My support team...who made fun of me the whole time.

 The Hospital

I don’t like check-ups or needles, I’m very picky about my doctors, and hospitals are for really sick people...I really don’t want to go to the hospital, especially one where the doctors and I do not share the same first language.  But I’ve had a fever of over 100 degrees for three days...I keep breaking them and they keep coming back, they miss me too much to stay away.  Momma Kate and Zik insist that I go and with Kit by my side (my other sick roommate who also thinks she’s caught something from the kids we teach) we embark on what will turn into a grand adventure...

On the way I try to create realistic expectations, giving myself a crash course in culture shock 101...Luckily when we arrive I am in such a state of delusion from fever and not really eating for days (because this is one of those illness where eating exhausts you...the kind where your esophagus and windpipe stage an epic battle with each bite and after a few you’re too tired to finish) that the place doesn’t faze me.  All the waiting areas are open air, similar to a pavilion, with closed in rooms that have barred windows on either side of he open space with benches everywhere.  Everything’s concrete except for the benches which are wooden.  Dust is everywhere.   The particular doctor we are here to see, the one that works closely with CCS, is working in the pediatric unit today so we head there, not once stepping inside four walls as we go.  Colors flood my vision...kangas (a traditional garment that can be used as a skirt, a shirt, a baby carrier, a head wrap, a bag, a diaper....) of every color I could ever imagine are worn by the women plus their babies in this small open air waiting area.  We sit down on a cement step in the middle of the place.  Babies crawling, walking, playing, laughing, crying.  Some are sick, some are here to be weighed and measured...it is organized chaos.

We finally see the doctor after about an hour of waiting, in a little cement room that he shares with two other people with one barred window and no moving air.  I tell him my symptoms, fever, runny nose, slight sore throat, fatigue.  While taking my temperature, under my arm...haven’t had it taken that way in years (99.7 or something, down for a change) he asks me about three times if I’ve been nauseous in the last three days...in my head I’m thinking carsick and seasick don’t count he’s trying to diagnose me with malaria, which I don’t have because I haven’t been vomiting...I say no.  As I sit there watching him scribble something onto a piece of paper I wait for the standard procedure, stick out your tongue, let me listen to your heart, let’s take your blood pressure, I’m going to look in your ears, in your nose and so on... none of that happens.  He hands me the scribbled on paper with my prescription... paracetamol and some type of cold and flu medicine I’ve never heard of.  I am to take 2 paracetamol 3 times a day and 1 cold and flu pill three times a day.  I’m too dazed to comprehend at first that this is 9 pills a day. I don’t even take advil for headaches...9 pills?  But without question I stand up and tell him asante sana (thank you very much) and we head to the pharmacy to.

By the time we get back to the house it has registered that this doctor man has prescribed me a heck of a lot of medicine without knowing any of my history, I start to worry.  I voice my concerns to Zik explaining that I am not sure if taking this high of a dosage is really all that good for me given my lack of history with medicine taking. He got a little feisty and told me that what the doctor prescribes is what you should take. Rather than get defensive toward his snappiness I just started crying and walked away and told anyone that would listen that I just wanted to talk to my mom or at the very least I wanted Momma Kate to come home so that she could tell me what to take.  Mom’s should really be the only one’s qualified to deliver basic first aide and healing advice, they know best, you can see the proof in their healthy children...plus they always know what to say to make you feel better, and bring you tea...they’re just great!

Seeing my distress, Kit starts investigating my medications.  Both contain paracetamol, 500mg each, which means if I took the prescribed doses of both medications I would overdose on paracetamol by the end of the day.  Overdosing on paracetamol can cause liver failure, granted I don’t think that would have happened to me, my liver is quite healthy despite the damage I’ve done to it at college, but this doctor man doesn’t know my history...what if my liver weren’t so great... I shouldn’t be so harsh, he was fitting us in to his already overpacked day, he was doing us a favor and I was grateful...I’m just stubborn and I hate medicine.

Momma Kate comes home and I immediately ask her what I should do, she can’t understand why he would prescribe me two things with paracetamol in it and advises me to take one or the other but not both. Since my nose and throat are my biggest problems right now I decide to alter my medications and take two cold flu medicine things with the paracetamol stuff in it and hope for the best.

