Graduation

The atmosphere at Sega on Graduation morning was full of excitement. Everywhere we looked there were pre-formals, soon to be form-ones, running around in their scrubbed clean uniforms and polished shoes, with huge smiles on their faces. The new canteen was decorated beautifully, in maroon and white, the colors of the pre-formal’s uniforms. We gathered with the pre-formals in their classroom, and presented them with the graduation gift we had been working on with Fran. We had made three big posters that said “Congratulations, Graduation 2010” and decorated them with pictures of the girls and drawings. The girls are very enthusiastic about photos, so they had a blast searching the posters to find their faces and the faces of their friends. As the guests began to arrive the excitement mounted. The guest of honor, a generous patron of the school, arrived dressed in a beautiful orange and gold kitenge dress fit for a queen. The graduation ceremony was lovely, and Polly introduced special guests from Teach a Man to Fish, a company who support self-sustaining schools like SEGA. This was followed by speeches from Salome, the headmistress, the guest of honor, some of the graduating students, a parent representative, and the chair of Nurturing Minds, Clark. The Form-one girls performed beautiful dances to traditional African drumming and to popular bongo flava songs. Of course, the butt-shaking was included! We were thrilled to see that in one of their dances they incorporated both the Macarena, which we had taught them, and a special dance move that came from the movie Seventeen Again, which we had shown them! In the pre-formal’s performance, one of the girls, Rose, led the chorus with her high, beautiful voice, and the rest of the students echoed her. We had no idea she had such an incredible voice – just one of the hidden talents so many of the girls have! The parents were all very enthusiastic, and during the performances they ululated loudly, and some even went up on stage and started dancing in between the rows of performing girls! When it was time for the non-formals to get their graduation certificates, they were called up one by one to the head table. It is a tradition that after the girls get their certificates their families come up and place a taji (sort of like a colorful Hawaiian lei) around their necks, and often give them gifts of soda and sweets. After the ceremony there was a delicious catered lunch, with bottles of Sprite and Coke for everyone! The girls especially seemed to enjoy the chicken dish, and they all begged to have pictures taken of them tucking in! Everyone was in a giddy mood, and we had a great time shaking our butts to Bongo flava with Fran and the girls; even the Maasai guard, Babu Jona joined in on the dancing and was congratulating the girls as he did so! Eventually the time came when we had to say goodbye to the girls. It was very sad because we have become really close to them, but we gave them all our phone number so that we can meet up during the vacation!

The Snows of Kilimanjaro

Proof that we reached the highest point in Africa!

It looks like the moon!

