We paid for our plane tickets today, so it’s official: we’re leaving Kigoma on Saturday. I’m very excited to leave, but a little sad too. Kigoma is a very special place; a small town in a beautiful location. Even though I’m very ready to leave, I’ll always have a soft spot for this place.
We’ve packed up the boxes of questionnaires and handed them off to Dr. Godfrey, finalized the budget, are close to having a clean data set, and will (hopefully) have all the transcriptions in our hands tomorrow. We’re done! It’s a very good feeling, and we feel proud of the work we have done. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens with all the quantitative and qualitative data we have collected.
Our last few days here aren’t that exciting. Tying up loose ends, saying goodbyes. We took Anton (director of Jane Goodall Institute) out to dinner last night, and true to form Gibbs took two and a half hours to get our food on the table after we’d ordered it. We don’t get annoyed at it; it wouldn’t be dinner if you didn’t have to wait a few hours (it’s part of the entertainment here; what else would you do with your evenings?). We had good company: we were joined by the newly arrived conservation specialist for JGI Kigoma and the director of a research program for undergraduates (all sorts of water, fish, and snail projects) who’s been arranging groups of students to come over for research experience for the last ten years. She knows a lot of great facts about the lake, and is an all-around nice person too.
I had my last run in Kigoma, which made me a little sad. There’s great running here, although I won’t miss the dust and exhaust fumes from the cars. Today was our last day, and it was blistering hot; really uncomfortable. I spent the morning at Baby Come & Call and taking pictures of Kigoma. We went up to Hilltop for a lunch of grilled cheese (one of the best things I’ve tasted in a while), and tonight we’re having dinner at Gibbs. Ending our stay in Kigoma the same way we started it. And like that first day, we’re still waiting for our food.
So, we’re flying out of Kigoma tomorrow (Saturday) morning. We fly to Dar for one night, where we have plans to go to an Ethiopian restaurant with Molly and Terry, who are arriving back from Zanzibar that day. The next day we fly to Arusha, and on Monday we’re doing a one-day Safari to Arusha National Park. Tuesday we fly to Zanzibar, where we’ll stay until Sunday. We fly back to Dar on Sunday (fingers crossed the flight doesn’t get canceled!), and then back to SF on Monday. So, this will be my last blog entry until I get back to the US, when I’ll let you know how my travels went.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Almost Done
We’re down to our last few days in Kigoma – thank goodness! The project wrapped up really well. We ended up with 930 completed questionnaires – about double our target so we’re really happy. All the data has been entered, just has to be cleaned up a bit. We need to prepare the boxes of surveys to be shipped back to the States, but that should b finished tomorrow afternoon. During the last two weeks of data collection, we also conducted almost thirty in-depth interviews with mothers, TBAs, and nurse/midwives at the hospital. Last week we held five focus groups with community leaders, TBAs, and health workers. They went really well, and we have almost ten hours of recording from them. What we’re waiting for now is to have all the audio transcribed into Swahili before we leave, so it can be translated into English when we get back to Berkeley. So, needless to say, we’ve been busy busy the last few weeks. But now there’s only a few days left, and we’re itching to go. We really could finish what we need to do in less than a day, but we have to wait for all the transcription. It’s dragging on, and it doesn’t look like we’ll get to leave until the end of the week. It’ll leave us with about a week to travel, and we’re hoping to go to Arusha for a one-day safari and then on to Zanzibar for a few days on the beach. And then, two weeks from today, I’ll be on my way home. It’s hard to believe that the summer is almost over; it’s gone by really fast. I’m happy to be coming home, and I’m really ready to leave Kigoma. With only one restaurant left that hasn’t made us sick, and nothing to do but sit in our room at night, we’re really ready to leave!
Saturday, July 21, 2007
7/18: And then there were two...
As July continues to pass by at the pace of a runaway train, things are beginning to wrap themselves up here. Molly and Betsy finished their project on the 10th, and we had a farewell dinner at Gibbs with Dr. Godfrey and the supervisor from their team, Mr. Caliste. It was an enjoyable evening, and it was just unbelievable that they were actually done (which meant we were approaching being done). They did a random sample of 30 houses in 50 villages, ending up with a response rate of 91% and interviewing 1200 women – pretty impressive. I’m really excited to see what their data looks like. It was great having two fellow students working on a similar project to share this experience with, and I’m sure we’ll be in contact in the future (maybe do another study, perhaps? Although I think hiring interns to do data entry is a fabulous idea).
We spent Betsy’s last few days fabric shopping (our favorite pastime, fabric is cheap but it’s adding up in both weight and cost!), and eating at our “favorite places” (aka the only three places in town we can eat). And then on the 12th Betsy left.
I guess her leaving marked the beginning of the end, because a week later Terry and Molly left for Zanzibar. On their last day, Terry and I went for our final run together. We logged 83 minutes, going a little more than 9 miles by our estimate. We ran from AquaLodge through Kigoma, around to the lake and across the bridge to Kibirizi, and then followed the road out of Kibirizi for another half hour. Around the spot we turned around, we were rewarded with an amazing view – a distance shot of Kigoma and the lake. We were surrounded by grass fields and a few mud houses, and groves of palm trees spread out below us and into town. It was one of those “woah, I’m in Africa” moments. I’m kind of used to being here at this point, it all feels kind of normal. But then sometimes it hits me where I am and what I’m doing, and it just feels really unbelievable. We came back from our run feeling pumped and excited, and starving.
All four of us were invited to Caliste’s (Molly and Betsy’s supervisor) house for dinner that evening. He lives in a really nice house – actually the first real house I’ve been in other than mud huts – in what feels like a suburb of Kigoma (we called it Kigoma’s Agrestic – I’ve gotten everyone hooked on Weeds). His wife is beautiful and very hospitable, and cooked us an amazing dinner of noodles, coconut curry vegetables (the first time we’ve had veggies we’ve seen in the markets – okra, eggplant, and peppers!), beans, chicken, rice, ugali, and chipati. For dessert there was perfectly ripe papaya and bananas. It was a feast, and the most delicious meal we’ve had in Tanzania. We’ve really been missing out – the food in the restaurants doesn’t compare. It felt really nice after a month and a half of living in hotels and eating in restaurants to be in someone’s home and have a home-cooked meal, and hang out with a family. Caliste’s triplets (two boys and a girl, almost ten) had arrived the previous day from boarding school, so we got to meet them, which was a treat.
