Thursday, July 20, 2006

Almost There

One more flight from the UK to Boston and we are home!!! So far everything seems on time. -JR

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

No News is Good News

We haven't left news in a while, but that's mostly because we have packed our days quite full (and lost a few entries to power failures and dropped connections). But no news is good news and we';ve been having a fabulous time. A brief recap.

Kidogo the hamster, five guides and most of our crew summited Kilimanjaro and stood atop Uhuru Peak at 19,500 feet above the Indian Ocean. We safely descended and gave Kidogo to our guide Living, who promised that he would use it to lift the tired spirits of Kili hikers for years to come. Our other gift to the local guides was to introduce them to the concept of Zombies, and thus our head guide Bruce very quickly became the Zombie King, wishing us to bed each night with the phrase "Sleep like Babies, wake like Zombies."

After a half day of washing up in Moshi, we headed out for a three day safari, which we paid for by selling Madison along the way to some locals. Some highlights of the safari included seeing gnu, dikdik, baboons, monkeys, hippos, baobobs, gazelle, zebra. lions, elephants, baby elephants, a Finnish guy, and way off in the distance what was either the elusive Black RHino or a rock. Nihal actually saw 6 or seven Black Rhinos along the way. Our safari included trips to Lake Manyara, Ngorogoro crater, and the Tarangire National Park. All told, a magnificient few days.

From there we headed to the beach where we had a chance to swim, walk, build sand castles, eat, snorkle, and sail on an old, traditional wooden dhow. We had a great time and after about 48 hours of paradise (which is about the time it takes for our boys to become bored of paradise) we headed south for Dar Es Salaam. We are now a few minutes from taking our final dalla-dalla ride to the Airport, and from there we head back to Boston, with just a few stops in South Africa and Britain. Other than that, pretty much a straight shot.

We've confirmed our flights and expect travel to go well. When we arrive in Boston, we'll be able to deliver 7 healthy, smelly boys with bags full of gifts, memories, and wretched smelling clothes.

To the parents in the house, Elsa and I are looking forward to delivering you your loved ones shortly.

Signing off from Africa,
Justin

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

back from kilimanjaro

We are all back and safe from trekking up kilimanjaro. We are exhausted and some of us are trying to get over tummy bugs but we had fun and stories will follow...
-Elsa

Thursday, July 06, 2006

Mramba

Hello again eager parents, friends, relatives, siblings, and creepy stalkers. I will begin on this entry with June 29, when we traveled from Moshi (a city we now think of as our home) to Mramba Primary School. We arrived at the school to a warm welcome from Mfanga and Laurent, a teacher and the principle, respectively. They gave us a wonderful tour of the school and delegated a task list. During the tour, we observed chalkboards with chemistry, math, English, and history scrawled across them. Surprisingly, many of us had just learned a large amount of the material in school that we saw here. The two best options for tasks included painting classrooms and building walls between classrooms. There were giant openings in the walls between classrooms, and classes were being disruptive of each other. After a quick lunch, we walked into town to buy paints, concrete, sand, and bricks. On the way back, we stopped at the local market to marvel at the cornucopia of passion fruit, bananas, jackfruit, and oranges. Later in the evening, we played an enjoyable game of DEMOCRAAAAZYYY. After a productive day coordinating our construction efforts, we retired to our sleeping bags.

