My World Discoveries

Cosy, comforting home

bonniedawson — Thu, 31 May 2012 10:45:00 GMT

I've now been back home for a month. I've been surprisingly content here after my 3 months in Africa... I thought I would get bored as soon as I'd caught up with everyone at home, and want to escape to Melbourne, at least, for more excitement. It's surprised me how the simple things and company of family can fulfill each day that goes by so easily. However, knowing that time keeps ticking by and a month has now passed by me without a whole lot of achievement I think I'm starting to fall in a bit of a rutt.

Last night I spent the evening catching up on emails and friends via facebook. Catching up on all the exciting things that people I know are getting up to was inspirational.

Here are some amazing creations of people I've met along the way:

Spreading the word of Kiribati -
http://thelittleislandthatcould.wordpress.com/

The Green Living Planet -
http://www.facebook.com/groups/142015989213831/

New Outlook Centre Orphanage and Nursery School -
http://www.nocettanzania.com/

Plodding along in Arusha

bonniedawson — Sun, 4 Mar 2012 15:00:00 GMT

Hi y'all!

Just a quick update of my time here...tomorrow will be a month since I arrived in Tanzania - time is such a strange concept when having such a different experience! In a sense I feel like I've been here for ages, but each week goes by so quickly.

I have been continuing with my volunteering at NOCET most mornings, looking after the 2 year olds. I love going up there to such a friendly, homely place. At times I find it difficult to come up with new ideas for the children and the energy to keep them stimulated without them pulling my hair. But generally a fun couple of hours is had by all! I have stayed for lunch a couple more times. I also cooked them an 'Aussie' lunch on Friday...I always feel a little bit stuck when people ask me about Australian food. It was also a bit of a tough decision as the 'stove' that I had was a small camp stove with charcoal and/or kerosene. After a bit of discussion with MotherDearest back home, I decided to make them damper and pumpkin soup. After not being in the kitchen for couple of months, I wasn't very switched on with the soup, making it far too watery. But I think it was enjoyed by all anyway.

After lunch, I stuck around at NOCET throughout the afternoon, and was able to help the older children who live there with their homework. There are 5 of them who are between 8 and 15 years old, and they are a beautiful bunch of personalities and so eager to improve with their schooling. I also spent an hour or so kicking around an Aussie football with a couple of the boys which was a bit of fun!

Other than my times at NOCET I've been going out at night, perhaps a little bit too much, both throughout the week and on a Saturday night.

Last Saturday Susie who also lives at the hostel arranged to take the children from her school on safari to the local Arusha National Park. After being informed that a BIG bus had been arranged, 6 more of us from the hostel said that we would come along... The 7 of us got a taxi (5 seats) to the school, only to arrive and see the teachers loading all 51 children into a 20 seater coaster. We were going to try to arrange an emergency extra car, but in the end decided to persevere and fitted all 61 of us into the bus for a fun day out!!! As we left the bus driver cranked up the African pop music and every single child and adult was singing 'Sawa Sawa Sawa' at the top of their lungs. It was a bus full to the brim with such excitement! It was certainly a cosy few hours driving - an hour into the park, and then another hour or so driving through. Unfortunately, it was really dense so we didn't see a lot to start with - some giraffe off in the distance and eventually some zebra just before we stopped for lunch. We pulled up at a picnic place on a big lake, and there were a few car loads of tourists also there. As the children unpiled from the bus a lot of the the tourists took photos of them lined up as though they were animals - it was horribly irritating! After our lunch stop we continued to drive, passing by a huge flock of flamingos in the distance, and lots of baboon and warthog. Despite the bus driver telling us that he knew where he was going we ended up missing a second big lake which is the normal hangout for the elephants, which was a bit disappointing as that was one thing that most of the children were really excited to see. Anyway, all in all I think it was a great day out for them, even just for the excitement, and proved to be enough to send every one of them to sleep on the way home!

