the wine just ok, luckily we have a couple better places on the agenda in the near future! I cannot wait to get into Florence, after such a lovely time in Siena, I think Betsy is also excited. Also think that my parents may be sick of looking at Venetian masks, just a bit. I am afraid Venice is too wrapped up in itself that it does not see it´s own flaws. I guess that is what happens to an island city that revolves solely around tourism. As most know, Florence is the home to much of what we know as true Italian cuisine, art and culture, it will be nice for everyone to see it for their first times... not that I am looking forward to leaving Venice but the crappy weather helps along without the door hitting us in the respective butts!
Ryan

Mello-brunello

2010-04-30T14:27:00.002+03:00

So, we've left Africa and moved on to civilization, ie Italy! We're rewarding ourselves after months of questionable food, no raw veggies and horrible beverages with pizza, salad and wine galore! We're in Siena now, in the heart of Tuscany. Yesterday, we went on a wine tour of the Montalcino area, which produces Brunello, Ryan's favorite wine. The highlight of the tour was a stop at a little winery in Torre Neri (black tower). We were guided through the cellars by Mario, frisky 78-year-old vinter who only spoke Italian. He then proceeded to get us drunk, feeding us wine throughout the tour, in addition to the very liberal tasting at the end, which included a shot of grappa. After getting completely toasted, he passed out the orderform. We may be sleeping on the street for the rest of our trip in Italy, but at least we have 4 bottles of great wine!!

Next on to Venice to meet Ryan's parents, hoping they like gelato, since that's our main staple here.

-Betsy and Ryan

Brass Mummy, You Funky Mummy

2010-04-26T08:40:00.006+03:00

Cairo has been quite the whirl-wind tour as we've only had three days to explore... Whirl-wind comes to mind when speaking of the Nile cruise we took on the first evening on being in Cairo. When deciding to take a dinner cruise we thought it would be dinner on a nice little boat motoring around on the river, oh we got that and SO much more! For entertainment two whirling dirvishes came out, one was a little person and the other Robert Downey Jr. I'm really thinking he needs to do that for his next movie, who needs a sequel to Iron Man when we could watch him doing a whirling routine?! It was like a car accident, horrible but impossible to take your eyes off. After that we had a belly dancer come out, this is my time to explain my dislike of belly dancers, they make me overtly uncomfortable and this was no different. The woman had giant breasts and was less of a belly dancer and more of a booby shaker, most of the men were having a good old time. One guy taking pictures was especially funny to watch as his wife glared at him, I'm thinking she was in my frame of mind, not entertained. In reality, the Nile cruise was so amazing it needs its own posting but due to the shortage in time, this is all it gets for now.

The next day we traveled out to the pyramids in Giza, but being the cheap-skates we are, we decided to try to take the bus instead of a taxi, yikes! It took about 30min to find the bus stop and to top it off the numerals were in arabic, which we cannot read. Luckily, the Egyptians we've met along the way have been very kind and assisted us along the way. If it weren't for the five different men we met in the various buses we took, I don't think it would have been successful. As we hopped off the final bus we started hoofing it West, thinking we'd find it eventually. Well, it practically hit us in the face, pretty hard to miss as they are HUGE! It was a pretty amazing site, if only we could get the camel peddlers to leave us alone so I could take a picture or two, man they poop a lot!

Speaking of poo, yesterday we went to the Citadel, well, tried to get to the Citadel... We flagged down a cab this time, thinking it would be quicker, and told him, Citadel. The Citadel, a fortress built in 1176, is a major, if not the second most important landmark in the Cairo area next to the pyramids. Cairo Citadel, large fortress situated on top of a huge hill in the middle of town, something you can see for miles! I kept saying Citadel with the idea that it will somehow sink into the cab driver's head, no such luck. He didn't have a clue and everyone we asked along the way didn't have a clue either, it was overly frustrating as he cris-crossed the Nile three times when we started on the correct side to begin with! I even had a map to show him as to where it was located. Eventually we drove within eyesight of it and we pointed to the place, I still don't know if he understood why we got out of the cab when we did. Inside the Citadel the architecture was nice but the show was stolen by the dioramas of different battles. They looked straight out of a highschool history project and were awesome! It showed them triumphantly winning all of the battles, although if my history is correct, it's been awhile since they've won any, especially against Israel, of which they have a piece of a jet wing in the museum with the Star of David on it. I'm thinking their lack of map reading skills could be the reason why they were devastated, couldn't find the Israelis! The best part of the Citadel was the uniform hall, Bill you'll enjoy this, they have Porta-Troops and you guessed it, their uniforms are brown!

We then visited the Islamic area of Cairo. We laugh in the face of Giardia and other microbial diseases as we have been eating the sketchiest of places. Sketchy, yes, tasty, definitely! After a quick lunch of pita, foul, chicken and green stuff (sorry Tender Branson, no recipes for you this time because I really don't know what it was) we were off to the Khan El-Khalili. I didn't know Betsy loved her scarves until now, she made me haggle for four of them! Anyway, they are pretty nice but four scarves, who wears all of those?!

One more stop in the whirl-wind tour, the Egyptian Museum. The museum is large and very interesting, it has so much stuff apparently they haven't found the time to categorize and tack information to all of it. In some parts of the museum, they have so much stuff you can barely squeeze though the statue of Amenhotep and Cheop's alabaster canoptic box. It's unfortunate because most of the items are out in the open, people are touching them and sticking their heads were they shouldn't be, I guess Egypt has so much stuff it's kind of a crap-shoot. Most of the stuff lacks any type of description, at least the King Tut displays, for the most part, had index cards with dates on them. We left the museum with out heads spinning for the over-whelming nature of it all, we didn't even go into a quarter of the upstairs rooms because it was all just too much.

On final thought, I know one place Betsy should go if we were ever to spit, Cairo because they LOVE her here! Not sure if it's the long legs or the blonde hair but one thing is for sure, they think I'm the luckiest man in the world! Even if they can't ready maps atleast they got that part right.
-Ryan

The Nose of Kilimanjaro

2010-04-22T10:01:00.006+03:00

After close to a week of watching the Big 5 through a Land Cruiser window, Bill and I were ready for a nice walk... Seven days were ahead of us which included a little camping, hiking, scrambling, with a touch of labored breathing. Ok, maybe a LOT of labored breathing, I have to admit even I was pretty winded in the last 6 hours of climbing. Luckily, the swelling of my face had decreased significantly, although you may still have mistaken me for the "elephant man".

The adventure started in 2003 when Betsy decided it a good idea to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro (19,334 FASL), currently the tallest mountain in Africa, one of the Seven Summits. She took the Machame route which is a south-central (Dr. Dre reference not intended but you may infer) route and is considerably difficult in relation to other routes. This sparked the genius idea from Bill that we take on Kili while they were here to visit. I, always looking for adventure, responded with an enthusiastic, "sure!".

Through months of planning and research with every company known to man, we chose Evan's Adventure Tours. They are a relatively small outfit with decent reviews and an array of new equipment designed to help you up the mountain. This was an obvious choice for Bill, now we just had to decide which route to take. Again, Bill consulted his Kilimanjaro guide book for the answer and it pointed to one distinct choice, Rongai Route. The Rongai Route is on the North side of Kili, the village situated at the gate is in fact a border town with Kenya. It takes a semi-meandering route, since the North side is relatively steep, to reach Kibo, the summit camp of Marangu Route. Being the rainy season, the North side of the mountain seemed like the logical choice since it receives less rain.

Saturday morning came and it was time to start our trek up the side of the hill. We said our "goodbyes" to Laura and Betsy, who were off to spend a week in sunny Zanzibar (rough), and were on our way to the foothills. Upon reaching the gate we realized that we had 15 people in our party not including Bill and I, we thought this number ridiculous! Ridiculous until we reached first camp when we found they had carried a porta-potty up to the first camp, apparently this was to follow us and our explosive-diarrhea (if we were to feel mountain sickness) up the mountain. It was embarrassing eating dinner in our very own mess-tent as the three course meal was delicious and we had a dedicated wait staff. We were wondering when the violins were going to enter the tent and begin the entertainment portion of the evening.

Both Bill and I were reticent to use the porta-potty, as there were pit latrines on the route. We felt bad for the poor guy who had to clean out the refuse when we finished... I think the feeling of remorse quickly subsided with Bill when he found out how difficult it is to use a squatty-potty, he is almost 60 years old! He took to the saying, "oh, toilet boy!", after he had done his business, thank god there is bleach in Tanzania!

After four hard days of hiking up the the mountain, we made it to the shared summit camp of Kibo. This is where Marangu and Rongai meet up to make a strike for the top. Till this point it was a pretty easy hike for me but I was still nervous about getting sick and feeling like crap, as I seem to get sick from just about everything here. Kibo is at 4700m, at this point I was pleasantly surprised that I hadn't had headaches or and sort of altitude sickness but was preparing myself for the worst in the morning.

After a sleepless night, where we went to bed a 5pm to wake up at 10:30pm, we got up to put on our winter clothing and set out into the darkness. Our headlamps lit the way as we trudged up the scree, at times we were the only ones on the side of Kibo which made the stars just radiate! This day, after the previous four, was relatively difficult for Bill, but as we ascended higher and higher, he seemed to become more and more determined to reach the summit (this is possibly the dizziness from the thin air or perhaps a cerebral edema - as Laura always puts it to me, "I don't want to make that call"). We finally made it to Gillman's Point (aka the crater rim) around 5am, with one hour to reach the summit before sunrise. Bill started to feel a touch better and we decided to push on ahead.

As trace amounts of light began to envelope the sky we were able to identify various landmarks and features of the crater. The ash pit was beginning to show itself, in what could only be described earlier as a looming black mass which stood ominously in the distance. We rounded the crater and felt a familiar "crunch" beneath our feet, it was snow, which made us realize we were close to the summit. As the sun continued to creep, I became anxious that we would not make the summit in time, so I forged ahead of the group. Coming around the last turn of the crater before topping-off, I could see the iconic Uhuru Peak sign just ahead. I arrived, minutes ahead of sunrise and was able to snap off a great deal of pictures (which will be posted in mid-May upon our return to the US). I felt surprisingly good on top and waited for Bill and our guides to follow up behind. We turned around towards Kibo only after a few minutes, which made a jubilant but exhausted Bill even more than joyed. After a hard 1.5 hours of descending down the loose scree, my quads burning with pain, we came to the realization that we made it!

Now it was a matter of getting down as fast as possible, which made it hard since Bill was definitely not feeling well. Although the thought of a nice hot shower was enough to almost get the two of us running, our legs dictated the pace more than our minds. We made the base camp in about 1.5 days and were back to Moshi before dinner time the following day. The camping was great and the fact that we both were successful in reaching the summit was even better! We are now able to put one more adventure in the books, don't worry, plenty of pictures will follow when we get the time and bandwidth to facilitate such endeavours.
-Ryan
ps- I want to give a shoutout to my two amazing sisters (ok, Brian should probably be included as well) Jenny for watching Frank, and Sarah for sending my boots, not her Boots, along with GUs, which really were the only reason Bill and I made it up the hill! THANK YOU!

5 things we learned by going on Safari

2010-04-12T07:44:00.002+03:00

1. Ryan is not (severely) allergic to African wasps.

A second point he learned in the same instance was to always inspect pit latrines for wasp nests BEFORE going in to pee. Ryan learned this the hard way, and before escaping the choo (toilet), got two good stings in the face and one in the leg. Luckily, my dad's severe hayfever finally paid off, and there were plenty of anti-histamines on hand. He still looked like a proboscis monkey for a few days though. (Pictures forthcoming)

2. Monkeys' love of bananas is not just a cliche (and they are very adept at stealing them)

We found this one out when a vervet monkey ran in the back window of the land rover, through all of us to the front seat, opened up a lunch box, grabbed a left-over banana then hopped out the driver's window. He then disappered into a bush, only to reappear a few minutes later happily chewing a cud of banana.

3. The proper procedure in the event of a leopard attack.

Apparently, leopards only attack from the back (lions from the front), so if you feel something on your back, it's most assuredly a leopard. You are supposed to grab it by the legs, swing it over your head and slam it down on the ground. Then you grab its front leg, rip it off (apparently this is easy to do) and beat the leopard senseless with it. Yeah, right.....

4. Don't try to drive down a road that's become a raging river, and don't try to pull a stuck land rover out in a borrowed car. You CAN over torque and break an axle.

This one is pretty self explanatory. We were the ones trying to help.

5. Seeing a million wildebeest and zebra migrating across shortgrass plans dotted with acacia trees NEVER gets old.

What's your favorite Dish? I won't cook it, but I'll order it from Zanzibar!

2010-04-02T10:34:00.000+03:00

Our whirlwind tour of Africa and Europe has started! 1st Stop:
Zanzibar!!! When Dr. Livingstone came here, he wrote of the island's
beauty....and of its odor, calling it "stinkibar" in his accounts of
it. In our estimation, he's about right. (He also could have called
it "Noisibar". The capital (and only) city, Stonetown has no less
than 51 mosques in a 1 square mile area, each with their own call to
prayer...5 times a day.)

Our tour of stonetown has been led by our great tourguide/hostess
Naheed, a friend of ours from USF who is doing research in Zanzibar.
(A common theme of our trip: Mooching housing off long lost friends!)
Zanzibar has unique food traditions that are very different from the
mainland, so our trip was mostly a tour of Swahili cuisine, punctuated
with a little sightseeing. We started off by going to the famous "Two
Tables" which is highly recommended by all the guidebooks. It's
literally someone's house, and reservations are made by calling up to
the kitchen window and telling them what kinds of foods you like.
It's quite 'authentic' to say the least as family members come and go
throughout the meal, people sat in the next room watching TV and
laundry hung in the hallway. The food included cardamom donuts,
lentil soup, fish in coconut sauce, okra curry and spiced bananas.
After 7 courses, they pretty much had to roll us out of there. The
next night we went to get "Zanzibar Pizza", which is basically the
best hot pocket ever. Ryan and I are hot pocket fiends (a little
known vice) and we definitely think that these are amazing!

We took a little break from gorging ourselves to go to the beach, at
Matemwe. All if Zanzibar's beaches are world class (sorry Florida,
but they put you to shame) and Matemwe is purported to be the best of
the best. It's reached by either a very expensive cab ride, or dala
dala. Since we are dala dala experts, we didn't think this would be a
problem at all. Oh, how wrong we were. Zanzibar's dala dalas make
Dar's look like a north American metro system - organized, timely, and
relatively calm. Rather than the used Japanese school buses that
populate Dar, Zanzibar's dala dalas are literally pickup trucks with a
bench around the bed and a sun shade. Also, the roads in zanzibar is
generally unpaved. The trip out took over 2 hours, and at one point,
there were 33 people on the dala dala, including 6 hanging off the
back, plus a few buckets of fish and local fruits and vegetables being
taken to the market. The ride was worth it though! The white sand
beaches go on as far as you can see, islands growing out of choral
reef atolls dot the horizon, and local fishing dhows sail to set their
nets. Since this is the low season for tourists, we shared the beach
with a few local women gathering seaweed. It was pretty hard to tear
ourselves away from the beach and go back (via dala dala) to the
hustle of Stonetown. (Luckily, I'll be back with my mom in a few
weeks!)

Now on to Arusha for Safari!!!

Betsy

There are Two Posts Today, Read the One Below as Well...