It was really sad saying goodbye to Molly, Terry, and Betsy. It doesn’t feel real that they are all gone. It’s quiet just the two of us, and we miss having other people to share our time and meals with (dinner seriously is the main source of entertainment. Since it takes at least an hour at Gibbs to get your food after you’ve ordered, it takes most of the evening to have dinner – thank goodness or else we’d be really bored!). So now it’s just the two of us, counting the days until we can leave Kigoma and do a little traveling before we come home.
We spent Betsy’s last few days fabric shopping (our favorite pastime, fabric is cheap but it’s adding up in both weight and cost!), and eating at our “favorite places” (aka the only three places in town we can eat). And then on the 12th Betsy left.
I guess her leaving marked the beginning of the end, because a week later Terry and Molly left for Zanzibar. On their last day, Terry and I went for our final run together. We logged 83 minutes, going a little more than 9 miles by our estimate. We ran from AquaLodge through Kigoma, around to the lake and across the bridge to Kibirizi, and then followed the road out of Kibirizi for another half hour. Around the spot we turned around, we were rewarded with an amazing view – a distance shot of Kigoma and the lake. We were surrounded by grass fields and a few mud houses, and groves of palm trees spread out below us and into town. It was one of those “woah, I’m in Africa” moments. I’m kind of used to being here at this point, it all feels kind of normal. But then sometimes it hits me where I am and what I’m doing, and it just feels really unbelievable. We came back from our run feeling pumped and excited, and starving.
All four of us were invited to Caliste’s (Molly and Betsy’s supervisor) house for dinner that evening. He lives in a really nice house – actually the first real house I’ve been in other than mud huts – in what feels like a suburb of Kigoma (we called it Kigoma’s Agrestic – I’ve gotten everyone hooked on Weeds). His wife is beautiful and very hospitable, and cooked us an amazing dinner of noodles, coconut curry vegetables (the first time we’ve had veggies we’ve seen in the markets – okra, eggplant, and peppers!), beans, chicken, rice, ugali, and chipati. For dessert there was perfectly ripe papaya and bananas. It was a feast, and the most delicious meal we’ve had in Tanzania. We’ve really been missing out – the food in the restaurants doesn’t compare. It felt really nice after a month and a half of living in hotels and eating in restaurants to be in someone’s home and have a home-cooked meal, and hang out with a family. Caliste’s triplets (two boys and a girl, almost ten) had arrived the previous day from boarding school, so we got to meet them, which was a treat.
It was really sad saying goodbye to Molly, Terry, and Betsy. It doesn’t feel real that they are all gone. It’s quiet just the two of us, and we miss having other people to share our time and meals with (dinner seriously is the main source of entertainment. Since it takes at least an hour at Gibbs to get your food after you’ve ordered, it takes most of the evening to have dinner – thank goodness or else we’d be really bored!). So now it’s just the two of us, counting the days until we can leave Kigoma and do a little traveling before we come home.
7/15: Observation
I spent today shadowing a nurse-midwife in the maternity ward of Maweni hospital – an incredible experience.
The maternity ward is set up like a shotgun house – each room leads directly to the next, going straight back (so if you fired a shotgun, the bullet would travel through each room). The first room you enter into is the recovery/ward room. 18 saggy old metal beds line the walls. Today every bed was full – women sleeping with a baby wrapped in bright kangas like a present at the foot of the bed or next to them, awake mothers breast feeding, and then the recovering women – laying on their side staring into space, recovering from a c-section or suffering from malaria, the drained and exhausted women recovering from PPH, and the vacant expressions of the women (around 3) where the brightly colored packages were conspicuously absent. Around 12 visiting hours began, and the ward turned into a zoo. Each woman had an average of four women visitors, each carrying kangas, tea, and porridge to fortify the new mothers. They held the baby, bugged the nurses, fed the women, and provided support. It seemed like a very necessary part of postpartum care for these women. A few men came, hanging back and maybe holding the baby. It was obvious that this was women’s territory. When the visiting hour was over, the mass of people went outside to wait for the next visiting time, which explains why there are always groups of ladies with thermoses and kangas sitting in the (open air) corridor outside of the maternity ward.
The next room is the nurses station. It, like the ward, had chipping cream and sea foam painted concrete walls, a concrete floor, a single fluorescent bulb, and a rusty metal fan. It’s a busy room, with people (not just nurses, but patients too since it connects all the rooms of the ward) coming and going. They don’t have a stapler, so they use medical tape to hold patient’s papers together (I’m giving them one when I go to observe again next Monday).
The room beyond that is the delivery room. It has four metal beds with plastic pads on them. When women deliver they put a plastic sheet down, which they reuse wash between patients. There’s also a rusty little box on wheels that they use to hold the babies after delivery. There’s only room for one, so if more than one newborn is present the others have to lay on the weighing table next to wrappers and instruments. Beyond the delivery room is the ANC room, where women who have begun labor but aren’t ready to deliver wait until they were ready. The ward was so crowded when I was there that the overflow stayed in this room.
So today there were over 26 patients – 18 in the ward, 4 in the ANC room who had already delivered, and a few that showed up to deliver. There were five deliveries during the 8 hours I was there (all but 1 were delivered in the last two hours). There was one nurse/midwife and one public health nurse on duty.
I spent a lot of the day alternating between being really bored and being incredibly overwhelmed. When I first arrived, a woman was going in for a c-section. They invited me into the theater, but I declined – didn’t feel quite ready for that. I went back to the delivery room and watched women labor for the next few hours, taking breaks to watch the nurse give transfusions and injections. I saw several vaginal exams – one of them I was instructed to step back during the middle of it, and a few seconds later her water broke flooding the table and the floor. Later I was standing just observing the room, when I got pushed out of the way. I looked back, and a couple feet from where I was standing, a head was emerging. I saw the baby be born, and then the n/midwife took the baby and started cleaning it. She ignored the mom, and when I looked back over my shoulder, I saw another head appearing – twins! I tapped the nurse on the shoulder, and she went back over to deliver the other twin. They had no idea that there were two babies there – no ultrasounds here and archaic methods of listening to heartbeats, so usually twins are a surprise here. The second twin was much smaller, and had to be put on oxygen. Meanwhile, the on-call doctor for the hospital (the one) examined a woman that had been laboring for over 24 hours. He said that the heartbeat on the baby was beginning to change, and he needed to perform a c-section. So I attended a cesarean. They put me in scrubs (not sure if they were clean or not, there was a bit of scurrying to find them) and wrapped my face in gauze (no extra masks). The doctor had me stand two feet from his side, and I watched the procedure. I won’t gross you out with the details, but it was really interesting. The baby had gone into distress, and it’s head was about a foot long from being stuck in the birth canal for so long. They spent ten minutes resuscitating the infant, and thankfully he was fine.
