Haven’t posted in a while as we’ve been pretty busy on the
weekends and I hope everyone is well.
Over the past few weeks I’ve gone on a few hard hikes to beautiful
waterfalls, gone to a local church with two teachers from my school, visited
their homes and my last day of school was this past Friday so here goes…
A few Sunday’s ago I went to church with two teachers from
my school and their families. Teacher’s
Ruth and Lily. After getting lost on a
Sunday morning for about 45 minutes (good thing I left nice and early!) I met
Ruth and we walked into a little village, Sekena, to church together. The service began around 10:30 AM and ended
around 1:45 PM although it didn’t seem nearly that long. The service was very active, lots of signing,
dancing, it actually felt more like a party than any service I had been too
before. The dancing and singing by the
choir was very entertaining, lots of clapping and shouting praises although I
didn’t understand a word at first because it was all in Swahili. About 15 minutes into the service one of Ruth’s
friends showed up late and spotted me in the crowd, obviously easy as I was the
only mzungu in the crowd. She translated
for me which was great although I was so amused by everything it really didn’t
matter I didn’t know what they were talking about. Towards the middle of the service there were
two “collections.” For the first one we
all walked up to the front of the room and put money into a little covered
basket and immediately after a woman walked around with a narrow sack on a
stick, it was probably about 18 inches deep and everyone dropped a few more
coins in. Not sure why it was so long,
my first assumption was that maybe it’s harder for someone to reach into and
steal the money although maybe it’s mean for me to think that because it is at
church…anyway, after that the pastor read about 7 passages from the Bible and talked
about them and did a lot of promising to serve the Lord. Lots of shouting and singing, a free for
all. I wish I brought my camera to try
to sneak a few pictures or video some of it.
All of a sudden everyone scooted their chairs back. Most of the chairs people use here are those
white, cheap, plastic patio furniture chairs you can buy anywhere in the
States. I wondered what was going on
when all of a sudden everyone crouched down on their hands and knees into the
tornado position from grade school and the pastor started ranting and raving
and everyone started praying out loud and screaming and begging for
forgiveness. People started crying and I
was crouched down, couldn’t see anything, the blood was rushing to my head and
we stayed this way for what I would estimate to be about 15 minutes. About half the time I wanted to stand up and
see what everyone was doing and the other half the time I was wondering how
long it was going to last and daydreaming about delicious Sunday brunch I wish
I was going to eat after. Breakfast
burritos, some Bongo Room apple pancakes with cinnamon ice cream, maybe an
omelet, etc. Not happening. Anyway after about 15 minutes of this
sobbing/ praying people shuffled back to standing. A few more songs and dance, the choir sang a
final prayer and about 3.5 hours later the service was over. Seemed much faster than 3.5 hours and of
course I was introduced to everyone and invited back, especially after I told
them I was Catholic and I’m pretty sure they are convinced I need to be “saved”
or something. The teachers were really
excited I came and I’m glad I got to experience it.