The sunrise over Stella point

Well, we made it to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro! And it wasn’t as easy as it sounds! We started at the Machame gate, the beginning of the Machame route. From the gate until the sixth and final day, it poured with rain, hail, and snow, leaving us frozen for the majority of the trip. The first day was spent weaving our way through forest (in torrential rain) up to a level of about 3000m above sea level. There were sections that were relatively flat, and there were also stair sections that left us feeling sorry for our eight (yes, eight) porters, who had to carry everything up on their backs and heads. Our first night was spent in Machame Camp. We had some good views of the surrounding forest, and our camp was right on the border of the moorland region. Our guide, Eligius, was really fun and we had a good time talking with him in the evening over a huge amount of delicious food that was cooked for us. The portions they gave could have fed a family of five, but they were still shocked when we couldn’t finish them! The next morning, still soaked, we headed up to Shira Camp, at 3,900m above sea level. The trekking was very enjoyable despite the rain, and we took refuge in several caves we found along the way. The biggest cave, Shira’s Cave, was located just further up the mountain than our camp, so we did a little trip out there to take a look at it. Due to our frozen state, we piled on all the clothing we had (it was still only raining at this point, however) for our walk. Eligius nicknamed us Mama and Bibi (grandmother) because we looked like such idiots in headscarves, huge woolen jumpers and waterproof trousers. Fair enough.  Day three consisted of a not-too-difficult climb to Barranco Hut, made more difficult by an acclimatization detour around the 4,600m above sea level detour to Lava Tower. Most of the day had been spent walking through what looked like an endless moon landscape – piles of scree and rocks shrouded in a heavy mist was pretty much our only scenery for several hours. It didn’t take much imagining to pretend we were on the moon, and we had a good time reenacting Neil Armstrong’s famous speech, much to the confusion of Eligius. Lava Tower was, in fact, just another big rock that was covered in mist. It was snowing and hailing so hard that we had to huddle under a different rock to eat our packed lunch. On the way back to Barranco Hut, we took a path that had been replaced by a freezing cold stream even though it looked as if we could have walked on perfectly dry land on either side of the path. We thought that maybe the guide had decided to test the waterproof-ness of our boots. Well, they ended up soaked, along with the guide’s, and stayed that way for the remainder of the trip. It was that night that our guide decided he wanted to try and sell us for some Konyagi (a hard alcohol they drink here).  After we had been offered around to various other guides and companies, and we were unwanted with our wet shoes and grandmother-esque clothes, Eligius resorted to just paying for the Konyagi himself. It seemed rather an extensive joke, but most Kiswahili humour is lost on us! The morning of day four was spent scaling the Barranco Wall which involved rock climbing and some pretty dangerous games of Twister on daunting rock faces. It also involved many flailing walking poles, especially from the French group behind us who hadn’t quite mastered the whole hold-them-both-in-the-same-hand thing. It took us a couple hours to reach the top of the wall and by that time we both had very sore legs. Eligius had vaguely told us that from now it was another six hours of up-down-up-down-up-very up, as if we were somehow going to remember the amount of up and downs. It basically meant another four hours of walking in moon landscape up a gradual scree slope that killed your calves. It was also getting slightly harder to breathe as Barafu (snow) Hut, our next stop, was at 4,600m asl. Once we passed Karangu Camp, one that we were not staying at, it was supposed to be another three hour walk from there. We walked for two hours up the same landscape. To distract ourselves, Elena created a bucket list in her mind, and Camilla was trying to find countries, vegetables and colors that started with every letter of the alphabet. It was a challenge to keep coming up with things to think about, and so at one point we pulled out the ipod and sung along to Christmas songs. After two hours of walking, Eligius thought that it would be funny to tell us we still had another four hours to go. As we said – the humour is lost on us! We arrived at Barafu Hut, and true to its name, it was snowing. A lot. We sat in our tent for a little in the puddles that had gathered, freezing to death, then decided to move into the lunch tent. We were lucky that we had a table and fold up chairs, and we drunk chai and ate popcorn. We went through 50 tea bags in six days that’s how full of caffeine we were. We took an early night to bed as we had to wake up at midnight. After only a couple of hours of frozen sleep, we woke up, drank more tea and had some porridge then put on literally every piece of clothing we had. We were both wearing at least twelve warm jumpers and five pairs of pants. We wore our headlamps, and in the middle of the night while it was snowing, we started our ascent to the summit. It sucked.  Every couple of steps we had to stop and try to regain our breath, and we hadn’t been drinking enough water. Elena felt dizzy and was having trouble not fainting due to dehydration. Camilla had altitude sickness and was feeling like a truck ran over her, and was also having trouble not falling asleep. On top of that, Eligius had it in his mind that we had to overtake the other streams of headlights who were going too ‘pole pole’ – slow.  We actually enjoyed their pace, but had to keep up with Eligius. As we were nearing Stella Point, six hours later, the sun broke through the clouds and the snow turned bright yellow. It was gorgeous and lifted our spirits just enough to get us to Uhuru Point. Uhuru (freedom) point is the highest point in Africa at 5,895m asl, the highest peak you can reach without oxygen equipment, the world’s highest free standing mountain’s highest peak, and basically just awesome. We spent a while there with the sign, taking pictures and trying very hard to breathe and not freeze at 7:30am. We then started our long descent down, still feeling very sick, and not wanting to spend another eight hours walking. We did, however, and arrived in Mweka Hut (3,100m) with bruised feet and droopy eyes.  The next day was our official get-us-the-f-off-this-mountain walk to the bottom of Mweka Gate. We’d had enough. We were cold, still wet and our legs were so sore we couldn’t walk up the steps to the registration hut. After three hours of hiking, we made it to the bottom and had a Kilimanjaro beer with our guide and porters. We’d done it! We received some pretty spiffy certificates and got a ride back into Arusha, where we showered, ate pizza, then got onto a bus headed back to Morogoro.

