Ngorogoro Crater

We were at Lake Manyara on Monday the 15th and on Tuesday morning we got up and had a quick breakfast of watermelon and deep fried sweet potato before we left at 7am for Ngorogoro Crater. We had planned to leave earlier, but the Twiga Lodge restaurant didn’t open until 6:30. It turned out not to matter because when we finally bumped our way into the information centre at Ngorogoro almost an hour later, we had a very long wait ahead of us while our guide, David, went to get our permit. The car park was filled with safari vehicles so he had to wait in line for a long time. Then he told us that when he finally got to the window to pay, he was $5 short. So he had to come back to us in the car and get the extra money and then go and line up again to pay and get the permit. All this for a chance to glimpse some animals (or so I thought at the time... it ended up being hundreds of times better than I ever expected - next time I will happily wait in line for hours!) Also, while we were there a baboon followed me into the bathroom, which I found strangely terrifying.

Nicole and I at the information centre - Ngorogoro is freezing that early in the morning!

It takes another 45 minutes to get into the crater from there. First you wind upward so that you’re 610m above the information centre, to the crater rim, and then you descend into the crater itself. The road is very, very bad. When I told my parents about it I compared it to the road up Sanitorium Hill at home, only ten times worse and with even more hairpin turns. Plus it’s dirt of course and you bump up and down, up and down the whole way. It was very foggy so we couldn’t see anything from the lookout point and it didn’t start to clear until we were quite far down. The view is amazing though. It was what I expected being on safari in Africa to look like – wide open plains for the most part, dotted with small clumps of trees now and then. There was a lake in the distance and small streams flowing in the hollows. As you got further down towards the crater floor you could see dark patches which were large herds of animals grazing in the plains.

The first animals that we saw as we drove down into the crater were buffalo. They were standing on the hillside, looking down at the stream of water. It seemed like they wanted to go and drink, but were not entirely sure about it. David said it was because the lions like to hide down by the water, knowing that at some point or other, all the animals will have to come down to drink. There were little buffalo calves as well, which seemed like they were cute - although they were too far away to tell really.

On the drive in we also saw ostrich. I’ve seen ostriches in zoos before, but they seemed so much bigger when they were out in the wild! I certainly wouldn’t want to be out of the car and in the path of an angry ostrich, that’s for sure. 

The next thing we saw were herds of zebra and wildebeest. Apparently the wildebeest and the zebra hang out together because the zebra have very good eyesight and the wildebeest have very good hearing, so they are able to help protect each other from predators. The zebra and wildebeest crossed the road in front of us, only two or three metres away. It was a real live zebra crossing!

We saw a whole lot of safari cars parked in the distance so we went to investigate – usually if there are a lot of cars in one place then there is something worth looking at! In this case there were four female lions in the distance. They looked like they were trying to hunt buffalo, but one large buffalo (perhaps the leader of the herd) was standing lookout so they didn’t come too close. We watched the lions stalk around in the distance before following them along the road. At one point there were two warthog in the grass and a lioness started stalking and then chasing one of them - perhaps only 20m away from us. None of the other lions backed her up though so the warthog got away. It wasn’t going to be a lion’s dinner today!

Then the most amazing thing happened. The lions came over to the safari cars. They walked back and forwards in front of the cars and paced along the line of vehicles. Twice lions came straight towards us – the first time I was so terrified of looking straight into the eyes of a lion with no barrier between us, that I ducked down into the car. David said not to be worried, as the lions never jump on the safari cars. The lions walked along the length of our car, so close that we could have reached down out of the pop up roof and touched them. It was amazing and scary all at once. We stayed there for a long time – more than an hour, watching the lions. They seem to accept the cars and the inevitable noise that comes with them as a part of their environment. They don’t even blink an eye or turn around when one of the cars starts its engine or follows it down the road.

Lionesses walk down the road in front of our car.