The best, unfortunately, is not what befalls me.  I wake up the next morning covered in a red splotchy flat to my skin rash all over my arms, legs and chest.  I panic...Kate informs me that I am having an allergic reaction...hmmm.  Back to the hospital for me again today.  CCS’s typical doctor is not in today, so I have to see another one.  The wait is even longer this time, there might be closer to 100 mothers with babies here today.  When I finally see the doctor and explain my symptoms, the first thing he does is scold me for not being able to tell him about my symptoms in Swahili.  No one will ever be allowed to say “Learn the language” or “Speak American” in my presence again.  All I want it to feel better and this guy is making an ass out of me...Super.

My weird weird rash.

He ends up telling me that I am in fact having an allergic to the paracetamol and will need two injections of hydrocortisone (didn’t know that came in anything other than cream form) and that I have a sinus infection so I’ll need to take a round of amoxycilan.

Amoxycilan I’ve heard thanks to Ursinus College, where the Wellness Center hands it out regardless of what symptoms you walk in with, but needles, here, now...YIKES!

As it turns out, there’s no need to worry.  The syringes they use are individually packaged and there’s a biohazard bin.  First the nurse checks out the veins in the crooks of my arms, my veins are never easy to find even under the healthiest of circumstances and after five minutes of coaxing she gives up and decides to use the back of my left hand.  Thankfully she gets out an IV line because the needle is smaller than the syringe and sets to work.  I get lightheaded of course, I always do, but it’s over relatively quickly.  The doctor smiles at me and says now all I have to do is come back in 12 hours to get another. Great exactly what I wanted to do tonight at midnight...

It ends up being a group affair, three of my roommates decide to come along for my second injection.  Two haven’t seen the hospital yet and the other has been there for the other two visits so why not make it three for three.  We all wear pants for the first time because it is surprisingly cold, or maybe we’ve all just adjusted to the blazing heat of the day.  The hospital is a bit unsettling this late at night, with no one around and no flashes of color to distract me.  We find the right nurse and she sets to work setting up my shot.  She misses twice in the crook of my arm and then shoves the huge syringe needle into the back of my right hand.  This time I get seriously lightheaded....but it’s over....and with any kind of luck I will not be seeing this particular place for the rest of my trip.

Sticking the huge syringe needle into the back of my hand.

 Carsick, Seasick, Sick Sick

Carsick: Oh man...Tanzanian drivers are chizi cama ndizi (crazy like bananas)!  Every time I get in a car my stomach feels like its on the roughest part of a roller coaster...it’s like riding the wildcat at Hershey Park with less safety features and for a minimum of an hour at a time... it’s absolute craziness!  So far I’ve managed not to throw up, which I am extremely proud of and attribute to the conditioning I’ve received going to and from the cave the last two summers...Camp is great for so many things!

Seasick: We went to Zanzibar this past weekend by way of ferry and I didn’t get seasick at all...twice now that I have been out on a boat in open water and felt fine.  But these two experiences lulled me into a false sense of security...On Saturday we went snorkeling on this tiny little boat and the Indian Ocean was doing it’s best to see how vertical out little boat could go without dumping any of us into the ocean.  Great fun.  I turned a lovely shared of green but similar to my crazy car rides I was able to hold down the breakfast and the minute the ocean calmed down I felt fine.

Sick Sick:  If asked I don’t think I’d be able to tell you the last time I had a fever but did I ever have one both nights we were in Zanzibar... you could feel the heat radiating off my skin from inches away.  Not good.  When we finally got home on Sunday, Momma Kate (this is what we call the mom from Scotland because she always reminds us to put on our sunscreen and has been teaching us all highly proper table manners and we call her Husband John is daddy John.  They’ve raised three children of their own and are expecting their first grandchild in June!) took one look at me and asked what was wrong, I told her about my aliments and she felt my head confirming that I did in fact still have a fever and insisted that if I woke up with one that I went to the hospital to get checked out.  I hate being sick when I have all the comforts of home...being sick here is downright miserable...   

 Zanzibar

Friday (Jan 21) was non-stop woke up to pack, went to placement, rushed home to grab some lunch, jumped on the dala-dala (a kinda van taxi that you will frequently see people hanging off the back of) to take us to Dar, bought two way tickets for the ferry, ran to catch the ferry, checked into our hotel, took a minute to breath, got ready while simultaneously looking for a place to eat dinner.  By the time we finally made it to the restaurant it was 8:15 almost two hours later than we’ve all been use to eating dinner.  The five of us (Lauren, Deirdre, Kit, Heather, and I) polished off three pizzas a sandwich, a bowl of pasta and a loaf of bread...and then all had gelati for dessert! Our meal was soooooo good!