We awoke early the next morning to the sound of Laurent’s cow mooing near the classroom we stayed in. Our strategy: divide and conquer. Some of us negotiated with the Foondies (skilled workers) about the price to build the walls, Max and Justin stayed behind as the “Domestic Operations Coordinators” for the day (fondly referred to as cooks and maids), and the construction team began to sand classroom 1. We had a total of five classrooms to paint, and we decided upon a sequence of chores:
1. Sand walls
2. Plaster holes in the wall
3. Sand again
4. Coat of Primer
5. Add 2-3 coats of white water-based paint
6. Add coat of cream oil paint that extended about 4 feet from the floor
7. Wait 10 hours (drying time)
8. Add second coat of cream oil paint
9. Wait 10 hours (drying time)
10. Add red oil paint band that extends up six inches from the floor
11. Wait 10 hours (drying time)
12. Add second red coat
13. Mop floors
14. Scrape paint off floors
15. Mop floors
After this simple list of tasks, a room was finished. We spread people out through all five rooms in order to maximize our time. Throughout the week, we divided into teams. Chris helped the bricklayers do heavy lifting, and he continued to sand once they were finished. The entire team worked on miscellaneous sections of sanding in addition to Chris. Justin was our plaster master. Seth, Madison, Nihal, Greg, and Pete spearheaded the white paint and primer effort. Max and Elsa covered the majority of oil painting. Unfortunately, Nat was feeling sick for the first few days, and remained resting. We figured it was better to be sick there than on Kilimanjaro. However, once he recovered he enthusiastically launched right into working with the rest of us. During down time, we also taught English classes. We introduced students to basic introductions and conversational hints. In an effort to teach body parts and professions, we had students sing the hokey-pokey and act out jobs and make us guess them.

The next five days progressed in a similar divide and conquer manner as we rotated in and out of being DOC’s. One night however, we got a marvelous surprise. We were invited to a wedding of a local couple. We were instructed to give small cash gifts, so after the ceremony we danced up the aisle as the band played, shook hands with the happy couple, and deposited our gifts. We proceeded to dance back down the aisle accompanied by many joyous wedding-goers. The “cake,” as they called it, was actually a spit-roasted goat. The other amazingly memorable nighttime experience included a large bonfire on July 4th. We sang the national anthem to a small audience, and explained American independence. Other nighttime experiences included a short walk to a good viewpoint of the town and Kilimanjaro as well as stargazing.

By July 5, we had completely finished four of the five classrooms, and the fifth was ready for oil paint. That was okay though, because two more full groups of world challengers from Newton North were coming through in the weeks to come. We returned to Moshi later that day after a deep thank you from Laurent to find many more westerners in the town. This helped with the distribution of pesky vendors, who by this time we had developed strategies to deal with anyway. We were amazingly grateful for the showers and laundry services we found in Moshi, our base camp.

Today, we organized our expedition up Kilimanjaro with Zara Tour Co, and booked our safari for R+R week. We also had some free time to wander the city and buy assorted goods. Kili was looming over us in the distance all day, like a precurser to our next seven days. We are all amazingly excited.

Still no casualties,
-Max and the Kilidogs

Quick word pre-kili

Hey Everyone, Elsa here. Things are hopping here in Moshi with lots of tourists around. This means that internet time is hard to come by. Max is going to try to find some moments to do a blog update on our last week working with the Mramba primary school, but we leave for Kilimanjaro in the morning so he may not have time...
hope all is well with everyone and I hope we have a sizable post on here before the night is out...

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Children Children EVERYWHERE

We have all been stunned by around 400 primary school children. We painted their classrooms, played football with them, and enjoyed their town. It was crazy. I've lost contact with the English language currently, so now Manks or some other team member has more to say on the whole trip status.

still no casualties,

-Keches

PS: We as campers are involved with a little thing known as swill. Swill is the residue at the bottom of your camp dishware when you have finished your camp meal. We are also familiar with the art of "drinking your swill." this is the process of mixing your residue with water and drinking it... so there is less to clean. i told you all this so i could quote J Reich.

"Drinking your swill is like watching the Highlights real, you get to experience the meal all over again."

That is all.

Back in Moshi

Greetings from the leader! Well, at this point I'm pretty much the old follower guy, but that is according to plan.

I'll let the boys give you all the whole story, but we are safely back in Moshi after a week of painting, brick wall building, English teaching, soccer playing, and featuring prominently in an African wedding.

We are all safe and healthy and looking forward to a day of rest before we make an attempt at kili. Thanks to all for comments and keeping in touch.

Best from Africa,
Justin