Ahhhhhfrica!

Well I think it's pretty safe to say that Africa was Ahhhhhh-mazing! How could it not have been!?! I was totally a wreck the day before we left for numerous reasons: sad to be leaving my kids/max for 2 weeks, anxious about 20+ hours on a plane, Tucker was sick and miserable and so sad which just made it worse! The night before I left I finally took him to the dr. and he had a double ear infection/cold/virus...regardless, he was miserable and it didn't help Max with feeling any more confident about me leaving:)  

But by God's grace and lots of prayers, we made it there safe and sound! Overall the trip was definitely a trip of a lifetime. The safari was obviously amazing and the animals were just incredible, and to be able to see them so closely was unreal. I was most excited though to get to hang out, kid free, for so long with my sister. Not that I needed to go to Africa for that, but it was a perk I realized at the end of the trip. It was so fun for me to be able to see and experience many snip its of her life there. It was a huge blessing to be able to meet her friends there who have become her colleagues/friends/family etc. They are the people she cries too, celebrates with, sniffs, picks their hair, and hugs inappropriately, and I just had to meet them all! Life is definiltey not easy in Dar, but no one complains about it. They all moved there knowing that it wouldn't be easy, but that it's here they belong for the time God has them there. And they are all doing amazing things working at HOPAC and in the many ministries they have involved themselves with in and around Dar es Salaam.

Here's a TON of pictures (obviously)!

The plane for the long leg (12.5 hours there and 13.5 hours back) was a house! It was a double decker plane, with the top floor for business and first class. Coach was incredible with tons of food, drinks, movies, etc. and hot towels...all included!

They give you these useful stickers:)

Flying over Greenland-you can see some large ice-masses.

The plane had three cameras: front, back, and below. The is the view out the back.

We had a very brief layover in Dubai and it is definitely  HOT HOT dessert! The airport is insane-it's like New York City (5th ave and times square combine) in an airport!

Flying over Kenya into Tanzania was just beautiful as we descended.

Driving around Dar takes about 10 times longer than it should. There is no respect of lanes too much. If you are on a vehicle that is small enough to fit through a space, you can go! And all types of vehicles drive on the same road. This picture illustrates that pretty well!

The area of Dar that D lives in is called Mbezi Beach. We saw a beautiful view the first night we got there.

D works at an international Christian School as a 1st grade teacher. This is her classroom and some pics from around the school.

huge snail outside her classroom.

There are a variety of different ways to get around Dar using public transportation. D frequently uses a bjaj (pictured below) which is a three wheeled vehicle that is steered like a motorcycle. Every ride is a negotiation in price:)

The first full day we were there we headed to White Sands Beach, a touristy area near D's house. We took a boat to a private island. It was the perfect "adjustment day" as we tried to figure out the 7 hour time difference. You can order drinks and food to eat in your cabana (of course you have to pay/bargain for everything-good thing D's Swahili is pretty good, because they try to take advantage SO much!), and we had fish and chips. The fish was DEFINITELY fresh and I even managed to eat it right off the bones! It was so good!

Dar es Salaam is a city, but has a variety of different areas. D's house is not in the downtown area, it's much further out. She lives on top of a "hill" that's home to at least 15 homes/apartments that one family owns. Many of them are rented to staff at the school and her school is a 3 minute walk from her house, which is really nice. There's a native people group in this part of Tanzania called Masai. That have a lot of different qualifying features, but they also provide security to many of the people in the area. They guard the house at night. I don't really know what they're doing besides being a deterrent because all they have is a machete.

The walk to school

Her view of the Indian Ocean is incredible!

The next day we headed to the market to buy some traditional Tanzanian gifts! It's the rainy season there right now and it's certainly called that for a reason! Imagine Florida type hurricane torrential downpour without all the wind and lightening and thunder. It happens almost daily or at least every few days. The biggest problem is the crappy drainage systems-they have ditches dug on the sides of the road, but all of the roads perpendicular to the main paved ones with the ditches are made of dirt...so they flood and the dirt/sand floods down and fills the "drainage ditches." Problem solved by having a bunch of guys digging out the sand and having a dump truck haul it away...until it rains again before they've cleaned out the clog:) It causes major flooding and massive traffic problems that are even worse than normal. It can make traveling amusing.