Lioness directly behind us. She came so close we could have touched her. If you look closely you can see the beautiful patterns on her coat.

We saw more lions later on too – once a young male lion, who didn’t yet have a full mane and another time, three more females who had cornered a wildebeest, but did not appear to be making any attempt to catch it. I had wanted to see lions on safari and we got to see eight altogether. Being in the same environment as all these wild animals was very interesting – it seemed familiar in some ways, due to the amount of wildlife documentaries I’ve seen (only those narrated by David Attenborough though!), yet entirely different in other ways. I used to want to cry on the documentaries when baby wildebeest are snatched from their mothers or antelope are killed. And yet, when you’re there it seems different. The killing is another, albeit horrible, part of the circle of life. Although after seeing those lions hunting it amazes me that one day the “lion will lay down with the lamb!” What a different world that will be!

We saw a lot of other animals – jackal, two different types of gazelle, hyena and baboons, as well as hundreds of zebra and wildebeest. By lunchtime we had seen most all of the animals we wanted to see except for a rhino. We drove around and around searching for the black rhino (of which there are only eight in the whole crater) and eventually just before we stopped to eat, we saw one in the distance. At first I mistook it for a large rock, but it turned out that it was a rhino lying down asleep. David said that rhinoceros walk alone, which made me sad for some reason, to imagine eight rhinos walking around the crater without company. Rhinoceros only eat grass and they have no predators due to their size. It seems like a lonely existence, but I suppose they must have been designed that way.

There is a beautiful lake in Ngorogoro Crater, although I didn’t realize how big it was until later that afternoon when we stopped at the lookout on our way home and were able to look over the whole crater. In the lake were both white and pink flamingoes as well as other birds. I’m afraid, not being particularly interested in birds, that I don’t remember what they were!

We stopped to eat lunch at a small swamp-like lake which was filled with hippopotami. We had seen one hippo earlier, beached in an area beside a small pond, but here there were at least half a dozen that we could see, and probably others beside. I never really realized how huge they are. I can see now why they are one of the more dangerous African creatures – just their sheer size scared me. We had to eat lunch in the car as there are many scavenging birds in the area which swoop down and steal food from people. They have very sharp claws so could potentially seriously injure people. 

Dyan and Nicole in front of the hippo lake. The blob in the water to the right of Dyan is actually two hippopotami. 

We ate lunch in the car to avoid the birds! This photo doesn't adequately show how dusty I was!

At the lunch area there were also some very interesting toilets. Apparently the “squatty potty” (as I called it much to Dyan and Nicole's amusement) is common here, but we just hadn’t been lucky enough to come across one before. Also common is a lack of toilet paper – always carry a roll with you in your bag!

After lunch we drove out of the crater to the lookout at the top. It was slightly hazy, but a beautiful view looking out over the entire crater. I was the only one game enough to go and stand on the very edge of the (barrier-less) platform. Everyone else, including our guide, was too scared and didn’t want to go near the edge for fear of falling off. I tried to reassure them that you wouldn't fall very far as there were bushes there, but no one believed me.

Beautiful view down into the crater.

Standing on the edge of the world!

The trip back to Arusha was very, very long (it seemed to take three times as long to get home as it did to get there) and very bumpy. By the time we got back at 8pm my neck was aching from bumping all over the road and we were exhausted. We stopped at a souvenir shop on the way back which was interesting although you can buy most of the same things at the Maasai market in Arusha. We also stopped to look at a building that Dyan and I had admired on the way to Ngorogoro. It used to be a souvenir store, but now it’s abandoned. To me, it looked like an African fairytale house! Dyan made Nicole go down and take pictures and they came back absolutely covered in sticky, prickly thorns. A week later we were still finding the sticky things in our room in Arusha!

The house looked like it came straight out of an African fairytale.

