Ruaha National Park

Our trip to Ruaha National Park was amazing and something that I will never forget. I wasn’t expecting to see much more than we saw driving through Mikumi, but boy was I wrong. Multiple people told us that seeing lions around this time of year, and in Ruaha in general, is rare. However, not even 5 minutes after entering the park we saw a lion! I was so happy! Lions are one of my favorite animals and I really was hoping we would see one.

Continuing on in the park, after seeing the lion, I was hoping that we would get to see some more animals that we hadn’t seen like hippos and crocodiles. Sure enough, we came upon a huge river and I said “ This looks like a nice home for hippos and crocodiles” We stopped and were able to get out and walk across a bridge over the river. There was only one crocodile that we could see laying on a rock, but there were a lot of hippos!

After a short time, we continued on our way. We came across a really scary rope bridge that we were able to walk across. It seemed fine at first, but as you went across it the gaps in the rope on the side started to get bigger and in some places it was just gone completely!

It was looking like it was going to rain shortly after that and was beginning to get dark. We continued our journey though in hopes of seeing more animals. We came across some giraffes that were in the way of the path of the car and we were able to get quite close to them. Giraffes are very interesting creatures. They are so tall and it is really cool to see them running. Seeing the animals in their natural habitats is just such an amazing experience that is so much better than seeing them at the zoo.

As we ended the day, we headed to our cottages in the park. From the backdoor of my room, you could see elephants down by the river. We ate dinner in the restaurant there, and then went to head back to our rooms. However, when we went to leave we were stopped. We had to be escorted back by a man with a gun and flashlight just in case we were to run into any animals! I hadn’t even thought of that. At some point during the early morning, an elephant actually walked right through the cottage sight, although I did not personally see it.

We began our second day of safari bright and early! Our driver, Peter, had already known where a large family of elephants was at, so we headed there. We stopped the car and watched the elephants for a couple of minutes. A few of the younger elephants were playing with each other’s trunks.

We continued on our way in hopes of finding a male lion. We came across a lot of rocks that reminded me of the Lion King and looked like a perfect home for lions. We didn’t see any lions here though.

We made our way back to the large family of elephants. They were all crossing the path in front of us, so Peter stopped the car. Apparently we didn’t stop far enough away though. After majority of the elephants crossed, a mother elephant and it’s baby began to cross. We were all in awe over how small the baby was. The mother was not happy with us though. She came right up to our car. We had to be very quiet and were instructed not to make any noise. We couldn’t even take a picture. It was very scary because elephants are some of the most dangerous animals. However, after just staring at us for a few seconds, she continued on her way.

 We ended up coming across another family of elephants that also had a lot of babies.

Elephants truly are such amazing creatures. After this safari, they have definitely become possibly my favorite animal. They are so large and just amazing to watch. It’s so neat how they use their trunks. A lot of times it seemed like they were even waving at us.

We even got to see some elephants bathing in the river

Although we didn’t see any more lions on our trip, we did see a lot more giraffes, zebras, a baby crocodile, a fish eagle, impala, and yellow baboons.

Resident Permits, Isimila, Hiking

When we applied for the program, we were instructed to get tourist visas. This was apparently not true though and we were supposed to get student visas. Since we didn’t have student visas and we didn’t yet have our resident permits, we were told that we weren’t allowed to have class. We ended up not having class for a whole week. We joked a lot about being deported since the immigration officers would randomly come to make sure that we weren’t in class. Our resident permits were soon complete though and I am now a resident of Tanzania! I can officially live here until February 2016!!

On one of the days where we didn’t have class, Paulo took us to this beautiful Stone Age sight called Isimila. We got to see these beautiful natural creations in a valley. It was almost like a mini grand canyon I though. It was absolutely beautiful. We got to hike down into it and walk all throughout the valley. We also saw some really cool lizards there that I now see all over the place! The male lizards are an incredible blue.

The university of Iringa is surrounded by a lot of mountains with large rocks on them. One Saturday, Renee, Julia and I decided to go hiking in them. Renee had gone the day before with her roommates and said that there were some really cool rocks you could hike up to that had some amazing views of Iringa. Although it was hot, and jeans aren’t exactly the best things to hike in, the views at the end of the hike were great! 

