Blogs from East, Tanzania, Africa - page 2

Wednesday September 12 Yesterday we crossed into Tanzania and with that, the six month mark. Conversations are starting to change their tune and focus more on what we'll be doing after this trip ends (oh, which looks like it'll be in Tunisia. Yay!). Some have jobs waiting for them, others will need to find work and a lucky few will continue to travel. For some time now, indeed since Ghana before Ben and Steph left, we have known that Suse was offered a trip through South America, beginning next September. It incorporates every country on the continent and obviously appealed to us for not only that reason, but because eight of us are interested and Suse would be taking us. I figure I'd find work for six months, go home to Oz for my cousin's wedding ... read more

We had to leave the hotel by 8.30am which we were really gutted about. We loved our time in Zanzibar especially in Nungwi where we had a chance to relax and get to know our group better. Plus it was really lovely not having to be on the truck at all over those days and just deciding what we wanted to do each day. We do love overlanding and know it is the best option for seeing Africa but it is nice just having time to ourselves and getting to relax. We had a couple of hours in Stone Town so Chris and I went to the internet café and then met Shaun and Sharon for lunch. Neither of us had a lot of shilling left so we went to the cheapest place we could find. ... read more

Today we had to get up at 4.00am as the plan was to drive for around 14 hours which would mean we would be able to skip out a day which had just been set aside for travelling, giving us an extra day in Zanzibar. Everyone got into the truck and fell asleep pretty quickly. The drive wasn’t too bumpy but it definitely wasn’t comfortable. We stopped along the way a couple of times for bush toilet breaks, basically heading out into the bushes and squatting! Everything was going accordingly until we were stopped by the Tanzanian authorities, pretty much they seen tourists and decided to try to blackmail us. They claimed that our driver and cook should have special permits to be able to work as they drove through Tanzania, our guide stated this had ... read more

There are moments in life sometimes where I need to stand back, realize what amazing blessings I have in my life. I (Lisa) have dreamt of this for so long, this dream of living and working in Africa. And here I am. I had prec-concieved notions and romanticized ideas of what it would look like. For some odd reason I thought it would be easy and fun all the time. I guess that's what I get for being an optimist. :) While there are definitley times where it is easy and fun, moments of difficulty, frustration and feelings of being uncomfortable occur more than I would like. It's the reality of living in a country different than my own. The language barrier is one of the biggest hinderances living here. For some reason it did not ... read more

I'll start by saying that this is probably the only day of the trip I would do differently if I had the chance to do it over. I was up at 5.45 to get the Dar Express bus from Moshi to Dar Es Salaam. The trip should take 7 hours, which would allow me to connect with the ferry to Zanzibar. Unfortunately what should have been a 7 hour trip turned into a 9 hour ride from hell stuck in a tiny seat. The main delays were caused by the Police, that stopped us every 75km or so to do some sort of bogus inspection along with a couple of stops in the middle of nowhere when the entire bus would empty out to water the trees. We eventually got into Dar at 4.00pm, tantalisingly close ... read more

We thought you might like the google map to Moshi, our home base for 3 weeks. If you zoom out just a little you'll see the Ngorongoron Crater and surrounding lakes and parks where we hope to safari (Swahili for travel). Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE ... read more

I thought I would give you a small look into some of the daily things I do, so you can have a better sense of how I spend my time here: Get up super early (6:30am) and sometimes go for a run on the beach. Breakfast which mainly consists of white bread, some form of egg, and jam that tastes like candy. For the past couple weeks we would have Swahili lessons a couple times a week in the morning for three hours. In the afternoon Njavwa and I (my placement partner) would meet with Mary (our supervisor) at her house or at a coffee shop travelling by bajaj and discuss/brainstorm our work. For two days of the week, Njavwa, Levi and I would go to the children's home which is about an hour and a ... read more