Saturday was amazing, I went to bed not feeling the greatest but I just kept telling myself “You get to go snorkeling tomorrow...absolutely nothing can ruin your day!”  And it was so true, my first time in the Indian Ocean and I went snorkeling!!  Checked off one of things on my life list “Go Snorkeling” and got one step closer to another “Put my toes in all the oceans.” Even before we even made it to the coral reef we came up on a of dolphins and we got in and swam with them!!  So cool!  And honestly nothing can compare to real live snorkeling...Not Finding Nemo, not The Little Mermaid, not even the three different aquariums I’ve been to in my life.  It was gorgeous!!  The colors are unreal, if you swan too close to an anemone a clown fish would come out and attack your mask to keep you away.  There were four different colored star fish, we saw a sting ray and a scorpion fish, these crazy black tentacle looking things so many different types of coral and tons of fish that I could never learn all the names of...BEST DAY EVER!!

Clown fish protecting it's home!

Lauren and I with our snorkel masks on :)

                                                                                                       We kept it very low key on Sunday because we were all exhausted and finished out trip with a spice tour.  We walked through the jungle like forest while a guide pointed out the different kinds of trees and plants that certain spices and fruits come from...On our tour we saw a cinnamon tree and got to smell it’s barked which smelled exactly like big red, smelled the nut that contain nutmeg, saw a cardamom plant, looked at the pods on the plants that vanilla come from, saw star fruit and jackfruit trees, and saw this really cool fruit that had a soft but porcupine looking exterior but the fruit inside tasted exactly like a grape.

The grape like fruit.

 Imagine If...

-You only had one pair of shoes, that you had to wear rain or shine, hot or cold

-You only got one meal a day

-Elementary school and high school cost your parents 75% of their weekly salary to send you and you have at least 3 other siblings

-when you got a cold not only did you not have money for medicine but didn’t have money for tissues (and you couldn’t substitute with toilet paper because when your going to the bathroom in a hole in the ground you don’t really bother with the stuff)

-You had to wash all your clothes by hand (the Reimert Laundry room looks nicer and nicer in my memories as the days go by)

-You’re most prized possession was 200 shilling coin (about 17cents converted to US dollars.

-You didn’t have running water or electricity 

-Every March there was the potential for huge rainstorms to come and wash away everything you own

I keep trying to imagine my everyday life at home with just one of these things missing from it...and I can’t...There are some days where this world doesn’t seem so different than the one I left but the moments in between when I’m faced to recognize that I should be way more grateful for the life I have has been quite humbling.

The other reality check I’ve received since arriving has been the actualization of the concepts I learned in my Anthropology of Photography course.  Just because we believe someone to be the “other” doesn’t give me the right to photograph them to provide evidence that I’ve experienced the other.  Since this realization I’ve been trying to be better about when I take pictures...because again I can’t imagine someone coming to my home or driving down my street and taking a picture of me just because they wanted documentation that they saw what they saw there...it’s insane.

 Placement

AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!  A few things....

1. Kids are kids are kids no matter where you are in the world, they are just way easier to deal with when you speak the same language...
2. I cannot even begin to describe how grateful I am to have grown up where I did...I was absolutely humbled today watching 3-6 year olds being so gracious over receiving a cup of chai tea and a piece of butter bread (for most of them the only thing they would eat all day)
3. I’m incredibly impressed by the husband and wife who run the free nursery school where I work
4. I can’t believe that I’m going to be doing this for the next 8 weeks.

First and foremost the children that I’m working with are absolutely adorable, and so many of them are so smart.  Listening to them recite the alphabet and their numbers today was probably one of the most endearing things I’ve ever heard.  But with that said I can’t imagine bringing a child into the world that is here...for most of them, being hungry is the least of their daily worries.  They have huge cuts and scrapes that are filled with dirt, many of them have runny noses and no tissues and no medicine, there are over 60 children in a room barely bigger than my bedroom at home trying desperately to receive some attention and when they don’t get it they resort to wailing on each other so that myself or the other volunteer I’m working with will walk over.  Today three kids got so incredibly excited to show me there pencils when we were going over the letter P I wanted to cry and laugh simultaneously.  

