My Life in Tanzania: Come On Along With Me, On Safari.

Here I am again, waiting ages to write another post and only doing so because I've finally managed to guilt myself into it.

So I feel like I've settled into life here pretty well. It's been 3 months now—which seems crazy on two levels. Days tend to drag by here. Not necessarily in an unpleasant way, just sometimes I'll be doing something and look at the clock and think “how has it only been 5 minutes?!” But when I think about how I've already been here 3 months it's like where did the time go?

I've had days here that seemed to last a week, but I think it's because I'm doing so much and experiencing so many things I never have before. I mentioned being 2 feet from a wild lion in my previous post, and let me tell you, that day was a LONG, amazing day. We started out early (like 5 or 6 in the morning early) from Morogoro and drove the couple hours it takes to get to Mikumi National Park. We wanted to get there early because I guess the lions disappear during the middle of the day (makes sense since they're nocturnal) and we really wanted to see one. We decided to rent a safari car rather than take one of our own in. It was a lot more costly, but totally worth it. Plus, we had 7 people so it wasn't too expensive split 7 ways.

This is the car we took. Totally worth it.

So we spent an hour or so driving around looking at all the giraffes and zebras and elephants (oh my). Then at one point our driver kept circling back around to this one area and getting out and looking around and finally he just went offroad, weaving in-between these bushes while we're all bouncing up and down in the back. And then we saw her, this gorgeous lion sitting in the shade of a bush and we were like okay, totally worth getting 3 hours of sleep. I have no idea how our guide knew she was there, but I guess if your job is showing off animals every day you learn their usual haunts.

After that we stopped to have lunch and then went back out for a couple hours. We saw all kinds of gazelle-type animals (Charlene says they're like the dogs of safari because after the first couple minutes you're just like “Oh, another gazelle. Meh.”), plus wildebeest, water buffalo, baboons, monkeys, hippos, a crocodile, and even a green mamba (an extremely venomous snake that was in a tree right above our heads and totally could have dropped down and killed us if it wanted to. Fun!) I think we spent about 4 or 5 hours there total, and it was a blast. After we got back to Morogoro, Charlene had to take her mom and friend back to Dar es Salaam because they were only visiting for a week, and Zach went back to Berega, but Kristien, Kevin and I decided to stay in Morogoro for the weekend.

I feel like we might have spent a few hours at the pool that day (Morogoro Hotel has a lovely pool with these cabana things you can sit underneath and it's like our little retreat we visit every time we go into Morogoro), or at least we did something else that I can't remember, but I do remember what we did later.

That night we went to a club with our Tanzanian friend Almas, who lives in Morogoro and so knows all the best places to go, plus he's a really nice guy. This particular club has two sides: one with a DJ and a bar and one with live music and room for dancing. We were sitting on the bar side and I was drinking a soda (I feel the need to emphasize this even though I know anyone who knows me knows I don't drink—but the fact that I can't chalk what happened next up to alcohol is, I think, significant), and out of the blue Almas says “so, Lisa, I'm friends with the band manager here and he said you could play a song tonight.” I just sort of stared at him and, eloquent English teacher that I am, blurted “um... what?”

After a bit (read: a lot) of persuading and nervous hand-wringing I assented and we made our way to the other side of the club. Then I really started sweating, because good gracious, there were a lot of people there. And I don't mean “a lot” like 50 people, I mean like over 100, probably closer to 200 people all sitting around listening to the band and having a good time. And I didn't even have time to practice.

If you look closely you can see the green mamba.

I wanted to back out but I knew if I did I'd regret it because who can say they've really performed live in Tanzania, right? So, after an introduction from the band manager (he called me “Mama Lisa” which I thought was kind-of adorable, even though I know they do that to everyone here), I went on stage and awkwardly introduced myself again in English because my Kiswahili is terrible. I think everyone was a little confused as to why this random mzungu was interrupting their music and dancing, but oh well. I ended up playing Paparazzi by Lady Gaga and halfway through my guitar got unplugged but I just kept going because hey, what else are you gonna do? Luckily they noticed and plugged it back in before I'd made too much of a fool of myself. Then a random man came up and threw 5,000 tsh at me like I was a stripper, which was nice of him. All-in-all it was a sort of mortifying but also fun experience and I'm glad I didn't chicken out. Who knows, maybe one day Mama Lisa will give a repeat performance. But maybe she'll wait until she can introduce herself in Kiswahili, first.

Things at the school have been going pretty well. Charlene is leaving soon and midterms are coming up so the workload is getting heavier for students and teachers alike, but I'm confident that we'll all do well. We really do have a great, smart group of kids. And the ones who aren't as bright, well, they'll still have half a year after this test to improve. I am pretty bummed that Charlene is leaving, though. I'll miss her, and I know she'll miss the kids. Just thinking about leaving them, even after only being here for 3 months, breaks my heart. I don't think I'll ever be able to stay away from this place for long, just because of them. Berega feels like home to me now, and I love it.

I was so happy when we saw a crocodile! They're one of my favorite animals.

In my next post I will regale you with the story of my adventure in border hopping to Malawi to renew my Visa. It was meant to be a quick weekend trip but ended up becoming a week-long endeavor. Hamna shida, we should have known that travel plans never go quite the way you want them to in Africa (or anywhere else, for that matter).