Mikumi and Udzungwa

hello my darling readers!
i hope this post finds you well and enjoying hot showers and nice air conditioned houses. i am enjoying none of those luxuries but im still having more fun than you probably ;-)
this weekend was the safari! and it was fantastic! we left early friday morning. joshua, our tour guide, picked us up in a HUGE badass safari truck. all 8 of us fit comfortably. the first hour of the drive was ridiculously bumpy but then we hit a paved road which was much nicer. even on the paved roads tho they have so many speed bumps. they LOVE their speed bumps here. it's quite bizarre. they have all different kinds. the big humps. the small bumps that come rapid fire. the medium sized humps. i never knew there was such a not-so-wonderful world of speed bumps. my theory is that they don't like smooth roads here so when they make a paved road they add speed bumps to make it feel more like the dirt ones.
oh jeez im spending way too much time on speed bumps.
OKAY the safari was great! Friday we rode around for like 5 hours in Mikumi which is the national park. We saw warthogs, giraffes, elephants, zibras, impala, buffalo, hippos, and a bunch of other things! it was so much cooler than going to a zoo and seeing animals locked up in small cages. we also drove around saturday morning for another 4 or 5 hours. our primary goal the second day was to find a lion! actually it became more of an obsession. we strained our eyes for hours and hours but to no avail. the thing is, lions are tan and nearly all the grass and shrubs are also tan. also they are relatively short in the tall grass which makes it even harder to spot them. it's possible that there were no lions out this weekend or it's possible that we were a few yards from one and just couldn't spot him. i guess we'll never know. there were a few false alarms which turned out to be either other animals or just large rocks. it was still an amazing trip tho and i got some great pictures. especially of the elephant herd that surrounded our car saturday morning. they were just loping around, eating some grass. and there were a few babies too! so cute. also, when giraffes run it really truly looks liek slow motion. it's the weirdest thing! your brain goes wait whaaaat? i always thought that when you saw giraffes running on tv that they had put the video in slow motion to make it look epic, but no, that's really how they run!!
the accomodations were mediocre. the first night was in this guest house sort of thing. it was just our group staying there and we had a common room and kitchen and some bedrooms. it was weird because the furniture was really nice and clean and new looking and the kitchen and bathrooms were disgusting!! i guess they discourage the use of water here by just making their bathrooms unbearable. very few of us showered.
saturday after the morning driving around mikumi, we drove about an hour and a half to a national park called Udzungwa. There they have one of the largest waterfalls in Tanzania. We stayed in a hotel/hostel deal and I got my own room which was pretty sweet. The thing that was not sweet was that right outside my room was the bar. If I told you that on Saturday night I slept literally in the middle of the US/Englad worldcup game field, would you believe me? because that is honestly what it felt like. i don't think it could have been any louder. they didn't really have windows that could block noise out either. it was just screens and metal bars. so there really was no hope. and then after the game? a dance party!!! or something that involved very loud music. but then it quieted down. and around, oh, 4 am the goddamn chicken/rooster started it's wake up call every 20 seconds or so. i was ready to go out there and slaughter the thing myself. if i had brought my maschetti i would have. (yes i bought a maschetti and will not hesitate to use it on anyone who tries to mess with me in new bruns).
the amazing part is that i was actually able to fall asleep by like midnight, even with all this ruckus. i was completely exhausted and turned my ipod on, put absinthe the party at the fly honey warehouse on repeat, and drifted off into a very deep sleep. that is, until the chicken ruined it.
sunday we woke up early and drove 10 minutes to Udzungwa and started our hike by 8 am. It took about an hour or more to hike to the top of the water fall. And let me tell you, this was not a leisurely hike, although our tour guide looked like he was just going on a leisurely stroll through the jungle. This hike was STEEP! the kind where you couldn't look too far ahead or you would just give up completely. you had to just look at the step in front of you and go "ok self, can i do this one? yes i can. how bout this one? sure not bad" and go on like this. and just when you're about to tell your new friends "i'm not going to make it, im going to die here. go on without me and tell my family i love them", just when you're about to say that, then youre there. you're at the top of this magnificent 750 meter high water fall and you can see out for miles and miles across fields of sugarcane and small huts. it was beautiful. and then we hiked back down which was annoying because you have to keep stopping yourself from tumbling down the mountain. and when we got to our starting elevation it was another 20 minute hike to the bottom of the waterfall, but again, definitely worth it. after a while you couldn't tell if the liquid you were drenched in was your own sweat or the spray from the waterfall or just the general humidity. most likely a mixture of all of these. let me tell you, i am looking good in the water fall pictures haha.
so joshua met us at the end and brought us food and then we headed into the safari van, stinkyness and all, and began the journey home which took about 5 hours. all in all, it was a great weekend. definitely more of a trip than a vacation. and dear lord, was my butt sore this morning from all that hiking! i didn't think I was going to make it out of bed!! i need to go on more hikes back in the US.
this week is going to be a bit more relaxed because there are no more afternoon activities. just placement in the morning. i love seeing the kids after being away for the weekend. its so precious when they come up and go "mbebe!" (pick me up!). or when they play with my hair until it's a knotty mess. or when they yell "mother!" and show me the shapes and letters that they can write in the dirt. today we tried to tackle colors. which i'm aware is a large ambition with a room full of 3 to 5 year olds. but it went relatively well. although im sure they still don't know any of the colors, they seemed to enjoy themselves and liked when i pointed to one of their shirts and said "green!" or "sabrina is wearing pink!"
and im hoping to go to the baobab home one afternoon this week and see how things are run there so i can help out this weekend and possibly next week. terri stopped by last week to meet me and pick up the suitcase i brought for them. what a wonderful woman! i can't imagine just dropping life in the US and falling in love and moving to a very very foreign country. But now she's been here for 7 years and is fluent in Swahili and knows loads of people in the community and has helped tons of kids grow up and stand on their own two feet. and her new baby girl is beautiful!! terri is truly an amazing woman and i hope i get a chance to talk to her more even though she is always super busy with one thing or another.
ok that's all for now. i'm actually really glad the homebase here doesn't have internet access. i like only being on once or twice a week and not obsessively checking my facebook every few hours. honestly, that was getting a little pathetic and im considering possibly deleting it. or if not, then most definitely drastically cutting back on my usage.
ok i miss you all! actually, i miss most of you! hahaha. :)
LOVE
margie.