I will admit that I have truly been spoiled since my parents arrived. I have taken some time off from the Baby Home while they are here (although we will go to hang out for a few hours every day). I have also been staying with them at the hotel. You can’t imagine what a luxury this is for me now. I have a hot shower every morning, a beautiful flat screen TV that plays more than the African Christian network, constant electricity (the hotel has a huge generator), air conditioning (so I don’t sweat through my pjs at night), a gorgeous swimming pool and best of all, wireless internet. When I go back to living at the Volunteer House on Monday after my parents leave I will have to adjust to living in Africa all over again. But my parents topped everything else that I have enjoyed during this trip (minus their wonderful company of course) with the safari of a lifetime.
Early Monday morning we took off with our safari guide heading toward the Serengeti. After a two-hour ride to the gate of the park we started our African adventure. It wasn’t even 10 minutes into the park before we spotted our first bits of wildlife: zebras and gazelles. We quickly discovered that the grazing animals are everywhere and there are tons of them. We also saw antelope, waterbucks, duiker, topi, giraffe, wildebeest, elephants, water buffalo, and impala. What was amazing about these animals was either their size (I have always felt short, but looking at a giraffe made me feel shorter than ever before) or their numbers. There were so many zebra everywhere; the size of the herds was amazing and unbelievably beautiful with all of the intermingled stripes.
The first bit of extreme excitement came at lunchtime. We were eating our boxed lunches with our safari guide, Kupama, at a park rest area when my dad spotted something moving across a nearby field. He said “It looks like there is a lion over there,” so we all looked and sure enough there was a lioness walking through the tall grass about 200 yards away. Of course, my mom and I started to run toward the Land Cruiser to get our cameras. Thank goodness Kupama was thinking straight and brought us back to reality; he quickly said “We get in the car now.” He was the only one to realize that we weren’t in the safest position out in the open with lions so close. So we hurriedly packed up our lunches and headed off to get our pictures. We found three lionesses lounging in the shade of a tree in the field. To my delight they had a cub with them as well (although he wasn’t that young, maybe a month or two old). We were in awe for about 20 minutes before moving on.
Our next exciting stop was at the watering hole where we saw a swarm of huge crocodiles. I honestly can’t believe how big they are. The amazing part was that they were feeding. Although we didn’t see the kill, we saw them ripping apart a zebra carcass. The head of the zebra was the only part that we could really make out anymore. It was a feeding frenzy in the water, which was unbelievable to see. A crocodile would grab onto a piece of the zebra flesh and then quickly roll over about 5 times in the water (popping their big white bellies up into the air) to rip the piece off. After the flesh was free, they would throw back their head (snout up in the air) and swallow the piece in two quick chomps. It was horrific and beautiful all at the same time.
Probably one of the funniest things that we saw was also on the first day. We found a huge herd of elephants. I couldn’t believe how many there were, possibly 200. Right at the front of the group we saw a large male attempting to mount a female elephant. It didn’t last long because the female ran away, but the male continued to pursue her and mounted again. The most hilarious part of it was they were doing it right in front of a little baby elephant. I got the most amazing picture of it ever! If you would like to the see photos from my safari you can check them out on my facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=204280&id=505738097&l=37f31770ba.
The second day of our safari was just as exciting as the first. We drove right though the wildebeest migration. I cannot express what it is like to see wildebeests for as far as the eye can see. I believe there are 1 million wildebeests in the migration. We attempted to capture in effect in photos, but they really don’t do the sight justice. It was amazing. On top of that it is baby wildebeest season. Apparently all of the females are calving, so there was baby wildebeest everywhere. They were so cute, which is kind of amazing because the adults are so ugly. The mothers seem to stick together, most likely for protection from predators.
