Home Sweet Kitale Town.

We are back at the old stomping grounds of 2 years ago, finally.

Zanzibar was amazing. Amazingly beautiful and amazingly humid. We stayed at a little hostel in Nungwi, on the northern tip of the island. I'm not sure I've ever been anywhere so hot. You could be sitting in the shade not moving at all and still have sweat streaming down your face. Not my cup of tea, but bearable when the Indian Ocean is accessible.

On Saturday night we roamed around Stone Town (central hub of Zanzibar) for a few hours which was so reminiscent of India. About 90% of the island's population is Muslim, with a lot of Indian immigrants and influence.


We bought cheap bananas and drank ginger coffee and chatted with some locals before getting on the overnight ferry back to the mainland. Ina slept the whole time; I woke up at 3am to the boat swaying quite intensely and the sound of about 10 people vomiting. Lovely. We arrived back in Dar Es Salaam by 6am, and hopped in a taxi which ran about 8 red lights to get us onto the bus to Nairobi by 6.15.

On the bus, eating a Tanzanian delicacy known as "Chips Mayai" (pronounced 'my eye'), which is, literally, an omelet with french fries it. Particularly tasty when consumed from a black plastic bag.

The bus ride took 16 sweaty hours, which was a test in perseverance after spending the entire night before on a crowded ferry. A plus was being charged $25 LESS than expected for our Kenyan visas. Since when does THAT happen, in one of the most corrupt countries in Africa?!

We arrived in Nairobi and decided to stay put for an extra day, take in the big city, and get our highly-anticipated hot showers, which were unattainable when we first arrived thanks to a city-wide power outage and the wells not being able to pump (classic Nairobi). We also visited a large AIDS home that has a 70% HIV reversal rate -- one of the highest Africa. (HIV reversal is when a child is born with or tests positive for HIV but after a particular amount of treatment, starts testing negative. VERY interesting and exciting stuff.)

I will admit, we also stayed in Nairobi an extra day so I could eat a proper Mexican burrito at a Westernized restaurant. Glorious.



Yesterday we got on a shuttle for a final 7 hours of travel to dear old Kitale Town. To our surprise and delight, the roads on the first 5 hours of the journey have been repaved... between that and a cheap visa, we're starting to wonder what's going on in Kenya!

Train Travel.

Our table, with all the necessities: Water, TP, malaria meds, raisins, a mobile, Tennis biscuits, and nail polish.

Awesome! Sheets with complimentary blood stains on them!



Ina from the top bunk.

Crossing the border into Tanzania.

Leaving Dar For Zanzibar.

Greetings from extremely hot and humid Dar Es Salaam!
We arrived last night. The train ride was a generally positive experience. The main good thing is that we got to Dar in less than 50 hours. The other good thing was getting to see everything along the way. We passed through a game park yesterday and saw impalas, elephants, and a giraffe! Who needs a safari when you've got the train??

The not so great things:
- Large blood stains on my sheets. MMhmmm.
- Spending the evenings with cockroaches who live on the walls next to your bed.
- Being completely and utterly ripped off at the border.

2 minutes before the Tanzanian border, money changers get on and you change all your Zambian Kwacha to Tanzanian Shillings, which we did. 2 minutes after the border, the passport officials get on and tell you the visa is $50 for Europeans, $100 FOR US CITIZENS, and can only be paid in US dollars or Euros. Let me begin by saying, we've read every travel book and website on our required visas and none are supposed to cost more than $50, regardless of citizenship. Let me also say (mostly to the border guards, because I'm pretty sure everyone else knows this about me) that just because I am an American, I do not carry hundreds of dollars in US currency around with me whilst traveling in Africa.

They had "insisted" we pay in US dollars at the Zambian border too, but eventually caved and let us pay in Kwacha as it was all we had. The Tanzanian border guards, however, quickly called in a money changer with US currency who charged us about 30% interest. We ended up spending every last bloody shilling on the visas. It was that or get kicked off the train at the Zambian border. Ahhhh, African corruption at its finest. I tried my best to shower the border guard with stinging, guilt-tripping comments about how we would now starve to death on the train days as he'd robbed of us all our money and would be held fully accountable.

All I can say is, thank goodness for peanuts and Europeans. Before we went bankrupt, Ina bought an enormous bag of raw, unshelled peanuts from a vendor outside the train window for somewhere around 30 cents, and we proceeded to eat these for the next 3 days. There was also a very sweet German girl sharing our cabin, along with a Norwegian couple and a British/Kiwi couple who shared their bread with us and occasionally a slice of gloriously nutricious tomato. We are forever endebted.