It’s incredibly painful to realize that no matter what I do while I’m here, no matter how hard I work to help these children learn basic skills so that they are ready for primary school in a few years it won’t be enough...because in the end money rules the world, and without it this free school for street children will be shut down.  The question is...where do they get it and how do they make it sustainable?  I shudder to think what would happen to some of these kids if they didn’t get that one cup of tea and that one piece of bread.

 Adventures

There is so much wonderful culture to absorb.  While sightseeing we came across a Baobab tree which is used in a lot of handcrafts basic everyday items that has been growing for over 500 years!  It is huge and the trunk looks like a rock climbing wall on one of it’s sides, it has elephant ear sized leaves...I’ve never seen anything like it.

We also experienced Monday market...which is kinda like chinatown but way hotter, smellier, cheaper goods, and way way way more people!!

Yesterday we went to see this group of native musicians and dancers perform and they were amazing.  This huge extended family lives on this compound together and they create these concerts and perform them all over the continent.  It is amazing to watch this family work, the way the take care of each other, the way they all live together...it was incredible.

 Bagamoyo

Man oh man is it hot...like I only use cold water in my showers and the water doesn’t even feel cold to me it’s so hot.  But it’s also absolutely beautiful, the flowers and the trees and the Indian Ocean, incredible!  The other volunteers are great too! Arriving with me are John and Kate from Scotland, Lauren from New York, Deirdre from New Jersey, and Heather from Canada.  On our way in one of the other girls goes “oh that’s kinda cute we’re John and Kate plus four.”  The three volunteers that were here when we got here are Kit from New York, Violaine who is French but lives in Connecticut, and Faye who leaves tomorrow but is 80 has such a youthful spirit and has lived all over the world...AMAZING!!!

The town is definitely a paradox of very wealthy and very poor...and the extremes are evident everywhere.  The house that I am staying in is beautiful though and extremely safe with guards on patrol 24 hours a day (which should make mom and dad happy).  Right now I still feel like I’m on vacation, it still hasn’t hit me that this will be my home for the next 8 weeks.

Time Travel

Recently (although according to my parents this has been a life long problem that I suffer from) I have become extremely absent minded as a result I have forgotten deadlines, mixed up times, and have almost missed entire events.  My most recent blunder which could have also been potentially one of the worst ones I ever made was mixing up the time that my flight left for Tanzania.  For weeks and weeks I had been telling people that my flight left on Friday January 14th at 7:30pm.  Plans were in place for my parents to take me to JFK the day of my flight, for someone to watch over the dog in case my parents decided to spend the night in the city, and I conveniently was waiting to do some of my more important packing until the last minute (because I work better under pressure obviously.)  Well as it should happen for the few weeks leading up to my trip I had been having trouble sleeping, frequently waking up and feeling like I had forgotten something or was missing something but after checking and re-checking I thought I had everything done or at the very least accounted for.  Then the Thursday before I left I was sitting at lunch with my dad and all of a sudden got this sudden sinking feeling in my stomach...my brain screamed at me YOUR FLIGHT IS TODAY AT 7:30 NOT TOMORROW! I panicked, immediately went home and checked my flight itinerary... Friday January 14th departure 10:40am.  Whoooo! I breath a sigh of reflief for a single heartbeat and then realize that I need to tell my dad about my most recent blunder...and he is not going to be happy.  And of course he wasn’t but everything worked out and we left for the airport that night getting me to JFK in plenty of time for my flight which was delayed not once or twice but three times...figures.

But once of the plane...WOW...like no other airplane I have ever been on in my entire life.  Every seat had it’s own TV set into the seat in front of it and an outlet to plug anything in you like.  On the plane I was able to charge my phone, I watched four movies (Grown Ups, The Social Network, The Killers, and Twilight Eclipse).  I was fed three times, and really good food too, which I was skeptical of because the last time I ate of meal off an airplane it gave me food poisoning.  In an attempt to adjust everyone’s body time to the new time zone the lights went out in what felt like the middle of my day and the ceiling of the plane lit up with stars like the night sky (Harry Potter style like the great hall).  When I left JFK it was daytime, when I arrived in Dar es Salaam it was daytime...so basically I time-travelled...sweet!