After that, I was done – a long day! It made me realize I definitely don’t want to be a doctor (all that sewing looked really monotonous), and maybe don’t really want to be a nurse either (the operation didn’t bother me, but drawing blood and tying the umbilical cord did). I think I do really want to be a doula, because all I wanted to do during the hours I spent with laboring women (4 at once at one point) was support them and rub their back and help reduce their pain. It was an incredible day, and I’m fortunate enough to be going back for another observation with one of our interviewers who is also a nurse-midwife at the hospital next week.
What amazed me a lot was how self-sufficient the mother's were. There was definitely no coddling involved - in fact the nurse slapped a laboring woman on the but a few times to get her to move. Among the women's belongings were thermoses of tea, and in between contractions they would pour themselves a cup. The woman who had twins barely made a peep during delivery, and showed no surprise when she delivered twins. In fact, she never spoke to the nurses. After delivering the placenta and getting cleaned up, she wrapped herself in a kanga and, without a work, walked into the ward. She looked utterly exhausted, and never asked about her babies. Her mother came in later to retrieve them and take them back to the ward.
The maternity ward is set up like a shotgun house – each room leads directly to the next, going straight back (so if you fired a shotgun, the bullet would travel through each room). The first room you enter into is the recovery/ward room. 18 saggy old metal beds line the walls. Today every bed was full – women sleeping with a baby wrapped in bright kangas like a present at the foot of the bed or next to them, awake mothers breast feeding, and then the recovering women – laying on their side staring into space, recovering from a c-section or suffering from malaria, the drained and exhausted women recovering from PPH, and the vacant expressions of the women (around 3) where the brightly colored packages were conspicuously absent. Around 12 visiting hours began, and the ward turned into a zoo. Each woman had an average of four women visitors, each carrying kangas, tea, and porridge to fortify the new mothers. They held the baby, bugged the nurses, fed the women, and provided support. It seemed like a very necessary part of postpartum care for these women. A few men came, hanging back and maybe holding the baby. It was obvious that this was women’s territory. When the visiting hour was over, the mass of people went outside to wait for the next visiting time, which explains why there are always groups of ladies with thermoses and kangas sitting in the (open air) corridor outside of the maternity ward.
The next room is the nurses station. It, like the ward, had chipping cream and sea foam painted concrete walls, a concrete floor, a single fluorescent bulb, and a rusty metal fan. It’s a busy room, with people (not just nurses, but patients too since it connects all the rooms of the ward) coming and going. They don’t have a stapler, so they use medical tape to hold patient’s papers together (I’m giving them one when I go to observe again next Monday).
The room beyond that is the delivery room. It has four metal beds with plastic pads on them. When women deliver they put a plastic sheet down, which they reuse wash between patients. There’s also a rusty little box on wheels that they use to hold the babies after delivery. There’s only room for one, so if more than one newborn is present the others have to lay on the weighing table next to wrappers and instruments. Beyond the delivery room is the ANC room, where women who have begun labor but aren’t ready to deliver wait until they were ready. The ward was so crowded when I was there that the overflow stayed in this room.
So today there were over 26 patients – 18 in the ward, 4 in the ANC room who had already delivered, and a few that showed up to deliver. There were five deliveries during the 8 hours I was there (all but 1 were delivered in the last two hours). There was one nurse/midwife and one public health nurse on duty.
I spent a lot of the day alternating between being really bored and being incredibly overwhelmed. When I first arrived, a woman was going in for a c-section. They invited me into the theater, but I declined – didn’t feel quite ready for that. I went back to the delivery room and watched women labor for the next few hours, taking breaks to watch the nurse give transfusions and injections. I saw several vaginal exams – one of them I was instructed to step back during the middle of it, and a few seconds later her water broke flooding the table and the floor. Later I was standing just observing the room, when I got pushed out of the way. I looked back, and a couple feet from where I was standing, a head was emerging. I saw the baby be born, and then the n/midwife took the baby and started cleaning it. She ignored the mom, and when I looked back over my shoulder, I saw another head appearing – twins! I tapped the nurse on the shoulder, and she went back over to deliver the other twin. They had no idea that there were two babies there – no ultrasounds here and archaic methods of listening to heartbeats, so usually twins are a surprise here. The second twin was much smaller, and had to be put on oxygen. Meanwhile, the on-call doctor for the hospital (the one) examined a woman that had been laboring for over 24 hours. He said that the heartbeat on the baby was beginning to change, and he needed to perform a c-section. So I attended a cesarean. They put me in scrubs (not sure if they were clean or not, there was a bit of scurrying to find them) and wrapped my face in gauze (no extra masks). The doctor had me stand two feet from his side, and I watched the procedure. I won’t gross you out with the details, but it was really interesting. The baby had gone into distress, and it’s head was about a foot long from being stuck in the birth canal for so long. They spent ten minutes resuscitating the infant, and thankfully he was fine.
After that, I was done – a long day! It made me realize I definitely don’t want to be a doctor (all that sewing looked really monotonous), and maybe don’t really want to be a nurse either (the operation didn’t bother me, but drawing blood and tying the umbilical cord did). I think I do really want to be a doula, because all I wanted to do during the hours I spent with laboring women (4 at once at one point) was support them and rub their back and help reduce their pain. It was an incredible day, and I’m fortunate enough to be going back for another observation with one of our interviewers who is also a nurse-midwife at the hospital next week.
What amazed me a lot was how self-sufficient the mother's were. There was definitely no coddling involved - in fact the nurse slapped a laboring woman on the but a few times to get her to move. Among the women's belongings were thermoses of tea, and in between contractions they would pour themselves a cup. The woman who had twins barely made a peep during delivery, and showed no surprise when she delivered twins. In fact, she never spoke to the nurses. After delivering the placenta and getting cleaned up, she wrapped herself in a kanga and, without a work, walked into the ward. She looked utterly exhausted, and never asked about her babies. Her mother came in later to retrieve them and take them back to the ward.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
7/11: Evil Eyes
Yesterday was another great day in the field. I conducted two in-depth interviews with mothers that had PPH and were treated with miso. Both were great respondents, and we spent about an hour with each woman (and I took about three pages of notes on each!). I give my interviewer a list of prompt questions, and then she conducts the interview in Swahili. This part takes about 20 to 30 minutes, depending on how much of a talker the woman is. Then I have my interviewer review what was said during the interview, and I ask questions about her responses or think of other questions. I had great conversations with both mothers about miso and TBAs, what the problems were and how we could make things better. The women had great suggestions, such as having the community pool together for the TBAs to have a cell phone so she can be reached for emergencies.