We stayed at the Dar Es Salam YMCA last night, which here seems to stand for You May [Hear] Construction [Noise] Allnightlong. After 2 nights on a lurching and rolling train though, it felt so good to be still. At 4am we were woken by the mosque call nearby. I am trying really hard to be tolerant but any religion that requires not only its followers but every single person within a 20 mile radius to be woken at such an ungodly hour by such an.... INTERESTING noise is going to have a hard time converting me. The joys of staying in a Muslim area. We walked around for a while last night and Dar seems to be quite modern and mixed. It feels a bit like India with a lot of rubbish everywhere and even tuk tuks. In between all the high-rises, there's white sand and palm trees, and the humidity is mind-blowing.

Now we're off to try and sort out bus tickets to Nairobi, before catching the ferry to Zanzibar for the weekend. It's supposedly a very touristy and expensive place, but for once I'm a bit excited to head to a more mainstream location in hopes of finding something to eat besides white bread, peanuts, rice and cabbage, which I'm pretty sure is all we've had for the last 3 weeks.

Also, a word of praise about showers. When you've been having bucket baths or living on a train for many weeks combined, there is nothing comparable to soap and a shower, even if it is freezing. We were a bit hesitant to shower on the train because when you brush your teeth and wash your face, the water you wash your face with looks like the water you just brushed your teeth with. Or water from somewhere else.

But anyway. Bye for now and love to all of you!

Leaving on a Slow Train.

Yesterday we said goodbye to Eden Farm and the treacherous roads of Chingola and headed to Ndola. It's weird how hard goodbyes can be when you've only been somewhere for a week.

On Saturday we were in town picking up some things at the market when a street girl walked over, begging for money. Street boys are all over the place in Chingola but girls are much rarer. We gave her some peanuts and talked for a while; found out her name was Jackie and she was 8 years old. She kept asking us to buy her zapatos (the Bemba word for shoes.. and yes, it's the same word in Spanish. Weird.). We asked where her family was and she pointed to a blind woman sleeping with hands outstretched on the side of the road, with a few young kids playing around her.

When we passed through town yesterday, I saw Jackie sitting near her Mum on the sidewalk. A man and a woman were grabbing at her her feet and she was screaming and kicking. We parked the car and I went over to see her. The couple had left and Jackie was now lying in a heap by her Mum, sobbing. I asked her what was wrong and she pointed to the bottom of her foot, with a band-aid on it, which I assume the couple had been trying to put on earlier. I peeled part of it off and found a wide, swollen, bleeding laceration right in the centre of Jackie's foot. A street boy told us she had stepped on a broken bottle, and they'd pulled a large piece of glass out of her foot earlier. Very reassuring, since street boys are such qualified doctors, typically high out of their minds on glue. We had a bus to catch in 20 minutes. I grabbed some antibiotic ointment and a bigger band-aid and put both on her foot and prayed for her. She just lay there sniffing, next to her incoherent, blind mother. All I could think of as we left was, what if I'd just bitten the bullet and gotten her a pair of $1 flip flops from the market a few days ago??? Ugh. This is the hard part of Africa.

Today we take a bus from Ndola to Kapiri Mposhi to catch the infamous Tazara train to Tanzania. The journey takes anywhere from 30 hours to 5 days, but we are stoked, mainly because it's not another bus. On the bus from Lusaka to Ndola last week, a woman spilled a whole bowl of chicken on the floor by my feet and it stayed there for the remaining 6 hours of hot and sweaty travel. I hate to sound like the martyred vegetarian but SERIOUSLY, out of ALL the 80 seats on the bus..???? Also I'm pretty sure one of the wheels on that bus was wooden. And square.

BUT it doesn't matter because train is the mode of transport for now.
Miss you all and look forward to seeing everyone in just a month...

More from the land of Tanzania!

Thoughts on Zambia.

Zambia is an interesting place. (Duh.) 2 really intriguing things about it:

1. It has 78 official languages. We are learning to speak a bit of Bemba, which is what is spoken most in the Chingola area. When people don't know each others' languages, they speak in English, which is handy for us.

2. Obviously from 78 official languages, it has at least that many tribes living together, plus refugees from surrounding war-torn countries like the Congo. And the fascinating thing is that unlike places like Kenya, everyone gets along just fine, and people are particularly friendly to whites. There's no tribal conflict, and marriages of people from different tribes are very common. It is a really peaceful country, and though very poor, a pretty impressive example to the rest of Africa.


