I love Corn!

So here in Africa they cook there corn in a different way then we do in the US. In the US, we cook it but here they burn it. they have little coal barbecues that they burn the corn on and I have to say I like it here a lot more then I do in the states. At the house, we have grown some corn and so I thought I would try to make my own...I fail. When I make the corn, it tastes nothing like the corn on the street, which is a shame because I really want to learn how to make it. David said he would show me so I am looking forward to that.

Until that time....every night, I trek out with my 200 shillings (the equivalent of 15 cents) and buy an ear of burnt corn from the lady at the end of the driveway. And...I LOVE it!!

The Vets of Arusha

So, I am living in Africa with my aunt while I do school. I have always been interested in animals and thought that my job would be working with them, I had always thought of being a vet but it just was too much school and money for me to really consider or so I thought. My aunt knew the vet here in Arusha and asked if I could do stuff with them like volunteer but they laws in Arusha make it illegal for me to volunteer without a volunteers visa which I didn’t have so I thought that I wouldn’t get to help them, but then Marisa said that there was a way. We would just say I was observing and I could come and help/watch.
So on Wednesday I went to the vet clinic, the name is VetAgro, and helped them prep two dogs and two cats for surgery. They were just getting spade and neutered, nothing big. We started with a male dog; I even got to watch the surgery. I didn’t handle watching it as well as I had hoped, I had to leave part way through. I think it was the combination of the smells from the sterile chemicals, and the heat that made it so hard. The room was really stuffy with no wind coming in. I was worried that I just didn’t have the stomach to handle surgery, which made me a little sad and disappointed in my self. When they started working on the female dog, they opened the window and from then on, I was fine. It was incredibly interesting to see the different steps to the different sexes, the mail seemed harder to do then the female.
Then we started on the cats. Marisa had told me that the cart were a lot easier then the dogs, however they don’t handle being knocked out before the surgery so well, where dogs take it well and if they have eaten they throw up before they pass out cats will pass out and then try and be sick which means that if your not careful they could choke.
We started with the male cat and I was amazed to see that it was at lest ten times easier then the male dog. The whole thing took like five min. However, the female was a bit harder then was expected. The female seemed to have a lot of fat that made finding what they needed harder then it should have been, it took about seven or eight tries before they finally got it. After that it was only five minutes and they where done.
It was really interesting to have seen both sexes of both dogs and cats getting “fixed” because even though there body build might be similar they are still very different. After seeing that I started to think that maybe it was worth it to go to school to be a vet. To me, the joy of working with animals out ways the pain of doing all the school, and paying all the loans.

Maramboi Tented Camp and our safari in Tarangire National Park

So we finally went to a real tented camp. I say real because I have been to Safari West, which is a place in the U.S. that does a mock safari and has tented rooms. Although I must say that the tents were similar. If you have never been in a safari tent, just imagine a tent the size of a hotel and you have an idea of the size. The tent we stayed in was a two-bed tent with a bathroom in a different tent that was still attached to ours. We went with my Aunt's friend, Tanja so she had her own tent. On the way there, we went to Tarangire National park. I really liked that park, but I think that was mostly because that was the first time I had seen wild elephants and I thought that was really cool. However, the flies were murder. They would bite you and it actually hurt a little. These flies are called Tetse flies and can actually be quite dangerous. A friend of ours went there a different time and had a bad reaction to the fly bites and had to go to the doctor because of it. The flies would follow the car and when you stopped, it would sound like it was raining on the car because they would just keep running into it. So far, I have now seen elephants, buffalo out of the big five, but I am hoping to see them all before I go home. The day after we stayed at the tented lodge Tanja and I went on a walk down to where the lake would normally be because we saw a bunch of animals. We walked for about 15 min before we got to the animals. I was surprised at how close we where able to get to them. We were about 70 to 100 meters from the closest ones. I got some pictures but they are all on film so I can’t put them on here. There were zebra and wildebeests and after we got back to the tent and started swimming, we noticed a giraffe out there too. I wish I could have gotten close to it. The swimming pool was nice because it had an unobstructed view of all the animals that were out there so you could enjoy swimming and watching them all at the same time. Over all I had a ton of fun.

