On Saturday I decided that I had hung around Tanga long enough. It was time to venture out on my own and visit some old friends of mine that I hadn’t seen for a long time. For those of you who don’t know, I first came to Tanzania 4 years ago on a mission trip. Myself and 9 other Americans were stationed outside of Morogoro in the Uluguru Mountains with several Tanzanian college students as guides and translators. If you ever want to get to know someone VERY well, I highly recommend traveling to a developing country with them. You will learn more than you ever needed to know, and if you are still speaking to each other after the trip, you know your friendship will last through anything. We all had an amazing time together, and our translators became our close friends.
It was my experience 4 years ago that led me to where I am today…back in Tanzania. Not only did I leave Tanzania wanting to come back again someday, I left Tanzania knowing that I wanted to pursue a career in international development. When I got back to Texas A&M, I changed my major from International Studies to Agricultural Development. This may seem like an odd change, since I wanted to do international development, but if you want to work in developing countries where well over 50% of the workforce is employed in agriculture, it is a very good way to find a practical solution to 3rd World issues. Suddenly I discovered that I was not the first person to think this way and found myself surrounded with like-minded classmates at Texas A&M, along with a host of professors, organizations, and books on the topic. Don’t you hate it when you come up with an amazing, unique idea and find out that thousands of people have already been doing it for years? My brother, Paul, still holds fast to the belief that he invented the snowboard. Someone else just invented the snowboard also…and first.
Anyway, I have kept in contact with many of these Tanzanian friends and was excited to find that my friend Elisha still lives in Morogoro. He is working towards his Masters Degree at Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA). He welcomed me to visit this weekend, and I gladly accepted. Saturday morning, I took the daladala to the bus stand in Tanga and found a bus leaving almost immediately for Morogoro. The bus ride took nearly 6 hours and as I neared Morogoro, the mountains rose in front of me. I must had looked like a lunatic, sitting alone on the bus with a huge smile plastered on my face. I made it to Morogoro’s city center where I had agreed to meet Elisha. I waited and then started talking to a young man who was using me to practice his English. Suddenly I felt a hand on my elbow and heard someone behind me yell “Elisha is here!” I can’t tell you how ecstatic I was to see him after all this time! He took me to get some lunch and we mostly just stared at each other and said “I can’t believe you are here!” While I have wanted to return to Morogoro for 4 years, the fact that I actually had was a little unbelievable. Elisha informed me that he had arranged for me to stay in a dorm at SUA, we were going there to meet some of his friends, and then there was a going away party for some international students from Austria and Norway who had been studying at SUA for the semester. I had only been there a few hours and I already had several new friends and was hanging out at a party where everyone spoke English. Then I remembered what I happened to read on the internet that morning about the bombing and shooting in Norway. The group of five from Norway were obviously really anxious to be home with their families after what had happened. Two of the girls knew several people who had been at the youth camp, so far they had only received good news about their friends, though one was in the hospital, undergoing surgery. My heart went out to them as I can’t imagine being away from your home when you receive news like that. Keep them in your thoughts and prayers as they finish their final exams and head back to their homes.
After the party we headed to the dorms where I was introduced to my new roommates, three welcoming girls who took great care of me, even heating water for me in the morning for a hot shower. While the dorms at SUA are really nice, there is still no hot water. Although I am used to taking cold showers, the water in Morogoro must be refrigerated. It is absolutely frigid. Since I only had a bucket full of boiling water and no cup, I decided I would take a normal shower, then use the hot water to pull myself out a near hypothermic state. It worked and I have never been happier to have hot water in my life.
Sunday morning Elisha and I headed to a church in Morogoro where we sat next to two girls from America who are teaching at a primary school in Morogoro. They got to Tanzania about 2 weeks ago and are loving it. After church Elisha and I went to get lunch and walk around Morogoro for a while while I tried to get my bearings. Surprisingly, while some things about the city are the same, a lot has changed if 4 years and Morogoro seems to have grown drastically from what I remember. We walked a long way through the market, streets, and up towards the mountains. We were reminiscing about events and people and I asked if he knew what had happened to Agripina, one of our translators. Agripina isn’t on Facebook, and I had completely lost contact with her. Elisha updated me to the best of knowledge, knowing she had gotten married, but didn’t know where she was now. He said “hang on, let me make a phone call.” And a few minutes later, we were walking to her home, only a couple of kilometers from where we already were. We met her and her husband Samweli at their home and talked for a long time about the fun we had on the mountain. Agripina was more than a little surprised to see me, since she had no idea I was even on the continent, let alone in her neighborhood! Agripina and Samweli are both teachers at secondary schools in Morogoro. Samweli wanted to know a lot about my work with 4H and is hoping to use 4H programs or start a 4H club for young women entrepreneurs that he works with. It was great getting to use my knowledge and explain what 4H programs are available in his area!