When we got back Caroline commented that she thought I had gotten a tan. Not so at all. What no one tells you about going on safari is just how dirty you will get. Yes, I know this is Africa and it is a dusty and dirty place, and yes we were standing in a car with essentially no top on it for two days, but I still did not expect to have so many layers of dirt encrusted in my skin. The night we stayed at the Twiga Lodge I took my sunglasses off and looked in the mirror only to find that I looked somewhat strange. I wondered if I had gotten sunburnt as the skin around my eyes appeared much lighter. It took me a few minutes to realize that it was dirt and that a washcloth would do the trick! When we got back to Arusha I have never been so grateful for a shower in my life. I take at least one shower every day at home, but never because I’m actually covered in dirt!

We had an amazing two days and aside from the less than wonderful food on the first day, we would definitely recommend the company that we went on safari with. It was fun seeing so many wild animals and it was nice to spend time with some new friends.

Altogether – safari njema. A very good trip indeed.

xoxo,

-Hannah

Lake Manyara

A couple of weeks ago Dyan and her daughter Nicole from LA invited me to go on an overnight safari to Lake Manyara and Ngorogoro Crater with them. 

Last Monday morning our safari driver and guide, David, picked us up early from the volunteer house. We drove into town to pick up some things and then we started on the road to Lake Manyara which is about two and a half hours from Arusha. The first part of the journey out of Arusha was paved road, as was the last part into Mto wa Mbu, the closest village to Lake Manyara National Park. The rest of the trip was dusty, bumpy, dirt roads. These are not like our rural gravel roads in New Zealand which might be a little bumpy. This is Africa. Everything is extreme – including bumping over great rifts and valleys and down into deep holes in the middle of the road. Also, the road builders feel the need to put speed bumps in unexpected places in the roads – just in case you were thinking of doing the impossible and driving too fast!

It was amazing to watch the scenery outside the window. This was the first time in the month that I’ve been here, that I had been outside of Arusha. I had seen the city side of Tanzania, but what I hadn’t seen was the small villages and mud huts and plains and the people walking, walking everywhere – herding cows and goats and carrying baskets of food on their heads and bundles of sticks on their backs. It was interesting and eye opening. These are things you hear of and that you know exist – but to see it with your own eyes is something else. It makes it real.

When we got to Mto wa Mbu we went and dropped our bags off at the Twiga Lodge where we would be staying the night and then continued on to Lake Manyara. We stopped so that David could open the pop up roof and then we were officially on safari. Lake Manyara surprised me. I had never seen any photos of either it or Ngorogoro so I had no idea what they looked like. I expected Lake Manyara to look like the picture in my head of what going on safari looks like – great plains and animals in the distance and all that. Not so! Lake Manyara National Park is mostly forest with flood plains only down near the lakeshore. The lake itself is salt water and shallow – at its deepest point it is only 3.7m deep. 

Nicole and I outside the information place at Lake Manyara

It was all so beautiful – you could stand up in the safari car and look out at the trees, keeping an eye out all the time for tree climbing lions! The first animals we saw was a troop of baboons coming straight up the road towards us. There were dozens of baboons, all different sizes, with tiny babies clinging on to their mothers. The babies were cute and the baboons looked fine from the front. When they turned around though… I have to say – there are few things more ugly than a baboon’s bottom! Especially due to the fact that many of them had open sores or wounds.

Baboons coming up the road towards us

When we started out on our safari David asked us what animals we would like to see. I wanted to see lions. Dyan wanted to see giraffes. Nicole wanted to see elephants. At Lake Manyara she certainly got her fill of them! We first saw one solitary elephant which walked alongside the car for a while. We wondered where its family was as elephants usually stay in groups.

One lone elephant

An hour or so later, after driving along by the lake and spotting zebra, wildebeest, buffalo, warthog, antelope and lots and lots of monkeys, we came upon a whole herd of elephants. They surrounded the car and crossed the road behind our vehicle, so close that we could have reached out and touched them. It was amazing to be so close to such beautiful gentle creatures. You could see every wrinkle in their skin. Nicole described it as "magical". We spent a long time watching them walk around, cross the road one at a time and eat grass and other vegetation. We saw one drinking from a stream and spraying water on himself to keep cool in the middle of the day.