Zanzibar, Unguja Island (much delayed)

We were sitting on the open air dalla dalla half on someone’s lap and half squashed up against the back of the benches. Something flew down from the roof and splattered on Camilla’s arm – blood. From that point on and for the rest of the hour and a half long ride we were both continuously splattered with blood that was dripping from a someone’s dead animal tied onto the roof. With no room to budge an inch, we had to sit and watch the blood stain the clothes that we had painstakingly handwashed. It was awful. Later that day we were lying on a hammock on a white sand beach in Kendwa watching the turquoise ocean lap at the feet of women clad in traditional kangas as they walked along the beach, buckets on their heads. Our trip to Zanzibar only enforced what we had learned earlier – if you keep a good attitude and laugh the bad moments off, a day can turn around drastically!

            We didn’t start our trip in Kendwa though – we had to pass through Dar Es Salaam first. We decided to visit Slipway – a western market outside of town and the only place in Tanzania you can get real ice cream! We did some tourist shopping then headed back down into town for some Indian dinner food and then to buy our tickets for the 4pm ferry to Stonetown. It just so happened that we arrived during the Islamic holiday Eid al Baraka, and seeing as Stonetown is predominantly Islamic, everyone was dressed in their best outfits, sparkles everywhere, and out on the town. We met Wendy, a VSO volunteer who was kind enough to offer us a bed in her house, and wandered down to Forodhani Gardens, where they have a nightly market of freshly caught fish and other delicious food. We had a Zanzibari pizza, a glass of sugar cane juice and some beautifully grilled mahimahi fish. We ended up eating at that place three times during the week! Stonetown is gorgeous – a maze of ancient buildings and narrow streets that seem to exude island culture. Taarab music blared out of every shop and every few hours the mosques would siren, calling the citizens to prayer.

            We spent a couple of days in Stonetown – we joined onto a spice tour and went into the plantations in the centre of the island to taste cinnamon, vanilla, cloves, ginger, tumeric, and many others! One of the guides climbed a palm tree and brought us fresh coconut, which was delicious! We also went with Wendy to the place of the old slave market and saw the chambers in which they kept the slaves, and the site of the old whipping post and auction. It was really interesting to see – in case you didn’t know, about 600,000 slaves were passed through Zanzibar and were kept in horrific conditions that led David Livingstone to speak out against the trade. We also enjoyed walking around the town and exploring the little corners of the market and the Old Fort, and paid a visit to the House of Wonders – the first place in East Africa to get electricity, running water, and an elevator.

Locals on Kendwa beach!

