im so home!

home home home home home home home home home home home home home home home home home

coming back... its strange. but i was ready for it. i can drink from the tap, sleep not under a mosquito net, i still take malarone (whatever), have dairy! its good. ill be home for just over a month before venturing off to buenos aires for the semester. i better start learning spanish yesterday. oh happy holiday fun!

safari fun and loving rwanda

mama's on safari!

surprise visit to maasai village

elephants!

we did safari right this time 

mbuzi mawe camp site! go here!

cute little rwandan babies in a tree

gorilla trekking! see the silverback!

beautiful rwanda

hot spring unofficial tour guide

beautiful garden at lake kivu at the border to congo 

i love it here!

safari and arrival into kigali

oh my gosh. safari was amazing.
mama got in on the 6th and immediately we went to the hotel, toasted to our promised adventures and climbed the emergency stairway to get a view of the arusha skyline. on our 5 day safari we started first at ngorongoro crater. oh my word it was incredible. i've been before but the elephant on the crater rim road the night before our crater tour must have been a sign because we saw it all! all of it! everything we could have asked fore and amazingly close. babboons scampering across the pathways, rhinos close enough to actually see them, lions lounging in the sun, a bijillion buffalos, and sooo much more. we saw it all. it was so great. if you go to tanzania, go to ngorongoro crater. i dont care what they say. the crater is so beautiful and such a strange fishbowl, there must not be anything else like it in the world. upon leaving the crater mama and i visited a maasai village. oh baby, talk about culture shock. we were greeted with lots of grunts, jumps and white beads galore. there is really almost nothing i can say that could describe how awestruck and awkward i felt all at the same time (mama felt similar i believe as well). it was beautiful, uncomfortable, loud, dusty and like nothing ive ever seen before. just us and about 50 maasais singing to us for about 20 minutes. ill post pictures, i can't do it justice. i can't even try. just incredible. also if you go to tanzania, stay in tented lodges in the serengeti. like daymn. :) no joke, after a drive thru the serengeti, it seemed only appropriate to stay in tents hidden by huge rocks in a camp site peppered with buffalos, lions and bmuzi mawe. we loved it. we wanted to stay another day but couldn't cancel our next stay in lake manyara.

ngorongoro: everything you want to see
tents: the best place i might have stayed in my life.

no im in kigali.
mama and i arrived here just a few hours ago. we road in our Rwandair flanked on every side by the Rwanda national soccer team! such nice guys. ton will be so jealous. i didn't know that french was the national language of rwanda tho and tried to speak kiswahili to them... pole. one guy told us, "welcome to the beauty of africa". im taking his word for it. everyone we have met here is so sweet and friendly. the city is beautiful on rolling hills and to think this county is recovering from a so recent genocide. the people here are just beautiful. i can already tell i won't want to leave after just a few days. 

all alone in a big dirty city!

on my own in arusha. its a strange feeling being completely by oneself in such a strange town that i think i truthfully hated for a long time. however, my feelings of hate have since given way to acceptance and simple delight in many of the aspects i despised.

 i fondly refer to arusha as the armpit of africa, not just because there is such a buildup and transfer of sweat in everyday life here, but because it is definitely the most physically unattractive city (on the whole) that i might have ever visited,strangers are seemingly rude and often make fun of me for my funny accent when trying to speak swahili and when walking down the streets i am often yelled at, followed and groped. for all these reasons, you must understand why i did not immediately fall in love with the city. volunteers would say that they liked arusha because it made everywhere else seem that much better. i think that is a terrible reason to like arusha; and when i heard this, i think it made me dislike arusha even more. however, for some reason my feelings have swayed more positively in the past week and a half. why might you ask? i actually believe since my program ended i have been much happier in arusha living like a normal backpacker in a shitty, cheap but adorably great hostel in the middle of town off the busiest street, sokoine rd. sokonie rd, before living in meru house, was probably my least favorite part of town in my least favorite town. but now i feel a solidarity towards the town and the street people that i was missing at mama's. at mama's, we were always worried about the bad things that were happening outside the gate. mama's was a sanctuary from all the cheating, lying and dirty people who we were warned would take advantage of us at any time and to think otherwise would be letting your guard down and then you would get mugged. plain and simple. but that is so not the case. yeah the town is noisy and dirty, but its strangely nice. people no longer shout mzungu as much when we walk down and if they do we just look over and smile. if someone gives us shit, we give it right back. living in town has become so fun! i love being a dirty arusha backpacker. my feet are just as dirty as they have always been, my clothes are probably dirtier, but im happier and more excited here now than i think i was at mama's. the freedom to do what we want also probably has something to do with it. (*we has been refering to me and anniken, who left me just yesterday and now im here all by myself :)) arusha and me are kinda friends now.

right now my biggest problem is going to be how to show mama that side of arusha when a dumb tour company wants to not let us go on daladalas? :) 

out of there

me and anniken are out of mamas! its so weird, but so far its sooo fun. our last day of school was on wednesday and it was so cute. the kids all wore their sunday bests and played all day. we were then treated to a feast of biscuits (plain bland cookies), fanta, corn flakes and some stale popcorn. it was wonderful. since it was the end of the school year, the kids who preformed exceptionally well got presents (paper and a pencil) before going home. im so proud of the kids! their english has improved even since we arrived and it is so great to see them so confident in what they are saying. i swear tho, this one girl, Zamzam, she didn't say a single word  for the entire month, wore a head scarf and would never finish her work. on wednesday, she had braids in her hair, a bright pink dress with floral piping and more attitude than i would have ever imagined. i think just the idea of school really scares the shit out of some of these kids. it was so nice to see so much confidence.

anyway, it was sad to say goodbye to mama. she has been so good to us and more than generous in so many ways. on our last night there, she gave anniken and i kongas, patterned wraps that women here wear either around their waist or on their heads, with "where the is love, god is near" written in swahili. she was so sad to see us go, she really loves having people around her so she says that she is always sad to see anyone go. but after leaving, anniken and i checked into a 7 dollar a night hostel in downtown arusha. sounds much worse than it is. our room is massive. much bigger than our one at mama's and we have our own bathroom and a great mosquito net! it is incredible! we have a view of mt meru out on of the windows if you lean and a balcony! for 7 bucks! africa, man! unreal. its also got a great roof terrace and if you climb up a really sketchy ladder you can get to the very top of the roof and have a 360 degree view of arusha... but also all the lies beyond. it is incredible. we went up and watched the sunset with a bunch of other american that are staying there and then danced the night away at a local bar nearby. not too shabby. anniken, an adorable 19 yr old norwegian girl who was also at mamas with me, arrived on the same day as me and is leaving on the same flight as me, is my traveling bud/ accomplice for the next week until my real mama comes!!! yay!!! im so excited! mama needs to ride in a daladala. itd be too funny. hopefully its full of goats or chickens or maasai or a communal baby is being passed around. ill miss the dalas.