A mother and baby elephant not far from our car

We saw a lot of impala, as well as antelope in the distance. The first group of impala we saw was a male with his herd. Later on we saw the bachelor herd, which are separate from the others. David told us that one male impala can have up to thirty females in his herd!

Male impala (top left) and his herd

At one point we could see giraffes so we got out of the car (you do so at your own risk!) and went a little closer to the water. There were six Maasai giraffes which are the tallest subspecies of giraffe and have the darkest markings. They are the only type of giraffe which live at Lake Manyara. One of the giraffes was noticeably taller and bigger than the others - I figured he must be Papa Giraffe! 

Giraffe down by the water

My favourite animals that we saw at Lake Manyara were the vervet monkeys. They are very light coloured and look quite silky. A lot of them had babies which scampered along the road beside us. They were so playful and had very long tails compared to the size of their bodies. Apart from the fact that it would be cruel to take an animal like that out of the wild, I would have liked to have taken a baby one home to keep as a pet. They were adorable.

Adult vervet monkey up a tree

There were many beautiful trees in the park and one of my favourites was the boabab tree. The one in the picture below is a particularly big one. Apparently they can live to be thousands of years old. I found it amazing that this tree is so huge and so old - David said hundreds of years old, if not a thousand. Imagine what that tree has seen. Imagine what's changed in the last few centuries. In the West, the whole world as we know it has changed and changed and changed again in that time. Apart from the fact that there are now safari cars filled with people and probably less animals, I suspect less has changed in this particular part of the world. I suppose we'll never know for sure.

The beautiful and ancient boabab tree

Before we left Lake Manyara we went down to the hippo pool where you can get out of the car and hopefully spot some hippos. Unfortunately there were none there that day (although I wasn't entirely sure where they go... do they wander far away from their pool?), but what we did see was two big buses filled with local high school students. They came over, asking to take photos with us. After we obliged David told us that they would consider their tour of Lake Manyara a success simply because they had their photo taken with the wazungu.

After a good six to seven hours at the park we left to go back to our lodge, spotting some baboons eating bananas on the way. There were no banana palms around so I can only assume that some friendly tourists threw them their way! There are many signs in the park though saying not to feed the animals, because if they get accustomed to it then they may bite you.

The Twiga Lodge was lovely - clean rooms with the softest bed I'd slept on in a long time! All our meals were included with the safari so we had dinner there. It was very nice and very typical of Africa (as I have found out) - rice, beans and chips with vegetables or meat and then fresh fruit for desert.

All in all, it was a very nice day. I enjoyed spending the day with friends and it was exciting to see animals in the wild like that. Nicole and I both loved being able to stand up in the car and look out at everything that was going on around us. It was such a beautiful place and so different to how I thought it would be. I'm finding that is the case with a lot of things here. Different from expected, but so beautiful and yes, magical, in their own way.

xoxo,

-Hannah

African Moon

Have you ever had one of those nights when everything just feels right?  A night where you are wanting for nothing, but simply feel at peace with yourself and with the world around you? Tonight is like that for me.

All was quiet at Neema House this evening. The babies were fed. They had drunk their evening bottle and we had spent the last half hour singing hymns and rocking them. Baby Anna fell asleep on me, her two middle fingers in her mouth, content. She knows I love her.

It was dark when I left and the moon was a golden sliver in the African sky. This moon is the same one that I have spent hours looking at out my bedroom window at home. I have often sat up late writing, pressed against the window, that silver disk hanging above me in an endless sea of stars.

It seems strange to think that I can sit in my comfortable bedroom in New Zealand and see the same thing as people worlds apart from me, literally and culturally, will see. The sky is constant, revolving in unceasing circles, a reminder that no matter where or who we are, we all live and love under the same sky.