I sat and talked with my interviewer for a while after we finished the interviews. There was a woman we really wanted to interview, but we were unable to reach her. I guess when she completed the questionnaire she spoke with this interviewer for a long time afterwards, and her story is great. Even the TBA was disappointed that we weren’t able to get her for in-depth interviews because she has a lot to say. This woman lived in a remote village off of the lake (probably one of the villages I saw on the way to Gombe, where there is only boat access). In her village, at least 5 women die per month due to PPH. She heard from a relative that there was a TBA in this village who had a drug to treat PPH, and so she traveled all the way here to give birth with her. When she heard that there were people coming to the villages to ask women who had had PPH and taken miso questions, she traveled back to the village just to be interviewed, which is when she met my interviewer. She stayed for a week just to be here for the questionnaire administration, and during that time 3 women died in childbirth.
The TBA and her assistant walked us back to the main road when we were done. They asked me questions about where I came from, and had heard of San Francisco before. I asked if they wanted to see pictures, and pulled some out (I always carry some with me, people love them!). I said I had a picture of my house in SF, and my interviewer asked if I had built it myself. I said no, and that I rent, but that didn’t really translate. When I showed them pictures of my roommates, they started pointing very excitedly at Pearl. I said no, that’s not me, I’m on the right. But they kept pointing, and finally my interviewer asked me why her eyes were red. I explained that when people have blue eyes, often the camera makes their eyes look red. She said “oh, ok” and explained that they had all thought that she was evil or possessed, and they were all really worried. They asked to keep one of the pictures to remember me, and they definitely did not want the one with Pearl in it, they took one of my family at Elise’s graduation instead.
I sat and talked with my interviewer for a while after we finished the interviews. There was a woman we really wanted to interview, but we were unable to reach her. I guess when she completed the questionnaire she spoke with this interviewer for a long time afterwards, and her story is great. Even the TBA was disappointed that we weren’t able to get her for in-depth interviews because she has a lot to say. This woman lived in a remote village off of the lake (probably one of the villages I saw on the way to Gombe, where there is only boat access). In her village, at least 5 women die per month due to PPH. She heard from a relative that there was a TBA in this village who had a drug to treat PPH, and so she traveled all the way here to give birth with her. When she heard that there were people coming to the villages to ask women who had had PPH and taken miso questions, she traveled back to the village just to be interviewed, which is when she met my interviewer. She stayed for a week just to be here for the questionnaire administration, and during that time 3 women died in childbirth.
The TBA and her assistant walked us back to the main road when we were done. They asked me questions about where I came from, and had heard of San Francisco before. I asked if they wanted to see pictures, and pulled some out (I always carry some with me, people love them!). I said I had a picture of my house in SF, and my interviewer asked if I had built it myself. I said no, and that I rent, but that didn’t really translate. When I showed them pictures of my roommates, they started pointing very excitedly at Pearl. I said no, that’s not me, I’m on the right. But they kept pointing, and finally my interviewer asked me why her eyes were red. I explained that when people have blue eyes, often the camera makes their eyes look red. She said “oh, ok” and explained that they had all thought that she was evil or possessed, and they were all really worried. They asked to keep one of the pictures to remember me, and they definitely did not want the one with Pearl in it, they took one of my family at Elise’s graduation instead.
7/8: 24 Hours in Paradise
We went to Gombe. At around 11 on Saturday morning, we got a call from Betsy and Molly’s colleague saying that he had arranged a boat from the hospital, and we should meet the driver at noon to make arrangements. We walked into town, arranged for the boat to pick us up at 3pm, paid him, and were set to go. It seemed ridiculously easy after all the work we’d put into going during the week.
At 3pm sharp (the first thing to happen on time ever in Tanzania), the boat pulled up behind our hotel and we loaded it up. The boat was a little rickety – it used to be the TB/Leprosy boat for Maweni hospital – with a only a minor leak that kept one of the crew busy scooping out water for a good half of the journey and filling in minor holes (with wool pounded in using a screw driver and a rock). Since the boat was named Survival and there were life jackets on board, we weren’t too worried. The journey took about two hours, and was beautiful. We passed small little villages on the lake, and watched the landscape turn from the red dirt and palm trees we know so well slowly to forest and then dense forest. We arrived at Gombe and were taken to the Rest House, a small but great green building with an open air wraparound living room (with screens and mesh to keep the baboons and mosquitoes out) and two bedrooms with two big beds each (which felt amazing after sleeping on my smaller than a twin bed for the last month). We made arrangements for our treks the next day, and then Anton, the director of JGI showed up. He welcomed us and insisted on having his cook come and get all of our food to prepare our dinner for us. He’s an amazing man – very accomplished but so calm you always feel very at ease with him. We went for a long walk on the beach and short swim, and then headed up to Anton’s house.
Anton actually lives in Dr. Jane’s old house that she built in 1973 when she started doing research. It’s a really cool open air house (with screens of course) that was completely candle lit when we arrived. Anton showed us a large poster with all the different monkeys of Africa, explaining which ones were located in Tanzania and tons of interesting facts about them. He also showed us a bunch of skulls of wild pigs, monkeys, and baboons, telling us about their teeth and how they are used, the size of their eyes and how you can tell if they have depth perception. We were joined by Mark, a University of Minnesota student who is doing research for six months at Gombe. We drank the wine we had brought with us (an actually decent Merlot from South Africa that’s only about $6) and talking about life in Gombe and Kigoma. Then we had a delicious dinner and said our goodbyes. Before we went to bed, we went out to look at the stars, which were amazingly bright since the moon hadn’t risen yet. I saw a falling star just as we went inside.
We got up bright and early this morning and had breakfast (boiled eggs on bread… yum). Anton was nice enough to give us a thermos of hot water and instant coffee (I’m not sure how much caffeine is actually in it, but it makes the mornings a little easier). The baboons started coming out around breakfast time, and started walking around our little house. It was crazy being so close to them! We saw a cute little baboon hanging onto its mother’s back.
