Last Day in Arusha

Today is officially my last day in Arusha. As I explained in a previous post, tomorrow morning I will wake up and head out on a bus – the Dar Express - to the biggest city in Tanzania, Dar Es Salaam. From there I will catch a ferry to the island of Zanzibar, where I will spend four and a half days on the beaches before heading back to Dar to meet up with my friend David from Global Family Rescue and head down to southern Tanzania.

Leaving Arusha will definitely be bittersweet. On the one-hand, I'm definitely looking forward to a change of scenery, relaxing on the beach, seeing more of Tanzania, and the work I will be doing in Njombe with GFR. On the other hand, it will be hard to leave behind Arusha, Ujamaa hostel, and all the friends I have made here over the course of the last six months. I have already had the experience of saying one hard good-bye, which was to Caroline (head of the Umoja Centre), who left this past Sunday to head back home to Australia for six weeks. Unfortunately, she arrives back in Arusha four days after I depart from Africa for good, and therefore I will not see her again during te rest of my time here. As for everyone else, I have the benefit of seeing them again during my last four days in Africa when I return to Arusha for one last lap before flying out of Kilimanjaro airport, which is just outside of town.

The last week here has been great. I've spent most of my time finishing up work from The Umoja Centre, but I've also managed to squeeze in some leisure time as well. Last sunday a group from the hostel went to go see Invictus, which has subsequently led to the Aussies of the hostel starting some rugby matches ('ruggers', as they call it) in our backyard in the evenings before dinner. Good times, although I still vastly prefer football. I've also managed to make a tour of my favorite restuarants in town, and tonight we are headed back for round two of the movies and dinner for my final goodbye.

I'm not sure how much blogging I'll be able to get done in the upcoming weeks, especially as I'm not certain of the power situation in Zanzibar (there hasn't been any since December. It was supposed to be fixed last week, but I would find it to be close to a miracle if they actually completed it on schedule), but I promise I will continue to blog and update whenever I find the means. At the very least, I will do another round of retroactive posts when I arrive back in Arusha in 3.5 weeks. Hopefully though, I can continue to give updates in real time.

General Update, 2/25

Hello everyone,

Sorry for the delay in getting the blog restarted. It took me a little bit longer to get back into the blogging routine than I thought. At any rate, I just posted a new post on my trip to Nairobi today, and will have several more to post in the upcoming days.

I just wanted to give you all an update that I have finally confirmed in the last two weeks that I will be heading down to southern Tanzania to work with Global Family Rescue. It turns out there was some miscommunication with my contact over the last few months about which email address I should be using to get a hold of him. Everything is sorted now though, and I will be packing up to leave Arusha next weekend. It will be sad to leave the hostel and The Umoja Centre, but I have to admit that I'm looking forward to a change of pace and to see more of Tanzania.

As I said, the plan is to leave sometime next weekend - either Saturday or Sunday; I haven't decided yet - and then head to the island of Zanzibar for a couple days of rest and relaxation on the beach. On March 12th I will then take a ferry back to Dar es Salaam, the biggest city in Tanzania, and will stay that night with a Tanzanian contact I have met from GFR, Nestor. David, my GFR contact whom I met in Chicago before leaving, will then be arriving the following day, and the three of us will be heading down to Njombe (check Google maps to get a precise location if you're interested), where I will spend at least three of my final four weeks in Tanzania. I'm still finalizing the exact scope of my work, but I will let you all know as soon as I find out more details. Sometime in my last week I will be heading back up to Arusha to spend my last few days saying goodbye to friends before flying out of Kilimanjaro airport, which is only about 45 minutes outside Arusha.

In the meantime before I take off, I will be finishing my work up at the Umoja Centre and enjoying my last week in Arusha. I will also continue to update my blog, both with some retroactive posts from my dad's visit, as well as some new posts about Tanzania culture. Look for more updates soon.

General Update, 2/14

So I think it's very obvious to anyone who has been checking the blog lately that my posting frequency has dropped immensely since the turn of the New Year. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, it was around the beginning of the New Year that a lot of the novelty of living in Arusha began to wear off. I had developed a fairly routine schedule - much of it spent at work - and the number of experiences I felt were worth writing has drastically reduced. Additionally, as I have become much more accustomed to the culture, I'm having more trouble distinguishing which experiences are interesting to read about back home and which would instead be considered mundane. Therefore, I've had to supplement the lack of experience posts with more informational and / or personal opinion posts (such as the post on independent volunteering) , which take much more thought, effort, revision, and therefore, time.

While lack of interesting subject material is partly to blame for the drop in posts, the bigger reason is that my access to a computer has been greatly reduced. I actually had access to a laptop about every other weekend for my first month and a half here, which allowed me to write posts in the evenings when I was back at the hostel. However, this has not been the case in the past month and a half and, combined with the fact that I spend most of the day working, I have not had ample opportunity to sit down and write posts.

A third and lesser reason for my lack of posting is that my dad has been visiting me these past two weeks, and I have spent much of the time traveling with him. While this has given me quite a bit of new material to write about, it again means that I have had neither the time nor the acess to a computer to blog.

Despite these reasons, I have good news to report. First, I kept written notes on a number of blogs which I wished to write before my dad came to visit, so that I would be able to come back later and turn them into proper posts. Second, my dad's visit and our corresponding travels has given me quite a bit of new and interesting material worth blogging about. Finally, in the last few days I have once again gained access to a laptop, which I will have for the next three weeks until I depart for southern Tanzania. Therefore, I will be spending the next three weeks trying to catch up on events from the past month and a half, as well as hopefully writing about a few new experiences as well. So be on the look out for much more frequent posting through the beginning of March.