Safari!

This past weekend our training group went on a safari at Mikumi National Park, about 3 hours south of Morogoro. It was absolutely spectacular. We were lucky enough to see most of the major animals. We saw elephants, zebras, wildebeests, water buffalo, monkeys, antelope, and giraffes. I tried to take a good number of pictures, but I found I enjoyed myself most when I had the camera turned off. Kinda seems silly to look at animals through an LCD screen when they’re right in front of you, and it’s not like I’m exactly going to compete with National Geographic. That said, I did manage to get a number of decent shots. Most of these pictures speak for themselves, so I’ll keep the rambling to a minimum.



Zebras were everywhere. Bold as can be too, they’d often walk right up to the bus.





One of the watering holes we stopped at was filled with hippos. Hippos are not small. They are also inherently hilarious. I couldn’t stop chuckling for most of the time I was watching them. They just kind of float around all day, and occasionally make a prehistoric sounding snort. They look really docile, and maybe even a little cute. It became abundantly clear to us just how dangerous the critters are though when the lone 15-foot crocodile in the pond bolted away in fear from one of the grunting hippos. Unfortunately, the hippos and crocodile didn’t come above the water for very long, so it was hard to get a decent picture of them. All my attempts came out looking like floating logs. So, instead you get this sweet picture of me fearlessly standing in front of the death pond! You’ll just have to take my word though that it’s filled with hippos and a croc.



This next one is my favorite photo.



This is an Acacia tree. The branches are covered in super sharp 4 inch spikes. Africa: even the trees are made to kick your ass.



Being the knuckleheads that we are, we of course resorted to sneak attack spiking one another with fallen Acacia quills. Hey, we can’t be mature ALL the time. Poor Allen here just incurred Conor’s wrath. Conor’s face of pure sinister joy is priceless.



A few random photos now:


Peace Corps Trainee Neil looking especially prepared to take on whatever the safari throws his way.


Chacos and Peace Corps service go hand in hand.


This is Kit, a very good friend of mine from training. It really is hard to take a bad photo in Africa.

We closed out the day by all relaxing in the shade of an enormous baobab tree. Standing beside an ancient African tree while watching dusk settle over the grasslands, it’s hard not to be touched. I was flooded with a great sense of peace. This last month has been incredibly challenging. It was really nice having all the built up stress and fatigue just kind of wash away into the sunset.

Behold, the power of science!

Apologies in advance for how disjointed this post is. My time at the computer today is very limited, so I'm going to mostly focus on getting my photos to upload, (which is a serious task).

The big excitement last weekend was my (I like to think) courageous attempt at baking a cake. We don't have an oven, but by putting a smaller pot inside a larger one, and by putting coals on top of and beneath the large pot, I was able to make a convection oven. The name sounds a lot more complicated than the contraption actually ended up being. The family was definitely amused while I was putting the thing together though. I managed to buy some Pillsbury cake mix at the local import store, (cost me a pretty penny), so mixing the cake was really easy. I was not entirely confident that the baking process was going to work at all though, so man oh man was I relieved when the yard started to fill with the smell of chocolate cake. It took forever to cook. The shack was hot as hot can be. The cake itself ended up being a little burned around the edges. But damn, it was so good. I wanted to cry it was so good.





So, definitely something to check off on the list of things I never expected to do in my lifetime: baking a chocolate cake in a pot on a charcoal stove in the middle of East Africa.

While I was waiting for the cake to bake I took some pictures of the yard and family. Here's a shot of my host mama washing dishes:



Last Saturday we had our weekly group training session, and afterwards we got a chance to go to a local pub and hang out for awhile. We get very few chances to unwind, so the chance to just sit around over a couple beers was pretty great.



We managed to get a group shot of most of us last Saturday. We've only lost one trainee so far, (and he left within 12 hours of arriving in Dar es Salaam), so we're at an even 40 now. Not bad at all.



Our Saturday training sessions have a habit of dragging a bit near the end. Here's a shot of me and Cynth messing around in the back of the room. I think we were trying to be thugs or something. Honestly, who knows? Let's see YOU try to be attentive after 9 hours of lectures on cross cultural exchange.



This coming weekend's looking like it's going to be awesome though. To celebrate the half-way point in training Peace Corps is giving us the weekend off. Tomorrow we're all going on a safari in Mikumi National Park, which is I'm told about 3 hours away. I am ridiculously excited. I've been in Africa for over a month and have yet to see any elephants, zebras, or lions. Tomorrow, that's going to change. Hopefully I'll have some good photos to upload next week. Wikiendi njema kila mtu! (Have a great weekend everyone!)