After talked for a long time, we all walked back into the city where Samweli was meeting with an American who is working on building wells in villages up in the mountains. I know I have said it before, but one of my favorite parts of traveling is meeting all of the fascinating people who are giving their time in such unique ways. It never fails that when I am traveling I meet at least one person like this. After meeting with him, Elisha and I headed back to campus to get dinner at the faculty restaurant. We picked up one of Elisha’s roommates along the way and when we got to the restaurant we were met with more friends of Elisha who we joined for dinner. There ended up being 6 of us eating together and we sat, ate, and talked for hours. I had so much fun getting to know these students who were all studying different fields of agriculture and doing research in various areas of Tanzania.
I was going to head back to Tanga on Monday morning; however with a little convincing (it didn’t take much) I decided to stick around for another day in order to hike to the village of Mbete, the village I was working in 4 years ago. When Elisha and I started driving from SUA to the base of the mountains, we passed a sign with a picture that looked like a rat sniffing a bomb. Elisha asked if I knew what it was and when I said no, he explained: this is a lab where they train rats to sniff out old minefields and dig up the mines.
For those for you who have never heard of this, yes, I am serious. Coincidentally, my mom read an article about this project before I came to Tanzania, I just didn’t know that it was based at SUA. Elisha said that we could take a tour if I was at all interested. Of course, I was. In fact, I think he was a little taken aback by how excited I actually was about this! We pulled into the parking lot and just walked up to the buildings; the men working there were very welcoming and didn’t hesitate to show us around. In case you are like me and were envisioning little white lab rats, let me relay another story to you from when Collin and I were in Zanzibar, two months ago:
We went to an aquarium where you could pay a little and then learn about sea turtles, feed them, and even hold the small ones. After we took a million pictures of ourselves with the adorable sea turtles, we were shown to the less adorable creatures that inhabit the aquarium: Two cages, each holding pythons. I’m not one of those people who do a frightened snake dance when they come upon a snake, but I’m not a fan of them either. And these massive pythons looked like they could devour me for afternoon tea (assuming snakes have afternoon tea). So I was surprised when our guide told us that they feed each snake one rat every two weeks. I said that didn’t seem like much, they must be big rats. He said they were just normal sized rats…and held his hands about two feet apart to show just how normal sized they are.
The rats here more resemble opossums than my idea of a rat. But anyway, we were shown to where the rats are kept and we got to hold them! Then they took us to where they train the rats to identify the scent of explosives. They basically use Pavlov’s method. When the rat has correctly identified a positive sample, the trainer makes a clicking noise and then gives a piece of food, or some mashed banana. After they have been trained to identify the smell, they are taken to a dirt area where samples are in the ground and they have to dig them up. There is a minefield for training near the area for the final step of the training. After they have been trained, the rats are mostly transported to Mozambique where there are many unidentified landmines. People can also send soil samples to the lab so the rats can identify if there are explosives in that area. Even more amazing is that the rats can also be trained to detect other smells. For example, they can detect tuberculosis. To date, rats have detected 716 cases of TB that were otherwise missed by lab tests. Totally amazing. I cannot wait to see what these rats can do next!
If you want to learn more about this project, they have a fantastic website: www.apopo.org
After this surprise visit, we continued on our way to the Uluguru Mountains. After we parked in an obliging man’s yard, we began our hike and I was reminded of the mantra my friend Kara and I used when we were hiking to the camp, “It’s only twenty minutes, it’s only twenty minutes, one foot in front of the other, it’s only twenty minutes…” Except I don’t think we ever made it to the camp in anything close to twenty minutes. Once we reach Bahati Camp, we rested for a little bit and I took pictures before we headed on to Mbete. These mountains are the most beautiful place I have ever been. Between the tropical foliage, the mountains, and the rivers and waterfalls, it is impossible to not love the area.
We headed farther up the mountain to the village of Mbete, where I was hoping to be able to see my old friend, Abdullah. Fortunately for me, he happened to be home when I arrived and he remembered me as well. After hugs, we sat and talked on his from porch as we had so many times before, four years ago. After we caught up with how his family is doing and my work in Tanzania, we walked down to the new guest house that was built on the way up to Mbete to get some soda and enjoy each others company a little longer.
We reluctantly headed down the mountain and back to SUA for dinner with Elisha’s sister, then bed, then Elisha took me to the bus stand the next morning for the 6 hour ride back to Tanga. Overall it was a WONDERFUL trip and I cannot wait to make it again!
Whew! Ok, now for my 4H work: we are in full swing here at the 4H Center in preparation for the Take a Lead Conference that starts next week. I am honored to be a participant in the conference as one of five delegates from the US. There will be about 50 delegates in all from Finland, Austria, Canada, America, Gambia, Liberia, Kenya, Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Namibia, Malawi, and Zambia! The conference is two weeks long and includes several days of home-stay visits to clubs around this area. This is the third year for the conference and the focus is on volunteers this year. Many of the participants work for 4H Organizations, some work for other youth development related organizations. The conference is held here and most of the delegates will be staying here at the hostel with me. I can’t wait to see who I meet and what all I learn! I know that this will be a great experience and will add to my work for the Global 4-H Network! I will try to update everyone half way through the conference, but the schedule is packed with activities, so it may be two weeks before you hear from me again, with the longest blog post ever. Expect lots of pictures and stories.
And for pictures of Morogoro, Mbete, and explosive detecting rats, look on Facebook, or click here!
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