Our safari was 4 days and 3 nights. We drove across the entire Serengeti to reach the Ngorongoro Crater, which is known for its large population of predators. The Serengeti and Ngorongoro were both beautiful landscapes. I expected that the Serengeti would be all savanna and plains, but the landscape changed around every bend of the road. We passed through rolling hills, mountains, plains, and woodlands. The plains were unbelievable because it was just grasslands for as far as the eye could see. Ngorongoro Crater passed all my expectations. We stayed in a lodge on the rim of the crater. It was a breathtaking view of the steep jungle-like slopes that ended in grasslands all the way across the Crater. In the middle was a very large salt lake that had thousands of pink flamingos around the edge. If you ever go on safari in Africa it is a must-see.
I could probably write 10 pages about our safari and all that we saw, but I unfortunately have tons of homework that I have to do and I’m way behind on. If you have any questions about the photos or my safari feel free to comment or email me.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Saturday, February 13, 2010
11 February 2010
Guest post by Bernie (Emily has a paper due!)
Well, we have arrived here in Tanzania; a very anxious Emily met us at the airport. She looked really good, nice and tan and ready to show us around Mwanza. We were immediately surprised with her knowledge of Swahili! We were even more surprised when a cabby who knew her by name approached her. “Emily, Emily, do you need a ride.” It turns out that Castro had become Emily’s favorite cab driver in the little while she has been here. A very generous tourist helped Castro purchase a car so that he could start his own taxi service and thus better support his wife and new twin boys! Anyway, back to Emily! Emily has carefully planned our visit with her and we even have an itinerary to follow (she was just a little anxious for us to come). First order of business was to get checked in to our hotel. The Ryan’s Bay Hotel is located right on Lake Victoria, the largest lake in all of Africa and the second largest lake in the world. We were very happy with our room and the lake view. We have a beautiful pool and a nice restaurant right at the hotel. Since it is about 85-90 degrees by the middle of the afternoon, the pool will come in handy.
All our flights went really well, if any of you ever get the chance to fly Emirates Airlines, please do, it was wonderful. Hot towels to freshen up with, complimentary refreshment bags with toothpaste, toothbrush and other little goodies and your very own 10” television with an endless array of movies, television shows and music at your fingertips! The only disappointment was that the food wasn’t much better than any other airline, but it didn’t cost extra, like U.S. airlines do now. Oh, and the combined twenty-one hours of flying time wasn’t that bad, the movies helped a lot!
This part of Africa is very lush and green (this time of year anyway), flying in you see farm after farm. Mwanza itself looks quite poor, lots of half finished construction and run-down buildings. The people are very friendly though and eager to be of service if you can get through the language barrier. Most of them speak some English, thank goodness!
Our next order of business on Emily’s itinerary was a visit to the Baby Home. We went just after lunch and after a tour of the home we went outside and played with the big toddlers. Just so you know, at the baby home the babies are put into categories. There are tiny babies, big babies, little toddlers and big toddlers. There were about twenty-five toddlers outside playing under a large tree. They immediately came running over to see us. Several of them were saying “Mama Emily, Mama Emily”. It amazed us how they wanted us to pick them up and hold them. No shyness at all. They are really all so beautiful. We played with them for a couple of hours, until it was time for them to go in and have dinner. The baby home runs like a well-greased clock. Every minute of the day is thoughtfully planned and thus everything seems to run pretty smoothly. Don’t get me wrong though, there is still at least one baby crying at any given moment. But it really seems like a very happy place for these innocent babies that have suffered so much misfortune in their short little lives.
Well, we have arrived here in Tanzania; a very anxious Emily met us at the airport. She looked really good, nice and tan and ready to show us around Mwanza. We were immediately surprised with her knowledge of Swahili! We were even more surprised when a cabby who knew her by name approached her. “Emily, Emily, do you need a ride.” It turns out that Castro had become Emily’s favorite cab driver in the little while she has been here. A very generous tourist helped Castro purchase a car so that he could start his own taxi service and thus better support his wife and new twin boys! Anyway, back to Emily! Emily has carefully planned our visit with her and we even have an itinerary to follow (she was just a little anxious for us to come). First order of business was to get checked in to our hotel. The Ryan’s Bay Hotel is located right on Lake Victoria, the largest lake in all of Africa and the second largest lake in the world. We were very happy with our room and the lake view. We have a beautiful pool and a nice restaurant right at the hotel. Since it is about 85-90 degrees by the middle of the afternoon, the pool will come in handy.