2010-03-26T08:23:00.000+03:00

As the dala-dala wars have waxed and waned, we’ve had ever more exciting times with transportation in Dar. Yesterday we went to Kariakoo, a large section of Dar es Salaam with TONS of random wares as well as a fruit and vegetable market with our main goal to obtain the later. We caught a dala-dala, which is really convenient because one runs from our hotel door directly to the market, and were off on our daily adventure. Since Betsy’s research has begun to wind down, we’ve already conducted most of the key-informant interviews she needed in Dar, we have had to struggle to maintain sanity while keeping ourselves busy. One of the worst things to do is to ride a dala-dala to its terminating point, I would not suggest it. However, riding them in general is quite entertaining as a pseudo-masochistic approach to life in Dar.
Being that our hotel is close to the starting point for the Kawe-Kariakoo dala-dala, we were able to secure seating. About half way to Kariakoo, the bus was filled and a larger woman was standing next to me. Trying to be chivalrous, I stood up and offered her my seat, to which she adamantly declined. The man standing next to her was more than willing, but seeing that she was uninterested, I returned to my seat. At the next stop we must have picked up a great number of riders because it was instantly packed! This didn’t work in my favor, as I had the large woman’s breasts firmly planted in my face. Normally, I probably wouldn’t mind this situation, however, she smelt of rotten-eggs and the bag of milk she was carrying was dripping on my leg. Helpless to do anything about the dripping milk, I tried in vain to hold my breath until losing consciousness, which I felt was a better fate than what I was dealing with at the moment. Trying not to be overly dramatic, as I am now, I exited to the dala-dala to see that Betsy was laughing hysterically; she had been sitting a couple rows behind in full view of the unfolding events to which she most eloquently stated, “You smell like eggs.”
That being said, we head to Zanzibar today, and our journey takes an abrupt turn towards tourism. I can’t say that I’m disappointed, since this was the main reason I came along with Betsy, but it’s sad that we probably won’t be able to truly convey our experiences with people who weren’t with us. The gestalt of our experience was one of good, bad and ugly, although in retrospect most of our blog posts tended towards the negative and uniquely bizarre. In all honesty, there were plenty of “good” times, we were predisposed to omitting these because they were average and bordering mundane but I digress.
We hope, in the next handful of weeks, to continue our blogs as we travel the country-side with Betsy’s parents, however spotty our internet connection may be. Although not as anthropologically interesting as our previous 6.5 months, I’m sure the pictures from the wildebeest migration in the Serengeti as well as photos atop Kilimanjaro will satisfy.
-Ryan

Beep-Beep, Move out the Way!

2010-03-26T08:16:00.001+03:00

It seems as though I just won’t be able to shake the idea that I’m Chinese within the remaining time we have in Tanzania. We were asked yesterday what our indigenous language was, most Tanzanians have what they call “vernacular” which is their tribal or regional tongue, because they could not understand how I could speak English so well being that I am from China. As my hair becomes longer, it seems that Tanzanians are increasingly convinced that I’m Chinese, even though I insist otherwise. Luckily, Clement, our safari guide from Haydom, knows I am not Chinese, or so I think, which means that he can relay that on to other Tanzanians we meet along the way… oh well, I’ll be in Italy in a month where they think I’m Italian, so I’ve got that going for me.
Speaking of foreigners, they have EXCELLENT Indian cuisine here, it’s purely amazing! We have, as well as every other wazungu in Tanzania has (hello Alex, Bhog 56 anyone?), found “our” Indian restaurant which we frequent almost on a weekly basis. Our favorite place use to be Ladybird’s, as we exclaimed in a previous post, but it was shut down and we now discovered Purnemia. They dole out the strangest combination of sweet and spicy-hot I’ve ever had and we love it!
I continue to order the same thing every time we go there, little fried balls which are packed with the most wonderful fillings! One ball has an anise filling which has a slight taste of black licorice, another has what seems to be sweet-potato but they (the cook) insists it’s not, and the third, well, that’s hard to describe aside from delicious. If I had to articulate what they were, I could only describe them as falafel type of food. Along with these delicious balls come sides of spiced coconut milk with shavings and a spicy mango salad. After eating the mango salad, which is medium spicy, I thought that the coconut milk would help out my mouth… as you can imagine, the sweet, cool flavor of coconut going down your throat is great until the spice kicks-in! Fortunately, Betsy was prudent enough to remember water.
After having lived in Dar for about a month now, we’ve started to unearth new and usually better locations to acquire goods. We both love wheat bread back home but this is almost impossible to find here in Tanzania! We were purchasing bread from a local bakery down the street which only sells white bread; although, they are good at tricking you into thinking you’re buying something exotic. They have about twenty different shapes of bread, from standard loaf, baguette, bun, twisted pretzel, roll, misshapen loaf, lumpy loaf and last but not least, the mini-loaf. Betsy was insistent that we try every “type” of bread just to be sure there wasn’t a diamond in the rough. Needless to say, we never did find the elusive wheat loaf but we were able to sample a GIANT German style white-bread pretzel!
On our way home from the bakery today, we were almost run-down by a trash cart. Two men running down the road pushing an improvised two wheeled contraption, fortunately for us they had verbal warning system which mimicked a car horn and we all narrowly averted calamitous disaster.
-Ryan

New roommates

2010-03-23T10:01:00.002+03:00

We've been slacking on the blog posting lately, but truth be told, we've been really boring. My research has pretty much wrapped up since the one person in the government who deals with adolescent nutrition isn't too helpful, and no one else that I've talked to deals with adolescents at all. So, now our schedule as of late has consisted of working out at the gym at the embassy in the morning, then vegging in the airconditioning in the afternoon.

A friend of mine from ISU has been in Dar for the past few days, preparing to leave Tanzania after living in the forest listening to chimps for 19 months. His daily trips to various government offices strewn about Dar es Salaam makes our COSTECH/Immigration issues look like a cakewalk! I guess I'm glad that anyone off the street just can't import kilos upon kilos of ape poo.... but it makes me glad I
work with people.... Anyway, the community of poor graduate students in Tanzania is small, and welcoming, so through a long string of a friend of a friend of a friend-type acquaintances starting with my ISU friend Alex, we were offered a free room in a house rented by an American professor. Of course, after hearing 'free' we jumped at the opportunity, and packed up all of our stuff, loaded it into a cab and headed over. Of course we've never met the professor, and until yesterday when we showed up in the cab, had never met her student who was staying in the house. Emily, it turns out, is very nice.

We're also sharing the house with the professor's cat, who seems to survive just fine without anyone around to care for it for months at a time. Yesterday, we saw it chase a bird, bat it down mid-flight, and eat half of it. The other half, he proudly brought it into the house and left in the middle of the floor as a snack for later. The other roommates are, unfortunately, the bravest and most outgoing bunch of African cockroaches I've ever seen. Bugs are obviously a big problem in a tropical area such as Dar, and with the people gone, the roaches seem to have taken over the house! I'm not a fan to say the least, and generally just freeze and become completely worthless when I see them. Alex thinks that killing them will just make a mess. So, he's taken to grabbing them with his hands (gah!) and tossing them out the door. Ryan's taken a different approach, and chases them down and beats them with a broom. The cat and Emily just ignore them.

So, we've learned that paying for your housing gets you things....like insecticide and air conditioning....but we'll deal with a couple of bugs for a few days to save a few bucks.

"People with heads worth protecting wear bike helmets" -Bill Danforth

2010-03-04T20:27:00.002+03:00

We’ve been settling in to our routines here in Dar. Which mostly consist of banging our heads against various government ministries. We’ve made some headway with Ryan’s visa renewal this week. After submitting his application, a million passport-sized photos, a copy of his resume and college transcript, then being told to return on a federal holiday when they were closed, returning the next day to find that they had ‘misplaced’ his application, and didn’t want to take the time to look for it, we returned yet again. This time, they had miraculously found Ryan’s folder and let us pay for the visa!! That was a major step, as we got a receipt! And they glued it to his application! This is progress! They told us to return in 4 working days, and THEN the visa will be re-stamped into his passport.

Other than immigration, I’ve been trying to interview people about Tanzanian health and adolescent policy, and learning that although people may be nicer at other ministries, they run at about the same efficiency level.

In our many travels, we see TONS of bikers. It’s probably the most common mode of transport here. Bike helmets aren’t sold in Tanzania and we’ve only seen one biker with a modern helmet. (Thanks to my dad's constant chiding, and several traumatic junior high years as the ONLY kid who had to wear a helmet, I pay pretty close attention to this.) The rest of the bikers who are concerned about protecting their heads, have to get creative. We’ve seen: baseball batting helmets, motorcycle helmets – worn both forwards and backwards, construction hats, and one guy wearing a WWII-era German military helmet.

local transport

2010-02-26T16:30:00.000+03:00

Top: Typical (although light) Dar traffic
Middle: a daladala
Bottom: CRUNCH! Pole (Swahili for "sorry") to the guy who thought the daladala wasn't going to cut him off.

Pictures 1

2010-02-26T16:24:00.001+03:00

Top: A lychee from a local market. Apparently, you're not supposed to eat the seeds....
Middle: Women cooking at the Kivokoni fish market in Dar. We ate lunch here, and 3 days later, our GI tracts seem to be fine!
Bottom: Sister Hilde showing the children at the community center in Singida the scales we gave them for tracking the effect of food aid.

I Want a Fast Machine

2010-02-25T19:15:00.001+03:00

After riding in what I can only describe as a school-bus with bench seating, for over 12 hours, we made it to Dar, as Betsy previously mentioned; I made a promise to my butt that I wouldn’t do that again until the Danforths arrived in April. Instead, we’ve been exploring Dar in what the locals call, Dala-dalas. They are actually old Japanese school buses, when I say old, I mean really OLD, shipped over and repainted with their destinations and sometimes their ‘mottos’. The paint-jobs look to be somewhat half-hearted as most of the Japanese cartoons are still visible under the section of bus they neglected to cover. Needless to say, these buses were not meant to have anyone over 5’-6” tall or heavier than 150lb. Again, just as everywhere else transportation takes you in this country, recommended capacity is merely a suggestion and rather a game to see how many more people they can stuff onto one of these things.
Today as we left Posta, the dala-dala we were riding “British Airways” crashed! The driver, if you can call him that, of “British Airways” (it is the name of the bus) rammed a Toyota Prado (a small SUV) while attempting to execute a 180 degree turn with roughly 40 people in a Japanese school bus. Needless to say, we didn’t make it and the Prado was smashed into the under-carriage of the bus. Luckily, Tanzania has a road-justice system, where a bunch of on-lookers ran over to assess the situation. After about 30 minutes of bickering back and forth, they came to the conclusion that the SUV driver was at fault since the dala-dala was larger and therefore he should have moved out of the way. A somewhat backwards system and I’m pretty sure the driver of British Airways would have had his license revoked in the US, but it was effective and we were quickly on our way.
The fun of dala-dalas, however doesn’t end there; we were embroiled a few days ago in what one could only call a “dala-dala war”. Similar to gang-land wars of the US, dala-dala wars are considerably less bloody but just as exciting and action-packed! Within the metro area of Dar es Salaam there are roughly 7,400 dala-dalas, which are all privately owned by approximately 2,500 different owners; which means on average that each owner has three. Many of the dala-dalas have similar routes, so it’s a competition to secure as many riders as possible. The other day we hopped onto a Kawe-Kariakoo dala-dala to go purchase fruits and vegetables at the market, not knowing what fun was in store for us. As we begun to roll away from the shoulder of the road, a second Kawe-Kariakoo dala-dala came flashing by to make it to the next stop before ours could get there. As both buses rolled to a stop at the second stand, the other bus ran our bus off the road in an attempt to delay us in getting to the next stand. Unfazed by the “minor” set-back, our driver began to off-road drive as we gunned it in an attempt to inch ahead of the other dala-dala. We were successful in getting ahead only to see that the other dala-dala decided to drag-race us. Both buses, the other riding down the opposite lane of traffic, nearly topping out in speed, ran a plethora of other vehicles off the road as we re-enacted the car-chase scene from the movie “Bullitt”. Although, with a few minor elements missing, such as patented bucket seats and a 1968 Ford Mustang Fastback, we felt as if we were in the back seat with Steve McQueen at the helm! We exited the dala-dala safely, thankful the only thing to have happened to us was elevated blood-pressure, at the Kariakoo market.
-Ryan

D-Day

2010-02-18T21:26:00.001+03:00

Well, the research in Singida is done! And we’ve moved on to Dar, the land of milk and honey. Only a 'short' 12-hour bus trip away....on what would be a school bus in the US...with one pee-break....which I stupidly, oh so stupidly, decided not to take advantage of. But we're here now, and living in the relative lap of luxury, with a bunch of Italian and Tanzanian priests. Sadly, when we arrived, we found not one, but TWO of our three favorite restaurants closed! Luckily, we went to the embassy, and found a Christmas box waiting there for us from Ryan’s parents, with Christmas cookies inside, and they weren’t moldy! So at least we have some only slightly stale cookies to help us ease the pain.

In the past few days, we’ve been exploring Dar, and taking random dala dalas (public busses) to their termination point. We’ve learned that the Dar Airport Inn is no where near the airport, that Mtoncani is a great deal (all dala dalas are 20 cents no matter how far you’re going), but there’s nothing to see when you get there, and that Tanzanians can sleep anywhere, including standing up on a dala dala, using Ryan’s back as a pillow.

One of our favorite destinations is Kariakoo, a crazy fruit, spices, used clothing, bootleg dvd, and oddly enough, farm supply, market. The best part about it is the people watching. Today, we saw sanitation workers using used shoes tied to their faces as protective masks. While I understand not wanting to breathe the dust and smell from Dar es Salaam trash, I’m not sure that used shoes is the route that I would take.

-Betsy

Shoe-less Joe

2010-02-13T20:25:00.002+03:00

Yesterday, after amassing large amounts of surveys, so many we are unable to keep them in our hotel room, we went to the post office to send them home. Our first trip to the post office was interesting… We lugged two boxes full of surveys (me carrying both since I am after all, the work horse, so much for the union I was trying to form), each weighing approximately 18 kg, down to the office about one half mile away. Upon reaching the post office, we were told that we needed to take our boxes to the Tanzania Office of Revenue, similar to a customs office, which is ironically adjacent to our hotel. Upon hearing this news I insisted upon taking a taxi, after all I haven’t lifted in over 6 months, because I was already getting sore from this (I’m really out of shape)! The customs office is conveniently located on the third floor of a building without an elevator. Anyway, we met with the customs guy, went back to the post office, paid our couple hundred dollars of postage and sent them off to the USA.
As my muscles ached from walking up and down the streets of Singida with 80lb worth of surveys, we decided to head to the Singida Youth Center. It was our intention to buy some of the “street kids” shoes, since they don’t currently own a pair. We met up with Sister Hilda, the operational manager of the center, who gathered four of the kids to go with us. We were able to find shoes for each of them, although I’m not so sure they chose the shoes based on fit… At the very least, they have some leather and rubber surrounding their feet, since walking around here barefoot is NOT recommended!
We had yet another chance run-in with a couple of local professionals here in Singida, the competitive whistlers! We have come to a consensus that these two men, both older men with colorful whistles, one green the other pink, are few bricks short of a full stack. They tend, every time we see them, to walk down the center of the roads blowing their whistles with hand-made traffic signs. We wonder if they want to become traffic cops although Singida doesn’t have traffic signs, none-the-less traffic officers. We’re always entertained by these men, since it seems neither bores of the continuous whistling and directing, it’s pretty amazing. On the off chance they happen upon each other, we witnessed this a few days ago, they tend to escalate the whistling as an attempt to become the loudest on the block. If only I could find where they bought these whistles I would have something to fill my time when I’m not working on surveys.
-Ryan