Nick's Pub - the chicken is FANTASTIC

So we finally went to Nick's Pub and got totally tanked...well no but we did have a beer. Nicks pub is a place that BBQ's fish and chicken in massive BBQs. My aunt had told me about it and I have been wanting to go but it took Tanja being here before we went. When we got there, I thought it looked a bit odd. There was a big sign that said nicks pub and under it where a bunch of four person fold up tables, however it was packed. When we found a seat and ordered my aunt told me that we don’t use forks and knifes there we just use our hands. That was cool with me. When the food came, I realized that when you order the chicken you get the full chicken, not just like a wing or a leg but the whole thing. My aunt had gotten the fish and it was the same way you don’t just get the meat part though you get the head and tail, the head still has its eyes in it. I was hungry so the full chicken wasn’t a problem and it tasted REALLY good. They have a type of spice sauce called peilepeile sauce that made it even better. I had never had that sauce before so I was surprised by how much I liked it. When I had finished my chicken, I was still a little hungry but my aunt was full so she let me have some of her fish. Normally I don’t really like fish but this fish was really good too. It was a little creepy to eat because of the head but once you get past that its great. After you finish eating they have about a 2-gallon container of water that you poor some into your hands and that is how you wash them...the one problem was that they don’t give you a way to dry your hands. Over all I really liked it and really want to eat there again soon.

House Staff

We have 2 guards and one replacement guard, a gardener/handyman, 2 cleaning/nanny people, and a cook that comes two to three times a week. This post is all about them.

The guards we have now are all really good, nice guys. The day guard is Osmond and we got him about a week after I got here. Before him we had a guy named Frankie but he seemed to have a problem showing up to work so he was taken off our house and was replaced. So far, I think Osmond is going to be great!

John is the night guard and he is also very nice and actually does his job. At night he walks around the house to make sure everything is ok and if Twiga is barking he will walk closer to where she is to make sure everything is ok. Even Aki likes him. The replacement guard changes between people so it really depends sometimes they seem really nice and other times they can be irritating.

The gardener/handyman is David and I really like him. He takes care of our different fruit trees and brings in the fruit when it is ripe, he feeds Tembo the goat and our chickens, and if we need help with something in the house he can almost always do it. On the occasion that he can’t fix it, he knows the people that can. My aunt said that at first he was very difficult but that as he has gotten used to the way she wants things done he has gotten a lot better. I think he is pretty cool and is really talented.

Then we have people that work in the house to help us out...Hope and Jenny. I'm not sure what to say about them, they are best friends and seem to have a hard time doing there respective work apart. For example if Hope is supposed to be watching Aki and Jenny is supposed to be doing the laundry, Hope will go outside with Aki so she and Jenny can talk. Of course that means they aren’t playing with Aki the way they should which is a problem. My Aunt gets upset about this sometimes. A few times they left Akira out on the patio by himself for an hour or so why they were cleaning and talking in the house. When my Aunt found out about this, she got very upset. Another example is that right now, as I'm writing this, they should be cleaning but they are in the living room talking. They are both nice and friendly but don’t do there job well. Sometimes, my Aunt gets really frustrated and says that she's going to fire one of them so that the other one will work...but she never actually does it. Sucker!!!

Finally we have the cook Gasper. Gasper has been my aunt’s cook every time she comes to live in Arusha so she has known him for years and has always spoken very highly of him. After eating his food I completely agree. Gasper is very friendly and really likes Aki and Aki really likes him. He comes for sure twice a week and on Saturday when my aunt asks him too. He technically works Saturdays but she tends to give him two Saturdays a month off. Over all I really like the staff here. Since I'm home all day with them, its nice that we all get along, and I never feel very lonely during the day....it's like a little village inside our compound. It's pretty nice!