Anton met us and escorted us up to the park office, where we met our guides. Our plan was to hike to a few areas and try to spot chimps, (which is actually a little difficult – a lot of people come all the way to Gombe and never get to see any), then hike up to the waterfall and then further up to Jane’s peak. We started hiking along the forest, which was incredibly beautiful, and stopped at the feeding station. When Dr. Jane first came to Gombe, she had a hard time finding the chimps. Since they were raiding the local food stores and stealing bananas, she figured out that they really liked them. So she built a little house a little ways into the park and laid out bananas so the chimps would come near her, and started observing them that way. The guide was a little ways into telling us this, when the other guide pointed up and said “chimp.” We looked up, and in the tree above us was a small chimpanzee. It was wild! We stood there watching him eat leaves, taking a gazillion pictures, when we noticed an even bigger chimp a little higher up. All of a sudden Anton showed up, and started telling us the names of the chimps, and that they were both males. The smaller one was a younger male who was doing active idol worship – following around the bigger male and imitating him, learning his mannerisms. Then a mother and her child showed up on the other side of us, the mother grooming the baby. The males climbed down from the trees, and the mom and the baby walked across in front of us, and the whole bunch moved down the path. Anton motioned for us to follow them, which we did for a ways. He said that it was a mother and her child, and the mother’s brother. We watched them chill and groom each other. It was very surreal, standing there watching the chimps with the director telling us all about them. Crazy.
Then we hiked up a little farther to watch another family. They were really high up in the trees eating, and we waited for them to climb down, but they never did. We decided to hike for a while and come back later. We hiked to the waterfall, where Gombe stream cascades down for 25 meters before continuing onto the lake. Gorgeous. From there, we hiked for about 30 minutes up to Jane’s peak. This is where Dr. Jane hiked to every morning at sunrise, because you can perfectly see the two valleys below and she could see where the chimps were to follow them. We were amazed that Dr. Jane is 74 years old, and when she’s at Gombe she still hikes up it every day, because it’s a steep climb. She’s an amazing woman, for many reasons. The view from Jane’s peak was incredible – the valley of forest spreading down below us and continuing all the way to the lake, which is so large you can’t see across it. Our guides pointed out a few old chimp nests. We sat up there admiring the view and feeling like the only five people in the world for a while before climbing back down. We tried to find the family that we were waiting for earlier, but they had apparently climbed up to Jane’s peak while we were climbing down, so we missed them. We didn’t really mind, seeing more chimps than most people ever get to see, and very close up, so we hiked back down to camp. Also walking through the park we saw blue monkeys, baboons, and many different kinds of butterflies.
After a yummy lunch of crackers, avocado, and cheese (we found one shop that has what we assume to be very very old cheese, since Tanzania doesn’t have cheese, but that tastes delicious anyways), we all jumped into the lake and swam for a while. The lake is so huge that the water is wonderfully clean, so you feel really rejuvenated and clean when you get out (cleaner than we feel after we take a shower at AquaLodge, where the water is dirty and the water pressure isn’t enough to get your hair completely wet).
We stopped at Anton’s house before we left to say goodbye and thank him for his hospitality. He was very kind to us during our stay, and after such an incredible 24 hours we were really sad to leave. It felt like paradise, or like we had discovered the fountain of youth. We just felt so clean, inside and out, and re-energized. The fresh air, hiking, fresh water, and good food did us all a lot of good since we were a little rough for wear after the last month. The park is one of the most peaceful places I’ve been to in my entire life. We had another nice boat ride home (although we all fell asleep for a while), and came back buzzing from our incredible trip. We felt like the luckiest people in the world, experiencing what few people in the world have experienced, and being lucky to share it together. We went and had a great meal at Gibbs to finish off such a wonderful weekend.
At 3pm sharp (the first thing to happen on time ever in Tanzania), the boat pulled up behind our hotel and we loaded it up. The boat was a little rickety – it used to be the TB/Leprosy boat for Maweni hospital – with a only a minor leak that kept one of the crew busy scooping out water for a good half of the journey and filling in minor holes (with wool pounded in using a screw driver and a rock). Since the boat was named Survival and there were life jackets on board, we weren’t too worried. The journey took about two hours, and was beautiful. We passed small little villages on the lake, and watched the landscape turn from the red dirt and palm trees we know so well slowly to forest and then dense forest. We arrived at Gombe and were taken to the Rest House, a small but great green building with an open air wraparound living room (with screens and mesh to keep the baboons and mosquitoes out) and two bedrooms with two big beds each (which felt amazing after sleeping on my smaller than a twin bed for the last month). We made arrangements for our treks the next day, and then Anton, the director of JGI showed up. He welcomed us and insisted on having his cook come and get all of our food to prepare our dinner for us. He’s an amazing man – very accomplished but so calm you always feel very at ease with him. We went for a long walk on the beach and short swim, and then headed up to Anton’s house.
Anton actually lives in Dr. Jane’s old house that she built in 1973 when she started doing research. It’s a really cool open air house (with screens of course) that was completely candle lit when we arrived. Anton showed us a large poster with all the different monkeys of Africa, explaining which ones were located in Tanzania and tons of interesting facts about them. He also showed us a bunch of skulls of wild pigs, monkeys, and baboons, telling us about their teeth and how they are used, the size of their eyes and how you can tell if they have depth perception. We were joined by Mark, a University of Minnesota student who is doing research for six months at Gombe. We drank the wine we had brought with us (an actually decent Merlot from South Africa that’s only about $6) and talking about life in Gombe and Kigoma. Then we had a delicious dinner and said our goodbyes. Before we went to bed, we went out to look at the stars, which were amazingly bright since the moon hadn’t risen yet. I saw a falling star just as we went inside.
We got up bright and early this morning and had breakfast (boiled eggs on bread… yum). Anton was nice enough to give us a thermos of hot water and instant coffee (I’m not sure how much caffeine is actually in it, but it makes the mornings a little easier). The baboons started coming out around breakfast time, and started walking around our little house. It was crazy being so close to them! We saw a cute little baboon hanging onto its mother’s back.
Anton met us and escorted us up to the park office, where we met our guides. Our plan was to hike to a few areas and try to spot chimps, (which is actually a little difficult – a lot of people come all the way to Gombe and never get to see any), then hike up to the waterfall and then further up to Jane’s peak. We started hiking along the forest, which was incredibly beautiful, and stopped at the feeding station. When Dr. Jane first came to Gombe, she had a hard time finding the chimps. Since they were raiding the local food stores and stealing bananas, she figured out that they really liked them. So she built a little house a little ways into the park and laid out bananas so the chimps would come near her, and started observing them that way. The guide was a little ways into telling us this, when the other guide pointed up and said “chimp.” We looked up, and in the tree above us was a small chimpanzee. It was wild! We stood there watching him eat leaves, taking a gazillion pictures, when we noticed an even bigger chimp a little higher up. All of a sudden Anton showed up, and started telling us the names of the chimps, and that they were both males. The smaller one was a younger male who was doing active idol worship – following around the bigger male and imitating him, learning his mannerisms. Then a mother and her child showed up on the other side of us, the mother grooming the baby. The males climbed down from the trees, and the mom and the baby walked across in front of us, and the whole bunch moved down the path. Anton motioned for us to follow them, which we did for a ways. He said that it was a mother and her child, and the mother’s brother. We watched them chill and groom each other. It was very surreal, standing there watching the chimps with the director telling us all about them. Crazy.