Hannibal research col-Lecter

2010-02-05T13:27:00.002+03:00

Our time here in Singida has been just flying by, in a relative fashion. We haven’t been severely ill since arriving, which is probably the main reason we’ve enjoyed our time here so much. Also, Betsy’s research is moving right along and it looks like phase two will be concluded this coming Wednesday already, kicking butt and taking names! During the course of collecting data, Betsy and I have come across different parts of Singida, which have just slightly amazed us; part bizarre and part completely awesome!
One of our first finds within “unique” Singida was the Curio-Cabinet Jesus. Down the road from our hotel, which has large concrete animals outside scattered about, there is a Catholic Nunnery. This particular compound is one of the nicer looking areas of Singida so we decided to investigate and to our delight they have a live-size concrete Jesus, contained within a glass enclosure (see pictures below)! One of the nuns saw us looking through the gate and offered to let us in to see the amazing concrete Jesus, they’re so proud of it. We’re also white so getting into enclosed and gated areas is somewhat easy around here.
Speaking of gates, here in Singida they employ a slightly more sinister way to protect their buildings than in Haydom, they implant broken bottles at the top of the walls as a kind of razor wire technique. I think it’s amazing the ingenuity of using the one resource they have which will cut people, glass. Since they don’t have access to many materials here, it’s definitely a good way to keep people out (see picture below).
We’ve also found the first city waste disposal system since we’ve been in Tanzania here. Singida, for a Tanzanian town, is relatively clean and litter free. Having been to many different towns prior to coming to Singida and finding them to be just covered in trash we have been wondering why there isn’t taka-taka (Swahili for trash) everywhere! Well, we finally found the reason, they actually have places you can deposit your trash and again, another reason we really like Singida. Apparently, they had widespread outbreak of cholera a few years ago, since then they place large trash receptacles around town (see picture below). It looks really ugly, at least in the places where they placed these things but it’s quite amazing that they do this and keeps the rest of the town relatively clean. I’m glad our hotel isn’t near one of these, they smell like death and people are always climbing around in them, yuck!
As some of you know, we have done some of the data collection at a local youth community center, which is funded by Outreach Africa and run by the local Catholic diocese. Every day they feed a large number (around 150) of the students who attend the Majengo Ward schools; these are the same schools we are doing data collection from. Our mission here was to interview the “street” kids who frequent the center for food. Of the seven street children, two of them their parents had passed away and the others were abandoned in near-by villages and have been scraping-by for the past few years. All of them were in pretty rough condition; all have severe vitamin A deficiency, pellagra, worms, one has jaundice and another has HIV. None of them have shoes so they’re constantly cutting their feet on the ground and one had a large gash on his head. After a little investigation he admitted that other kids tried fighting him because he lived on the street and one hit him in the head with a large rock! Anyway, sorry for being such a downer, they’re situation is just so sad though. After the interviews we went out and bought all of them sodas, which was literally the best thing in the world to them!
Speaking of vitamin A deficiency, an issue Betsy definitely won’t have, our hotel, the Stanley, serves liver and fava beans for breakfast. Betsy has, much to my, and probably many of your, amazement, is that she has a large plate of this every morning. I recently brought up the idea of forming a research assistant union (thank you Ryan Davis for the idea) which she quickly squashed. I’ve become increasingly scared of her lately; she seems to have picked up the taste of liver and can’t shake the addiction. Many mornings I find her standing over me saying, “It’s time for breakfast”. If only she had a nice bottle of Chianti in the morning to accompany her meal, I could call her Hannibal…
-Ryan

Running around

2010-01-23T18:47:00.000+03:00

Now that our little immigration ‘hiccup’ is over, things are moving along relatively smoothly. I’ve been spending my time learning about healthcare in Singida. It’s pretty amazing that anyone is actually alive here. In the area we are working in, there is the health center run by the district, which provides in- and out-patient services, as well as minor surgeries. Singida District has over 120,000 people; however there is no doctor at the health center and only one “Assistant Medical Officer” which is somewhat akin to a nurse practitioner. Also, they only have 35% of the health workers they need, and only have enough money in the budget to pay salaries. There is no ambulance, and there is a constant shortage of drugs and medical supplies. If we get sick here, we’re heading to see the Norwegians in Haydom (where there’s a slightly smaller shortage of drugs and supplies)!

In our spare time, Ryan and I have both started running again. We’ve found a relatively deserted path along Singidani, the lake Singida sits on. Running is not something Tanzanians do; in a calorie-deficient environment, expending extra energy is a pretty foreign idea. Since Ryan is a faster runner than me, people usually think I’m chasing him, and I’m constantly told, “He went that way!”. “He’s ahead, up the hill.” Gee, thanks.

-Betsy

Dar-tour

2010-01-18T14:01:00.000+03:00

Singida, oh Singida, you were so good to us for the first few days, what happened?! Ok, Singida is still beautiful, tasty and overall pretty darn nice place to be but the immigration officials of Singida Region caught wind of our presence last week, apparently not good. We awoke Wednesday morning to an average Singida day, overcast and eggs done just right for breakfast, smothered of course in hot sauce (thank you Ryan & Tamara); that's where the "normal" day ended. We were just setting up our computers and getting ready for a day of research assistant training when the concierge of the hotel came to the conference room to say that someone was at the front desk for us. The person waiting at the desk was an immigration and customs agent who asked to see our documents. As all of our papers would suggest, he said that everything checked out but that he needed to take us down to the immigration office to verify, at this point we were accosted.

As we entered the office it seemed as though everyone knew us or at the very least had seen us in the streets. Singida, I didn’t realize was so small, although we are definitely the only wazungu in town, which makes us stand out a bit. They took one look at Betsy’s passport and alarm-bells started to ring! Apparently, the Dar es Salaam immigration office did not stamp her passport properly, not good. After grilling me for about 15 minutes about what I was doing in the country, they seemed to think that I had everything in order and were prepared to release me. That is where the trouble started; Betsy had applied this week to change her COSTEC permit so she would be able to do research in Singida region. Only problem with this is that the COSTEC wheels move at an amazingly slow pace! We were awaiting approval, which we were given word that next week Monday we were good to go, unfortunately this was a few days too late. They quickly realized that she was not yet approved to do research in this region, although we had not started and did not plan to start the research until given approval we were in some trouble here.

After about an hour of finagling we managed to convince them to release us from their custody with the promise we were leaving on the next bus to Dar es Salaam. After calming our nerves we checked the bus station to see if there were any buses leaving pronto, there were. We regrouped with the idea that maybe they would let us stay in Singida until Sunday, the day before the permit was to be retrieved, then return thereafter. We went and ate lunch, returned to the immigration office to be received by the very annoyed looking immigration officer who sent us away. We asked to leave on Sunday in which he threatened legal action against Betsy for over-staying her visa, which she didn’t but according to the stamps in her passport, she did. Nothing here is digitally entered, so they would have had to call Dar to verify she was here legally, apparently that’s too much to ask.

After a long ride to Dar, Monday morning was surprisingly productive! Being MLK day in the US, the embassy was not open (sorry, Mom, we weren't able to pick up the box) but everything else went smoother than it would an a Western country! Betsy had the passport stamp and COSTEC revision in hand before noon, it was simply amazing! We called the bus station to have our return tickets ready for the next morning, looks like it was a short vacation in Dar, time to go back and get ready for research.
-Ryan

Singida-a-gogo

2010-01-16T16:42:00.000+03:00

So, week one of Singida down, and we’re settling in nicely. We’ve already found a new favorite restaurant, Cheshi Cliff, which is literally built into the side of a cliff. It’s about 4 stories tall, and 20 feet wide, and would never pass ANY building code in the Western world. But they have great “wali rosti” with hot peppers, and cold beer, so we’ve become huge fans. Also, the cliff offers an amazing view of the city of Singida. We’ve also settled into our hotel, the Stanley, chosen mostly because of the concrete animals in front. There are several hotels in Singida all owned by the same person, all identifiable by the concrete sculptures on display. Sadly, the Aqua Vita, which has a concrete dinosaur scene was too far from the city center to be feasible.

Interestingly, the perception that Ryan is Chinese has followed us here, and rather than shouts of “Wazungu! Wazungu!” when we walk through the streets, we more likely hear, “Mchina! Mchina!” This make a modicum of sense however, as many of the kids here have probably seen a lot more Chinese people than Americans or Europeans come through Singida. It seems that every road or development project in the area is sponsored by the Chinese government.

We’ve moved forward with setting up research here, and have hired a couple of research assistants, and started meeting local government officials. They’ve largely been very helpful, and I’m really excited to start working here. Unfortunately, we have to go to Dar for a few days to get some paperwork before moving forward (see Ryan’s blog post). People keep reassuring us, “don’t worry, it’s only a 12-hour bus ride”….great….

-Betsy

Divine Intervention

2010-01-11T19:40:00.000+03:00

Wow, the past week or so has been more than exciting on our side of the planet! First of all, I’ve been ill with flu-like symptoms for the past couple of weeks until a few days ago. It wouldn’t attract much attention aside from the fact that I had my first, “Pu your pants on the side of the road” experience. Yep, you heard it right, although I didn’t go in my pants there was no way I could not possibly make it to a bathroom, so that was great! I’ve been on a daily regimen of cipro for the past week and seem to be on the mend which has made for a much more pleasant trip.

Well, we decided this past Friday was going to be the “great escape” for us. We arranged plans to head out for Kigoma. According to Betsy, Kigoma was to be a land of “milk and honey” in which we were to be delivered. After speaking with a few of the locals who were helping in arranging the trip, one of them, Esto (research guru of Haydom) warned that going from Haydom to Kigoma direct was an “adventure”. Betsy, having heard the warnings from locals that the trip was not necessarily the most pleasant and deciding to forge ahead was also warned by her fiancé. Our massive amounts of luggage, coupled with us being wazungu, meant that this trip, no matter how pleasant the bus, was going to be a difficult one. Again, Betsy dismissed any reluctance or reservations I had and decided that going straight through was the best plan of action.

(see below: Betsy no longer makes ANY decision from this point on)

We awoke Friday morning and much to our chagrin, it was pouring rain! This also wouldn’t be of immense importance aside from the fact that all of the roads out of Haydom are dirt paths; so any type of precipitation makes for quite the eventful landcruiser ride! We found ourselves at the hospital garage with the drivers around in a circle arguing about whether or not we were going to be able to leave that morning; we were not happy people at this point. Finally, one of them made the decision that we were to try and three separate drivers hopped in to the car. I’m not sure why we needed all three drivers… not sure if I’ll ever understand that. Well, we believe from this point on it was direct divine intervention which kept us from Kigoma. About two hours into our trip to SIngida, the stop-over town for buses heading from Dar es Salaam to Kigoma, we came to a river which traversed the road we were to cross. Being in a Landcruiser I told the drive, “Twende”, since we were running late, but he hesitated to continue. Our landcruiser was outfitted with a snorkel and had 18” of clearance, I knew we would be fine, but they were still hesitant. Before we knew it our drivers had walked off, leaving Betsy and I in the car surrounded by 50 bored Tanzanians wanting to cross the same river on foot. About two hours after our drivers deserted us, having been ogled over for a similar amount of time by the bored Tanzanians and countless efforts to convince Betsy we should just take the landcruiser ourselves across the river, our drivers returned. We think they went and grabbed a cup of chai, although neither of us was certain either way. Finally, after watching a large charter bus enter and forge the river successfully, we made our attempt and to everyone’s relief, we made it just fine.

Two hours later we arrived in Singida the same time our bus was scheduled to leave. One problem, we were lost and didn’t know where to go. As we frantically called people to find out where to go, we happened upon the bus-stand and to our relief; the bus had not yet arrived from Dar. So, we bought our tickets and crossed the street to grab some lunch around 3pm. For the following six hours we were continually told that the bus would arrive within the current hour only to find that it never arrived. As time approached 9pm, our hospital drivers were antsy to head back to Haydom, since it was over a 3 hour trip back. We released them after they drove our stuff to the side of the road; we had five LARGE suitcases, two large boxes of Betsy’s surveys, two laptop computers and a large daypack! I decided to run to the restroom since the bus hadn’t arrived yet and was over 6 hours behind schedule. I exited the restroom to find an out of breath Tanzanian chasing after me yelling, “your bus, your bus!” Inferring that he meant my bus had arrived I doubled it back to the spot on the side of the road I left Betsy to find her deep in argument with the concierge of the bus on how much extra we needed to pay for all of our luggage! He wanted us to pay him 60,000 Tsh, about $50 USD, almost the price of our two tickets to Kigoma combined. She offered him 20,000 Tsh in which he responded in silence. As the argument continued on the side of the road, Betsy became more and more despondent while I became increasingly jovial, it was quite the juxtaposition. As we ate the dust from the bus pealing out as it left us on the side of the road, we came to realize, (Betsy: that we were stuck on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere at 10pm, me: that I didn’t have to ride in a bus crammed with 100 stinky Tanzanians for over 24 hours) that we were on the threshold of hell!

Well, that’s where we stayed, not on the side of the road but in Singida. We decided, I decided (see below) that we were going to stay in Singida and do the second part of her study here. We awoke in the morning to find that Singida is a surprisingly nice town, with cassava chips and the golf channel! We couldn’t have asked for a better mistake, it even seems to make more sense for Betsy’s research to stay here, as kids in Haydom could feasibly come here, where as Kigoma is too far away. So, cheers to all of you back in the US, I’m going to enjoy a little more soccer and CNN news on the TV, it’s been a long time!
-Ryan

Sincere and Public Apology

2010-01-11T16:48:00.002+03:00

This is a public announcement to say “I’m sorry” to my wonderful, patient, amazing fiancée who I have put through the ringer repeatedly. I promise I will never have you left on the side of the road with all your belongings, at night, by a bus in the third world country again. I promise to listen to your worries more. I promise to do the exact opposite of whatever I think is best. Please accept my apology, and please don’t bash my head against a rock.

Also, I want to send a belated Shout-Out to my sister Megan for taking her dental boards this weekend. I'm sure you kicked butt! One more step to free dental care for me!!!

-Betsy

An end in sight

2010-01-06T16:08:00.001+03:00

Well, our time in Haydom is wrapping up, but in true Tanzania fashion, not without a few bumps along the way. I finally finished collecting data yesterday, but have yet to enter it since the electricity in town has been out for more than 2 days. We’ve been saying good-byes to people we’ve met in Haydom. Although we will miss people, we may not miss the meals they serve us. This weekend we were invited to various people’s houses to say goodbye, and served various types of meat (we think goat and beef) from various parts of the animal – definitely some tubes, maybe a bit of tongue, and something that was a texture similar to lizard skin that I didn’t really know existed anywhere in mammals. But, being polite guests, we choked it down and smiled.

We’ve made fast work of the Christmas boxes, and had better leave Haydom soon, or we’re going to be back in the barren snack-wasteland that this town is. American food (and fiber) has made us feel much better – both mentally and GI-tract-wise!

We said our goodbyes at morning prayer at the hospital this morning, and we (when I say we, I really mean Ryan) were awarded with a coveted HLH heart. Not just everyone gets one of these. We’ve only seen one other person in our time here be awarded one, so we’re among the elite few, I think. The rest of the majority of our time has been spent trying to figure out how to get out of here, and the best way to get to Kigoma. We’re half way across the country now, so it doesn’t seem to make much sense to go all the way to Dar on the east coast to get to Kigoma, which is on the very western edge of the country. ….although, logistics and lack of roads make what should be a pretty simple thing to do, nearly impossible. I think our plan now is to hire a car, drive to a mid-way city which has a paved (possibly gravel) road, and take a bus from there to Kigoma. In theory, we will be able to get there in one day….

Well, sorry for the somewhat boring update, we should get a lot more interesting in a few days!

Betsy

(Photo: Apparently, after their Orange Bowl win, they Hawkeyes have become so popular they have fans here in Haydom! Who would have thunk it?!)

Hospital Architecture

2009-12-31T17:37:00.002+03:00

(1. General Ward with three phase construction: New shower area, three new exam rooms and new reception 2. Maternity Ward with four phase construction: red-first phase with 8 new delivery rooms / green - new neo-natal rooms / blue - 10 year master plan expansion with two new theater rooms / yellow - 25 year master plan construction for new patient room)

Help, Help, I'm being repressed!