Onto our hikes…the past two weekends we’ve gone on a few
intense hikes. Last Saturday morning we
left around 8 AM for the Marungu waterfalls which are right past the town of
Moshi. We arrived a couple hours later and
hired a local guide for the day which ended up being pretty expensive at 20,000
each (around $15 USD for the whole day which would be cheap in the U.S. but
expensive here). We hiked about two
hours into the bush and were out of breath, sweating and exhausted by the time
we got there. Hiking might be
understating it, it was more of a trot and uphill the entire time. At a few places we were almost going straight
up and climbing on our hands and knees, grabbing onto tree roots and pulling
ourselves up it was so steep! We finally
arrived at the waterfalls and they were beautiful. There were only a few local people there
washing clothes in the river. After
spending some time relaxing on rocks and eating our snacks we hiked into a
little village and this old man showed us some “Kilimanjaro” coffee plants and
how they roast the beans. After the
coffee we walked a little further to a small bar and sampled banana beer. They gave us a pail to share. After lots of imagining I convinced myself it
tasted a little like banana. It was warm
(it’s actually really hard to get a cold beer here, even at bars, you have to
ask for a cold beer and most of the time they come back just slightly chilled,
that’s taken a bit of getting used to but when you have no other options you
get used to it!) and full of grainy bits and a dark murky tan color, not at all
like regular beer. Add it to the list of
things I’m glad I tried but wouldn’t be at all sad if I never had again in
life. After the banana beer we hiked
about another hour uphill to the base camp of Mt. Kilimanjaro which was great
to see…I’ve decided not to climb Kili on this trip because after being here for
almost 6 weeks with barely no cardio activity (we walk everywhere all day but I
don’t at all count that as “training.”) I don’t feel prepared at all
anymore. If I’m going to spend over
$2,000 to climb a mountain for 6-7 days I want to be prepared! So, in place of Kili I’ve booked a 7 day yoga
retreat on Zanzibar and I can’t wait! www.yogazanzibar.com. Anyway, base camp was neat and it was
inspiring to see all the hikers that were about to start climbing and I will
hopefully make it back with some friends over the next few years to climb. I’m also not sure about being stuck on a
mountain for 6-7 days with a group of strangers I haven’t met and would rather do
it with a group of people I know I can stand for that amount of time! After base camp we drove to see the last
remaining house of the people of the Chagga tribe. There was a small man made cave they
constructed underground for security purposes, to hide when invading tribes
entered their area. It was so short and
narrow, we had to waddle like ducks and crawl on our hands and knees most of
the time. I’m not claustrophobic but was
getting nervous and everyone’s legs were cramping and shaking from being so
tired, especially after all the hiking we had already done that day. We were covered in clay and dirt but got some
great pictures from the day.
Last week I visited the home of Lily, a teacher at my
school. I met her husband and two
children, Charity and Phillip at church the week before. Charity is 4 and in the “baby” class at our
nursery school. She’s super sweet and
smart. She has great English and Lily
told me at school on Monday that all she talked about the rest of the day on
Sunday after church was about how she “talked English with a mzungu.” We got off the school bus and walked a ways
down a little dirt road into a pretty little village. Her home consisted of two rooms, the main
room you walk into with two little couches, the kids bed, a little coffee
table, a cabinet with their dishes and other things. The walls were painted bright blue and the
cement floors were covered in blankets.
The other room could barely just fit the parents bed. They had a little area outside where all the
cooking was done. I played with her kids
and then she came back into the room with thermos of tea, two mugs of porridge
for the kids and a bowl with 4 bright pink hot dogs in it. Yeah, they were all for me. I tried convincing her for a while that I was
still full from lunch at school but she wasn’t having it. I’ve mentioned it before but people here
really get offended if you don’t accept food or drink they provide
anytime. There were just four hot dogs
in a bowl, no bread, no fork etc. I
picked up the first one and just ate it down as fast I could, tried taking a
break and offering it to the kids but that didn’t work. I choked down two more and was finally able
to convince her I was way too full from the tea and first three to eat the last
one. Of course the kids were overjoyed
they got to share the last one which made me feel bad because I didn’t want any
of them. Not sure what hot dogs are even
made of in the U.S. and I’m sure African hot dogs are probably ten times
worse! Didn’t get sick so that’s a
positive…
We hiked to more waterfalls yesterday which was a 7 hour
round trip and we’re all super sore and tired today. The biggest one was about 500 meters high (at
least that’s what the locals told us but who knows…it was really high though)
and the hike through the countryside was absolutely beautiful. We only had to pay 4,000 each to bribe a
local tribe to let us onto their land to hike through which was a lot cheaper
than last week.
My last day of school was Friday and it was really
bittersweet. The show was great but I’m
really sad I won’t see the kids as they are now on break for the next
month. I’ll post more on that this
week. I’m going to take the next few
weeks and visit other volunteer placements, schools and orphanages in the area
so that will be neat.
Anyway, running out of internet time right now so more on my
last day of school next week. I can’t
believe I’ve been here for 6 weeks already, time has flown by! Hope everyone is doing well!
Take care, Catherine 