Then we hiked up a little farther to watch another family. They were really high up in the trees eating, and we waited for them to climb down, but they never did. We decided to hike for a while and come back later. We hiked to the waterfall, where Gombe stream cascades down for 25 meters before continuing onto the lake. Gorgeous. From there, we hiked for about 30 minutes up to Jane’s peak. This is where Dr. Jane hiked to every morning at sunrise, because you can perfectly see the two valleys below and she could see where the chimps were to follow them. We were amazed that Dr. Jane is 74 years old, and when she’s at Gombe she still hikes up it every day, because it’s a steep climb. She’s an amazing woman, for many reasons. The view from Jane’s peak was incredible – the valley of forest spreading down below us and continuing all the way to the lake, which is so large you can’t see across it. Our guides pointed out a few old chimp nests. We sat up there admiring the view and feeling like the only five people in the world for a while before climbing back down. We tried to find the family that we were waiting for earlier, but they had apparently climbed up to Jane’s peak while we were climbing down, so we missed them. We didn’t really mind, seeing more chimps than most people ever get to see, and very close up, so we hiked back down to camp. Also walking through the park we saw blue monkeys, baboons, and many different kinds of butterflies.
After a yummy lunch of crackers, avocado, and cheese (we found one shop that has what we assume to be very very old cheese, since Tanzania doesn’t have cheese, but that tastes delicious anyways), we all jumped into the lake and swam for a while. The lake is so huge that the water is wonderfully clean, so you feel really rejuvenated and clean when you get out (cleaner than we feel after we take a shower at AquaLodge, where the water is dirty and the water pressure isn’t enough to get your hair completely wet).
We stopped at Anton’s house before we left to say goodbye and thank him for his hospitality. He was very kind to us during our stay, and after such an incredible 24 hours we were really sad to leave. It felt like paradise, or like we had discovered the fountain of youth. We just felt so clean, inside and out, and re-energized. The fresh air, hiking, fresh water, and good food did us all a lot of good since we were a little rough for wear after the last month. The park is one of the most peaceful places I’ve been to in my entire life. We had another nice boat ride home (although we all fell asleep for a while), and came back buzzing from our incredible trip. We felt like the luckiest people in the world, experiencing what few people in the world have experienced, and being lucky to share it together. We went and had a great meal at Gibbs to finish off such a wonderful weekend.
7/6: Weekend Plans
Who would have thought our plans could change so many times within a few hours? We’ve been planning all week to go to Gombe National Park, the park where Jane Goodall set up her institute to study chimpanzees in the early 70s. The trip requires a little planning, though – you have to hire a boat to take you there, make sure you have enough money in US dollars (all the TZ national parks operate on US $), and buy all the food and supplies you need to cook it while you’re there because there’s no food in the park. We managed to take care of the food and the money, but hiring a boat was very difficult.
First we started at the Jane Goodall Institute, trying to see if we could borrow one of their boats, but everyone was out of town. Then Dr. Godfrey said he’d try to arrange a boat for us, but that didn’t work out either. So then we had Betsy and Molly’s colleague call a number they got from some Irish doctors they met in Kasulu that have gone to Gombe. Betsy and I met with him this afternoon (Friday) to negotiate the price. He told us the boat he usually takes to Gombe is gone for the weekend, but he has another boat that we could take. He promises us that it can easily take five people, is safe, and will only take two hours to go to Gombe, but we decide to go and take a look at the boat just to be sure. Good thing we did. His boat was nothing more than a glorified canoe – I didn’t even see a motor on it! I took a picture with my phone so that the other’s wouldn’t think that we were just being picky. We later found out the boat has holes in it too.
With it being 7pm on Friday night, we figured we should just admit defeat and realize we’re not going to Gombe this weekend. It’s Betsy’s last weekend, so we were bummed that she wouldn’t be able to go. But then we were hanging out in our room and saw a boat outside, and thought it wouldn’t hurt to see if we could hire them for tomorrow. After talking with them for a while, they agreed to bring the boat over the next morning, and we could decide if we wanted to take it or not.
Even with this new prospect of going to Gombe, we actually came up with another plan – hiring a car and driving to Burundi, a small country juts a few hours north of here. It would get us out of Kigoma, into another country, and be an adventure. With a new plan in tact, and time to arrange a boat for Gombe the next weekend, we were happy with our plans.
For dinner, Terry had bought a chicken in the village and brought it (still alive) back to the hotel. The kitchen killed it (I’m used to the sound of dying chickens because if I’m near a place that serves food at dinner or lunch time, you hear a lot of squaking for about five seconds and then a big chop!) and cooked it up for us. I had fish but tried a taste – not too bad. It’s a little tough and chewy, and I guess it’s because the chickens are so muscly here from all the running around.
We hung out in our room drinking Zed (pineapple alcohol, we’re not sure what kind) and juice, listening to music, and getting excited about going to another country tomorrow.
First we started at the Jane Goodall Institute, trying to see if we could borrow one of their boats, but everyone was out of town. Then Dr. Godfrey said he’d try to arrange a boat for us, but that didn’t work out either. So then we had Betsy and Molly’s colleague call a number they got from some Irish doctors they met in Kasulu that have gone to Gombe. Betsy and I met with him this afternoon (Friday) to negotiate the price. He told us the boat he usually takes to Gombe is gone for the weekend, but he has another boat that we could take. He promises us that it can easily take five people, is safe, and will only take two hours to go to Gombe, but we decide to go and take a look at the boat just to be sure. Good thing we did. His boat was nothing more than a glorified canoe – I didn’t even see a motor on it! I took a picture with my phone so that the other’s wouldn’t think that we were just being picky. We later found out the boat has holes in it too.
With it being 7pm on Friday night, we figured we should just admit defeat and realize we’re not going to Gombe this weekend. It’s Betsy’s last weekend, so we were bummed that she wouldn’t be able to go. But then we were hanging out in our room and saw a boat outside, and thought it wouldn’t hurt to see if we could hire them for tomorrow. After talking with them for a while, they agreed to bring the boat over the next morning, and we could decide if we wanted to take it or not.
Even with this new prospect of going to Gombe, we actually came up with another plan – hiring a car and driving to Burundi, a small country juts a few hours north of here. It would get us out of Kigoma, into another country, and be an adventure. With a new plan in tact, and time to arrange a boat for Gombe the next weekend, we were happy with our plans.