It makes me sad that little Malikia will never see how much the sky looks like blue velvet on a clear evening; how the stars can make you feel both ancient and eternally young at the same time. How much you miss if you don’t have eyes. And how much more you miss if you have eyes, but never really learn to see the beauty in the things around you.

I have a heart full of feelings tonight, but no real words to describe them. Perhaps that’s the best way.

xoxo,

-Hannah

More Than Cuddling Babies

At Neema House we do a lot more than just cuddling and taking care of babies. When you have 27 infants in the house there are endless jobs to do. Since I’ve been here I’ve mopped floors, labelled nappies (small, medium and large for the different sized babies), cleaned up numerous lots of vomit, cut up mountains of vegetables, helped make stew and corn bread, whizzed up baby food, grated coconut, emptied and sorted drawers, tallied up what babies are eating… the list could go on and on forever.

One day last week Safina was running behind in the kitchen so she asked if one of us volunteers could come in and help her. I was the lucky one! She presented me with a pile of vegetables, which seemed to be nearly as tall as I was. I asked her what type of vegetable they were, as they looked similar to spinach, but not quite. She called them “mboga” which translated simply means vegetable, so that wasn’t very helpful. I was also presented with a knife that had definitely seen better days – the handle was split in two and the blade kept falling apart so I literally had to hold it together as I cut. No problem, I thought. An hour later I was still there and I eventually had to give up because the knife had given me a big blister on my hand and it was simply too painful to continue!

Safina showed me the right way to cut mboga.

Another day Safina needed help grating fresh coconut. They have a wooden device that you sit on, which then has a rough blade to the side which you use to grate the coconut. It looked far easier than it actually was! Aldelien, Shermaine and I all had a turn, but unfortunately none of us were very good at it. Martin, a local volunteer, kept stopping us and saying, “No, no, not like that!” He tried to show us, but we still couldn’t get it. It was fun to try anyway! As a child I remember my Samoan grandfather having a similar device that he used to grate coconut to make traditional deserts.

Martin tried (and failed) to show me how to do it right

Something that never ends in a place with so many babies is the laundry. No matter how many times a day you wash, it never seems to be enough. Michael and Dorris, who live at Neema House, say that sometimes they have gotten out of bed at 3 in the morning to put a load of their personal washing in, only to find that the washer is already full! It seems to take hours every day to fold all the clothing and put all the reusable nappies back together again. Once all the clothes are folded though, they simply get stuffed into overflowing drawers. Big clothes in little baby drawers and pink clothes in boys drawers – it’s never very organised!

This was a problem that Lori, Lita and I decided to address on Friday. In the little baby room there are seven babies, each of whom has a drawer, which is meant to be filled with their own clothes. This is an idea that works well in theory, but not so well in reality. We pulled all the clothes out of all the drawers and were left with this…

Enough clothes for 20 babies! (Notice Beulah chilling on the mat at the front with the piles of clothes). It took probably two or three hours to sort all the clothes into boys and girls and then into different sizes. We can’t really go by the sizing on the tag as the clothes are likely to have either stretched or shrunk, not to mention the fact that a lot of our babies are not the right size for their age. Then we picked out about 10 outfits for each baby and put them back in their drawers. The left over amount of clothes was enough to clothe a dozen more babies! Provided of course that we wash multiple times a day, which we definitely do.

Today my roles (aside from the usual looking after baby duties that are a given at Neema), I was a blower-up of balloons, a bubble blower and therefore toddler entertainer (I loved our improvised bubble wand - a twisted coathanger!) and a party decorator.

Nicole and I were in charge of decorating the triplet's birthday party with balloons.

The triplets turned one yesterday, July 6, so we had a party for them this afternoon in the backyard.

So there you go… for all those people who asked what I was going to do for 8 months, this is it. Laundry and cleaning and cooking and tidying and planning and organising and babies and babies and babies.