All our flights went really well, if any of you ever get the chance to fly Emirates Airlines, please do, it was wonderful. Hot towels to freshen up with, complimentary refreshment bags with toothpaste, toothbrush and other little goodies and your very own 10” television with an endless array of movies, television shows and music at your fingertips! The only disappointment was that the food wasn’t much better than any other airline, but it didn’t cost extra, like U.S. airlines do now. Oh, and the combined twenty-one hours of flying time wasn’t that bad, the movies helped a lot!
This part of Africa is very lush and green (this time of year anyway), flying in you see farm after farm. Mwanza itself looks quite poor, lots of half finished construction and run-down buildings. The people are very friendly though and eager to be of service if you can get through the language barrier. Most of them speak some English, thank goodness!
Our next order of business on Emily’s itinerary was a visit to the Baby Home. We went just after lunch and after a tour of the home we went outside and played with the big toddlers. Just so you know, at the baby home the babies are put into categories. There are tiny babies, big babies, little toddlers and big toddlers. There were about twenty-five toddlers outside playing under a large tree. They immediately came running over to see us. Several of them were saying “Mama Emily, Mama Emily”. It amazed us how they wanted us to pick them up and hold them. No shyness at all. They are really all so beautiful. We played with them for a couple of hours, until it was time for them to go in and have dinner. The baby home runs like a well-greased clock. Every minute of the day is thoughtfully planned and thus everything seems to run pretty smoothly. Don’t get me wrong though, there is still at least one baby crying at any given moment. But it really seems like a very happy place for these innocent babies that have suffered so much misfortune in their short little lives.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
3 February 2010
It surprises me that it has taken me this long to write about the Mosque Man. Down the road from my house by the market we have a local mosque. It is actually quite cool because the imam broadcasts all his calls to prayer over loud speakers so the entire neighborhood can hear it. The problem is that the morning call to pray usually begins at about 4:30am! The stupid loud speaker wakes me up every morning. But that isn’t even the worst part; the prayer usually lasts until about 6:30am. Two whole hours of prayer that doesn’t even make sense to anyone here because it is in Arabic. The prayer also includes what I believe is singing but sounds more like moaning and grunting for about 30 minutes. I hope that everyone understands that I respect all religions and their right to practice, but after the first week of waking up every morning at 4:30 the situation becomes quite frustrating. Thus my housemates and I have started calling the imam “Mosque Man” whenever we discuss our lack of sleep. I suppose giving him a nickname may be a bit rude, but it is quite cathartic. It is better than our other discussions of how to solve the Mosque Man problem, which involve disconnecting the electricity to the mosque so he simply cannot broadcast it in the morning. One morning the power did actually go out during the prayer to my relief, but unfortunately came on again about 20 minutes later so the prayer continued. From what I understood about Islam and their five daily calls to pray, they are each supposed to last less than 10 minutes (but correct me if I am wrong it may be longer), so it makes me wonder how this short process is elongated into a two-hour session. I guess all I can really do is either hope to sleep through it or learn to live with it.
