PICTURES!!!

My parent's have collapsed!

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...

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

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

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

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

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!

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...

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?!)