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.