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Rain Study:
floral umbrella with darth vader boots
(ps I'm standing in a road in this picture) I'm not sure where the time has all gone, but somehow I find myself at the end of my stint living in Dar es Salaam and working with the local Roots & Shoots groups. I spent a lot of the last blog entry reflecting on the trip in general, so I need to let you know what I've been up to these past few weeks.
Many of the photos in this entry have been compiled over the last couple months (aka the long rains), but
there are quite a bit more here, which is a new site as I'm leaving yahoo behind and switching to google.
Tulifanya Kazi sana All of us at Roots & Shoots Dar es Salaam have been spending much of May preparing for World Environment Day (June 5) for which we organized a few fun events. Last weekend we planted mangrove trees at a nearby wetland area, and we've been making presentations at schools regarding a number of environmental topics. The students then took that information and designed original posters which were on display here at the JGI house/office for an educational fair and beach cleanup on the 2nd. All in all, we had few hundred kids here this morning!
Nimechoka sana As you can imagine, the last week or so has been very hectic planning for the event, printing a member newsletter for local clubs, and at the same time, finishing up a relatively sizable grant proposal due to a local foundation on June 1. But if that wasn't enough, as soon as our poster fair/beach cleanup ended, I was thrust on to center stage for a surprise going away luncheon. Fortunately, the stage was relinquished rather quickly. Within the hour Jane returned home to Dar for the first time since January.
I spent the rest of this evening (which has lasted until nearly 2a.m.) in a combination of relaxing, talking on the phone, visiting with friends, uploading photos from recent events as well as doing all those "last day on the job" kinds of things, like organizing and copying files. Tomorrow is a full day of errands getting ready for a very exciting month-plus of travel around East Africa. I don't want to spoil all the surprise of my next planned entry, but in a nutshell I'll be spending time on safari and camping trips with friends from home in the USA. We'll be visiting all
the classic spots - zanzibar, gombe (with jane), serengeti, ngorongoro, and more, then relocating to Uganda for the source of the Nile River and gorilla tracking before I settle in to another six-month volunteer stint working with Jane Goodall Institute in Uganda.
Looking Back I'm neither leaving East Africa nor JGI right now, I'm just going on a vacation here in Tanzania before starting back up in a neighboring country. Nonetheless, it is the end of a significant chunk of this journey, so I feel it's appropriate to look back a little bit. The last four-and-a-half months have been unbelievably full. I've started getting to know a brand new culture, started studying a new language, moved to a new city, work environment and community. At the same time, there have been plenty of "small world" connections to life back at home. Here I am in Tanzania and the parents of one of my recent house mates hail from the same small part of Northern Indiana as my mom - another house mate went to college with a grad school friend of mine - walking on the street one day, I ran into a Tanzanian friend who I went
to school with in Seattle in 2004 - I met a group of Berkeley students, one of whom went to camp guci near my hometown and knows people who went to Livingston (my old camp) - and perhaps the biggest one, I've been living in Jane Goodall's house this whole time and she's now a friend of mine! It may sound crazy, but these little connections have had an effect to make me feel not so far from home after all. Of course, my mobile phone and internet connection have helped with that, too!
Though I'm leaving Dar es Salaam, the Tanzania experience will continue on for another month and my work with JGI is far from over. But this is still the end of the second phase of my trip, so just looking back for keeping records:
Arrived in Dar - January 15th, 2007
Visits: Zanzibar, Amani Nature Preserve, Saadani National Park
Activities: Lots of work, lots of fun, Kiswahili, weekly basketball, yoga, running on the beach
Books: Angels and Demons, Brown
Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck
Dark Tower VI, King
Dark Tower VII, King
Prodigal Summer, Kingsolver
SUPER COLTS! Road to Championship,
book collection of Indianapolis Star Newspaper Articles
Inconvenient Truth, Gore
God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, Vonnegut
Kite Runner, Hosseini
In the Shadow of Man, Goodall (in the middle at present)
Movies: too many to recall thanks to black market DVD sales ... some favorites: Departed, Prestige, my superbowl dvd, good night and good luck, the namesake, good shepherd, and I'm hoping to catch a few of the summer blockbusters before too long.
Okay - more updates from the road later this month!
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Katie Trelstad
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From a fellow traveller
Say there D... thanks for the email you sent a few weeks ago, and finally a new blog update. I remember reading bloyour blog entry about you meeting Jane Goodall back when I was still in the US. That seems so long ago now. Time flies when you're having fun. Travis and I are here in Northeastern Thailand if you get a hankerin for a weekend trip. Come visit us! I hear flights are 6 hours from where you are. Peace brother.