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.