2009-12-31T10:59:00.000+03:00

As our time in Haydom is drawing to a close Betsy and I have been waxing nostalgic about our time here… wait, what, not us! Ok, that part about being sad is a total lie; I can’t wait to sink my teeth into a bag of cassava chips. That being said, we have to give a shout out to all of you who sent us packages, you’re the best! My parents, Betsy’s parents, my sisters, Ryan and Tamara in Tampa and I can’t forget my aunts, Kathi, Mary, Patti and Vicki, THANKS; you all ROCK! Since the packages arrived, as you all know on Christmas Eve (“a Christmas Miracle” exclaimed by both Betsy and my Mom), we have been pretty much eating exclusively from said boxes of goodies and we don’t feel the least bit guilty!

In one of those boxes came a giant bag of Hersey’s chocolate (thanks Mom and Dad) and in another was a package of balloons (thank you Zillig girls). At my first point of reflection these goodies are relatively un-noteworthy until we realized that our family has never had balloons or chocolate in their lives! We gave our family a sizable bag of chocolate, among other things, which their four and two year old children commenced consuming as soon as we handed the goodies over. We tried to stress, in vain, that they should eat the candy pole, pole (very slowly). Within the hour Upendo, the four year old had a tummy ache and Wesley was bouncing off the walls! We went over to have dinner with our family that evening to see that Upendo and Wesley, normally in bed at this time of night, were still up running around with the balloons, which were in and of themselves a HUGE hit! Stefano asked if we wanted to take Wesley for the remainder of the evening, we politely declined, sorry about that, no more sugar for our family. All in all our Christmas was a good one, I having just recovered from the flu was elated by the plethora of snacks, thank you again!

Time has been passing by rather slow lately, but passing which makes me think of my sister, Sarah and my Mom. As look in the mirror and brush my hair, yes it’s long enough that I need to brush it daily now, I am constantly reminded of Sarah; essentially as my hair grows longer I look more and more like her. It doesn’t help that Betsy keeps calling me “Sarah”. Also, I feel like I’m turning into my mother, I’ve been eating white bread, with butter on it, chocolate (since the boxes arrived), and candy! I know, I can’t believe it either, but I guess that’s what you do when the only other option is ugali.

That being said, the eight guests, who were staying at our family’s 750 square foot house, have left. This is a great thing for Betsy and my personal hygiene since we have had to resort to using scrap paper as toilet paper as of late. Since the family friends were in town we have had a drastic shortage of usable TP, luckily they left and we didn’t resort to Betsy’s surveys, but it was close!

Speaking of being disgusting, one of our research assistants mopped our floor for us. She came over to transcribe with Betsy and was apparently disgusted enough by our American filth, apparently people here mop their floors every day, not once a week like us, that she had to stop and mop the floor. I loved how someone who bathes twice a week was telling Betsy and I how disgusting we were because the floor wasn’t clean enough to eat from… oh well, we have freshly mopped floor so I won’t complain, too much.

As Betsy’s survey is coming to a close, she only needs seven more to hit the 300 mark (100 more than she originally planned) she’s been getting more adept to entering the data. Drastic increase of data entry efficiency has afforded her time to play Mine Sweeper, the cheesy little game that comes with Windows, non-stop! I really think by the time we head out from Haydom that she will be a grand-master of Mine Sweeper, if there is such a thing. I’m constantly reminding her to return to her data-entry which I receive the response, “I am doing data entry, I just needed a little break… ok only 10 more tries at the advanced level, I have to beat 200 seconds!” I think this game has created a monster.

Out in the village this week we spied a woman stacking mud, yep Monty Python and the Holy Grail style! The initial reaction was that she must be doing this for some reason but neither Betsy nor I could find any discernable rationale. She was just in the middle of her yard, digging mud and stacking it into nice little piles. This display of non-sense made us run home and check out our copy of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the part where Arthur is speaking to the communist “mud-stackers”. We’ve decided to stop being oppressed as well, on to eating more Honey Wheat Pretzels, yum!
-Ryan

The Christmas Miracle

2009-12-24T16:03:00.002+03:00

We’ve both been feeling a little dumpy lately, mild to moderate tummy issues, missing the holidays at home, and our coveted fan is breaking (somehow, after 2 months!?). Today, Ryan came down with flu-like symptoms, and was achy with a slight fever (the same symptoms as one of my research assistants, Valentina, we’re blaming her). I was sick earlier in the week, and Ryan took over the role of Anthropologist in my absence. This morning, I left him at home while I went to the hospital to meet my research assistants, and head off on yet another day of interviewing adolescents. The novelty has worn off, and it’s gotten a little mundane asking kids about how often they eat ugali.

Since we arrived in Haydom at the beginning of October, we’ve been pestering the head secretary, Eliwaza, asking if there are any boxes for us, and making her call the post office in Mbulu several times a week. Well, this morning, when I was meeting with my research assistants, she came RUNNING up to me (Eliwaza is overweight, about 45, and normally does not move quickly in anything that she does), yelling “Eliza! You have packages!” (also no one in Tanzania gets my name right – the majority of people think I’m “Besti”, but at least they don’t think I’m Chinese). There was a mail run from Mbulu that arrived late last night, and there was not one, not two, but FIVE packages that arrived for Ryan and I!!!

I told my research assistants we were doing something different this morning: carrying boxes to my house. These were not small boxes by any means. In total, they represented over $400 in postage (thanks everyone for spending so much on us!), so I was definitely going to need help. I carried the largest one, Peter carried the next 2 biggest, and Regina put the last 2 on her head, and we headed off. As we were leaving the hospital, we passed the head of the transportation division, Wilson Jackson (by the way, he has a brother named Michael Jackson). He saw that we were struggling under the weight of snack foods and reading material, and offered to give us a ride in a hospital car. I returned home to my bedridden fiancée/(slacker) research assistant to exclaim, “A Christmas Miracle has happened!!!” In which case, he was momentarily cured, and jumped out of bed to check out our loot, yelling “Thank you, Baby Jesus!”.

A special Pu-Blog shout-out goes to Ryan’s parents, Betsy’s parents, Ryan’s sister Sarah, all of Ryan’s aunts, and our amazingly awesome friends Ryan and Tamara! We got some good stuff!! Aside from the 80 AAA batteries from Ryan’s parents (yes, that’s right, EIGHTY), we got multiple bags of beef jerky, honey wheat pretzels, trail mix, cookies, crackers, cereal, spices, bug spray, hand sanitizer, Neosporin, football/frisbee in one (it’s awesome), books, magazines, Scrabble, candy, slim jims (with the cheese sticks), saline, etc, etc….you can see from the picture.

On a sad note, the only thing that broke in our shipment of goodies was the one bag of Doritos. It somehow ripped open in the box, and this being Tanzania, and it being sent over 2 and a half months ago, we decided (after quite a bit of deliberation, and maybe a few tears shed by Ryan) that we had to throw them away. Sorry Ryan (Richey, that is). The other sad note is that we didn’t get this amazing haul of stuff 2 months ago! We only have a little time left in Haydom, so it’s going to be a snack orgy until then. We sat down today for a lunch of tuna salad with crackers (thank you Sarah), slim jims with cheese sticks (thank you, Ryan’s aunts), Oreos (thanks Betsy’s parents), and honey wheat pretzels (thanks everyone!).

Merry Christmas!
Betsy and Ryan

(Pictures: 1) the Christmas tree our family made for us out of tree limbs, fake flowers and ribbon, 2) Betsy’s research materials, aka Simba’s doggy bed, 3) our loot)

Chino-Latino, Wazungu?!

2009-12-18T09:19:00.001+03:00

Recently, the locals have started to call me “mchina wazungu”; my first thought about this is that since plain old “wazungu” wasn’t working in getting my attention that they would add a little something to it and maybe, just maybe I would show some sort of reaction. I told Betsy what the people were saying to me and she told me that this is the word they use for Asians. Apparently, they think I’m Chinese, mainly because they don’t differentiate between any other Asian culture and every Asian is Chinese to them. At first I thought, they must be semi-retarded to think I’m Chinese, but upon further contemplation my hair is pretty dark and since all of the other wazungu here are from Norway, they all have light brown or blond hair, it started to make sense. They probably haven’t seen an Asian, so I’m assuming they just went with it. Even though it could possibly make sense, I still think they’re idiotic. Although one of our research assistants thinks we are from Japan, the other wazungu don’t think that I’m Chinese, yet…

Being the project architect of the hospital has been going well so far, although they had about 15 projects in the queue, so Anders and I have been plenty busy. This is a great thing since it keeps me occupied and at the hospital, allowing me to successfully dodge data-entry with Betsy, muhaha! We just finished up designing the master-plan for the Maternity Ward Expansion. In our first meeting to discuss the design the only feedback I received from the local nurses is that they will no longer have a dedicated room to put their shoes. Apparently, this is a major issue for them, since every subsequent meeting we’ve had the issue continues to circulate. I would have addressed this issue but I have explicit directions to omit these design changes from the man at the top. This is in part because the hospital currently has over 5,000 deliveries per year with four delivery rooms; it is exceedingly taxed right now so every bit of additional space is imperative to be used for services, not shoe collections. Below is the current design for the expansion, the Red is Phase I to start construction January 16, Green is Phase II to be completed immediately after Phase I. Blue is Phase III, which will be in 10 years to keep up with increased demand, and Yellow is Phase IV which will be added in 20 years, give or take 5 years.

Last week Betsy and I went to the “Supermarket”, yes the supermarket, that’s what the locals call the semi-monthly market that comes to town. We were dismayed by the fact that the circus only stocked things you can already purchase in Haydom, only at an increased price which doesn’t make much sense to us. Either way, one stand was selling machetes which were inexplicably bent at the end; which confused the two of us for weeks. Confused us until just the other day when I saw a man cutting the hospital’s grass with it! Since the only place in Haydom with any grass is the hospital, I’m sure they’re the only one’s purchasing these “bent-grass cutters” (I apologize for the ridiculous pun).

Passing the time on the weekend has become difficult to say the least. Especially now that most of the Europeans have departed for Christmas back home, it’s pretty much just Betsy and I here. We went to a salt harvesting lake at the base of Mt. Hanang (see our last posting of pictures). It was great to get out of Haydom for a little while, even if it were only to watch a bunch of guys shoveling bottom of a murky lake into giant sized piles. The salt itself is quite tasty, which is what the locals use to salt their food here which we unwittingly ate before knowing its origin. We also stopped by the hospital’s farm, which consists of 15,000 acres of farm-land and about 100 goats imported from Norway! Not much to say about the farm, it was pretty unspectacular aside from its shear enormity and the fact that they imported goats; as all of you already know, goats are everywhere here, seriously!

Speaking of people being stupid, we’ve come to the conclusion that people here don’t know where they’re walking. They drive on the left side of the road, fine, just please walk and ride your bike accordingly! Everyday it seems as though people run into us or near-misses occur. Betsy and I have tried to make sense of it, our longest running hypothesis was that they are like water, taking the path of least resistance but that has since been disproven. Just yesterday I had a man run his water cart into my leg as I was moving to get out of his way. I think it could be that they stare so intently at us “wazungu” that they completely forget to walk the tangents, or something of that sort. Betsy has the Ludacris song “Move Bitch” (sorry everyone) on her iPod, which plays through our minds every morning while dodging the shotgun scatter of people, potholes and puddles which line the roads to the hospital. Some may find that Betsy having Ludacris on her iPod is absurd but I would say that’s just about right, watch for her to pimp her ride out when she gets home...
-Ryan

Finger Lickin' Good

2009-12-15T16:44:00.004+03:00

Ok, not finger-licking good, especially since giardia is one mis-placed lick away...
(1 - Betsy learn to cut the pumpkin, 2 - Me cooking up something fierce!, 3 - The finished product, pumpkin ugali! For all of those who want to try making it, ie Joel Holtry, start with a pumpkin. Cut it into bits, throw into a very hot pot. Stir for one hour, or until mushy. Add maize flour and mix until stiff, enjoy!)

Salty Lake

2009-12-15T16:40:00.002+03:00

(1 - Bets and I with the lake & Mt. Hanang behind, 2 - where our salt comes from...)

Thanksgiving Photos

2009-12-15T16:33:00.002+03:00

(1 - me taking it to the chicken, 2 - Betsy hesitating before the kill, 3 - Betsy reveling in the kill, 4 - the FEAST!)

These white people not know to cut the pumpkin

2009-12-14T09:05:00.001+03:00

Today started off like every day in Tanzania, where we woke up feeling a bit ill, and not wanting to go too far from the choo (toilet). Although not that unusual, it was especially bad because Regina, one of my research assistants, had invited us to her house to meet her parents and see their farm. We both decided that we weren’t feeling up to it, and would tell her we couldn’t go. She doesn’t have a phone, so we had to wait until she came to our house to pick us up. When she got here, she was wearing a new dress and new shoes. She was so excited we didn’t have the heart to bail on her, so we grabbed some TP and the camera and headed on our way.

Regina had told us her house was about a half an hour walk from Haydom, so we thought this would be a fun little morning trip. When we started on our way, she looked at my watch, and seeing that it was 11:15, said that we would be there by noon. Ryan and I both sighed, not wanting to walk too far with questionable bowels, but set off on our hike. We walked ….and walked….and walked….past the secondary school that we drove to for the study, past one of the villages we interviewed in to get a comparison to Haydom, past 2 rivers, and finally arrived at her parents house at 12:45.

When we got there, her mother, father and countless siblings (she is the second oldest of 12, her youngest brother is 5 months old, 2 months younger than Regina’s own baby) greeted us with open arms. They had prepared a pumpkin, one of the staple foods in the area, and wanted to teach us how to cook pumpkin ugali (kind of like polenta). Ryan and I have decided that Tanzanians generally think we are semi-retarded. Their logic goes that since we don’t know how to cook ugali, the most basic and easy food here, that we must not know how to cook anything else either. Regina started the lesson by showing us how to cut up the pumpkin into chunks. When I offered to help her, she gave me a look that said, “I’m not sure you can manage this without major injury” and handed me a knife. I’ll admit I wasn’t that adept at squatting and cutting up a hard pumpkin placed on a tarp on the ground. In my defense, the knife she handed me was truly the world’s dullest knife, where you couldn’t really tell which side of it was the sharpened one. The family that we live with lets the local herd of toddlers play with sharper knives (more on that later). Everyone thought it was hilarious to watch the mzungu mangle the pumpkin, prompting her mother to observe, “These white people not know to cut the pumpkin! Hahaha!”. Gee, thanks.

While the pumpkin was cooking, Regina’s father took us on a tour of the farm. We saw where the goats sleep (in the room adjacent to where the people sleep), the cow pen (a circle of acacia limbs), and how to feed chickens (yell “kuku kuku kuku” and toss corn at them). Regina said that they are able to grow all the food her family needs as well as all the feed for the animals, and never have to buy anything. Albeit, they only eat maize, eggs, beans, greens and milk most of the time.

After the pumpkin cooked and mixed with maize flour and a dash of oil it was ready to eat. Basically, you roll a ball of ugali dough, then dip it in whatever sauce comes with it. Today it was melted animal fat. Ryan and I tried one dip, both gagged a little, and then stuck to the plain ugali. As far as ugali goes, pumpkin ugali is pretty good – meaning that we wouldn’t touch it with a 10 foot pole in the states, but after walking for an hour and a half on an empty stomach it was edible, which is more than can be said for regular ugali. They also gave us fresh milk for lunch. This sounds wonderful and quaint, but if you’ve never tried fresh milk, there’s a reason we don’t drink it in the states. It’s sour, and has chucks on curdled fat floating on top. Unfortunately, a storm was rolling in, and we had an hour and a half walk ahead of us. As we were left, Regina’s parents gave us some fresh eggs and told us “karibu tena” (welcome again!). We hurried back as quickly as possible to Haydom, and straight to Samjo, our favorite restaurant for some meat and rice, and to get the taste of curdled milk out of our mouths.
-Betsy

2009-12-07T14:12:00.000+03:00

Pictures!!!