This morning in my devotional book I read a quote that I loved:

“And because we look for the bonfire, we miss the candle. Because we listen for the shout, we miss the whisper. But it is in burnished candles that God comes and through whispered promises he speaks: ‘When in doubt, look around; I am closer than you think.’”

I liked that. God is here through the mundane daily tasks as well as the big experiences. He is even here, especially here, in Africa where the need for a hope beyond poverty is desperate. And He is here for those of us who have stepped out in faith and come to serve Him with what little we have.

xoxo,

-Hannah

Searching for the Elusive Black and White Giraffe

This week has been my least favourite so far. They say that everyone gets sick within the first one to two weeks they are here and I was silly enough to think that when two weeks came and went, maybe I might be lucky enough to escape it. Not so, unfortunately. On Tuesday I woke up with what I thought was a cold so I stayed at home as I didn't want to pass on any bugs to the babies. Instead I went out to lunch with Susan, Lori and Lita. We also went to the supermarket and a book shop. It was a teeny tiny shop, but still so exciting! I think I'll be wanting to go back there. They had lots of neat children's books about Tanzania and I would love to get some to take home with me.

By Tuesday that night I felt really unwell. Shermaine and I walked to Neema to say hi to the babies briefly, but we had to come back after only a little while as I was sick. Lori was very kind and mothered me and gave me ibuprofen and phenergan. They were worried I might have malaria, but thankfully two days later, it doesn't appear so! There was only one full day that I didn't see the babies, but I missed them so much. It's funny how quickly we adjust to new situations and how things that were foreign only a couple of weeks ago become the new normal. Before I came here my contact with babies had been limited to cuddling those belonging to friends. Now I feel strangely empty if I'm not holding a baby or rocking a baby or giving a bottle or spooning uji into their (usually) willing mouths.

Last night Shermaine and I stayed up until midnight (we both usually went to bed early - early bed means early rising which means more time at Neema) and talked and watched a movie and ate chocolate and it was really nice. She was fascinated by the chocolate fish I brought with me so we ate one. We were talking about the strange phenomena where it is always easy to talk to someone when the lights are off. We wondered if maybe it has something to do with that theory that people are less inhibited after 8pm. I'm not sure!

Today was Thursday and it was a happy/sad day. Shermaine left and I cried. If you read this Shermaine - our room is very quiet without you, I miss you already, I've already eaten some of your chocolate, I'm going to watch New Moon and I promise to give Bahati extra kisses every day.

In the afternoon Aldelien, Katey, Caroline and I went into the city to the Masai market. It was my first time riding the dala dala and it was an interesting experience to say the least! The dala dala is a van which is used as public transportation and as many people as are able to fit, will squeeze in. People half sit on your lap, you're squished from all angles and it speeds down the road, doors opening and closing, people getting in while it's still moving. When you want to get out you shout "Shusha!" and bang on the roof or the sides of the van and it will (hopefully) stop. Thankfully we didn't have to bang or shout as we were getting out at a popular stop. The good thing about the dala dala is that it is very cheap. It costs 400 shillings, which converted is only about NZ$0.30

The Masai market is only a short walk from the dala dala stop and it too, is an experience all to itself. It is basically a craft and curio market where you can find just about any souvenir that you could possibly want. All the classic souvenirs that people come back from Africa with - carved masks and animals; beaded boxes, jewelry, place mats, coasters; serviette holders in the shape of animals (I found a set almost identical to one that Aunty Felicity brought my family back from Africa years ago); t-shirts and hats and beaded sandals and baskets; plus almost anything else you could think of.

Last week Shermaine and I visited the Masai market briefly and I found it quite overwhelming - people grab your arms calling "Sister, sister" or the Swahili equivalent, "Dada," and say "Karibu" (welcome), "Come into my shop," "Please look at my goods," "I have the best prices," and they tell you sad stories - "My daughter is sick," "I haven't yet had any customers today," "My family is going hungry," etc. etc. I found it quite exhausting just walking down one aisle at the market! Shermaine and I had to hide eventually because there was a guy who kept following us around, saying that he had zebra striped pants that she needed to buy.