Roommate Problems

We only had roommates in the dorms for 3 weeks before they all left for break. Since we are on a different schedule than them, they had one week of studying for finals, and then two weeks of finals while we were with them. I must say though, those were the longest 3 weeks of my life. Tanzanian people are SO loud. There is absolutely no respect for anyone else in terms of being quiet. The first week wasn’t too bad. Aside from being loud and constantly being on the phone, for the most part I was able to sleep through it. The next two weeks though were awful. One night during the middle of the night, my room light just randomly turned on. I thought that maybe one of my roommates had gotten up to go to the bathroom and needed to find something. After a while though, the light didn’t go out. I rolled over to see what was going on and I found Pendo sitting at the desk studying. I looked at my phone and it was 3 in the morning. I was very confused and also very upset because it’s really hard to sleep with the light on. Also, I am not the happiest of people to wake up when I’m tired. I get very grumpy. I thought that maybe she had an 8 AM exam and had gotten up early to study. However, this was not the case. When I got up at 7:30 to get ready for class, she was getting back into bed! I was so confused. I thought maybe this was a one time, random thing, but as soon as we got to class Julia told me that her roommate had done the same thing! This event of turning the light on at 3 in the morning continued for the next 2 weeks. I was exhausted all the time. When the weekend came, all I could do was sleep. I ended up getting a little sick from the lack of sleep. I had many of the symptoms of malaria including extreme fatigue, nausea, headaches, and a fever so I went and got tested. Luckily I didn’t have it! I knew then that I must’ve just been feeling sick from the lack of sleep. As horrible as it sounds, I was so happy when all of my roommates left. It wasn’t that I didn’t like my roommates; I was just tired of having them. I wasn’t able to unpack while they were here, so every time I wanted something I had to get it out of my suitcase. It’s also very annoying having everything you do be watched! I felt like they were always staring at me, which got old real fast. It was nice when they left to be able to sleep on my own schedule and unpack. Although the dorms are very empty, it’s nice to have some piece and quiet in a very loud country.

Moving Into the Dorms

Our first night in Iringa we stayed at a nice hotel called The Lutheran Center. Little did I know that this would be my last real shower! On Sunday, Paulo took us around town and showed us where the main market was and also our favorite place called Neema’s Crafts where they have really good food! Neema’s is run by Tanzanian’s with disabilities to give them a job. The majority of the workers at the restaurant are deaf. They also have a craft store downstairs where people with disabilities make all the items. They have such neat things there that I just want to buy it all! At around 2 that day, we grabbed all of our things and headed to the University. We had not heard about what our living situations would be, so we were very anxious. When we got to the university, we learned that we would all be separated and sharing a room with 3 other Tanzanian roommates. Although that is the best way to really learn the culture and get the full experience, I was definitely nervous. When I went to my room, my roommates were very quiet and just didn’t really say anything to me. However, Renee’s roommates were very nice and talkative to her. I was really wishing that I had got her roommates. It was raining when we moved in, but once it stopped we got a campus tour. When we went to see the CIEE office, Jenny began talking to us about living with Tanzanians. She said that our first night would probably be the most awkward night of our life. I was so nervous that I was being thrown into this room with people of a different culture. She told us that her first night in the Peace Corps, she went to her room after dinner and began crying because it was so awkward. I knew everything would be fine, but it was very overwhelming at first. That night sure enough was very awkward. I couldn’t really understand my roommates that much. I didn’t have my mosquito net up, so one of my roommates offered that I sleep with her. She was on the top bunk, which is very tiny and that just made me really uncomfortable. After persistent denying and saying that I move a lot in my sleep, she finally gave up and let me sleep on my roommate, Pendo’s, bed instead. 

Dar es Salaam --> Iringa

After a weeklong stay in Dar, we began our journey to Iringa! We prepared for a long, 10 hour car ride.

Although the car ride was long, the scenery made it well worth it. After sitting in traffic in Dar for 2 hours, when we finally got out of the city we began our way into the highlands of Tanzania. The mountains were absolutely beautiful and the weather began to get much cooler. These are some of the first mountains we saw near Morogoro.

About halfway into our drive, we got to drive through Mikumi National Park! My first African Safari! We were told that if we were lucky, we might see some baboons and maybe a giraffe so I wasn’t really expecting much. Not long after entering the park, we began to see a lot of impala, a type of antelope. The first animal we saw after that was a giraffe! It was way off in the distance but I thought we were really lucky and that was probably all we would see. However, we saw a lot more! We saw one elephant, and then we drove a little farther and saw a ton of elephant! It was amazing. I was overjoyed and amazed. I never would have thought that they would live in a place that was so green and beautiful. Everything that you see on TV and movies portrays Africa to be all dry and desert like, but that really isn’t’ the case. Mikumi Park was so beautiful and green. 

After leaving Mikumi, we began to really head up into the mountains. The weather began to get really cold! The mountains were absolutely gorgeous though and I couldn’t get enough pictures of them! I couldn’t believe that people live in a place so beautiful.