Last week I also was part of a FlashMob that a group of us from the hostel put on with a few local dancers from one of the nightclubs. I had gone along to watch a couple of practices but had not joined in as they had all been practicing for a good few weeks and I'm an awful dancer anyway! But, with 2 practices left, I decided that I would give it a shot as the girls agreed to catch me up on the dance! We put it on in the middle of town - in the middle of a roundabout - as East Africa's First Flashmob. Despite not quite getting it right a lot of the time, it was a load of fun! There were definitely a few locals who knew that something was going on beforehand, but I think otherwise it was something completely different for Arusha. The idea behind it was to raise awareness, and hopefully funds as a result, for the Ujamaa Children's Home - a small orphanage that Carley, the hostel owner, has set up.

Although I haven't done a lot more sightseeing over the last fortnight, I've been thoroughly enjoying life here. There is certainly a much slower pace than at home - I love to simply sit back and soak up the energy of the place. I was saying to Mum earlier today that there is such a content and welcoming feel to the place. It is not until I stop and have more than a passing conversation with individuals that you realise the stories and struggles that every single one has had.

I hope that all is well with everyone at home. Glad to touch base with you all - would love to hear any stories from any of you!!!

Lots of love, always. xox

HAKUNA MATATA - Tanzania - no worries!

bonniedawson — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 12:30:00 GMT

So I've now been in Tanzania for 2 weeks and 5 hours exactly...sorry that I've been a bit out of touch, but here's a bit of a speel of what I've been up to so far!

I got picked up from Kilimanjaro Airport on the 5th - about a 45 minute drive from the hostel in Arusha. It was obviously an overnight flight, so I slept between Jo'Burg and Dar es Salaam, but my first views of Tanzania were the sunrise from the aeroplane as we flew from there to Kili, then Mt Kilimanjaro as we flew past, and then Masai Warriors wandering across the arid land as we landed.

After catching up on sleep and settling into the hostel, I had a tour of some of the different projects that Ujamaa supports along with another older Aussie lady and an older Californian couple who had also arrived over the weekend. We started at a small orphanage/nursery school - NOCET (http://www.nocettanzania.com/) - which had just relocated and the hostel had only just begun to support, then went to another more established school, and finally to a more established orphanage. As well as walking, we caught daladalas along the main roads, which are just small minivans. At one stage I counted 24 people in the one that we were in. As well as the driver there is also a guy on board that bangs the roof when it needs to stop, and collects the money from the passengers - anywhere between about 200-500 Tanzanian shillings (about 15-30cents for a ride!).
I suppose because it is less established, and didn't already have any volunteers, I decided that I would go back to NOCET at least to begin with, as well as the other three. The Californian couple are only here for a couple of weeks, and decided pretty much straight away that they wanted to set up a vegetable garden at the back of the place. I definitely agree that the idea has great potential, but Sandy (the Aussie) and I both had a bit of a laugh/whinge especially about the wife (Dianne) as she was so bull-headed about it from the start. It made me cringe a lot to see such minimal communication she attempted with the staff of the place, and the assumptions she made all within the first half hour. And the lack of listening to advice - Sandy tried to tell her about 5 times that lettuce would probably not be the wisest choice considering it's not normally part of their diet and has minimal nutritional content compared to a lot of other possible veggies!

On the Tuesday I decided to visit another school that a few of the girls are involved in. Susie - a Scottish girl my age - has been here for the past 8 months, raising money and organising the building of a new school for them on land that she was able to buy with the raised money. Again, it was tiny but had about 5 different classes of varying ages from about 4-9 years old. One of the other girls from the hostel introduced me to one of the teachers, and she suddenly decided that she had other things to do for the day (sit under a tree??!!!) so I could take over. Thankfully another girl who normally helps to take this class turned up at about the same time, so I just helped her for the most part, until she left early for lunch. At that point I had about an hour to fill in before 12pm so continued with heads, shoulders, knees and toes, then went on to practice the spelling of their names so I could remember them better! It was a class of about 7 5 year olds, who each were ridiculously switched on. Call me immature, but the highlight of my day was when they were to copy a diagram of the body into their books and an innocent little girl brought her's up for Sally and I to see and she had added boobies and poo. At that point I had to leave the room to stifle my laugh! haha.