2009-12-07T12:06:00.002+03:00

Chickening Out

2009-12-04T08:11:00.001+03:00

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving! Ryan and I decided to celebrate Turkey Day by buying the family some chickens, and helping them cook a pseudo-Thanksgiving meal of chicken, potatoes, rice, and banana bread. There aren’t any turkeys in Haydom, so we had to settle for chickens. They are very expensive for most people here, so it was a special treat.

Relatives from the country had given them two chickens, but being Americans, and this being Thanksgiving, we decided that two chickens were definitely not enough for 17 people. We headed to the market with Lucy, one of the kids, to pick up three more. Word had gotten out that the wazungu wanted chickens, and a few steps outside of our gate we were met by people with armloads of chickens ready to sell. Lucy bargained for us, and $12 later, we were the proud owners of three live chickens.

That afternoon, we invited our friend and research assistant, Prisca, over to help us cook and to have Thanksgiving dinner. We started by making banana bread. I didn’t have a recipe, or measuring cups, or really any idea what I was doing, so I just started mixing flour, eggs, sugar, oil and bananas in a bowl. When it looked remotely like banana bread dough, I scooped it into a loaf pan, and stuck it in the oven. The ‘oven’ is a wood burning stove, with a chamber for baking, so there no telling how hot it is or if the temp is constant, so I just put it in and hoped for the best. While the bread was baking, we decided it was time to ‘deal’ with the chickens.

The family was convinced that two chickens were enough for everyone. These are scrawny, natural, African chickens, that spend their lives running around scavenging for food, not big plump American chickens who spend their lives getting fat and juicy. There was no way two chickens were enough, so we compromised and settled on three. With a parade of kids behind us, we grabbed a (rather dull) kitchen knife, and headed out back. Ryan and I had made a pact that if we were going to eat the chickens, we would each kill one, but neither one of us really knew how to go about doing it. Prisca (wearing nice shoes, a tailored dress, and perfectly braided hair) however, got right in there, and taught us to stand on the wings with one foot, their legs with the other, then grab their head and pull it back with one hand, and slit their throat with the kitchen knife, then hold it until it bled out and stopped flopping. At this point, I decided I was just going to have potatoes for dinner, and I was fine with that.

Ryan was up next, and without hesitating, positioned the chicken, and with Prisca cheering him on, started cutting. It seized, it flopped, and it bled just like it was supposed to. Two down, one to go….my turn. Ryan handed me the bloody knife, and I was on my way to vegetarianism. I begged and pleaded. I said I just wanted potatoes for dinner. I said I’d lived for 27 years having other people kill my meat for me, I didn’t see any reason to change. But Ryan, Prisca, and the kids wouldn’t back down. They were all teasing and laughing at me, and finally, my pride got the better of me, and I decided to go for it! I stood on its wings and its legs, but couldn’t bring myself to hold the head. Emanueli, one of the kids, held the head back for me, and with Ryan, Prisca, and all the kids cheering for me, I got in the zone, and cut its throat. It actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, the chicken died a rather painless death, and probably had a better life than most of the chicken I eat in the states. However, I will forever be thankful for Hy-vee and its saran-wrapped boneless skinless chicken breasts.

Turns out that killing the chickens is just the beginning of the work. Next, they are dunked in boiling water and plucked. We found out is that rubber chickens look amazingly like the real thing. Who knew? Then we seared them over the fire to burn off any remaining fluff, and we washed them, cut their necks more cleanly, and cut off their feet. Simba, the family puppy, was one lucky dog, and ended up eating all three chicken heads and some of the feet. Then he passed out, in a puppy version of the Thanksgiving turkey-coma.

When it was time to cut them up into pieces, Prisca again got right in there and started hacking. It was really more of a biology lesson for Ryan and me. We learned what eggs look like inside the chicken (they look like yolks), that the gizzard really is full of pebbles, and that unless they are American freak chickens, they don’t really have much breast meat.

That night, the family invited us over to their house, and we all sat down together for our feast. Three chickens actually make an amazing amount of meat, especially when you use ALL of them. Two chickens probably would have been enough, but three allowed it to feel like Thanksgiving, where no one worried about taking more than their share. We had broth from the chickens to put over rice, boiled potatoes, and banana brick. I forgot to put any sort of rising agent into it, so it was a bit dense. Besides being a masonry material, it was acutally pretty good. Being polite Tanzanians, they all said they loved the bread and wanted the recipe (but then they started talking in Iraqw, so who knows what they actually said about it.) At the end of the meal, we were all full and happy (tumeshiba sana).

We’re thinking about getting a goat for Christmas….
-Betsy

Witchy Woman

2009-12-01T10:00:00.000+03:00

We’ve figured out some of the sounds Tanzanians feel represent the local wildlife; I feel the most interesting of descriptive sounds to me is the bee. Apparently, Tanzanians think that instead of bees “buzzing”, as Americans would assume, they produce a “sucking” sound; which is best described as the sound you would make sucking on a dry straw. This isn’t a bad thing, just a strange observation that I happened to remember this morning.

Also, we have met some friends; well I have more or less from playing futbol on Tuesdays and Fridays at the hospital. They’re all Europeans but they sort of share our culture, sort of. We coaxed them into meeting up with us at our favorite restaurant, Green View Garden Restaurant. Well, the Green View definitely doesn’t have any green “views” nor does it have a garden. We think it should be called, Cell Tower View Concrete Restaurant, that’s the best description one could make. View or not, it’s the best place in town so we are regulars, John, the owner and Jacob, the maître d' restaurant, are great! Anyway, we met up for a drink with our new Euro-friends this past weekend; Green View is also the only place in town with wine. Well, this wine thing was a spectacle to say the least, luckily they actually had wine glasses to drink from but had a smaller wine glass in which they actually measured the drinks. Jacob came out with the box of wine and the small glass to measure out the glasses one by one, it was quite an experience. By the end of the night, Jacob was falling over drunk (literally); Betsy and I figured he was getting drunk because we bankroll their restaurant so they could afford a drink or seven. On a side note to drinking I’ve noticed that when I drink Castle Lager, my favorite beer here although I probably wouldn’t drink it back home, my ears begin palpitating. We were trying to figure out why this happens, the jury is still out, so if any of you have any ideas, I’d be open to hearing them.

The next morning I decided, since Betsy had recently had a dress tailored, that I would get a nice button down shirt tailored myself. We went into a local tailor that specializes in men’s clothing and had them take my measurements. They said to return in four days and the shirt would be ready. Four days came and it was time to return for my newly tailored shirt or garbage bag, whatever you want to call it. I tried it on and felt as if they took my measurements in centimeters and cut the fabric in inches, the shirt was HUGE! Also, the arms were about two inches too short so we tried to get them to take it in and decided the sleeves were ruined; we had them convert it into a short-sleever. I’ll keep you updated with this but I plan on having a suit tailored while I’m here, should be an interesting process, especially since it will be in local fabric…

To adequately describe the type of care people receive from the hospital here is hard to pin-point. Seems as though the “western” doctors that are here do a fine job but some of the local health-professionals are somewhat lacking. Regina’s (our female research assistant) boyfriend was having what we thought were epileptic seizures, hence one would diagnose him with epilepsy, not here. Apparently, he’s not taking any medication for his episodes, which I’m pretty sure is not a good thing, because the doctor he visited told him it was the work of a witch. They ran tests on him, which were inconclusive, so their only explanation was that someone in Haydom is apparently performing hostile witch-craft towards him. We thought it weird to hear from a hospital, albeit in rural Africa, staffed with western doctors.

Hope all is well back in the States and that everyone had a great Thanksgiving free of witch-craft and hob-goblins!
-Ryan

Goats are all the rage!

2009-11-28T12:31:00.000+03:00

The last week or so has been somewhat eventful retrospectively, but it is Haydom; anything that happens is an event. We’ve continued to make headway on Betsy’s research which is always a good thing. Also, we found something in which Betsy is definitely better than I am, killing flies and other various bugs with our tennis racket. I really think she missed a golden opportunity to become the next Monica Seles. Usually, she’ll spend a half an hour each day casing the “apartment” looking for flies to kill, it’s a never ending battle so she’s constantly entertained. Unfortunately for me, I’m either ducking to get out of the way of a wild electrified tennis racket or having to move out of the volley of life-less fly carcasses sailing through the air. The place usually has a distinct carbon smell to it; I’m guessing all of the wings that are fried in the racket contribute to the burning flesh smell. I can’t complain though since she does an amazing job of ridding our place of the annoyance; I can’t stand it when they land on my face!

I’ve been receiving quite a bit of ‘street-cred’ as of late, I’ve broken out the ‘siata’ greeting. For the most part we get heckled and taunted on a daily basis while walking around Haydom. Peter, our research assistant, has been teaching me some Iraqw words, which is the local language in Haydom. Most people will still speak Swahili but if you’re ‘wazungu’ you definitely do not know how to speak Iraqw! One evening, with the new greeting fresh in my mind, Betsy and I went for our usual walk to the water cistern at the edge of town. Along our route we were being pestered by a couple of boys driving their cattle, after greeting them with a ‘siata’ they immediately became silent. We overheard one of them saying to the other, (this is Betsy’s Swahili translation) “that guy just said ‘siata’!” Since that day I’ve broken out the ‘siata’ with many people throughout the day which either gets a smile or a dumb-founded look in return, either way it’s definitely breaking the tension on a day-to-day basis.

Speaking of tension, I have decided I HATE GOATS! I don’t know where this ‘goat-rage’ derives but it’s definitely a persistent feeling that I have whenever around them and in Haydom it’s hard to keep your distance, they’re everywhere! I think most of my distaste for goats may come from the fact that their “bah” or “neh” or whatever it is they do is semi-reminiscent of the kids who run around town yelling “wazungu, wazungu”, it’s just a misplaced hatred. We were hoping, for Thanksgiving, we would be able to buy one and roast it for our meal…

Something roasted sounds really good right about now, I’ve been drooling for a couple days! Peter and I interviewed a kid from the tribe of Barbaiq, pronounced, barbeque. I’m not sure if their food is any different from the local tribes’ food here in Haydom, but I wouldn’t mind trying it out. I’m sure being part of the tribe of BBQ has its advantages (ie – roasted goat).

Also, I’ve become the project architect for the hospital, much to my chagrin. We met with the medical director a couple weeks back, Dr. Olsen, much of the conversation consisted of Betsy’s research and what the hospital’s objectives in the area are but when told that I am an architect back home, his eyes lit-up. Their “architecture team” currently consists of a carpenter (Anders) from Norway and contractor (Albi) from South Africa, Tanzania doesn’t have an enforced building code so you can pretty much do whatever you like and obviously, anyone can design it. I guess they don’t pay much mind to ADA here either, not that it would matter, one would die here if they became incapacitated anyway. When we find reliable internet, I’ll upload a few pictures of Tanzania’s construction means and methods, very nice. Anyway, it’s good to actually have something that I specialize to sink my teeth into, even if it consists of the most mundane of projects. I have to continually think in an African mindset, they use sticks and mud to build things.

Speaking of dying, we found the hospital’s cemetery, more or less a body drop. Some of the local tribes, when they bring their ill members in, will leave them here, when they die, the hospital takes them to a large plot of land next to the airstrip outside of town and buries them. I would have to say, the plant life out there does grow unusually well, Betsy and I had commented on that many times before learning the gruesome facts about that area.

We’re about to head to the hospital for Research Assistant training, we are starting the second part of the study soon and have to train them on a new section, should be interesting. After that, up to Mt. Haydom, more or less a large pile of rocks, not really a mountain since Betsy and I can climb it in about 15min. I promise to send pictures soon but our internet modem with Vodafone doesn’t work anymore and the hospital shut-down all of the computers, so we have to mooch off of Anders’ computer, which really sucks. That’s Africa for you, rely on nothing because one day it’s here, the next day it’s gone, oh well, I think we’ve adjusted alright to the lack of connection to the Western-world.

Well, I won’t bore you anymore than I already have; I know my posts are extremely long-winded and “somewhat mundane” (direct quote from Betsy). Hope all is well back in the States, since we really don’t know what’s going on there, no phone calls, no packages, no email…
-Ryan

Ps- happy birthday Sarah, not sure I’ll get to my email anytime soon, so wanted to plug it in there. Happy belated birthday Brian, we were totally in the dark through the 10th of the November.

Running Scared

2009-11-17T17:47:00.001+03:00

We’ve been back in Haydom for a couple of weeks now and starting to fall into what you would call our “routine”. It has started to get easier for us, partly because we’ve been going gang-busters on Betsy’s research (kicking butt and taking names), which helps my state of mind; sitting around doing nothing was killing me! We spearheaded the qualitative portion of her research last week in a training session which lasted two days, by the end I felt as if I were one of the Leakeys. Peter and Regina (our research assistants) seemed to pick up the idea of the study pretty quickly which put our minds at ease.

Time came when we actually had to start going out and doing the research, but to our surprise it has been going more smoothly than we had initially expected. We have, however, run into a few kinks in the road, one big problem is that I’m a white male over the age of twenty. Normally this wouldn’t seem like an issue but since it’s just Peter and I, most of the kids run away at the sight of me. Peter said that most of the young boys run because white people only come looking for kids when they’re in trouble. It also doesn’t help that the adults in the rural areas are telling the children that we’re going to kill them. All in all we’ve been able to entrap a few of the boys into doing the interviews. We have a long way to go from here but looks like we’re going to do alright.

Many of you have sent packages and I wanted to send you an update as to what both you and we can expect. First the package goes to Dar es Salaam, then it is trucked out to Mbulu, the district capital. It apparently sits there and waits for that person to claim said package. Well, on a daily basis we’ve been going to the administration office in the hospital asking about the package my Mom sent over a month ago, finally a package with the name “Elizabeth” was sitting in Mbulu. Unfortunately, the postal worker took a gander inside and saw that the items were worth something, so basically they black-mailed us into paying them Tsh 6,000. This happens to “wazungu” mail, evidently this does not happen to Tanzanians, which they obviously know by the fact that it’s coming from outside their country. So, we waited another three days for the package, after the dirty-money (figuratively and literally, their money is incredibly dirty, I would rather lick a dollar bill than handle some of this currency) exchanged hands only to see that the package was for Elizabeth Fausenhausen, not our beloved Betsy. We continue to pester the Admin staff, hoping that something, anything will arrive soon, but alas, nothing thus far, so we continue to wait…

...Bat Back Into Hell(dom)

2009-11-07T10:44:00.002+03:00

OFFICAL: I am apologizing for the obscure Meatloaf reference, sorry to bring back bad memories

How Betsy was able to coax me out of the KLM Boeing 777 out of Tanzania, I will never know, and how she was able to stuff me back into the land cruiser to Haydom is an even more amazing feat. Well, I guess the rohypnol she dropped in my beer in Dar has finally worn off so my cognitive thoughts have returned, at the very least.

Dar es Salaam was a great experience and we were very happy to get a bit of a respite from the tedium that is Haydom. While in Dar we knew that we NEEDED to bring supplies, snacks and luxury items back with us, as Haydom has nothing to offer in the realm of 1st world goods. After much exploration, we found what we were looking for, chips, spices, fruit spread, TONS of cookies, an electric tennis racquet, a real fan and yes, a wireless internet modem! We packed all of these things, actually stuffed, smashed and piled everything we could possibly fit into an adult diaper box we found at the “wazungu” grocery store, and hoped for the best.