Today was my second time there and it was not nearly so bad. I quickly learned to just smile and say, "Hapana asante" (no thank you) dozens of times. It was funny though because Aldelien and I were looking for a soft giraffe toy for her sister who they call "Giraffe" because she is so tall. It couldn't be just any giraffe though - it had to be a black and white striped giraffe because the the furnishings in her house are black and white. Do you know how hard it is to find a black and white giraffe?! Once the shopkeepers heard what we wanted the cry went up and down the row of stalls, "Black and white twiga, black and white twiga" and we were accosted by dozens of people, all positive that they could sell us a black and white "twiga".

We were so excited when we came across this sight...

Only to discover that the stall owner was trying to pass off zebra as giraffe!

We did find some, but they were ridiculously expensive and seeing as the shopkeepers knew we were looking for one, it become more and more expensive with every shop we went into. Eventually Aldelien picked out a carved wooden giraffe and we were so proud of ourselves that we managed to haggle the price down to 4000 shillings from the original 12,000 that she told us. I thought I would be terrible at haggling, but being with Aldelien made me much braver and at one stall the negotiations for us to buy a bracelet and some key rings went on so long that the shopkeeper got us both stools to sit down on!

I have mentioned before that I am learning to be thankful for the small things - tonight I had what was probably the first proper shower since I left Australia. No holding the faucet trying not to drown the rest of the bathroom, no cold rinse, no more bucket washes. Just lovely hot water to stand under. It was glorious!

Every day I'm here I experience new things - from changing a dozen dirty nappies in a row (the toddlers wake up from their afternoon nap at 3:30-4pm and it's my least favourite time of day as all 11 of them need changing at the exact same time - should I ever have children of my own I will be eternally grateful that there is only one poopy butt to clean at a time!), to riding on dala dalas to meeting new volunteers to trying new foods. My life before was always stable, predictable - I knew what would happen and when. In this new life I am adjusting to, I've become increasingly grateful for my God - no matter what changes, day in and day out, He is always the same.

xoxo,
-Hannah

Pompeii 2.0

In an earlier blog post I mentioned that the city of Arusha is located at the base of Mount Meru. I also mentioned that it is an active volcano - the last time it erupted being in 1910, although this was just a minor eruption. Most of the bulk of the volcano was blasted away previously in an event similar to the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. This original eruption was said to have happened 8,000 years ago, which I don't believe is true (the earth not being that old and all), but when you look at it you can definitely see that there has been a major eruption there at some point in the past.

On Monday night Michael and Dorris went to the Rotary Club to speak about Neema House. Shermaine went along with them as she is part of the young people's Rotaract club in Dubai. The other speaker for the evening was a volcanologist from Belgium who has come to petition the government of Tanzania to purchase a seismometer for Mt Meru. Apparently it is true that Mt Meru is overdue to erupt at the moment. They expected a hundred years after 1910 to be the next major eruption and as we all know, it is now 2013. In a lot of countries this wouldn't be a big problem - there would be seismograph equipment on the mountain that would let us know when there was volcanic activity and then an evacuation would be possible. 

However, there is no seismograph equipment on the mountain so our only warning signs will be the physical signs that come from the mountain itself - just like Vesuvius in 79AD. Michael said to the volcanologist, "How close are we to Mt Meru?" He replied, "You are ON Mt Meru." Apparently here we are at ground zero! Should a major eruption occur it would wipe the whole city of Arusha out completely.

I laughed when Shermaine told me this. She was surprised and said, "Is this how you deal with fear?!" To be honest, I'm not scared. Sure, it could erupt but frankly I don't think that God worked everything together for me to come to Tanzania, only to die in a volcano blast. There were a lot of bad things that I thought could happen over here - muggings, malaria, snake bite, etc. Never did I imagine a volcano might be the chief worry!