We've had an interesting past few days. On Thursday, the Health Department came to check up on the farm and kids. During their visit, someone discovered a cobra outside and the House Mum came out and killed it with a rock. Apparently the HD workers were quite entertained by all this and left very impressed.

Yesterday we went to find some relatives of some ex-street boys who now live on the farm. One boy has only one surviving sister, and after trying to track her down much of the morning, she was eventually located in a very small village an hour away, near the Congolese border. She was quite sweet and seeing the reunion with her little brother was really emotional for all of us. The other boy is from a township closer to Chingola. His parents have more than 10 children and are really unable to care for any of them. We had to go pick up his birth certificate and get permission from his father that he live at the farm. His grandmother told us we should just take all of the kids to the farm while we're at it. Sad circumstances.

The last week we've been free of car troubles, but yesterday the Land Rover broke way out in the middle of no where, and today we got a flat coming down the 8km road to town. We've nicknamed various parts of it "Devil's Kettle" or "Hell's Ravine". Once we get to the main road and our teeth stop rattling, everyone is very happy.

Total Randomness.

Oh the things you find yourself doing in Africa! What we've been up to:

Taught a class to 26 high schoolers on resumees and job interviews.

Got escorted onto a bus by 2 drunk men who kindly carried our bags on for us, then dumped them on our laps and said, ever so sweetly, "We've done the work, now give us our money!" Gotta love the subtlety.

Ate amazing palak paneer and garlic naan. Yes, in Africa.

Got 27 bug bites on my lower left leg alone. New record!

Taking bucket baths. Can't say I've missed those so much.

Slept in a room with more cockroaches in it than I have ever seen in my life. Turned on the light around 2am and the floor was literally moving.

Rode home at 2am on an 8 kilometre road that takes about half an hour to cover, mostly because it is basically the Grand Canyon of Africa. Forget about driving anything other than a Land Rover on this thing.. I swear it eats small cars alive.

Ran early in the morning past all the locals heading to their farms. The land is stunning.

Wrote up care plans for the kids at the home where we're staying.

Eating heaps of mchima (ground maize, boiled until it's like Malt-O-Meal) and sweet potato leaves. Trying to avoid the deep fried caterpillars.

Doing washing by hand. Missed that.


We are in Chingola, Zambia now, after staying in Lusaka, Ndola, and Kitwe en route. We're working with a team of 14 from the UK at a farm/small kids home out in the boonies -- www.edenfarm.org.uk -- (you have to take the above mentioned 8km road to get out there.. rural doesn't even begin to describe it..) and take off next Monday on the train to Tanzania. Life is good! No running water or electricity, but so much fun with the kids and various projects going on. Today we visited a local hospital's AIDS clinic and spoke with some of the doctors about starting a project with the low/no-income single mothers who come to pick up their monthly ARV medications. So fascinating seeing how things work here in comparison to other places.

Sorry no pictures this time around.. Zambia has yet to know the wonders of broadband so uploading even a thumbnail sized shot is kind of laughable.

Miss you all!

Wham Bam Zambia.

2 flights and one layover in Johannesburg and we stepped off the tarmac into 102 degree Lusaka! It is hot and dusty and loud and full of organized chaos and we finally feel like we're actually in Africa. Lusaka, being the capital of Zambia, has very few things helping it stand out.. it's flat, with no high buildings, and most of it looks about the same as the rest of it. We stayed with fellow Bellinghamster Michelle Widman last night and take off for Ndola this afternoon. The currency here (called kwacha) is nuts. Just as I was getting used to South African Rand, which is 6r to $1, we switch to kwacha, which is 6,000k to $1. So a coffee costs around 18,000 kwacha here. And I withdrew 1 million from an ATM yesterday, praying to God I'd done my math right. Slightly disconcerting...

Goodbye, Cape Town.

Photos from the last few days.

Seal Island.


The lovely and hilarious Gracie at the kids home.


Potential student housing?


Found my long-lost Australian love here... delish.


No joke: there is an extremely popular restaurant here called Spur, and its icon
is an American Indian.

Off to Zambia at 5am tomorrow!

Table Mountain...

...another touristy venture. I've had my fill of American tourists for the next 2 months... but the views were worth it.

Coming up the mountain on the cable car.

Hiking in the clouds.

View from the top.

Shots from the Townships.