Things That Took My Breath Away This Weekend

- wheezing my way up a mountain (while my guide hopped from rock to rock without breaking a sweat).
- walking along red dirt roads, past sun-dappled coffee farms and bleating herds of goats (all the while having a serious T.I.A.* moment).
- watching eight-year-old girls carry enormous bags of rice.
On their heads.
Uphill.
Wait, no: UPMOUNTAIN.
- being attacked by fire ants in the jungle (literally, ants in my pants).
- wading through a stream, wondering about the possibility of schistosomiasis.
- standing at the bottom of a pounding waterfall, on the side of a mountain, in a place I've dreamed about for most of my life, feeling honored to be alive.
- attending a celebration that, in short, was the traditional Maasai equivalent of a dance party.
- drinking extremely potent locally brewed beer made from fermented bananas and wheat. Enough said.
- being proposed to by a sixty-year-old Maasai man.
- being accidentally spit on by the same overly enthusiastic, mostly toothless Maasai man.
- being told by a group of children that my "face shines like candlelight."


God I love this place.



*T.I.A. = this is Africa. A saying reserved only for the most awe-inspiring, heart-wrenching, visually arresting, quintessentially African moments.

Weeks One, Two, and Three: The Hyper-Abbreviated, No-Time-To-Breathe, Wow-It's-Hard-To-Find-Internet-Here...Re-Cap

Week one consisted mostly of being propositioned, pointed at, and proposed to everywhere I went. (Within a few days, I had a five-foot Rastafarian who identified me on the street as "his fiancee." Never mind the fact that the only words I had ever exchanged with him were hapana (no) and "I know where I'm going; leave me alone.") When I wasn't being made painfully aware of how white my skin is, I was spending most of my time at the Global Service Corps office in Arusha-town, taking a crash course in Swahili and delving deeper into the cultural issues that surround HIV/AIDS in Africa. (Most specifically, the fact that it's common cultural practice to have concurrent sexual relationships -- that is, to have only two or three sexual partners in a lifetime, but to have them all at the same time. If one person in the triangle contracts HIV, everyone in the triangle contracts HIV, which explains why the disease has spread more quickly in Africa than on any other continent.)

Week Two came, and I moved to Tengeru -- an agriculturally-oriented suburb of Arusha that is too beautiful for words. I lived in a house with no running water or toilet, so my bathroom essentially consisted of a few plastic buckets and a porcelain hole in the ground (really not as bad as it sounds.) My host mama Sylvia was one of the sweetest women I've ever met, and we got along splendidly, aside from the fact that I could never eat enough to satisfy her. I ate well beyond my stomach capacity and yet, no matter how much my belly felt ready to burst, she would end every meal by proclaiming, "Jammy. You have let me down. You have eaten only three platefuls of ugali!" Kind of an eating disorder in reverse.

Week Three is here, and now I'm back in Arusha, living with a new family for the next month and preparing for my role as an HIV/AIDS educator at a school called Themi. I'm within a couple minutes of the fastest internet cafe in town (which feels like a five-star luxury hotel at this point), and I'm living at the Arusha International School, surrounded by about 1,000 kids between the ages of 3 and 16 (which feels like just about the closest thing to heaven that I've experienced so far on earth.)

And now I only have 2 minutes left of internet time, so as usual I'm not going to be able to say everything I wanted to say. It's a predictably African predicament, but one that I've come to embrace. Suffice it to say -- I love love love it here, more than words can say.

p.s. I've turned down all marriage proposals so far.

What IS this thing?

In one day, one hour, fifteen minutes, and forty-eight seconds -- after a lifetime of dreaming, several years of begging, and at least a few months of planning -- I'll be on a plane bound for East Africa. The first two decades of my life have been centered in the same ten-mile radius, but soon I'll be spending nine weeks learning, loving, and growing in a place I've dreamed about since childhood. Specifically, Tanzania. Specifically, a place that's about 8,379 miles away.

For anyone who knows me at all, one thing is obvious: this is the most exciting thing, maybe ever. For real, this is on the same excitement level as the day I got a kitten for Christmas. And that’s saying something. I mean, I love kittens. I wept like a child that Christmas. Admittedly, I was also like, eight years old at the time, so weeping was not outside the realm of acceptable activities. Plus my dog had just died a couple months before. Look, it was just a very cathartic experience, okay? IT’S HEALTHY TO CRY SOMETIMES.

The point is, I’ve wanted to go to Africa for a really long time. And I may or may not cry on a regular basis. But I digress.

these kittens : level of improbable adorableness :: Jaime : level of excitement about going to Tanzania

I’ve heard that you can’t be certain that something has happened unless it’s been documented on the internet, so from this day onward, I declare this blog to be my proof. Who knows — maybe one day, I'll show it to my grandchildren. Indeed, instead of inviting them over to my cat-infested house to sit through hours of looking at photo albums of those nine weeks I spent in Arusha, I’ll just send them a link to my blog.

Which they’ll be able to view via iPhone.

Which will actually just be a microchip implanted in their bodies upon birth.

And they'll all be born half-robot.

I really do hate technology.

But at the same time, I can't shake the feeling that this experience is going to be transformative -- that these nine weeks in Africa are going to profoundly affect the trajectory of my life. There are going to be scary moments, probably; homesick moments, definitely; embarrassing moments, undoubtedly. But I'm also bound to have experiences that are powerful and rich, experiences that not only strike at the heart of Tanzanian culture, but that help me view the human condition through a wider, more sensitive lens. Plus I'll probably have some interesting experiences with bathrooms. And I can't help but think that all of that is worth documenting.

But no, seriously you guys, I’m not a crybaby.