Orientation in Dar Es Salaam

On our first day of orientation we met at 9 in a conference room at the hotel. We began by just learning about the program basics and what to expect. After that, we had a short break where we had Chai tea, which is a normal thing to do around mid morning in Tanzania. We drank our tea, ate our snacks, and then had our first Swahili lesson with our instructor, Paolo. The first lesson went really well, he is an excellent instructor. It only lasted about an hour and then we had the rest of the day to do whatever until our welcome dinner that night. Renee, Julia, and I played cards by the pool for a little while, and then went up to the room and rested before we headed off to dinner. Dinner was at a restaurant about 10 minutes away in Dar. I rode in Jenny's car there, however I rode in a bijaji on the way back, which is a 3 wheeled car. After dinner, we just came back to the hotel, showered, and went to bed.

I woke up the next morning feeling a little sick, but didn't think much of it. However, after moving around for a bit, I started to feel horrible. I felt like I was going to throw up and I felt very clammy and hot. Just a few minutes later, I did end up throwing up. I started to feel a little better though, I thought I had got it all out. So I went down to eat breakfast with everyone else before heading off on the day's adventures. I ate a few pieces of watermelon for breakfast and a piece of bread. Not even 10 minutes later, it all came back up. Once again though, I felt fine after throwing up so I thought I was okay again. We took a boat to an island for the day. Once we got there, I felt horrible. I thought I was going to throw up again. We had our Swahili lesson under a little hut, and then we were free to do whatever we wanted for about 3 hours. They cooked us lunch, fish and chips, which I was really afraid to eat. I was able to keep it down though! Yay! I started to feel a lot better after that. Still not 100%, but better. We spent the next few hours building a sand castle and just talking and hanging out. At around 3 we headed back to Dar on the boat. When we got back, we just relaxed in our room for the rest of the day.

I felt much better the next day after sleeping for almost 12 hours, which was a very good thing because we had a very busy day. We started off the day by driving into the city and going to the National Museum. I guess they only really have one museum throughout the whole country, which I found very interesting. After that we went to the village museum where we got to see a lot of different model houses for different tribes throughout Tanzania. They even performed a dance for us there which was very cool.