My B-day Weekend

For my birthday my aunt took me up to the crater(it is a national reserve so it would be going on safari). So the weekend before my birthday we went up to this lodge called Gibbs Farm which is a farm/lodge that is just a little outside of the park. it is a two and a half hour drive to get there and we brought Aki. He didn't like the ride very much but we worked it all out. When we got to the lodge we decided to just relax a little because the drive had been a long one. The room we had was a nice sized room with a deck overlooking banana trees and other plants. The bathroom/shower area was very nice and there was a door that took you outside to a shower that was an out door one. Over all I really liked it. Once we had settled down in there and fed Aki we decided we would wait and go into the game park the next day on the way out so we spent about an hour or so just relaxing and reading until we decided to go and sit outside near the main building. From where we sat we could see over a large portion of the farm and noticed a path that led through the farm a little. After being there for a little and eating popcorn (that was nice because i had been wanting popcorn for a while) we decided to go for a walk on that trail. We only went for like 30 minutes but it was a very fun 30 minutes. (I like hiking) Once we got back to the room we fed Aki again then put him to bed and then headed out to dinner, leaving Twiga to babysit. I found that I liked the leek soup (who would guess that) and the fish was ok. When we where done we went back to the room and went to sleep after feeding Twiga. The next day we were getting ready to go to the park when we remembered why the plan had been to go to the park the day we got there...they don't let dogs into the parks and we had Twiga. So we decided that we would forgo the park so we went down for breakfast. I really liked breakfast, it had pineapple and cereal and other fruit that where really good. after breakfast we hopped in the car and where headed home. the drive back was better because Aki slept for parts so he cried less. Over all the weekend was a lot of fun and a great way to spend a birthday weekend.

Life as an expat - bbqs, brunches and booze

After being in Arusha for a while, you find that there are a lot of people going out a lot. I have been out with my aunt and her friends a few times, however I think one of my favorite things we have done with big groups is the BBQ we had at our house. Shamus, Richard, and I did the BBQ'ing while my Aunt and Gasper did the rest. That was the first group thing I did here. There was a lot of food and drinking, I liked the food a lot. My Aunt had the BBQ to celebrate a lot of occasions: me coming to live with her in Arusha, adopting Akira and my 18th Birthday.

I have also been to a brunch place here. It’s the same place we went to for my B-Day except that that time we had dinner. It's named Coffee Lodge and it has a really nice restaurant and lodge set on a coffee plantation. My aunt told me that there were monkeys that were there because of the free food they get so I had been really looking forward to going there. The food there was really good but getting to see the monkeys and the baby monkeys, I thought they were better. I really think that if this is how life is here I could really enjoy it, sadly that isn’t all there is to living here, that’s just the fun part.

First Impressions of Africa

My first impression of Africa was that it is like being in Mexico, yet not at all like Mexico. Everything is dusty and not clean, but also new and very interesting to me. I had been out of the country a few times but never in a place that seemed as different as this. After getting out of the airport I realized that driving here was more like off-roading in the States, every five feet there is a pothole or speed bump. The big problem of those two things is that the speed bumps aren’t marked at all so you really just have to hope you see them before you get to them. Now if you think that is hard to drive with, you should also know that at the same time you are trying to spot these potholes and speed bumps you are having to watch all the cars around you more then ever because the only real road rules are "try not to kill anyone" and "try not to get killed" and that includes the random people,donkeys, carts etc. that walk across the road. However after you get past all those odd things you start to see the landscape and the animals that live here and it really seems to take your attention away from those things. In the city it is all the same but then you have to watch out for the bikers too, because they don’t really look out for you. I’m a little shocked that there are bikers here because that just seems stupid, it would be like trying to bike around in a bumper car rink with a bunch of little kids driving the cars...although I think that that is a bit safer. I'm also not quite used to the goats, cows, sheep, and chickens not to mention the dogs that are walking around too. It is definitely different then anywhere I have been before.