We left Stonetown on November the 23^rd. It was Elena’s eighteenth birthday, and we celebrated with a huge slice of chocolate cake, a candlelit beach dinner of pizza and coconut calamari and a well-deserved pina colada! We were staying in a thatched banda at the edge of the ocean and had a huge stretch of beach where we could take walks and beachcomb. Our banda was in the town of Kendwa, a little place right at the tip of Zanzibar, and it was beautiful. We really enjoyed relaxing on the beach, reading our books, and taking a dip in the picture-perfect waters when we got too hot (all the time!) We met Big Mama, a lovely lady who gave us beach massages and taught us how to put henna on our arms in the traditional Islamic way. We loved it, and she had so much fun decorating our arms! We did a day excursion to Mnemba Island, a coral reef marine conservation park and went snorkeling for the day. We went on a traditional dhow, which they even let us drive on the way back as we had made friends with the captain! The snorkeling was great – we saw hundreds of fish and coral of all shapes, sizes and colors, and even saw a puffer fish! The reef looked exactly like the one from Finding Nemo and we saw the whole cast of characters! Included was a BBQ lunch on the beach, which was tuna steak and a whole array of fresh fruits. Later, in Kendwa, we befriended two German volunteers who had been working on the Kenyan border in Moshi, and went with them to a nearby town called Nungwi for the day. We went to a local turtle conservation aquarium where they had huge turtles and snakes. Both of us held a massive African python – it was so strong and kept curling itself around us - quite scary! We had sundowners with Anne and Sabine and had a yummy veggie burger at one of the restaurants. We met them again on our trip back home, and had drinks with them at Archipelagos, a café in Stonetown, and hopefully they will join us in Morogoro soon! Our travels back were long and stressful – we took the overnight ferry and had hardly any sleep, then had to navigate several dalla dallas in Dar (not an easy feat) to get to the Indian Embassy only to find out that it was closed. We must have looked suitably upset as the security guard came out and talked to us before going back inside and reemerging with the mobile phone number of the High Consul of India in Tanzania. Score! Satisfied with that information, we found the next bus going to Morogoro and managed to board in the sweltering heat and head home. Now home, we decided to decorate our house for Christmas as it will take a lot longer to get into the Christmas spirit in Africa’s hot season! Our living room is now completely covered in paper snowflakes, paper chains, a balloon snowman (yes, we were creative), and a huge Merry Christmas banner. Yay!

Us two snorkelling off Mnemba Island

Pole Sana! Arusha TZ

Hey guys!
Sorry that it has been so long since our last update - we have had some internet difficulties at home! We have a beautifully long blog about Zanzibar we will post next week along with some pictures! Yay! We managed to survive a ten hour long hair-raising bus ride to Arusha (a city in the north of Tanzania) and are preparing to climb Mt.Kilimanjaro tomorrow! This past week has been hectic but very fun as we were wrapped up in preparations for graduation which happened on Friday. On Tuesday we went on a field trip with the girls to a town on the coast called Bagamoyo. It was an old slave town and the girls had been dying to see it, so we went as an end of the year treat. We took a big bus and a dalla dalla there and we both sat on the big bus. Somehow the girls managed to sing the entire three hour ride there due to excitement, and all of the songs were about Mungu - God. Typical of TZ, the dalla dalla got lost and ended up in Dar in terrible traffic and arrived an hour and a half late. We then proceeded to get everybody some chai-tea and maandazi -doughnut before starting our day at noon. We took a tour in Kiswahili around the various ruins - and actually managed to understand a fair amount. The highlight of the day was the beach. Many of the girls had never seen a beach or the ocean before, and a stampede of sixty girls ran, fully dressed, straight into the ocean. This included Babu Jona, who had a great time splashing around! The bus home was full of soggy, salty girls who insisted on drinking water bottles full of salt water that they had collected at the seaside. Days later, Mama Pili showed us a bottle of sand that one of the girls had brought back for her. She was so excited! Friday was graduation and was a beautiful ceremony to celebrate the school's past year. The girls performed many traditional dances and speeches were made by the headmistress,a guest of honour, the chair of Nurturing Minds, and a parent. We all cried at the awardingof the certificates to the pre-formals who were graduating to Form 1. Half of the crying was because we were so happy for them but we were also affected by the fact that many of the girls had no family to witness their graduation and give them the tajie (a flower lei) that is traditionally given to the graduates. We remember our graduation and how lucky we were to have families present to support us. As usual, the ceremony terminated in wild dancing and everyone was in such a good mood! Now we're off to a Maasai Market, and then to conquer Kili!