HomeSICK

It's finally catching up with me. I think I'm dying - not really, don't panic. Besides, just yesterday one of the CCS volunteers in the Moshi program fell off the top bunk and was safely med-evac-ed home, so I'm certain if my current fever and sore throat escalate, I'll be safe and sound in my own bed (wait, do I even have my own bed? I guess I mean Zoe's bed.) with Millie in no time.

The other most exciting stories:

1. A black kite (a large hawk/eagle/vulture-like African bird) swooped down while we were having lunch on safari yesterday and tried to steal Sanjay's sandwich. Luckily, Sanjay kept his sandwich, but he does have two large claw scratches on his arm from the scuffle. Of course, since then, rumor has spread among the volunteers about the incident. I believe the last I heard was that a pterodactyl bit him, that he overheated on safari and had to be med-evac-ed to Nairobi. Actually, that's a conglomeration of three exaggerated rumors - the black kite, the volunteer falling from her bunk and the overheating of our vehicle while we were on safari. (Yep, we were stuck for almost an hour, not really certain if we would ever actually leave Ngorongoro Crater while our guides poured water that exploded into steam on our 1,000,000-degree engine. More on that later . . .
2. Someone tried to mug Connie on the daladala (a small bus form of public transportation that generally holds about 30+ people with asphyxiating BO in a vehicle the size of a minivan). While two other volunteers exited the daladala (which Diane calls the dollydolly), a man held Connie by the arms and tried to rip off her hip-sack. Luckily, Nadia (a totally nice volunteer from the UK who works with Connie on her placement at Patandi School, a school for special needs students), hit the guy and Connie escaped without any losses other than her false sense of security. Connie's in her 60s, so I assume they thought she'd be an easy target. Little did they know who they were dealing with! She's one tough cookie.

Anyhow, since I last wrote, other than continuing to work at our placements, we've visited St. Lucia's Home for HIV/AIDS orphans and infected women, painted Shepherds Junior and went on a one-day safari to Ngorongoro.

At St. Lucia's, we played with the orphans, and visited the lone adult patient currently residing in the facility. She, I believe, was the saddest case of all, as she's laid on a mattress on the floor without speaking a single word for two years. As they described her situation, it was the first and only time I've been nearly moved to tears. Her husband abandoned her there and has since moved on, with her children (and likely her infection as well), to another wife. I have never been in the presence of someone so completely alone.

As we left, they shared some general information about the AIDS pandemic in Africa. The figure they shared was that in the small ward of Arusha they serve (called, I believe Mt. Meru or Moivaro), it is estimated that 32% of the adults are infected, and the number is rising despite their best efforts. (Of course, they said, the statistics are collected by multiple agencies without any clear central accountability or method, so there's really no telling.) While the Clinton Fund is currently providing free drugs to combat the disease, that funding is limited to two years, and they're not certain how they'll replace it. They said that the key reasons for the continued spread of the disease are shame, silence, and an unwillingness to even be diagnosed, a tradition of wife inheritance, especially among the Masai, which passes even the wives whose husbands have died of AIDS on to the husband's brothers, the continued practice of traditional medicine among practitioners who do not sterilize their instruments and equipment between patients (and, in many cases, who don't treat the disease but rather the "curse"), and religious rituals, like mass circumcision, which are practiced by using the same, uncleansed instrument on all participants.

On Friday afternoon, we also painted my school, Shepherds Junior. Nearly 20 volunteers went, plus Zungu, a local artist who works next door to our dormitory. On Friday morning, I asked him if he'd donate his time to help us that afternoon, and he agreed without hesitation. He's SO nice., and made our job SO much easier, since he helped us open the paint, mix it, you know, the stuff I'd have had no idea how to do. Instead of paint stirrers, he used sticks, instead of sandpaper, he used stones. He thinned all the paint, and walked with me to the local hardware store when we needed to procure additional supplies. Even the taxi driver who brought us there picked up a paint brush to help. It was awesome, and it turned out incredibly. On the outside, it's bright blue with bright red trim, and the three classrooms are light green, light blue and gold. I must admit, I was very proud to have organized the effort. I can't wait to see the kids faces when they return to find their formerly gray stucco classrooms newly brightened and glossy with a fresh coat of paint.

Zungu's even coming back with me this week while I paint so that he can add a mural to the front of the building. I can't wait! Even though he doesn't have much, he's SO generous with his time - he also teaches art, for free, to local children in his spare time. We learned that when our team of painters took him out to dinner at Big Bite after we were done renovating. The food was awesome (think Amber India in Mountain View awesome), and it was totally interesting to talk to him, too. He actually used to be a porter on Kiliminjaro before he became an artist, and he only completed primary school but speaks nearly impeccable English. Based on his Kili experience, he said that he had no doubt that Sanjay would make it to the top . . . but he wasn't so sure about me.

After our Big Bite feast, I immediately went to bed as we had to get up to leave for a 6am safari departure.