While in Dar, we spotted local stamp makers, guys on the side of the road who take old tires and cut the rubber into stamp-sized pieces and customize them with old razor blades for people who, well, want a stamp. I have been eyeing the possibility of having a stamp made since I first stumbled upon these people in Arusha, so I had to have one. Betsy and I made friends with one of the local Dar stamp makers, apparently everyone in Tanzania loves stamping things so it allows for ten stamp makers to set up shop within a mile radius. So, Betsy created a little drawing, this is something I definitely should have done, and gave it to Martin, our designated stamp dude. Martin told us to return in two hours at which time the stamp would be complete. At the designated time, we returned to find that the stamp was exactly how Betsy drew it out, unfortunately it was not what we wanted which was, Tembo (elephant, Betsy’s nickname for me) and Twiga’s (giraffe, Betsy’s nickname for herself) Tanzanian Adventure, with an image of a giraffe and elephant in the middle. Instead it said, STEMBO and TWIGA, in place of the elephant they carved a tree. The STEMBO mistake came from the fact that Betsy had made a little “scratch-out” at the beginning which Martin mistook as an “S”. Now, STEMBO is not a Swahili word so confusion abound for Martin who probably couldn’t understand why on earth we would want such a word, but did exactly as he was told, much to our chagrin. Both Betsy and I quickly realizing the mistake, asked him to carve an elephant into the remaining space on the stamp. In what looks more like a malformed fetus, Martin, tested the stamp and proudly handed it to its new owners, giraffe and fetus; apparently fetus will be my new nickname. Thoroughly disappointed, I returned to Martin drawing in hand, this time done by myself, and asked him to create a new stamp. The drawing I had created left nothing to the imagination, which was sketched in roughly ten seconds, since we know what happens when you ask Martin to design something. Delighted to see me, he directed me to return in two hours, status-quo. When we returned to purchase the stamp, to my surprise he cut the stamp EXACTLY how I drew it, EXACTLY! As you can see, it’s quite hilarious, since the elephant I drew was semi-retarded looking. Next time we will come to Martin with a computer print-out drawn in AutoCAD.

After the excellent week we had in Dar, we had to jump back on a bus heading to Arusha, we heard Scandinavia Express was the “best”, so we decided to try their service. The tickets were 4000Tsh cheaper than the Dar “not so” Express, the trip was to take eight, not ten, hours and they had a restroom on the bus! Well, the day of the trip we boarded the bus to find the restroom was not functioning, typical Tanzania for you. We also noted that only 12 people came on and all of them were wazungu, weird! So the bus headed for the country-side doing break-neck speed for Tanzanian roads, which is roughly 45mph. The reason this is thought of as quick is because every five miles or so you’ll hit a speed bump, literally, a speed bump. Well, what was a quick trip soon came to a crawl as we began to pick up “ticket-less” passengers on the side of the road. Before we knew it, we had a bus load of people and the driver and attendant had a fist full of schillings! (ok, no more cheesy pop-culture references from the 1960/70’s) After having stopped over twenty times, we quickly realized that this trip was infact much worse than the Dar Express, we arrived eleven hours later, three full hours after the designated time, again very Tanzanian. This wouldn’t be so bad, had we traveled 800 miles, but the distance from Dar to Arusha is roughly half that! After watching two extremely cheesy B films, one which was titled “The Base”, look it up, I highly recommend it, we arrived in Arusha. All in all, we were glad to go get a decent meal and rest the evening before climbing aboard the dreaded land cruiser to Haydom.

The next morning, butts still sore from the prior day of travel, we jumped into an 11 person land cruiser. Of course it was not only stuffed with 16 adults and 2 children, making the human total 18, but also 4 chickens! Knowing what to expect on our trip back, the 6.5 hours of rough-riding was relatively predictable and manageable. Our driver, we’ve had a different one each of the three trips, was semi-blind, which only added flair to the white-knuckled ride up the mountains. We finally arrived in Haydom that evening, Costech approval in hand and a box full of snacks in tow. We are now ready to conquer the task ahead of us, researching adolescent nutrition, for all of those not sure why the heck we’re here (albeit I ask myself that same question from time to time).

We hope that all is well back in the States and that fears of Africa have not frightened Betsy’s parents into retracting their desire to meet the two of us here... it’s not that bad, so long as you have cookies. 
-Ryan

(pics: Ryan and Rachel in Boat at Maliaka House, Ryan eating a fish head, stamp guys, Martin closest to Ryan, Stamps)

Ten Things the U.S. Hates About US!

2009-11-03T14:43:00.007+03:00

Our journey continues! Thus far, we have done everything the US Embassy security personnel explained not to do while you’re in Tanzania. We had our mandatory security briefing at the Embassy today, which went well but left most people shocked and bit freaked out. The things we have done which we’re told not to:

1. Walk in the middle of the night down unlit back-roads in search of an elusive restaurant.
2. Use ATMs, apparently people in Nairobi want to steal our money.
3. Use the DalaDalas, taxis or CNGs (little three wheeled motorcycles)
4. Actually walk into markets without armed guards or purchase wooden giraffes at the carving market
5. Go anywhere in Posta (downtown area) especially the Muslim section
6. To be anywhere within eye-sight of the water (Indian Ocean, since Dar is located on it)
7. Never leave the confines of Dar es Salaam or Arusha, since the rural areas of Tanzania are lawless (Haydom apparently falls under this category)
8. Eat at any restaurant regardless of lit atmosphere, aside from the two Subways.
9. Follow local Tanzanians guiding you somewhere because you were lost.
10. Last but not least, never trust any of the US Embassy guards… aside from the eight Marines which guard the interior compound.

The security personnel would rather you experience Dar and Tanzania from your hotel window rather than actually go outside; sorry Bill and Laura, looks like the safari and Kilimanjaro are off, we can’t leave the airport, it’s far too dangerous!

Friday, as Betsy and I became hungry for lunch, we set off from our hotel in Posta (not only are we not supposed to be down here, actually residing here is unheard of for Wazungu!) in search of a tasty meal. We were staying at the Safari Inn, it’s a modest place located on Libya Street in central Posta. Heading in the direction of the harbor (also, don’t go near the water), we happened upon a restaurant called Al-Hazzari, it was centrally located on Mosque Street, and was serving up a most pleasant smelling food. Wide-eyed and oblivious to her surroundings, Betsy headed onto the patio of the open-air restaurant. In what looked to me to be a recruiting hotspot for the Taliban, ten Muslim men sitting outside eating in a row almost spit their food out as they watched in horror as a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed woman walked into the restaurant. Friday is the Muslim holy day, it was about 1:30pm, right after their second call to prayer for the day, I’m assuming many of them had just retired from the mosque to enjoy lunch. Realizing the situation, I grabbed Betsy’s arm and immediately walked her out of the establishment. Walking down Mosque Street in the opposite direction, I noticed I had not seen a single female for the last 10 minutes, it was time to find food elsewhere! We ended up sitting down at a place called Ladybird’s, a small Indian restaurant, it served great food and cheap too! It was good to have escaped out of Little Kabul, unscathed.

Explaining why we were walking down a deserted, unlit road in search of a restaurant will never make a lot of sense until you visit the Malaika House. We, Betsy, Rachel Favaro (Betsy’s friend who is currently in Dar) and myself, set off on our fateful journey around 7pm Monday evening, it was already pitch black out since Dar is close to the equator, and walked in the direction our hotel staff had prescribed. After wandering through deserted residential areas for about 30min we happened upon, Lipold, a security guard at one of the compounds who told us the restaurant was in the opposite direction we were headed. We turned around and walked down another unlit area in which we hit, what seemed to be a dead-end. A young man sitting in a drainage ditch caught our attention, telling us we didn’t have to walk all the way back to the main road, but instead to follow him on a short-cut through the ditch. We continued on this and finally hit the main road, in which we deviated once more down an unlit residential area. This time we actually hit a dead-end, populated by fifty or so Tanzanians, we couldn’t tell how many there were since Tanzanians are REALLY hard to see in the dark of night, seriously! A friendly Canadian, who also happened to be a Tanzanian, popped out of the shadows to direct us in the best North American English accent I’ve heard since our KLM flight attendant on our way to Amsterdam. He explained that he had never heard of the Malaika House but that he loved the Houston Astros and BBQ, and were lucky because there was a great BBQ restaurant around the corner. We walked away from the crowd of Tanzanians, who by this point had broken out in mass singing “happy birthday” to us, since it is the only English any of them knew. We walked another 15 or so minutes until we decided it was no longer prudent to continue the course we were currently on, so did an about face and headed back to the main road. By this time it was nearing 8:30pm and I was getting cranky, I had walked for miles on end that morning in search of a functioning ATM (something we’re not supposed to be doing, according to the US Embassy). We finally hit the main road and located the nearest taxi stand (also, don’t do this) in which he drove literally half a mile down the road to the Malaika House, ugh! After much tribulation we finally arrived at our destination. When I say it was Malaika House, it was definitely a house, without any lights or identifying features which would traditionally signal that you are at a restaurant. In fact, we opened the door to the house and found a security guard sitting in a chair in a dark corner of the entryway. He explained that the restaurant was through the house and on the beach. As we approached, the place opened and saw a great sight, the Indian Ocean with the coolest Tiki-hut/bar in the world! It was awesome, the food was fantastic, Betsy and I had grilled fish and Rachel had beef. We sat in the chairs on the sand for two hours drinking beer and having a good old time. Apparently, the place closes down at 10pm so we were forced to leave and make the 5 minute walk back to our hotel, not too bad. Apparently, these are all things you should not do, should not attempt or even think about doing while overseas, because according to the security personnel, you will inevitably die.
-Ryan

(images: local fishermen, original slave trading ship still in use, Betsy with cows)

COSTECH update

2009-11-01T16:48:00.000+03:00

Well, Monday rolled around, and Ryan and I headed off to our appointment at COSTECH. We were armed with letters of support from various organizations and village leaders, and lots of time to just sit in their office and wait. I walked into the office ready to fight for my permit. I handed over the letters, and the guy read them carefully and said “Ok, now give me $300, and you’ll have your permit.” SUCCESS!!!! Only one little step between me and research clearance. The problem was that we didn’t have $300 in US dollars, being in Tanzania and all, where they use the shilling. I brought up this point to the man, and he said that all we had to do was go to a bank, and deposit the money into a bank account. It was all very easy really, and there was a branch just up the road. After yet another Tanzanian miscalculation of distance, we arrived at the bank.

We had our ATM cards to get T-shillings, and all the information for the account, we were good to go! We walked up to one of the account managers to ask how this process would work. She said that they didn’t exchange money at the bank (despite the rate chart on the wall indicating otherwise), and that we would have to go to an exchange bureau to get dollars, then bring them back to deposit them. We asked about the rate chart, and they said they would only do dollars to shillings, not the other way around. We walked out into the parking lot, but decided to go back and see if by some chance someone had bought shillings, and maybe they had dollars on hand. We went to a teller, who said “of course you can deposit shillings into a dollars account, you just have to have an account manager approve it.” Ugh. Back to the account manager. We told her what the teller said, and she said “oh, yes, if I approve it, you can do that. You just have to get a receipt from COSTECH.” Um, what? We were AT THE BANK to get a receipt to take to COSTECH. After explaining this to her, and that we wanted to put money in, not take it out, she asked if I had any documentation from COSTECH, that she could see as proof. I didn’t, however, I had my USF research approval stuff, so I showed that to her, and she said it would work. This paperwork actually has nothing to do with COSTECH, and was basically just a random piece of paper I was carrying, but whatever, I wasn’t going to complain. She told us we needed to get a photocopy of it and bring it back.

We set off to find the closest stationary shop. These shops are EVERYWHERE in Tanzania, so this wasn’t going to be a problem. We found one just around the corner, but due to rationing, there was no electricity in this part of Dar today. She thought the other side of the street might have electricity though. We headed over there, but again, no electricity. We remembered that the bank seemed to have electricity, so we headed back there to see if we could pay THEM to make a copy. Back to the account manager. “Oh, why yes, of course you can make a photocopy here. You don’t need to pay for it, either.” Thanks for telling us that now. She pointed us to the poor over-worked secretary who seemed to be the busiest person in the bank and went back to her office to wait. Another wait in line. Ryan decided to expedite the process and go get the money from the ATM while I got the copies. Problem was, the ATM wasn’t working here, so he headed off down the street in search of a functioning one. I got the copies and headed back. The account manager stamped them and told us to go to the teller with the money. I waited….and waited….and waited….and then started freaking out. Meanwhile, Ryan was on a 6-mile wild goose chase for a working ATM that took VISA cards. These are amazingly few and far between in Dar. After almost an hour and a half, he arrived safely back at the bank (albeit a little dehydrated and tired) with the money, and my blood pressure and heart rate began to return to normal.

We triumphantly walked up to the teller with the money, the account info, and the stamped photocopy to deposit our money. The teller looked skeptically at us and promptly disappeared for the next 10 minutes. When she returned, things went amazingly smoothly and we got the money deposited and hopped on a Dala Dala back to COSTECH. Back at COSTECH, we showed our receipt from the bank, drank about 2 liters of the coldest water in Sub-Saharan Africa, and in about 20 minutes, I was ready to do research in Tanzania!!!! After the bank experience, we spent the rest of the afternoon taking a much needed rest and re-hydrating.

-Betsy

Dar Days

2009-11-01T16:47:00.000+03:00

Note: sorry for the backlog of posts, we didn't have time to sit around and blog much, as we were out having too much fun!

I’m back to my old digs, Dar! (I lived there for about 3 months when I was an undergrad, studying at the University of Dar es Salaam.) A lot has changed since 2003 (movie theaters, shopping malls, pseudo-Target?!), although after a day here, it seems exactly the same. We started our day by attempting to walk to the American Embassy from “Posta” (downtown) where our hotel is. We quickly learned that Tanzanians a) give the worst directions EVER, and b) are seemingly completely inept at map-making. Although the Embassy was off the map that we acquired at the hotel desk, someone had hand drawn directions to the Embassy in the margin, making it look approximately ¼ mile off the edge of the map. Oh how wrong that was. We walked ….and walked….and walked out on the road that went off the edge of the map, looking for the embassy on the right, just off the corner of the main road. After about 2.5 miles, we thought we must have missed it and turned around. After making it back to where the map stopped and not seeing the American Embassy (we passed Iran, Sudan, Poland, Norway, France, Germany, Mozambique, Canada, Egypt…), we stopped and asked directions. After much discussion – some of it even about our problem at hand – they decided it was much too far to walk, and that we had to take a cab. Boy, were they right. At the bargain-basement price of 4,000 Tsh, we hitched a ride to the Embassy. For the distance – about 4 miles – it was a pretty good deal.

Once we arrived at the Embassy, things were good. The Embassy staff were great, and very helpful. We ended up sitting around chatting with them for a couple of hours. It’s a literally a little slice of America, where you can drink out of the drinking fountains, and even their port-a-potties are the fanciest Ryan had ever seen. (This ain’t no RAGBRAI, baby!)

Anyway, we then got yet another completely disproportionate map made by one of the Embassy staff (a Tanzanian) and headed off to COSTECH, the research ethics office. After about 3.5 miles in the mid-day equatorial sun, we made it! ….only to be told to return on Monday. Since both Ryan and I were not about to walk another step, we attempted to get a cab, but failed miserably at getting anything but ‘wazungu’ prices. Luckily, we were on a Dala Dala route, so we hopped on and Ryan got his first taste of true Dar life. Dala Dalas are public mini-busses that shuttle around the city for about 20 cents per ride. They are jam-packed and hot as hell, and definitely not made for people over 5’5”. But they get you where you need to go, and cheaply, plus you get free entertainment from the circus that is the Dala Dala.

-Betsy

Bat out of Hell....