The next morning I returned to NOCET with Sandy. There are 6 orphans that live there - 5 of them who are older than 7 so go elsewhere for school. During the mornings there are about 9 other children that come for school. There is one teacher and she has all 9 children - aged between 2 and 7 - in a tiny classroom (about 2x2metres). I went into watch for a little while, and felt so bad for her as it was obviously mission impossible trying to teach the older children, while also having 4 2 year olds to look after/attempt to teach numbers etc. Luckily the 'director' of the organisation - Mr Samwel - was there for the day so I was able to suggest to him and the teacher that Sandy and I use our time to look after/run playgroup type activities for the littlies while the teacher actually teach the older children. So that's what I've been doing while I've been there!

Later on the Wednesday afternoon I went back to the hostel and was chatting to some of the more 'long-term' girls who had a trip to Zanzibar planned for the weekend to go to a music festival - Sauti Za Busara (http://www.busaramusic.org/) - and then to the beach for a couple of days. So I headed back into town and bought a return flight for 7am the next morning...love traveller's spontaneity! haha. I had a little bit of a guilty conscience about it as I'd only just arrived, and had had such a good first day at NOCET but would be already running away the next day. But I'd read briefly about the music festival on my flight up here, and I was super keen to go to Zanzibar at some stage anyway so I took up the opportunity.

I was also feeling a little bit nervous, as I'd only just met these girls and they were all pretty close, but lucky after the first morning or so I felt pretty comfortable. We were supposed to be at the airport to check in an hour before our flight, we arrived exactly on time but the check-in desk didn't open for about half an hour. Then Carley 1 of the 3 others that I was flying across with, ticked off our names and we boarded without even pulling out our tickets!

We flew to Stonetown - a really intriguing Islamic city with tiny narrow winding streets - and were met by a guy that Claire (one of 2 other Aussie girls) knew and had hooked us up with an apartment-y place for us. We had 2 double beds and a double mattress on the floor for the 8 of us to start with, but were luckily able to get another mattress. It was definitely a bit of dusty place, with cold showers etc, but suited us perfectly fine and had a rooftop terrace (with no view except for of a random model Eiffel Tower!). We just had a relaxing day, the other girls didn't get there til a bit later. Then we went to an amazing seafood market for dinner, which was a whole lot of stands full of all types of seafood on skewers which then get barbequed in front of you. Made me so wish you could have been there Mum! Three of us then went to the festival (the others were already too tired after a night out the night before), we only caught the last couple of acts - one of which was a cool latin-influenced reggaeish band, and the other was apparently Tanzania's most popular dance act but was sooooooooo boring! haha.

The weekend continued in basically the same way - relaxing, lazy days and festival by night. We went to a couple of really cool place for drinks/dinner beforehand to watch the beautiful sunset over the Indian Ocean. Got some amazing pictures! Was a great weekend, but I know I could go back to Stonetown and have a much more educational time learning about the interesting slavery history etc.

On the Sunday evening we left to go to the beach - a village called Nungwi. We ended up moving places the second night, but either way we were 3 minutes walk max from the beach - beautiful white sands, and bright blue sea. There were quite a few bigger European resorts further along but the village itself was quite small and had a great local feel to it. Again, the days weren't full of activities - we basically hung out at the same local pub right on the sand the whole time, and went out for a nice dinner to a fancier restaurant one evening (more delicious prawns and fish!) I, along with 2 others left on the Tuesday, while the other girls went off snorkelling etc for the day. Was completely my choice to leave the day earlier - I regretted it slightly, but at the same time I think 5 days away was enough considering I'd had less in Arusha by that stage.

