stellenblog.SAM

Blogging at tublogulosis.tumblr.com

Pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/samwing

Dar is awesome. We are looking for housing. Check both blogs for updates.

How is everyone doing back home?

First night out on the town in Dar. Met some interesting people along the way. There is the occasional crazy who is strung out and wants some money, but they aren’t mean about it. The vast majority of people are really really nice and will say hi to you on the street (either in Swahili or English). I’m thinking that we won’t have any problem getting along with people here.

The dollar goes even further here than it does in the SA. We had a liter of beer each tonight (we are celebrating, OK?) for a total of 8000 Tanzanian Shillings. That chalks up to about 6 dollars total.

Time for bed. Long day tomorrow of getting our bearings and taking care of logistics. Hard work now means smooth operating later.

Tom and I made it safe and sound to Tanzania at about 730 local time (thats 10 hours ahead of West Coast USA time) this evening. As we left the plane and got onto the jetway we were greeted with a wall of humidity and heat. It is uncomfortable here at best, and it’s winter time. Yeesh.

We cleared customs with ease (getting a visa before we came saved us a solid 30 to 40 minutes waiting in line with sweaty, angry South Africans.

Time for a bite. Updates later.

We will be having a team blog for our TZ experience. I will probably still be blogging at this page, but if everything goes as planned, there will be good coverage of what’s going on at the other one as well.

Check it out at tublogulosis.tumblr.com

(not yet though, there’s nothing there yet)

Tom and I have been living the good life in CT in our little break before heading to TZ. We’ve been living with a friend of our professor who has been so hospitable and accomadating, opening her doors to complete strangers. Good people do still exist!

We’ve been getting around the city a fair amount, doing variety of different things. Spent the day in the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. Watched the US/Italy Confederations Cup Game (in a pub). Seeing the last few NU friends scattered around town. The weather has been great too, making for a spectacular last hurrah in SA.

It’s our last full day here, as we’ll be hopping in a cab early tomorrow morning and heading for the airport. We are going to spend our first two nights either here or here so that we can have a secure, clean place to call home for a few days to get our bearings and to settle upon some longer term accomodations.

This was my (overly obvious) theme song before we left. Now that traveling is coming up again, it’s made a roaring comeback.

For those who aren’t familiar with Amadou and Miriam, they are this incredibly talented blind couple from Mali to whom everyone should probably listen.

Things I’ve mastered here thus far:

• Not having my camera with me when I want it and having it with me when I don’t want it.
• Napping in broad daylight.
• Being able to pallet instant coffee.
• Using Afrikaans pleasantries (“How are you,” “Thanks,” etc.) and having it lead to people mistaking me as a someone who actually speaks the language. I awkwardly have to tell them I don’t understand anything they are saying shortly later.
• Carrying around small bills to make exact change and paying bills in groups easier.
• Scampering across big intersections because I still don’t know from which direction the traffic is coming.
• Being a casual cricket observer.
• Understanding that ketchup (tomato sauce) is really neither ketchup or tomato sauce. Rather, it’s a sad version of sweet and sour sauce.

Pack it up, pack it in, let me begin…

Just about packed up here in the dorm. Tom and I will be having a last meal with the group and then will be motoring into Cape Town to our new digs for a few days.

It’s sad to bid Stellenbosch adieu, but it’s great that we are still staying in SA. We’ll have a few days to relax, gather our thoughts and prepare for the next leg of our trip.

On a programming note, I’ve been really quite miserable with keeping you fine people updated on my life. I’ll blame it on finals because for a time I hadn’t left my room for days at a time.

Additionally, internet will be hit and miss not only for the next few days, but for the next few months. But please keep tuned though, and I’ll keep you updated on what’s going on. There might be a new blog going up documenting the TZ portion of the trip that John and Tom are also going to write on. If that materializes the link will be provided here.

In some wondrous Christmas miracle, I still have internet. The result? Got confirmation that Tom and I have had our flights changed and will be staying in SA until this coming Friday rather than leaving Sunday. Still no confirmed lodging yet, but it’s good to know what country we are going to be in this week.

On a different note, went out to dinner with David Bunn and Jane Taylor, the couple who were our guides during our time in the Limpopo province and in Kruger National Park (which leads me to think I didn’t blog more on this subject…hm…).

David and Jane are, quite possibly, the most interesting people on the planet. I say this with the utmost sincerity. The are South Africans born and bred, but both have PhDs from NU in English. Jane is a well known play write and author. David is a researcher who studies biodiversity, oral histories and cartography in the very northern portion of South Africa where his research camp is located. We stayed at this research camp for a few nights before we entered the park.

The camp is in the most secluded, remote part of the world I’ve ever encountered. To get there we drove 6 hours from Jo’berg on a big bus. Then we met Jane and David in a small village gas station a few km’s before the tar road turned into dirt. Here, we switched into smaller vans and SUVs. Then we drove another 2 or 3 hours on this dirt road which, although rough in spots, was still wide and quite passable. Then we turned off this road onto what can barley be described as a little one-lane village road which passed through a few hut settlements. We drove past these settlements and road conditions quickly deteriorated. It began as dirt and grass, became rocky, then sandy. There were ups, downs, twists, turns, water, cattle and darkness. So nearly 10 hours after we left Johannesberg, we arrived at this research camp. To our surprise, they not only had electricity, but running water (even hot, which was heated by external propane tanks) and a hot meal waiting for us.

Wow that was a big tangent. So anyways, David and Jane are amazing and are doing incredible things. They told us more awe inspiring stories about refugee research and lion tracking while we stuffed our dropped jaws with pizza and pasta.

The next two days we’ll be spending time with this great group of people I’ve gotten to know and love before we go our separate ways.

We’ll probably need to find a place to live in Cape Town during that time too.

I’m senior now. Oh dear, that is scary. I’m feeling a tad bit old.

We are scheduled to leave for TZ on Sunday, but still trying to stay in SA for a few extra days. Our travel agent is incommunicado still though. My whereabouts for the next few days is wayyy up in the air.

Our internet is being cut off by the University at 1PM today. Unlike many modern men, I can survive without internet. Unfortunately, our travel plans haven’t been finalized yet. The result? There will be a lot of running around to internet cafes to make sure we have a bed to sleep in for the next few nights and a flight out of the country and into Tanzania.

Here’s to flying by the seat of your pants.

Finals: Equally stressful in the southern hemisphere.

Tom and I are trying to work out the logistics of staying in South Africa few days longer before we ship off to Tanzania. John doesn’t get there until the 22nd anyways, so we’d be living there for nearly 2 weeks before we met up with him.

Instead, we are now planning on maybe staying 5 more days here, while still having 5 days of lead time in Dar before John arrives.

Tom might also have a family connection to get us lodging in Camps Bay

Keeping the fingers crossed.

Eh, can’t really keep the fingers crossed. I’ve got a lot of typing  to do. It’s still finals season.