When spending time at the Baby Home simply observing the daily routine between the Mama and the children it is amazing to find how smoothly things actually run. Every minute of the children’s day is scheduled into a neat and repetitive routine, so that the staff know exactly what they are supposed to be doing. On a good day it doesn’t even seem like the volunteers are needed because the Baby Home makes sure to employ enough staff to complete all the necessary tasks, therefore volunteers are simply extra helpers. We seem to be more a form of entertainment and distraction than required help. Being at an orphanage that runs so well and has so much help sometimes makes me wonder if I am actually more needed somewhere else. Yesterday I was reminded why we are needed here. I was discussing the youngest babies, a set of twin Shalom and Charles, with Amy, who is the director of the Baby Home. Shalom (girl) and Charles are 3 months old now, but came to the Baby Home at 1 month. The twins’ family went to Social Welfare out of concern for the children because the mother had left home, leaving the babies with their old grandparents. The family is incredibly poor and was unable to buy proper baby food, so they had been feeding the babies whatever they had around at the time, mostly tea with a few odd bits of fish and potatoes! As you can imagine the babies were not doing well on such a diet. The grandparents were sent to the Baby Home, but Amy said she could not take any more babies because we already had 53 (which was 3 over their legal limit of 50). She went to the home with the family, bringing milk, bottles, and tablets to sanitize believing that she could simply teach the grandparents how to care for the twins properly. Upon seeing the home and the twins Amy realized that she had no choice, the babies would die if they did not come to the Baby Home. The house was filthy having no sanitation or running water, there wasn’t even a place clean enough to make a sterile bottle. The twins were in an even worse condition, at a month old each weighted about 2lbs (from what I heard they were a heartbreaking sight). Amy decided to take the babies home with her limit or not because they were not going to survive there much longer. Now they are doing much better. Shalom is quite a bit bigger than her brother, Charles, but they are both over 9lbs. Unfortunately the situation is still quite difficult with the family because the agreement with the family when the twins arrived was that they should go home when they reach 7lbs because we were at capacity. This issue of going home needs to be addressed within the next week, either the grandparents can take them home and try to care for the twins or they can relinquish their rights and make them available for adoption. Either way I hope they continue to be happy and health because they are truly beautiful and sweet babies, but I would rather they don’t leave the Baby Home. Every time I am on the early morning shift I sneak away into the Tiny Babies House for 9:30am so that I can give Shalom her bottle. I love feeding her because it gives me a break from the noise and chaos of the older children, and she always falls asleep in my arms right at the end of her bottle.
Hearing a story like Shalom and Charles reminds me how important it is to have a place like the Baby Home. There is one other orphanage in the area that accepts young babies, since the Baby Home was opened about 3 years ago they had not received any new babies. Now that we are at capacity they have started receiving babies again, and unfortunately are not doing very well. They have had 7 babies die in the last three months, and their justification is that they are too small (2lbs). But as seen with Shalom and Charles just because they are 2lbs doesn’t mean they are necessarily going to die. They need the proper love and care, and this is what the Baby Home provides. The volunteers make it possible because provide all of the funding with our rent and fundraisers. Amy also explained to me why she decided to open a Baby Home in Mwanza. A few years ago (before the Baby Home was opened) when a new baby’s mother died or couldn’t care for the child they simply lived at the hospital until they are 2 or 3 years old when they were old enough to go to an orphanage. The problem is that the hospital does not have any system at all. They children are often just forgot about. They stay in the nurses’ station or linen closet and get spare bits of food or milk whenever there is some. If they are really lucky when a new mother is in the hospital nursing her own baby she will also feed some of the other babies that are just lying around. It boggles my mind that it is possible to just put a child aside like that, but it happens all the time here. The Baby Home is a necessity for these children to survive, and as a volunteer I am helping make that possible. I guess because I see the effects of the Home on daily basis (50 happy and healthy kids) it is easy to forget what it would be like without it. To remind myself how we have helped these kids I simply look at the arrival pictures. It’s hard to believe that some of the fattest kids at the orphanage (Musa and Adamu) were so skinny when they arrived. I guess I am needed here.