The Family Animals

So now that I have been at the house for a while and gotten used to it a bit I though I would tell you about the animals we have here. Before I came I knew we had chickens and that we would temporarily have a goat and a turtle. However they were supposed to be going to Nairobi after the person that used to have the house got settled. It seems that the plan has changed and that we will be keeping both the goat and turtle. I like that because chickens are no fun but a goat and turtle are. So we will start with the chickens. We at this point only have four because one of them got sick and died. This worried my Aunt because she didn’t know it was sick she just suddenly had a dead chicken. After talking to David the gardener/animal care taker, and performing chicken autopsy, she found out that it had been sick but he had not realized that he should tell her. See, the thinking here is that if your chicken is sick you hope it gets better but if not then that is a shame, but my Aunt and I agree that for our chickens (and all other animals) at least the thinking should be "the chickens sick so lets get it meds to make it better." The chickens and the goat (his name is Tembo or "elephant" in Swahili) share a pen together but we let Tembo out into the garden to eat some of the over grown grass and weeds. At first Tembo wasn’t very friendly (he had been bred to be eaten so no one was ever really nice to him) but after a little work he has become much nicer. He really likes it when you rub right between his horns. Finally we have Samantha the leopard turtle. She is at least a foot long and a good eight inches wide but that’s when she in her shell. She has free range of everywhere but the vegetable patch and the chicken/Tembo pen because if she could get in the chickens could get out. I have been working hard to make it so we can keep Samantha when we leave but the biggest problem I think will be the animal control when crossing back into the U.S. but we will see. All in all I really like our animals and am enjoying getting to spend time with them.

The House in Arusha

When we finally got to my Aunts house after the long drive I was impressed to see how nice it was and how nice the gardens were. The house isn't too big but it isn't too small either. It is roomy but still homey.

There is a big living room. My aunt says that the people who lived here before had it broken up into a living room and a dining room. My Aunt moved the dining room table out onto the veranda right outside though. So, we don't have a dining room in our house. But, I think it's nicer this way. There is now one big room and it's broken up into spaces. There is the space with the couches and TV and stuff (the adult space) and then there is another rug on the other side of the room where Akira can play with his toys and there are chairs and a small table where we can sit in front of the fire place and have coffee or a snack.

The kitchen is a regular sized kitchen. We have a gas stove which my Aunt is afraid of and hates, but it's good to have here because we loose so much power that its good to be able to cook even when the power goes out.

In the main part of the house there are two bedrooms with bathrooms in them. One is my Aunts room (the bigger room with the nicer bathroom....of course!) and the other is used as the guest room. The bathroom in there isn't very nice though....just a shower sort of place and a small toilet.

Then, there is a room that could be used for an office but also has some small closet space so it could be used for a bedroom also. It doesn't have a bathroom attached to it and its smaller. That is Akira's room.

Apart from those rooms, there are also two other bathrooms in this part of the house. There is another FULL bathroom in the hallway and then a small guest toilet room off the living room. This brings the total of bathrooms in the main part of the house to four. I just don't see why there are so many bathrooms....sometimes we can't decide which one to use.

The best is my room. Outside the living room there is a porch which is enclosed with an iron gate. Still on the porch if you look to the right (within the iron gates) there is a door which leads to a guest room and bathroom. That is MY room. It give me my own space and privacy but is still safe as it still has all the protections of the house. At first, when my Aunt mentioned me taking this room, I wasn't so sure. It seemed pretty removed. But, it's really nice to have my own space....especially now that there is a baby in the house!

The garden is bigger then the house and has a BUNCH of fruit and vegetables. We have a banana tree, a mango tree, an avocado tree and a passion fruit tree. I am waiting for the passion fruit to be ripe so we can make fresh passion fruit juice. I think my aunt wants it even more then I do. I wish we had a pineapple tree so that I could have fresh pineapple but sadly even if we planted one we would be gone before it grew much at all. The garden area is really big and there is a lot of space to run, lots of tropical plants and flowers. We have a gardener David, and all day long his job is to take care of the gardens and the animals outside. At the bottom of the garden we have a gate that goes to a veggie patch. My aunt has the gardener grow most of our vegetables down there. There are tomatoes, spinach, green papers, egg plant, carrots, celery, leeks, green onion, cabbage, and all kinds of herbs (parseley, rosemary, tyme, etc). she also has a small herb garden up on the veranda where we can go out and pick herbs when we are cooking in the house. There is another gate next to the veggie patch which leads to the chicken coop where we keep our chickens and our goat, Tembo. And, next to the chicken coop there is another small one room house. My Aunt used to have some guards that lived there, but those guards left and now the house is empty. We are going to start fixing it up and adding a bathroom so that my Aunt's Nanny, Hope, can move into it.

