Karrla and Ann's Visit

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all." -Helen Keller



November 28- December 4, 2009



I finally had some American visitors! I worked with Karrla at Mercy Corps, she is their IT genius, so of course being technologically handicapped I got to know her really well! Example conversation:



Me: (hurriedly arriving to work and trying to switch on my computer... to no avail. So I call IT.) Karrla? Yep, it is Brie. I neeeeeed you....

(Minutes later Karrla is at my desk)

Karrla: What is the problem?

Me: When I press the on button the computer doesn't turn on.

Karrla: (Walks near my desk grabs the cord and plugs in it, presses the button, the computer turns on.) There that should do it. Usually computers need to be plugged in to work.



So, as you can see, Karrla saved my Mercy Corps life multiple times a week. Naturally, I was thrilled when she told me she and her friend, Ann wanted to come to Tanzania for a vacation and visit my village. They arrived down in Njombe after the long bus ride from Dar. They were both pretty hard core getting on a bus after such a long plane flight. After one night in Njombe we hired my friend, Azim to drive us in his taxi over the rough roads to Image. It was really fun to have Karrla and Ann there. Despite the fact that they could not really communicate with my villagers, I think a good time was had by all.



The highlight for me of their village visit was the soccer game. Ann works for Nike and brought with them many nice, expensive, colorful soccer balls as gifts. The young men in my village have some teams but only a few balls. They came to the soccer field to meet us and put on some uniforms and accepted the gift of the balls. My village chairperson, Felix, was there and they all gave speeches which I translated to Ann and Karrla. Then they played. They were awesome, even the guys that went barefoot, the amount of athleticism was so amazing to watch. I felt like I should have paid good money for a game where the guys playing were so skilled. It was a great experience to watch my friends do something they love and I think Ann and Karrla enjoyed the village time too.



After Image, we went up to Iringa and spent one night there before heading out to Ruaha National Park for a three day safari. This was an entirely amazing three days! (Thank you Mom and Dad!) We stayed at the beautiful Fox Farms River Lodge right in the park. (See pictures below.) We were the only people staying there, so they had set up two of the bandas for us and lucky lucky me- I got my own. I pretty much wanted to live in the shower... Since Karrla, Ann and I are all vegetarian, there was great food every night that we could all eat. The dining area looked over the river and we would go down on the beach and sit around the bonfire and watch the full moon rise. Of course, one of my favorite parts was chatting it up in Swahili with the Masai guards (guards against animals, not people). They would walk us back to our huts at the end of the night, carrying their large sticks and Masai knives. There is something very comforting about the Masai and because, like all Tanzanians, they have a great sense of humor and are very friendly, they tend to be a favorite tribe.

Everyday we went out with our guides in a private land rover. A list of what we saw: giraffes, elephants, lions, zebra, antelope, gazelle, baboons, dik-diks, greater kudu, ostrich, vervet monkeys, water bucks, hippos, crocodiles, jackels, mongoose, turtles and many birds. It was so awesome.

My first lions were an experience. If you know me very well, you know that I have always loved cats and a dream of mine has always been seeing the big cats in the wild. It was pretty amazing to finally get that experience. The lions tended to be hot, hungry and tired when we saw different groups of them, but they really did not disappoint. It is almost impossible to describe what it feels like to have a lion in the Tanzanian bush look at you. Even from a car, it is terrifying, beautiful and hypnotic all at once. I knew when one would close his eyes, I wanted him to look at me again, but when moving to get a better picture, the eyes would open back up. And that gaze was enough to freeze you. It was like when you watch your house cat see something move and it will flash open it's eyes at whatever caught it's interest. But it was an entirely different thing to know that it was you that caught the lions interest. The look they give you feels like it pierces right into your soul and it was odd to want more of it but want it to stop at the same moment. To want to get further away and get out of the car... (Don't worry, Mom, the guide wouldn't let me.) They brought tears to my eyes and an overwhelming sense of awe at the beautiful world we live in. I felt immediately grateful that I was able to live in Tanzania, to see Africa's animals in the wild, the snow of Kilimanjaro, the rural village life of beautiful people... Sometimes I wish that I was born fifty years earlier so that I could have seen more unspoiled beauty around the world. I could have been a pioneer or an explorer. Then I realize that in my own way, in my own life, I sort of am.

Night in Ruaha was loud! There was just screen connecting the thatched roof of our huts to the foundation to protect us from bugs. Thus making it possible for me to hear every night time noise, and sense I am a light sleeper with a big imagination, I did hear everything! Hippos make the loudest and oddest noises, bugs of all kinds can make every sound imaginable, one early morning we could hear lions off in the distance, then there was just the unknown noises... Luckily, after all my time in a village I have learned that it is better to just pretend like those noises are not happening. At 3 AM on our last night in the park, there was a noise I could not ignore. Mostly because it was right outside my screen and was incredibly loud and crashing through the bushes. Since I have a totally wild imagination, I decided that whatever it was was big and it might want to eat me. So I thought about trying to pretend like it wasn't there, but then I figured that if this was it, I wanted to see what it was first and since the moon was full there would be a good chance that I would be able to. So I took a deep breath and pulled open the curtain to the undoubtable smell of elephant. They were right there... seriously, without the screen I could have touched them. A heard crashing through the under bush, pulling the trees apart and noisily stuffing the contents into their mouths. I got scared for a moment again when I realized the small movement on the ground that I hadn't noticed before was the smallest elephant I have ever seen. Elephants are so protective of their children, earlier in the day one had tried to stampede our safari car because it felt we were too close to it's child. I wondered if it would stampede my hut. The baby came up to his mother's knee and stood in her shadow. They stamped through the bush until they got to the front of my hut and stood bathed in moonlight on the banks of the river. A hippo was also down there, obese on the bank and giggled his creepy old molester laugh. I peaked out at the congregation of animals in the middle of the wild, in the heart of Tanzania, East Africa, and I smiled to myself because this moment makes up part of my life.