For dinner, Terry had bought a chicken in the village and brought it (still alive) back to the hotel. The kitchen killed it (I’m used to the sound of dying chickens because if I’m near a place that serves food at dinner or lunch time, you hear a lot of squaking for about five seconds and then a big chop!) and cooked it up for us. I had fish but tried a taste – not too bad. It’s a little tough and chewy, and I guess it’s because the chickens are so muscly here from all the running around.
We hung out in our room drinking Zed (pineapple alcohol, we’re not sure what kind) and juice, listening to music, and getting excited about going to another country tomorrow.
7/5: A Day at the Office
We’ve switched to the control area, Kigoma Rural. It’s about what I expected – same mud houses with thatched roofs, now only spaced farther apart and located an hour down a dusty, bumpy dirt away from Kigoma. I went along with the team today to assist one of the supervisors in conducting in-depth interviews. We want to hear about the woman’s birth experience and her perspectives on home vs. facility delivery and PPH.
First thing this morning was a breakfast meeting at 7:30 with Dr. Godfrey to review the project and get the next disbursement of funds. We’re in charge of the day to day finances, paying the interviewers and TBAs their allowances, transport, communication, etc. We asked for the next ten days, and the bank only had 5,000 TSH notes (the highest is ten, so it’s not that small really), so we got a stack of cash about eight inches high (can you imagine $4,000 in $5s? That’s about what we got).
I met the team at the usual spot – Mama’s Best restaurant, and we took our hired Dala Dala to Simbo. Like I said before, it’s located about an hour out of Kigoma along a dirt road. Every time a car came in the opposite direction, everyone would close all the windows to prevent the thick clouds of dust from entering the car. This only partially worked, because I was covered in a film of dust by the time I got Simbo. The dust just cakes on throughout the day, and usually by the time I come home from the villages I hate touching my skin because it’s so gritty from all the dirt. It’s a bright red dirt here, and it stains everything – trees, shoes, clothes, and I’ve just noticed that the tan on my feet isn’t a tan – the dirt has stained my skin!
Mr. Mwamba interviewed two women, and I held our ghetto tape recorder up for him while he interviewed the mother. Of course I couldn’t understand anything that was being said, but at the end of each interview I had him ask her questions that weren’t on the prompt list that we’d created, just stuff I thought of at the time, like “if you got pregnant again, where would you want to deliver and why?”
In the afternoon we drove around picking up interviewers from around the village (it’s really spread out). We waited near the center of the village for a while, where there were piles of coconuts. Boys around ten years old trimmed down the outsides with huge sharp knives using long whacking strokes, and then created a drinking hole on the top. We all had one, and the coconut juice was alright (it kind of tasted like it wasn’t ripe yet). When you’re done drinking, you hand the coconut back to the boys and they grab their huge knives (a little scary seeing such young boys wielding such large knives) and start hacking away at the coconut, breaking it in half and loosening the meat for you to eat – that part was pretty tasty. A deal for 10 cents! Our interviewers also bought long sticks of sugar cane (one was the length of the dala dala; I heard a knocking noise while I was sitting reviewing questionnaires and turned around to find one of the interviewers with a huge knife cutting off a piece. Whereas I need someone to cut up the sugar cane for me, they just take huge bites out of it and spit out the hard outside, something I’m a little to timid to try.
Back home to enter data and organize completed questionnaires, and plan for the next two weeks. It’s crazy to think that we’ll (hopefully) be done at the end of two weeks! We still have approximately 200 questionnaires to administer, 15 in-depth interviews to conduct, and 6 focus groups to hold. We need to get all the qualitative work transcribed and translated before we leave too, along with gathering some basic statistics about the study population – we’ll be cutting it close!
Tomorrow will be another day at the office – I’m going back to Simbo with Mr. Mwamba to conduct more interviews – one with a mother and one with a TBA.
First thing this morning was a breakfast meeting at 7:30 with Dr. Godfrey to review the project and get the next disbursement of funds. We’re in charge of the day to day finances, paying the interviewers and TBAs their allowances, transport, communication, etc. We asked for the next ten days, and the bank only had 5,000 TSH notes (the highest is ten, so it’s not that small really), so we got a stack of cash about eight inches high (can you imagine $4,000 in $5s? That’s about what we got).
I met the team at the usual spot – Mama’s Best restaurant, and we took our hired Dala Dala to Simbo. Like I said before, it’s located about an hour out of Kigoma along a dirt road. Every time a car came in the opposite direction, everyone would close all the windows to prevent the thick clouds of dust from entering the car. This only partially worked, because I was covered in a film of dust by the time I got Simbo. The dust just cakes on throughout the day, and usually by the time I come home from the villages I hate touching my skin because it’s so gritty from all the dirt. It’s a bright red dirt here, and it stains everything – trees, shoes, clothes, and I’ve just noticed that the tan on my feet isn’t a tan – the dirt has stained my skin!
Mr. Mwamba interviewed two women, and I held our ghetto tape recorder up for him while he interviewed the mother. Of course I couldn’t understand anything that was being said, but at the end of each interview I had him ask her questions that weren’t on the prompt list that we’d created, just stuff I thought of at the time, like “if you got pregnant again, where would you want to deliver and why?”
In the afternoon we drove around picking up interviewers from around the village (it’s really spread out). We waited near the center of the village for a while, where there were piles of coconuts. Boys around ten years old trimmed down the outsides with huge sharp knives using long whacking strokes, and then created a drinking hole on the top. We all had one, and the coconut juice was alright (it kind of tasted like it wasn’t ripe yet). When you’re done drinking, you hand the coconut back to the boys and they grab their huge knives (a little scary seeing such young boys wielding such large knives) and start hacking away at the coconut, breaking it in half and loosening the meat for you to eat – that part was pretty tasty. A deal for 10 cents! Our interviewers also bought long sticks of sugar cane (one was the length of the dala dala; I heard a knocking noise while I was sitting reviewing questionnaires and turned around to find one of the interviewers with a huge knife cutting off a piece. Whereas I need someone to cut up the sugar cane for me, they just take huge bites out of it and spit out the hard outside, something I’m a little to timid to try.
Back home to enter data and organize completed questionnaires, and plan for the next two weeks. It’s crazy to think that we’ll (hopefully) be done at the end of two weeks! We still have approximately 200 questionnaires to administer, 15 in-depth interviews to conduct, and 6 focus groups to hold. We need to get all the qualitative work transcribed and translated before we leave too, along with gathering some basic statistics about the study population – we’ll be cutting it close!