When spending time at the Baby Home simply observing the daily routine between the Mama and the children it is amazing to find how smoothly things actually run. Every minute of the children’s day is scheduled into a neat and repetitive routine, so that the staff know exactly what they are supposed to be doing. On a good day it doesn’t even seem like the volunteers are needed because the Baby Home makes sure to employ enough staff to complete all the necessary tasks, therefore volunteers are simply extra helpers. We seem to be more a form of entertainment and distraction than required help. Being at an orphanage that runs so well and has so much help sometimes makes me wonder if I am actually more needed somewhere else. Yesterday I was reminded why we are needed here. I was discussing the youngest babies, a set of twin Shalom and Charles, with Amy, who is the director of the Baby Home. Shalom (girl) and Charles are 3 months old now, but came to the Baby Home at 1 month. The twins’ family went to Social Welfare out of concern for the children because the mother had left home, leaving the babies with their old grandparents. The family is incredibly poor and was unable to buy proper baby food, so they had been feeding the babies whatever they had around at the time, mostly tea with a few odd bits of fish and potatoes! As you can imagine the babies were not doing well on such a diet. The grandparents were sent to the Baby Home, but Amy said she could not take any more babies because we already had 53 (which was 3 over their legal limit of 50). She went to the home with the family, bringing milk, bottles, and tablets to sanitize believing that she could simply teach the grandparents how to care for the twins properly. Upon seeing the home and the twins Amy realized that she had no choice, the babies would die if they did not come to the Baby Home. The house was filthy having no sanitation or running water, there wasn’t even a place clean enough to make a sterile bottle. The twins were in an even worse condition, at a month old each weighted about 2lbs (from what I heard they were a heartbreaking sight). Amy decided to take the babies home with her limit or not because they were not going to survive there much longer. Now they are doing much better. Shalom is quite a bit bigger than her brother, Charles, but they are both over 9lbs. Unfortunately the situation is still quite difficult with the family because the agreement with the family when the twins arrived was that they should go home when they reach 7lbs because we were at capacity. This issue of going home needs to be addressed within the next week, either the grandparents can take them home and try to care for the twins or they can relinquish their rights and make them available for adoption. Either way I hope they continue to be happy and health because they are truly beautiful and sweet babies, but I would rather they don’t leave the Baby Home. Every time I am on the early morning shift I sneak away into the Tiny Babies House for 9:30am so that I can give Shalom her bottle. I love feeding her because it gives me a break from the noise and chaos of the older children, and she always falls asleep in my arms right at the end of her bottle.
Hearing a story like Shalom and Charles reminds me how important it is to have a place like the Baby Home. There is one other orphanage in the area that accepts young babies, since the Baby Home was opened about 3 years ago they had not received any new babies. Now that we are at capacity they have started receiving babies again, and unfortunately are not doing very well. They have had 7 babies die in the last three months, and their justification is that they are too small (2lbs). But as seen with Shalom and Charles just because they are 2lbs doesn’t mean they are necessarily going to die. They need the proper love and care, and this is what the Baby Home provides. The volunteers make it possible because provide all of the funding with our rent and fundraisers. Amy also explained to me why she decided to open a Baby Home in Mwanza. A few years ago (before the Baby Home was opened) when a new baby’s mother died or couldn’t care for the child they simply lived at the hospital until they are 2 or 3 years old when they were old enough to go to an orphanage. The problem is that the hospital does not have any system at all. They children are often just forgot about. They stay in the nurses’ station or linen closet and get spare bits of food or milk whenever there is some. If they are really lucky when a new mother is in the hospital nursing her own baby she will also feed some of the other babies that are just lying around. It boggles my mind that it is possible to just put a child aside like that, but it happens all the time here. The Baby Home is a necessity for these children to survive, and as a volunteer I am helping make that possible. I guess because I see the effects of the Home on daily basis (50 happy and healthy kids) it is easy to forget what it would be like without it. To remind myself how we have helped these kids I simply look at the arrival pictures. It’s hard to believe that some of the fattest kids at the orphanage (Musa and Adamu) were so skinny when they arrived. I guess I am needed here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