2009-10-24T10:18:00.001+03:00

Sunday evening I took a turn for the worse, after dinner I became extremely sleepy. I went to bed early the evening, around 9pm and awoke around 11pm and could barely control my bowels. Just before 2am I was vomiting and extremely dizzy, I didn’t know what was going on, I felt fine only five hours earlier. This continued for much of the night until I felt as though I purged everything in my body. The next morning Betsy ran out to pick up some Sprite, what a life-saver! I was bed-ridden for all of Monday and most of Tuesday, which is not the most pleasant scenario in Haydom. That is especially true when Betsy, on Tuesday came down with Giardia, AGAIN! I keep telling her to stop eating other people’s Pu, but it’s just so hard to remind her when I’m sitting in bed. I think Frank has the same problem sometimes.

To make a long story short, we planned our escape from Haydom while we were still sick as dogs, not knowing if we would make it. We left Haydom at 5:30am in the notorious Land Cruiser, yeah, that one! Thank god for oral rehydration salts, which taste horrible but made both of us feel a TON better that morning. After another grueling 5.5 hours to Arusha, we crashed at the Meru House Inn. I must say that was the second worst ride of my life although it paled in comparison to the first, we were able to finagle for the front seats!

After the much needed stop-over in Arusha, we boarded the Dar (not so) Express, for Dar es Salaam. We’re both enamored by the fact that it seems you can board this bus at any junction of your liking; we stopped in the most random of places to pick people up. It was nice to see the country-side of Tanzania; we went from mountainous rainforest, to grassy savannah, ending in the coastal tropics of Dar. Along the way we were shown a movie, Prey, probably the worst movie I’ve ever seen. I equate it to Jaws on land, although Steven Spielberg definitely did not direct this flick. I think Tanzanians love the crappiest of American cinema (reference prior post about Stupidest Animal Videos). Set in the Serengeti, a tour goes horribly awry! The tour guide is first eaten by a lion and drops the keys to the vehicle 100 yards away. Meanwhile, the entire pride of lions surround the car and the people are trapped inside, for days on end. Eventually, through a stroke of good luck, people find the car and semi-rescue the occupants only to be over taken by the large male lion. The woman in the movie somehow rigs the car with a gas-bomb and blows the whole thing to hell, making it out unscathed! Truly a great film, one for the ages.

Well, we arrived in Dar, and let me tell you, I’m considering staying here the rest of the time and sending Betsy back! It’s a pretty cool city, the little I’ve seen of it, which there is a lot of. Speaking of which, we’re itching to head to the beach, so I’ll cut this short. Kipepeo, here we come (That’s what I’m talking about, anthropology finally pays off)!
-Ryan

Adventures in beer buying

2009-10-19T11:16:00.001+03:00

We’ve become more accustomed to life in Haydom. One of our major accomplishments was negotiating a crate of beer from the local distributer. In Tanzania, you HAVE to return the soda and beer bottles, so it’s quite a hassle to buy beer to take to your house, especially if you’re not returning empties. Also, men, such as beer distributors, seem to like to deal with other men rather than a mzungu woman.

On our beer-finding expedition, we walked up to a distributor, where of course, as in all Tanzanian stores, there were about 5 men loafing around, seemingly doing nothing but being nosy. As soon as wazungu walk up, they get interested. Ryan and I start looking around and I ask if we can buy a crate of Tusker. They look for our empty bottles, and realizing we have none, say they don’t have any Tusker. We can see it sitting 10 feet away from us. When I mention this fact to them, they tell Ryan that we need bottles. When Ryan stares blankly back in their direction, and I say that we will pay a deposit for the bottles, they ask Ryan how much. Finally, we are able to negotiate a price for the bottles, and the cost of the beer. This was a big purchase in Tanzanian, almost $40 for 24 beers and the bottles, so I wanted to be sure that when we returned the bottles, we’d get our money back. I made them sign a contract (a blank piece of notebook paper, which I wrote an agreement on in Swahili), which they thought was the weirdest thing in the world. You don’t get receipts here, let alone ever have to sign anything. We’ll see if the contract actually works, or if ANY of the random guys are there the day we return them…….I’ll keep you posted!

As we were getting the beer, Ryan looked around the corner of the building, then fled to the other side of me. At first I thought he was being paranoid or something, and didn’t notice the sloshing sound backgrounding my negotiations. Apparently, there was a guy standing in a bucket….stark naked….just outside of the beer distributor. After he finished his bath, he came to join the mob of people watching the wazungu try to get beer. Just one of the many random things you see walking down the street in Haydom.

After we successfully got and paid for our beer, our elation faded as we realized we had a mile-long walk back to the house, carrying 50 or so pounds of beer. We thought we were being smart by bringing a cloth to cover it while we carried it back, but nothing could cover up the distinctive sound of bottles clunking together. If possible, we were even more of a spectacle on this walk back than any other. When I say ‘we’ carried it back, I mean of course Ryan carried it back. He definitely got his workout for the day, and earned his luke-warm beer! The next day, we were sitting down, and he noticed 2 bruises on his legs. I got really worried that it was some kind of horrible bite, or crazy African disease (I can be a bit of a hypochondriac here), but then we realized it was from the crate banging on his legs as he walked! Anyway, now we’ve been enjoying Tusker at home on our evenings off, and remembering that in Tanzania, EVERYTHING is an adventure!

-Betsy

home

2009-10-17T10:07:00.001+03:00

slightly faster internet connection, here are a few pictures of our new digs.

Celestial Excretions

2009-10-17T10:02:00.001+03:00

Oh, the beautiful stars! I have never seen a sight so amazing in my life, well, I take that back, I have read a few National Geographic magazines and the pictures I snapped of the sky could possibly be published. Anyone out there know of an editor at NG that would want a photo of the Milky Way?! I promise to post them when we arrive in Dar, maybe a few weeks from now, give or take a few weeks… you know, Tanzi-time.

There was a bit of good news this morning, we received word that Betsy’s Fulbright funding will be sent out to us next week, that’s a load off our minds!

Speaking of pictures, we’ve received numerous requests to photo-document our elusive pet, Alfred, I promise, before I terminate our relationship, I’ll try to get a picture of him. I will have to apologize though, I usually have one thought in my mind when I see him, “die mother- #$@&er, die mother-#$@&er, die!” So, that being said, I may not have the will nor the strength to withhold dealing my great vengeance down upon his head (I’m currently reading the Bible, so the Pu-Blog may begin to have vengeful “god-like” references, for all of the heathens out there reading this, I feel your pain).

Well, we’ve been here, in Tanzania, a little over two weeks now and I feel as if the beginnings of what they call “culture shock” starting to infect my being. Everyday we walk by the same people, what they do all day long, I have no idea since they’re in the same spot at all times of their waking hours, who call out to us “WAZUNGU, WAZUNGU!” It never gets old to them, even if we pass by three or more times throughout the day! I’m definitely not a person who enjoys being the center of attention 24/7, so that is starting to wear on me. Yesterday, we met with the head-master of Haydom Secondary School, who is in one of the more respected positions in Tanzania. We met with him hoping to utilize him as a resource for studying adolescent nutrition in his school. Right off the bat he began telling us his life story and how his parents died ten years ago, it was a pretty sad story, but then went on to explain how he always wanted to be a doctor and it was never his intent to be a school head-master. After about fifteen minutes of the “sob-story”, he asked us to sponsor him so he could go back to school and become a doctor!

After a long explanation of how we too are students and cannot afford helping him, we retreated into the hospital compound where we found a Tiki-hut in the backyard their housing. Betsy and I promptly made ourselves feel at home here, over-looking the valley below, tucked away from curious eyes of Tanzanians. For me, this was the most comfortable place I’ve been since arriving here. We were alone, no one bothering or soliciting us; we were able to just become lost in our thoughts. Unfortunately, we only had a short “vacation” there, since we do not live within the hospital gates. We are currently living like true anthropologists; our life is a constant ethnography, as Betsy explained in the previous post. I’m not an anthropologist nor do I plan to become one, thank god because I’m just too ethno-centric!
-Ryan

adventures in ethnography

2009-10-15T09:59:00.000+03:00

Well, things are moving along, and I feel like we’ve gotten a good start, albeit slow, on our study. Sometimes, when daily life is so monumentally alien to us (bucket showers, no internet, pit latrines, oh my!) it’s easy to forget that we’re here to actually do work! We will be researching adolescent nutrition in the Haydom area and ultimately trying to understand ways to make culturally-based nutrition programs targeting adolescents. It seems to be a very neglected topic here, with most health outreach focusing on maternal and child health and HIV. We are the only wazungu living outside the hospital compound, which puts us in a 24-hour a day ethnography. We’ve already learned a TON in the past 2 weeks and haven’t formally started the study yet. We went with the outreach clinic to a village yesterday about 45 minutes away from Haydom, and the difference between food resources was amazing! To us Americans, Haydom seems like a barren food waste-land, with few pre-packaged foods (soda, a handful of cookies, some peanut butter, and that’s about it – there is one type of canned cheese and a bottle of Alter Wine in the ‘wazungu’ shop in town, and if you know us, that’s going to make for a long 10 months). In the village there was even less, a few greens, onions and mangos being sold, and some generic cookies. In interviewing people, their diet was amazingly monotonous, especially now, in the dry season when the crops aren’t growing and the wild vegetables and fruits aren’t available. Basically, they eat a stiff maize dough called ugali, and maybe some milk, beans and greens if they are lucky.

We’ve spent the past week and a half meeting people, and preparing our research materials, namely taking pictures of local foods for a pile-sorting exercise. I don’t know what I would do without my #1 research assistant Ryan who’s graphic design skills have been indispensible! We’re both excited to get them done and get the final research clearance so we can try them out (ok, I’m excited for the nerdy anthropology part of it, Ryan’s just excited to get moving).
-Betsy

icky-sicky

2009-10-15T09:57:00.000+03:00

Phew, through one solid week at our new home and we’ve definitely been given a wake-up call. I was ill on Tuesday but recovered nicely but just as that passed I started to have the beginnings of a bloody nose. If you know me well my bloody noses are infamous, which usually end hours later, my nose being cauterized and leaving me light-headed. Naturally, this scared the Pu out of me, what are we to do? We went to the hospital to buy a styptic pen (silver nitrate), which is the cauterizing agent on the end of a long wooden cotton swab. Apparently, Haydom Hospital doesn’t have anything for cauterization, good to know if either of us begin bleeding profusely we’re hours away from the nearest functioning medical facility. Another item that eludes our grasp here is a tube of Neosporin, which is the most basic of items to have on hand!

Betsy, on Saturday evening began to feel ill herself, the next morning she was unable to get out of bed, not good. She burped once and I caught a whiff of it, I remember Vikas emailing me and telling me about sulfur smelling burps being Giardia. Giardia is a stomach infection transmitted through fecal matter, yuck! As her state continued to worsen we decided she should take antibiotics. Good thing, she’s feeling much better today, so much so that she was actually able to eat breakfast. So far it’s been quite the test, physically and mentally for both of us, hopefully as we become more and more accustomed our surroundings, life here will become easier. I knew we would both become ill through our time here but never thought it would be so soon. Hope all is well back home, I wish I could drink tap water right about now…
-Ryan

BFE Africa!

2009-10-12T10:17:00.001+03:00

It’s like we are in rural Africa! We were without electricity from 3pm on last night, again, seems to be common occurrence, three times a week or so, give or take a day. Luckily, the family has on stock a large quantity of “shumaa”, or candles in English, which lit that evening’s dinner. I have a feeling Betsy and I will have “romantic” dinners quite often here, much to our chagrin because the darkness usually invites the buibui, or spiders the size of Betsy’s head, out of the walls. We have affectionately named one of the extraordinarily nimble spiders, Alfred; though not as cuddly as Frank, our dog, it may possess superior intelligence. We currently have a running tally of insects killed, Betsy is not as adept to killing as I am, although I definitely do not possess a “killer-instinct” myself.

Betsy: 4 roaches, 2 mini-spiders, 2 centipedes

Ryan: 4 GIANT spiders (gross!), 3 roaches, 3 mini-spiders, countless flies and the largest beetle I have ever seen! So large that I had to run and get Betsy to look at it before I took the howitzer to it.

Life here has been alright, I love the family we’re living with, however, I’m still trying to adjust to Tanzanian culture. There is a saying here, “Tanzanians are not like Westerners who like to have everything finished today, we leave the hardest tasks for tomorrow.” This mentality has been a stick in our spokes on a daily basis, which I’ve lovingly termed, Tanz-time, and has driven me nuts from the day we arrived. I am not an anthropologist, that is for sure and watching the paint dry is definitely not a coveted past-time for me, so this experience, albeit great so far, has had its definitive points of frustration.

The past few nights, especially the ones without electricity, have been quite spectacular, celestially speaking. A few nights ago I witnessed an amazing sight, the Milky Way, which is all but impossible to see in the US. Every part of the sky was lit-up with twinkling, yes they actually do twinkle, stars and there wasn’t a dark spot to be seen. Venus, which is high right now, was so incredibly bright is was hard to take my eyes off of while the rest of the stars come in a brilliant array of colors ranging from bright white down to a pale brown. It was one of the more incredible things I’ve seen in my adult life and wish all of you could see it. I will try to perfect my aperture timing over the next few nights and upload the pictures when we are in Dar. I have to apologize for the lack of pictures over the past week, Haydom’s internet connection shares the same mentality of its people, Tanz-time.
-Ryan

Life in Haydom

2009-10-09T09:56:00.000+03:00

Well, we’ve been in Tanzania for over a week now, and our first week of being in Haydom is almost done. We’ve been enjoying living with Mama Neema and Stephano, their 7 kids, and the 5 or so other people who seem to live here – we haven’t figured all the relationships out yet. Our house is starting to feel more comfortable, and we’ve decorated the walls with pictures of family and a huge map of Africa. We have plans for a batik slipcover for the couch, and possibly some batik wall hangings as well. The bugs are prevalent, although since we are in the highlands, the mosquitoes are not as bad as in Arusha. Our main problem is the ‘buibui’ (spiders) which both Ryan and I HATE in general, and the ones that they have here are basically the biggest, ugliest spiders you’ll ever see outside of a zoo. For their size, they are also amazingly fast, which is even more unsettling.

Haydom is interesting to say the least. There are no paved roads, making it incredibly dusty, and goats, cattle, chickens, cats and dogs seem to roam free. The roving packs of dogs are definitely hunting something at night, although neither one of us is brave enough to find out what. People are very nice, and kids love running up to the ‘wazungu’ and yelling random English phrases such as “good morning” (at any time of day) “thank you very much” and “give me money”. The brave ones try to grab our hands, or touch my hair.

The shops in town are pretty basic, and we’ll definitely have stock up every time we go to Arusha. We went on massive search for peanut butter where we canvassed basically the whole town. We finally found ONE shop in the whole village that had a BUCKET of it, which the shopkeeper unearthed from beneath a pile of junk in a corner. Amazingly, it wasn’t even out of date. Obviously, Ryan was very happy about that development.

The project is going well, and we’ve made some contacts in the community and at the hospital. Everyone has been really positive about the project, and things seem to be moving along. I had a huge step forward today, when I found out that the research clearance was preliminarily approved!!

Ryan was talking to a Tanzanian who works for an NGO that builds dorms for secondary students all over Tanzania, who said that the village that we’re in now is the most remote place he’s been in Tanzania. After Ryan and my experience here, that seems about right.