Tomorrow will be another day at the office – I’m going back to Simbo with Mr. Mwamba to conduct more interviews – one with a mother and one with a TBA.
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
7/1: My Weekend
I think we’re settling into life in Kigoma. This weekend was very pleasant, although not particularly eventful. Friday night we had dinner at Gibbs (the first hotel we stayed at that has the widest selection of food), and only waited two hours this time – last week we waited three.
Saturday was an errands running day for me. I left the hotel early with the mindset of getting everything done and getting back to the hotel before the heat of the day. Didn’t particularly go as planned. I walked the mile and a half from our hotel to town, and dropped off our questionnaire to be photocopied. I realized I forgot to bring the consent form, so I knew I would have to walk back to the hotel and then back to town again at some point that day – bummer. The next hour I spent trying to find a small voice recorder. Apparently, all six places I went had “just sold the last one”, which is Tanzanian for “I had one once and sold it at some point in time, possibly five years ago.” I finally found a small radio/tape player that has a record function which I figured would work (we need to tape in-depth interviews), but then had to search all six stores again for blank tapes, finally finding them at the last one. Phew! Then I walked back to the hotel to pick up the questionnaire and Kristina, and ran into Molly, Betsy, and Terry (the MPH students working on the Michigan survey, and a visiting boyfriend). The five of us went into to town and had lunch at Sun City, where we had tasty pilau (rice sautéed with spices so it turns brown, a big improvement on plain rice) and beans. The best thing about Sun City is your meal comes with a fruit cup – fresh papaya, pineapple, and watermelon, yum! After more errand running I returned to the hotel to nap because being out in the sun for four hours is super draining! At six I met Terry and we had a good run out to the edges of town and back, getting back just as it got dark.
The five of us had big plans to go out on Saturday night. We took a taxi to where we wanted to go, and it was empty. Not just kind of lame empty with one or two people there, but literally empty. We figured Kigoma’s probably the sort of town where there’s certain places you go on certain nights of the week, and apparently Saturday was not the night for this place. So we told the driver to take us to Website Pub, which was pretty busy. It has a big spacious hall and also outside tables. The hall was reserved for a wedding, and we got to peek in and check it out. It was pretty cool – kind of just what you would imagine a Tanzanian wedding to be. We got some food and drank some beer, and had a great time hanging out. We were done by 11, though and headed home.
Today, after a lazy morning at the hotel, the five of us walked into town for lunch at Ally’s Café – again, pilau and beans. The portions are so big that I ate half, was stuffed, and ate the other half for dinner, and was stuffed again (actually, I didn’t even finish it for dinner!). Then we walked around the market, looking at fruits, pirated DVDs, and fabric. Then we headed out to Jacob’s (or as the locals call it, Mzungu) Beach. You have to take a perilous taxi ride their, climbing dirt roads that are meant for four-wheelers in a Corolla (or Corona as their labeled here, I think everything is pirated). It’s a beautiful private beach, and we lounged around in the sun and swam in the crystal blue water. It felt like vacation, and was really relaxing. We shared the beach with monkeys, and had to keep an eye out for them or they would try to look through our stuff. It didn’t help that Betsy had bananas in her bag, so we ended up throwing them to the monkeys so they’d stop trying to sneak into our bags. It was crazy being that close to these cute little monkeys, and I got a few pictures.
Tonight we’re watching pirated movies and going to bed early – a nice finish to a relaxing weekend. It feels good to recharge my batteries because I have a feeling the coming week is going to be a little hectic.
Saturday was an errands running day for me. I left the hotel early with the mindset of getting everything done and getting back to the hotel before the heat of the day. Didn’t particularly go as planned. I walked the mile and a half from our hotel to town, and dropped off our questionnaire to be photocopied. I realized I forgot to bring the consent form, so I knew I would have to walk back to the hotel and then back to town again at some point that day – bummer. The next hour I spent trying to find a small voice recorder. Apparently, all six places I went had “just sold the last one”, which is Tanzanian for “I had one once and sold it at some point in time, possibly five years ago.” I finally found a small radio/tape player that has a record function which I figured would work (we need to tape in-depth interviews), but then had to search all six stores again for blank tapes, finally finding them at the last one. Phew! Then I walked back to the hotel to pick up the questionnaire and Kristina, and ran into Molly, Betsy, and Terry (the MPH students working on the Michigan survey, and a visiting boyfriend). The five of us went into to town and had lunch at Sun City, where we had tasty pilau (rice sautéed with spices so it turns brown, a big improvement on plain rice) and beans. The best thing about Sun City is your meal comes with a fruit cup – fresh papaya, pineapple, and watermelon, yum! After more errand running I returned to the hotel to nap because being out in the sun for four hours is super draining! At six I met Terry and we had a good run out to the edges of town and back, getting back just as it got dark.
The five of us had big plans to go out on Saturday night. We took a taxi to where we wanted to go, and it was empty. Not just kind of lame empty with one or two people there, but literally empty. We figured Kigoma’s probably the sort of town where there’s certain places you go on certain nights of the week, and apparently Saturday was not the night for this place. So we told the driver to take us to Website Pub, which was pretty busy. It has a big spacious hall and also outside tables. The hall was reserved for a wedding, and we got to peek in and check it out. It was pretty cool – kind of just what you would imagine a Tanzanian wedding to be. We got some food and drank some beer, and had a great time hanging out. We were done by 11, though and headed home.
Today, after a lazy morning at the hotel, the five of us walked into town for lunch at Ally’s Café – again, pilau and beans. The portions are so big that I ate half, was stuffed, and ate the other half for dinner, and was stuffed again (actually, I didn’t even finish it for dinner!). Then we walked around the market, looking at fruits, pirated DVDs, and fabric. Then we headed out to Jacob’s (or as the locals call it, Mzungu) Beach. You have to take a perilous taxi ride their, climbing dirt roads that are meant for four-wheelers in a Corolla (or Corona as their labeled here, I think everything is pirated). It’s a beautiful private beach, and we lounged around in the sun and swam in the crystal blue water. It felt like vacation, and was really relaxing. We shared the beach with monkeys, and had to keep an eye out for them or they would try to look through our stuff. It didn’t help that Betsy had bananas in her bag, so we ended up throwing them to the monkeys so they’d stop trying to sneak into our bags. It was crazy being that close to these cute little monkeys, and I got a few pictures.
Tonight we’re watching pirated movies and going to bed early – a nice finish to a relaxing weekend. It feels good to recharge my batteries because I have a feeling the coming week is going to be a little hectic.
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