The next morning, we left in an I-just-know-this-thing-is-about-to-break-down-and-strand-us-in-BFE minivan. Beth and Tegan packed a TON of snacks (thank goodness) so we ate crackers, peanut butter and nutella the whole way. Jean also provided us with some seriously coveted M&Ms. As we drove, we shared our favorite Africa songs by passing around everyone's iPod. We listened to today's:

Songs of the Day

• Africa, by Toto - I know, I know, this was yesterday's song, too, but I probably listened to it 5 times yesterday, so I haven't managed to escape its grasp yet.
• Circle of Life, by Sir Elton John and from Disney's The Lion King. Actually, this song nearly makes me cry when I hear it and am driving through the edge of the Serengeti. How lucky can one girl be?
• Baba Yetu, which is the Swahili Our Father. I don't know who sings this, but Alex, a 19-year-old good Catholic boy from Canada, brought it and it is incredibly beautiful.
• Weeping, by Josh Groban with the South African group Ladysmith Black Mombazo. It's a song about apartheid.

Once we'd completed our nearly three-hour drive to Ngorongoro, which is a huge imploded crater in the earth in which alot of animals live, we stopped at the gate to use the restroom, pour water onto our already-nearly-overheated engine, and watch a troop of baboons steal lunches from the Range Rover parked beside our broken-down heap. Even the monkies knew which of us would have packed the superior lunch . . .

We continued our drive, and they opened the roof of the minivan for us to peer out at the multitude of cheetahs, waterbucks, elands, gazelles, impalas, zebras, lions, elephants, flamingos and birds of all shapes and sizes (the coolest one was the Sacred Ibis). Once we'd made about 1/2 of our trip around the massive crater floor, our vehicle, as suspected just gave out. We were stuck for about an hour, but eventually, after significant consternation and talk with our travel companion Jean about how she, as a Boulder park ranger, would have the skills and supplies to save us, the vehicle cooled down. Of course, the drivers were feverishly running back and forth to the nearest mud puddles to fetch the water with which to cool the engine.

After we continued, we stopped for a quick boxed lunch of a grated cheddar-like substance & butter on white bread sandwich with a bluish-colored hard-boiled egg and a green, flavorless orange. We drank black currant juice from boxes. Luckily, they included some sort of African Doritoes and hid two tiny candy bars at the bottom, which we each quickly gobbled up.

After lunch (which was at about 3:30), we started to drive from the crater and, because a rain shower was moving our direction, we started to get super cold. Tegan and Alex had to pee so bad, and I started to feel feverish, irritable and my throat was killing me. We drove with wind gusts of about 2-degrees and speeds of 1,000 mph for over an hour while I slowly felt sicker and sicker. I put on my bright pink raincoat to warm up, but to no avail. Finally, we reached the exit gate, and several of us literally raced to the bathroom.

The rest of the drive was extremely protracted as well, because they couldn't push the gas too hard for fear of us overheating again. It may have seemed even longer for Diane, Jean and Sanjay, as Beth, Tegan, Alex and I sang the entire way home without any accompaniment except for the iPods in our ears. They hated every single Jewel, Beach Boys, Billy Joel and Simon and Garfunkel song we massacred, but I actually think they liked our rousing rendition of today's final

Song of the Day:

• I Touch Myself, by the Divinyls, which seemed to be very well-received.

We also stopped on the side of the road for Tegan's pee-break as Maasai warriors wandered past and watched her in an area that had until that moment seemed entirely deserted.

As we drove into Arusha town, we begged to skip dinner, but our super-nice guide Naaz (a 22-year-old who's married to a former CCS volunteer) wouldn't allow it. He stopped and insisted, because of the vehicle problems, that he buy us each a dinner of fried chicken and chips (i.e., fries) at Steers, a local fast-food joint. The chicken had feathers all over, so I avoided it. The fries were good, though, and as I left the man cleaning our table said, "She likes fat, but not chicken." No shit, Sherlock.

Anyway, eventually, we got home. I've never been so grateful for a hard mattress on a bottom bunk in a room with water that runs only part of the time and is generally frigid, and supremely unreliable electricity that barely allows Sanjay to charge his camera. But last night I was grateful.

Actually, if I've learned anything at all here, it's really that we can subsist on so much less than we have . . .

I finally woke up, with a low temperature and a terribly sore throat at 2pm today. I didn't want to move, but I also didn't want to eat rice and beans for the 92nd time, so I left the dorm with Sanj and Diane. We walked through town, and, after I clumsily fell into a foot-deep hole on the sidewalk but completely avoided injury, we dined in style at Pepe's.

Pizza and Sprite has never tasted so good.

PS: Thanks for all the photos (especially you, Millie). In my current germ-ravaged state, I'm growing a little homesick, so every little bit helps . . . I'm hoping to recover by Saturday in time for our Kili climb. Sanjay is sick too ;(

PPS: Chooch, you are the cutest birthday boy ever!