-Betsy

2009-10-05T09:50:00.000+03:00

So, we made our way to Haidom, the village in which we will be conducting our research, after a 6.5 hour trip in the most uncomfortable, crowded and crazy transportation ever! We rode in a Land Cruiser, a quintessential African vehicle, with our luggage strapped to the roof. After being blackmailed into paying more for our massive “wazungu luggage”, Tanzanians apparently do not travel with five full-sized pieces of luggage, we were on our way. The Land Cruiser, which was originally to have a maximum capacity of eleven, was stuffed with fifteen people. Tanzanians, while short, are much wider than Betsy and I; not only were our legs smashed into the seats in front of us, but my body also doubled as a backrest for an inconsiderate woman. We traveled 3.5 hours on a double track dirt and grass road, which was not without its potholes, washes and various water mitigation issues (thank you, Jaron, for the terminology), up a large mountainous region. Thankfully, the Land Cruiser was equipped with a snorkel which helped as we forged a river before hitting the mountains and into Mbulu. The town of Mbulu is mid-way from Arusha to Haidom, which we stopped for a stretch and a potty break (this is the point of mild “freak-out” for me). After going on a wild goose chase, we were finally pointed in the right direction to the choo, or restroom in Swahili. The second half of the ride we requested the front seat, which made the last 2.5 hours of driving “not-so-bad” but by American standards, horrible. We made it to Haidom around 3pm, which has absolutely no paved roads, and our host family was waiting for us at the station. We came back to their place where they have a separate detached structure which is to be our home for the next 10 months. The first few hours here were wavering at best, as the thought of being here for almost an entire year began to saturate our minds. I got my first taste of the bucket-showers and pit latrines, which I am sure we will become more proficient with as time progresses. Our family, however, has been great to us and has made us feel right at home; they had lunch ready when we returned and then around 8:30pm they served us dinner. This morning they brought us breakfast and then lunch around 1pm, the hospitality has been great! It has been quite an eye opening experience for me thus far and seems that the next ten months will continue to hold my constant attention.
-Ryan
ps- sorry, we will post pictures soon, the computers in Haidom are extremely slow and we have to size everything down.

Exploring Arusha

2009-10-02T11:09:00.001+03:00

On Wednesday we ventured out to explore the city of Arusha and Ryan got his first experience of Tanzanian city life. Our first stop was the ATM and Shoprite, also known as wazungu central (wazungu is akin to ‘gringo’ and means ‘westerner’). After successfully getting money and wandering around refrigerated food items, we ventured off into ‘real Arusha’ to get the list of supplies we realized we needed, such as shower flip-flops, washcloths and a cell phone. Day 1 in Tanzania was a success and we accomplished all of our goals and then some! At sunset, we watched the traffic from our hotel balcony, and took some pictures of the street at rush hour. We also ventured up to the roof, which has an amazing view of Mt. Meru framed by Jacaranda trees in bloom. Today, Ryan was introduced to Tanzanian rice and chicken as well as one of my personal favorites, bitter lemon soda and Konyagi (something like gin).

On Day 2, we went further from our hotel in Arusha, and explored more of the side streets, as well as the ‘fancy’ area. (not to scare you mom and dad, but it’s a little ways from our hotel.) We also found an internet café with reasonably fast wireless. Score! Our biggest success today was getting tickets to Haydom for Saturday! Thank goodness for Crystal and her detailed instructions; we never could have done it without her. (like, I’m sure, many things to come on this trip!) We also found some great Indian food, topped off with some Tusker and Kilimanjaro beer.

After two days, we’re getting more used to being a constant spectacle, and fending off ‘rafiki’ (friends) who just want to show us their paintings, shoes, safari trips, pirated DVDs, etc that they are selling. When venturing into a very non-wazungu market, one guy didn’t even want to sell us anything, he just wanted to be seen walking around with us. (This was really weird to both Ryan and I, neither one of us are what you would call ‘cool’). We’re having fun, but both Ryan and I are excited to leave Arusha and get to Haydom soon!

-Betsy

27.5

2009-10-01T09:44:00.000+03:00

Twenty seven hours, thirty four minutes and eighteen seconds, that is how long it took from my parent’s front door to our “hotel” in Arusha, Tanzania. I would have written it out like this, 27:34.18, but I thought it had a better impact in words. We flew out of Chicago to Amsterdam, from there we had a three hour layover before heading on our flight to Kilimanjaro, both flights were similar in length, just over eight hours. I woke at 5:30 am, September 28th, the day of our flight, I’m a notoriously nervous traveler, Betsy is so good to put up with me, I suppose she has to since I’ll be “camping” with her for the next ten months. Saying “goodbye” to my parents in O’hare, which is always a hard thing to do, putting on socks (thank you Mom, Dad and Betsy) in the security line, and hurrying up to wait for the plane to board, were the first items in a long list to be accomplished. Flying to Amsterdam was surprisingly easy, it didn’t hurt that we had exit row seats, although the poor guy next to us had our laptop drop squarely on his head, not once but twice during the flight; I’m surprised he didn’t give the two of us a black eye to match his skull fracture. We made friends with one of the flight attendants; he was really nice and gave us special treatment (extra bags of almonds, first class tea, and extra attention), who would have thought being nice to someone might make them do a little extra for you? We flew KLM, as far as I can tell they outclass all of the American carriers, although their faux Italian food is terrible! We were, however, able to nab four bottles of red wine which were saved as a celebratory drink on our arrival. The flight over to Amsterdam was uneventful, it was night time as we flew east and couldn’t see anything, not that the Atlantic Ocean is that spectacular. We spent a few restless hours in the Schiphol Airport then boarded our plane to Tanzania. We went over the Alps, somewhere between Switzerland and Austria, then over the Adriatic Sea. We saw a few pieces of southern Italy and then as we flew over the Mediterranean Betsy told me to look out the window; we were coming up to the coast of northern Africa. The stark contrast between brilliant blue and khaki sand was a sight I have never before seen, it was really cool. Right around this point we were served dinner, which had a Pu topped dessert. (see picture above) We were able to view the Nile and parts of the Sahara Desert; it was quite an amazing and spectacular flight. Mid-way through the flight I noticed Betsy fast asleep; unfortunately I am unable to sleep on planes, I tried but to no avail. We landed and made a mad dash to the customs department to fill out visa forms and beat the Europeans so we could get out of the airport, it was sort of like a race to a “baggage-finish-line”. Luckily, we won and all of our baggage arrived in one piece and we were off to Arusha 45 minutes away. We went to our hotel, which is literally a hole in the side of a wall; Betsy disappeared for a tenuous five minutes as five Tanzanians stared at me awkwardly. She re-emerged signaling that we had a hotel to stay in and that was it, we made it, and had a few bottles of wine to toast a very long and tiring trip. I’m glad to finally be here, but I am a LONG way from home!
-Ryan
ps- I will post pictures later, I forgot to bring the memory card...

'bout freakin' time?

2009-09-17T20:27:00.002+03:00

Ryan and I are engaged! He took me on a hike in Dubuque and proposed to me at the top of a bluff overlooking the limestone cliffs, then got down on one knee and proposed! Besides him dropping the ring (luckily it feel AWAY from the giant cliff) and me welling up and blowing a snot rocket, it was perfect. Ryan designed the ring, an asscher cut diamond with a platinum setting. It's perfect, and I love it more every time I look at it. No wedding plans yet, but keep an eye on plane tickets it Iowa!

-Betsy

Covey Roots Tour

2009-09-17T20:17:00.003+03:00

Back in Seattle, my mom, and Uncle Peter and Aunt Sue, took us on a tour of their 'hood and downtown. The tour included watching the salmon run at the locks (and "watching the rich people end their weekend" as the giant yachts went back to Lake Washington from the sound), a picnic on the Golden Gardens beach (where my aunt Ann spent her summers), and the Aurora Bridge troll. We also hit up the downtown highlights, including the totem pole in Pioneer Square.

-Betsy

Pu-bucks

2009-09-15T19:40:00.004+03:00

We went to the original Starbucks in Pike's Place Market and to my surprise the coffee was just as horrible there as it is in all of their other locations! Seriously, they could reason for you to visit their first store by making a decent cup of joe, but no, it's terrible. So terrible, in fact, that I spit out my first taste, Betsy caught the action on film. Over-roasted & acidic, hiding the fact that they purchase the dregs of bad coffee beans and then to top it all off, they burn the coffee in the pot! When will they learn to make decent coffee, they should seriously hire Kristen Covey.

-Ryan

Meeting the Coveys!

2009-09-15T19:19:00.002+03:00

Finally, I blog about the real reason I went to Seattle, to meet the Covey side of Betsy's family. First full day in Seattle I was a touch bombarded, meeting about 20 people but I wouldn't have it any other way. G-Betty, the matriarch of the family, is awesome and hilarious. She passes the time knitting, creating eye-glass buttons (don't ask), rock-butterflies (just what they sound like), reading about going to Mars and complaining about all the new people moving to Seattle. All of the others I met were awesome as well, must come from the great area in the Northwest, gives everyone a good attitude. Peter and Sue Covey let us stay at their house as we explored Seattle. Sue is the master of hiking preparedness, she always packed lunch for us which saved us from exhaustion. Her daughter, Kristen, could very well be the best coffee maker in the world. Ann and Tom, who live in my dream location on Whidbey Island and also run a crabbing sweat-shop on their back porch, employing, strangely enough, only Iowans. So, all in all, the family is great and would love to move out there and be close to them, unfortunately, the Coveys won't allow any more people in Seattle.

-Ryan

The REAL Iron Gym

2009-09-15T19:09:00.003+03:00

We went to Deception Pass, it's located on North Whidbey Island connecting the mainland of WA to the island. I think it's my current "favorite place on Earth!" location. It has everything I need, shelter (I can live under the bridge), exercise (I can do pull-ups on the bridge and run up and down the cliff overlooking the water), and food (blackberries). This place is seriously awesome, everyone should go at some point in their life, just don't fall off the cliff! I can hear the Covey family saying, "Ryan, step away from the cliff's edge, please, I don't want call your parents". Well, even if it was a selfish reason they didn't want me to die, at the very least I know that Laura Danforth doesn't want me to die on her watch...

-Ryan

The Trail of Blisters

2009-09-14T19:46:00.003+03:00

We decided to take advantage of the perfect weather and make a trip to Mt. Baker, in the Cascades about 3 hours north of Seattle. While I was planning a leisurely walk in the woods with my parents and aunt and uncle, Ryan had in mind a little more. We decided (Ryan was gung ho to do it, and I wanted to be able call 911 when he potentially fell off a cliff) to do the Chain Lakes Trail, a 7 mile trail with some gorgeous views. The only problem was that I was wearing 2-day old Chaco's and we had 2 hours to complete it. With a little bit of speedwalking, some sustenance from wild blueberries along the trail, and just a small amount of whining on my part, we made it with 15 minutes to spare! ....only to find out that there was another 2-mile trail we had to take to get back to the parking lot where the car was parked, and where we were meeting the rest of the family. By this point, I had learned why the hiking boot industry exists, so wonderful Ryan volunteered/was forced to RUN up the mountain to the car and come back and pick me up. Ultimately, my blisters healed, and in retrospect, a good time was had by all!
-Betsy

Whidbey Island and the mildly problematic catch

2009-09-14T19:00:00.003+03:00

Our Seattle trip started out with a stay on Whidbey Island with my Aunt Ann and Uncle Tom. Ryan especially loved the area, and is considering retiring at the ripe old age of 27 to take up crabbing with Tom. Ann and Tom gave him a "you build it, you can live in it" offer about their second floor remodel that they're considering. The only catch is that Ann's amazingly large fiber collection would also be sharing the space.

Our Whidbey trip started off by setting crab pots at the beach by Ann and Tom's. Then, while we waited, golfing at Island Golf, where greens fees are made to the milk can under a tree. I was able to rent lefty clubs from the next tree ($2, payable to the milk can). Tee boxes included the back of a pick-up truck, and a boat dock. When we returned to retrieve our catch, the wind had picked up, and our crabbing vessel (a row boat with Captain Tom and Ryan the crew) drifted off course and wasn't able to get the pots. We were forced to go home, drink some beer, and wait for the weather to subside. The next morning, the waters were calm, and Tom, with a new crew (my dad) was able to get our catch (5 crabs). That night the Danforths (aka Uncle Tom's Sweatshop) shelled the crab, and we ate the fruits of our labor in omelets the next morning. Not exactly The Deadliest Catch, but pretty good for a bunch of Iowans!
-Betsy

Safari Heartland!

2009-08-31T03:59:00.004+03:00

My parents have kindly been helping us prepare for East Africa by taking us to Safari mini-golf and the Omaha zoo. It's so realistic, we feel like we've already been to Tanzania and back! Ryan is looking forward to the go-carts, which apparently inhabit the bush; and we've learned that the scariest of all wild animals is the cranky toddler.
-Betsy

Vino Amore!

2009-08-27T04:09:00.004+03:00

We started the week at the Danforth's right by having the LARGEST and most colorful salad Betsy and I have seen. Sorry, Joel, we're sort of cop-ing your style here, not trying to impinge on your culinary blog. (for great cooking tips and blog hints visit: write.click.cook.listen) The salad was wonderful, thank you Laura for starting up a fibrous movement for all of us, we appreciate it. We also helped Bill "rack" the wine, looks like he may be giving me a wine enema... Frank, our wonderful super-dog, will be staying in Shenandoah with Bill and Laura while we globe-trot. So far, there has been only one major battle between their cat and our dog, Cat 1 vs. Dog 0. We recently returned from a nice game of frisbee golf, in the rain. Action shot - BETSY GOES THE DISTANCE!

-Ryan

Bakin' Chickin'

2009-08-27T03:55:00.003+03:00

Headed to Dubuque for a bit of golf, kids and the dog being completely run out of energy. My nephews are great, Wyatt obviously loves dogs and Alex has a great golf swing. I love to make crazy faces in pictures, you can see where I get this from...

-Ryan

Home, sweet, home!

2009-08-27T03:49:00.007+03:00

Land of tall corn, small towns and the ever present smell of Pu, IOWA! Well, we crossed the Iowa, Missouri border about a week ago, sorry for no updates, and we found a stark contrast. Decent roadways vs. Missouri pot-holes, thank god we didn't have far to go. Well, we're back in Iowa and everything is great so far. Go Iowa for wind-power, infact, they're all over the place, gotta love them! Maybe in a few years Iowa will be off the grid, aside from JD equipment, of course. The weather is beautiful and the corn is sweet, hopefully your week has gone as well as ours.

-Ryan

2009-08-21T20:55:00.003+03:00

Our next stop was Michelle and Tom's in St. Louis. We got a great tour of the city, and fell in love with their house. Unfortunately, our plan of moving into their spare bedroom was thwarted, as our pets don't seem to be huge fans of each other. Tom got the brunt of a cascade of events where Frank the dog freaked out Nixon the cat, who in turn attacked Beefer the cat, who got scared a Pu-ed on Tom's arm. According to Pu-ology and Michelle, it was a #3. Anyway, besides some psychological scarring of the cats, we had a great visit!
-Betsy

Floating like a log down the river

2009-08-21T20:34:00.003+03:00

Went to Augusta on our trip home to visit with my sister and brother-in-law. Betsy had not met Sophie, their new daughter, so we spent some time trying to decide who she looked like... For those of you who know my Sarah and Justin, decide for yourself. It was a nice relaxing weekend, good to see both of them. We also met up with a few USF friends, Ryan and Tamara, who were our tour guides around the river walk. After that we ate the LARGEST pieces of cake known to man, which definitely tested our Pu-bilities. On to St. Louis Monday morning, it was sad to leave the Sinnings, hopefully we'll see them as soon as we return, I'm sure Sophie is going to be HUGE by then.
-Ryan

Goodbye Florida!

2009-08-15T16:40:00.004+03:00

After a week of mad packing and purging our apartment of the majority of our worldly possessions and four years of planning, we finally left the Sunshine State. Goodbye swealtering heat, hour-long commutes to go 15 miles and mosquitoes who can skeletonize a goat, and hello, um, swealtering heat, hour-long trips to go 15 km and yeah, you get the picture.....(to be continued).
-Betsy