So after arriving back on Tuesday night, I've been back to NOCET each morning, which is still really enjoyable. I've stayed there for lunch a couple of days too. I think Sandy and the others feel guilty to do so since they live so minimally, but I find it's a really good time to bond with the staff and build up relationships with them to get to know a bit more about the background of the place... As well as the teacher there's a matron that lives there who doesn't really speak any English, but her daughter, granddaughter and neice (all between 16 & 23) have been there every day helping too and they're all beautiful and kind, and make me feel very loved! They actually invited me to their church service yesterday, which I didn't end up going to for being a bit lazy (and waking up with a stuffy nose), but I'm going to try to go next week for the experience! They all walk around humming gospel music so I think it will be quite the experience!

I've also been out a couple of nights to different nightclubs. Nice for a bit of a Western escape, and we also went to a little French cafe yesterday for lunch. As much as I love to immerse myself in all the local stuff (like eating a whole meal with my fingers), it's a bit of a comfort to have these treats occassionally!

I've been hoping to upload some photos, I have heaps to share! But I think I must have packed the wrong cord for my camera, so I'll see if I can borrow one off someone else.

Anyway, missing you all! I hope everything is great with you all, I think of home and everything that must be going on so often! But I am having a really great time, and am already thinking it will be really difficult to leave here in a month's time.

Kruger and surrounds

bonniedawson — Fri, 3 Feb 2012 19:36:00 GMT

Hey y'all!

Am currently in Pretoria, hanging out with my cousin Rob. He doesn't actually have anywhere to live himself at the moment, so am just couch-surfing for a couple of nights with him.

I got back from Safari last night. The trip was gooood. I got the train to the airport early Monday morning where I met the 'truck' okay. It was literally a truck, but the back is decked out a bit more like a bus. As per usual I was the last to arrive, just on time. There were only 7 of us in the group - 3 other Aussies from Adelaide (a sister and bro, and his mate), and Swiss, Dutch and Argentinian girls, all of us in our twenties. And we had a driver and a cook. We left Jo'burg at about 8am, and arrived at 'Kwa Madala', a private game reserve just outside Kruger at about 430pm, so it was a big day of driving. Where we stopped for lunch - Mbombela, or Nelspruit - was one of the cities where the World Cup was played. We all thought that we would be camping the whole time, but it was a nice surprise to find out that the first night was actually at a lodge. It was pretty much just us staying there which was nice. And it had this awesome pool which overlooked a waterhole - all very scenic. So we spent the afternoon relaxing there, and then went on an evening game drive. We spotted zebra and wildebeest right outside the lodge, and giraffes on the drive. We spent a good while following rhino tracks too, which seemed really fresh, but sadly didn't come across it. The couple of weeks beforehand, they had had really heavy rain and floods in the area, so we had been warned that they couldn't access all the roads. Anyway, we were getting along fine, but then went down a slight ditch and suddenly three-quarters of the wheel was stuck in the mud. After spending about 30mins waiting around trying to get it out, and staying in the ute because there were lions somewhere nearby, I fell to sleep. Woops! But by the time I woke up there was another ute there which was able to pull us out.
The next morning was another early one. We went on a walk for a couple of hours. Was a lovely morning, we didn't see anything that we didn't see the night before, but the ranger told us lots about the plants and different ways they could be used medicinally.

After our brekkie (fried eggs, cereal etc) we headed off to Kruger which was about a half hour drive away. We spent the day driving through the park to our campsite. We saw loads of elephants, which was exciting to begin with, but they were all just hanging out by themselves so not so exciting by the 10th or so time. But we did see a group of wild dog, which is apparently really lucky. There are at most only about 400 of them in the park (which is 2.2million hectares). In the 11 years that he'd been doing these tours our driver - Matt - had only seen them 4 times. They're pretty ugly though! haha. It did get a bit exciting though, when a warthog appeared on the other side of the road and decided to cross over. It could obviously smell the dogs though, as it suddenly got a bit wary and decided it wasn't the best idea. It escaped back to where it came from just in time as the dogs got up see what it was. I think they must have already eaten for the day though, as they didn't put up much of a chase.
We drove for a couple of hours to our lunch spot, and then another to our campsite, which again was a pleasant surprise. We camped at Skukuza, which is the biggest campsite in the park and again had a nice pool. So we spent a relaxing afternoon by it, and then went on another night drive after dinner. We weren't that lucky in terms of spotting cats, but we did have two hyena walk past the truck.