When I first got here to Arusha, I loved the house and gardens but it did seem empty because there was nothing on the walls because my aunt had just gotten her shipment the day before she left for Morocco. After being here for a while we went through the room and got out everything and put them in there places and hung the paintings so now it feels more full but not in a bad way. We also went to frame some paintings, and to buy some more furniture. When we started doing my room there wasn't much to do there. I have a very nice painting that she got here in Arushia two years ago and we put it in my room. It is of three giraffes running through the bush in the night. Then when we went to the Masai market on my birthday, my Aunt bought me a longbow and arrows and we put that up in my room. Then we put up a new hammock in the garden and we are basically done with the house. We now have two hammocks in the garden, plus lots of benches and two lawn chairs. There are lots of places to sit and play in our gardens now.

My First Safari

My first safari was the day after I got to Kenya. We went to the park that is just outside of the city. When we first got in I didn't think we would be able to see anything because there were huge bushes on both sides so we couldn't see past them. After like a mile or so it stopped and we could see, however we only saw open space at first. After about fifteen minutes we found a good sized group of zebra eating so we got some really good pictures of them. It was really cool because we ended up finding them even before the safari people did. After we watched them for a while we continued on. The scenery was so nice to just see. I found that if you don't like to just sit and talk while looking at the things around you would get really board on safari. When you are on safari you see animals for like 2 minutes then wait for like 2 hours and then see animals again for like a minute. However that minute in which you see the animals is worth the hour or so of looking for it. After looking for at things for a while, and having fun driving around we found some deer and HUGE birds. It was cool to see them but we didn't really stop to look we just kept going. Shortly after we found some Ostrich and a few more Zebra all close to each other grazing. It was really cool to see an Ostrich that close because they are really big. After that we decided we would start heading back towards the entrance but on the way we saw a huge group of cars and animals so we decided to get over to that area. That took long enough that the cars had all left however the animals were still there. It ended up being a big pack of water buffalo. It was really cool to see that many of them all that close and so many of them. We stayed there and watched them for a little but then decided that we should leave them alone because they are known to have a bad temper. From there we headed back to the entrance (which was a long drive) enjoying the scenery. It was a good start to what I hope will be many safaris to come!

My First Days In Africa

My first days in Africa I spent in Nairobi. I got there at about 10:30 but had to go through the visa line because naturally I don't actually live in Africa. After about half an hour in the visa line I got my three month visa. I need the three month visa because I was going to be there for a while and a traveler’s visa wouldn't have let me be there long enough. The drive back to the hotel was incredibly different than what I am used to. It seems to be more of a free-for-all when you drive - the only real rule being, try not to get killed and try not to kill anyone. After we got back to the hotel and put my bags up in the room we went down to the hotel restaurant because it was 11:30 on New Years Eve and here especially it is a big thing. We had a nice dinner and drink before we went up to bed. We were both really tired because we had both just gotten into Nairobi. My Aunt had been in Morocco and I had, of course, been flying from home. Then next day we slept in and then went out on a safari. The safari was a lot of fun even when we weren't seeing animals. The next day we spent shopping for Aki things. Akira is my new nephew....he's back in Arusha so I haven't met him yet. My Aunt has just adopted him from Tanzania about a month ago. The town she lives in in Tanzania is really small and there aren't baby stores there, so we had to do some shopping for him while we were in Nairobi. We got him a pack and play, a stroller, a seat that attaches to the table, and some clothes. This of course took all day to do because it is almost impossible to find baby things here as well. We also picked up some lawn chairs for ourselves. Although all that took all day it was a lot of fun while doing it. We went to some malls and some coffee shops. My Aunt kept telling me that Arusha was NOT going to be as nice as Nairobi so not to expect fancy coffee shops in Arusha....they just don't exist. When we got back to the hotel we chose to go for a swim in the pool, and man was it worth it. The pool was on the roof of the hotel and it was heated so even though it was a little chilly out it was very nice to swim. The next day we had to drive to Arusha. My Aunt got the stomach flu during the night so we had to drive with her really sick and pulling over every so often to be sick. It kinda sucked....but worse for her. Goodbye Nairobi and off to Arusha!

Impressions of East Africa

I arrived in Nairobi on 31 December 2008. I arrived in Arusha on 3 January 2009. This blog tells the story of my time in East Africa.