However, if I have learned anything so far in my time here, it is to live each and every day as it comes; no real planning (that is not the African way!) - only trusting God to provide our needs. He looked after us today and will look after us tomorrow, no matter what comes.

xoxo (or "zarkzo" as Nick's screen reader will pronounce it),

-Hannah

Church... the African Way

On Saturday, some of the young African nannies invited Shermaine and I to go to church with them on Sunday morning. Not only was it my first time experiencing an African church, it was also the first time I had been to church on a Sunday. It did feel a little strange closing Sabbath by myself on Saturday night and then waking up early the next morning to go to church!

Elizabeth (one of the nannies) and Safina (the cook) met Shermaine and I outside the volunteer house at 7am. We walked to the church, which is only about five minutes away - actually only a hundred or so metres down the road from the old volunteer house. We were still a couple of blocks away when we started to hear the music from the church - there was singing and a brass band and a sound which I can only describe as a war cry. I was thinking that if it was this loud blocks away, then it would be absolutely overwhelming once we actually got inside!

We went into the front gates of the church and we were greeted by this sight...

People dancing and clapping their way into church!

Church was just starting when we got there and I was worrying that if it started at 7 then we were going to be there for hours and hours, not understanding what was happening. It didn't turn out to be so bad though as it ended at 10 and the only part that was a little boring was what I assumed was the sermon. I only understood about one word in a hundred! I don't know what denomination it was, but there was a lot of stand up, sit down, kneel down, stand up again. Interesting when we couldn't understand so we just had to sort of mimic what everyone else was doing!

Shermaine told me that it was quite a modern church, compared to some of the others she's been to since she has been here. There was a sound system which played loud music and there were also African drums. We estimated that there was about 500 people there - there were twelve people squished in our pew alone! We were already quite crammed together when another lady came along and sort of sat and wiggled her way between two people. It was a cold morning, but it was quite warm being in such close proximity to so many other people!

There was not a great deal of congregational singing, but there was a lot of singing from the choir. This particular church had two different choirs who sat facing each other at the front of the church. They would get up and have a sort of "battle of the bands" thing where they each appeared to be trying to out-dance and out-sing the other. Some of the dancing was quite interesting - rather "come hither" and accompanied by cat calls and the war cry thing (I don't know what else to call it, but it is a shrill warbling noise made with the tongue and appears to be a sound of appreciation). Anyway, I thought a lot of the dance moves were rather risque for church, but clearly I am just not familiar with the African way! The choirs were very entertaining however and I enjoyed watching them greatly.

The other thing that I found interesting was the way they took up the offering. At the appropriate time, the people in the last pew stood up and filed down the sides of the church, put their offering in the basket at the front, and then filed back up the centre aisle to their seats, followed by the second to last pew and so on. Shermaine and I didn't really know what was happening, so we just followed everyone else, put some money in the basket and then returned to our seats. I felt very conspicuous as I was the only "mzungu" (white person) in the whole church! That was all well and good though, until the people at the front of the church had finished, and then the people at the back stood up and filed down again. A second offering! I was so confused and was starting to wonder how many offerings there would be... thankfully there was no more after that. Next time I will know to only put a small amount in each time, rather than one big amount in the first offering!

Altogether it was a very interesting experience. Even though I didn't understand either what the people up the front were saying, or what was happening in general, I enjoyed it. It was neat to experience a different style of worship to that I am used to. I guess it made me realise that there are a lot of different ways of worshipping God and that we should not automatically assume that our way is either the best or the "right" way. Watching the look of joy on the locals faces as they sang and worshipped God was amazing. I will definitely consider going back there some time - maybe once I know a bit more Swahili and can understand a little better what is going on!

xoxo,
-Hannah