For the day the animals we spotted were:
- elephants
- giraffe
- a crocodile under the bridge as we entered Kruger
- hippos from a distance in the water
- wild dogs
- warthog
- impala (small antelope, everywhere!)
- zebra
- wildebeest (the above three all liked hanging out together)
- hornbills
- genet cat
- hyena (night drive)
- monkeys in the camp

On Wednesday, we spent the day in a 4WD open ute, with a park guide called Roger. We left the camp soon after 6am, and were out until about 330. Again, we were really lucky in some respects - saw wild dog again! and a white and black rhino - but didn't see any lions, leopards or cheetahs. One dissapointing moment was when Roger stopped by a big tree because a couple of monkeys were making crazy yowling sounds, and Roger said that this is normally a warning sound signalling that there is a cat nearby. So we spent about 10 minutes looking through the grass, but couldn't see anything and then they quietened down. About 20 minutes later we were watch a huuuuge herd of elephants (I think they must have been 2 seperate families, really beautiful to watch, and some came about 10metres from the ute), when another group drove past and asked if we saw the leopard at that same tree. So it seemed we'd just missed it! Damn.

My list of spottings for that day were:
- white rhino
- klipspringer (cute little antelope jumping about the rocks)
- warthogs (later, a family came into our campsite)
- leopart tortoise
- terripan
- giraffe
- zebra
- buffalo
- elephants
- impala
- kudu
- hippo (as well as in the water, I spotted one way out of water, which is really rare during the day as they get very sunburnt! Roger said that was the first time he'd seen one so far out in the middle of the day in 9 years)
- vultures
- saddle-billed stalk
- maribou stalk
- black rhino
- baboons

It was nice that evening to not do anything, so we just hung out at the campsite. I went to bed pretty early though; I was pretty tired, but also I found the tour leader to be super annoying constantly talking about himself so I left the others to it!

Yesterday, we spent the day driving back to Jo'burg, but went via what they call the Panoramic Route. This includes the third biggest canyon in the world, God's Window (a viewpoint they think looks like what the world must have looked like when God first created it. All we could see was clouds!), and some blowholes. This was all just in the first section of the drive too, it was crazy to see how quickly the terrain changed! It was a really good tour, everyone was easy to get along with. I just found the guide super irritating which I probably let get in the way a bit too much! haha. But the cook was great - he didn't say much, but he was much less annoying! And cooked some great camp meals.

Head up to Tanzania tomorrow night where I'll be for the next 6 or so weeks.

Hope you're all fine and dandy :) much love to you all xox

ARRIVED!!!

bonniedawson — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 19:10:00 GMT

Hi all!

Just a quick note to say that I have arrived in Jo'burg safe and sound. In fact, very content in being here :)

After arriving in Sydney, I had a 14 hour flight which took me back over Melbourne (could QANTAS not have picked me up there?!). I slept for maybe a couple of hours after our lunch, and a tiny bit at the end, but otherwise not much so am now feeling a bit dazed (it's 1920 here so I'm guessing 0520 in Oz).

Was picked up at the airport by a cousin of a cousin - Graham - and his Dad - Mike. Am now back at their place for the weekend also with Mum - Eleze (sp?!) and brother - Will.

Really great family, especially to ease into the African way of life. Drinking ciders, music talk, and patting dogs in their cosy tropical backyard :)

Anyway, that's probably it for now!

Lots of love to you all :) xox