Like many foreign countries, they have many of the same cars we have, but they are called different things.  This car was VERY popular in Dar, the Toyota Harrier. I don't think it's a terribly expensive car (all the cars are expensive, but in comparison) but in the U.S. it's a Lexus RX and is definitely NOT cheap.

There's no water supply-you buy a huge water tank (pictured below on top of loads of lumber) and get it filled. The people living in the poorer sections do not have running water. They may, if they're lucky, have a public tank they can get water from if there is any. You cannot drink the water here. You either have to use bottled water (a HUGE source of good water-and there's NO recycling=major garbage and environmental problem) or filter their water.

We went to an Ethiopian restaurant one night with D's great friend and roommate Christine. It was DELICIOUS! I know it largely resembles poop here, but it was so good. They bring out this huge tray and put it on the table and inside the tray is this spongy bread/tortilla type thing. Then all of the different food is plopped on top. They give you rolls of the spongy bread stuff that you peel off and use to scoop up the food with your fingers. I need to find an authentic Ethiopian food place here-it was SO good!

Easter was the busiest day we had. I had my worst night's sleep the night before. Thankfully the time difference transition was pretty seamless and greatly aided by some maximum strength sleeping pills! 

We started the day off around 5:00 for a sunrise breakfast. As much as I didn't want to get up, it was beautiful. And we only had to walk outside, so that wasn't bad.

After breakfast and church, we splurged on Subway (I had to go all the way to Africa to eat Subway since I never eat it here) and then headed to Kurisini Orphanage. Danielle volunteers here with a few other friends every week/couple of weeks and just loves on the kids and tries to understand their stories. There are a variety of backgrounds. Some of the kids are true orphans. Others were placed here by DCF because they were in a bad family/home situation. And many others were given up for adoption by their parents because they could not afford them. Most of the kids are typical kids, but there were a few with special needs. One girl had significant deficits and it broke my heart, because it was not a place for a girl with special needs like this. Another boy had Cerabral Palsy. If he had been in a different environment I know he could really succeed-he was so bright! The kids were all very happy to see us and enjoyed playing.

This is a public orphanage (many of the private ones are corrupt) and some of the students attend school and some do not. I'm not sure what the reasoning is or rationale for who goes. The youngest kids seemed to be 2 or 3, and the oldest were teens. The tough thing is when the kids age out of the orphanage-what do they do then?? 

There was a boys dorm, a girls dorm an administrative building, and a community room that served as their indoor/rec room (it has 1 TV-mostly with inappropriate tv on-two women were beating each other down when we were watching) and their dining room. Each child has a job-some make/serve the food, and each child has a plate that they are responsible for keeping and cleaning. The children seemed relatively healthy, but I really don't know. Many/most of them had coughs and colds. It's amazing that with all of the snot and coughing on me going on I haven't gotten sick! 

I just loved taking pictures of the kids! They are beautiful and deserve to be documented. They also had fun taking pictures with my camera. There was no shortage of posing!

 I pray for these kids that they will find homes, but with the way TZ works adoption, it is very challenging for the kids to be adopted. The country is committed to keeping the kids with some family member, but often it creates a very very long process of adoption/returning to family. It was one of the highlights of the trip for me, and one of the lows. I just wish I was more awake that afternoon!

My sweet third-grade neighbor Sienna wanted to donate books to the kids in Africa. I took these National Geographic ones and the kids loved to look at the animals-many of which they have never seen!

This girl was just smitten with my dad for the whole afternoon!

Her cheeks!

 My little love, Rodah

And her twin Seman

Their playground would not be found safe where we live at all

My dad is a very proficient whistler, but these two taught him something he struggled with-whistling with a flower! Dad did help this boy brush up on his normal whistling skills though.

And what trip to the orphanage would be complete without Ball Cones for the family as we taxi'd to a mall to kill some time before our flight to leave on Safari? That's right...Super Ball Cones.

While we were killing time at the worlds most crowded mall we hung in a grocery store. You know they're farm fresh eggs when they don't refrigerate them...that or they're going to be really bad. Side bar-I completely know what it's like to be stared at for what you look like. Not only were we the few white people in the entire mall, but we were walking through with our hiking packs for our trip so we just screamed tourist! It was totally unnerving. I also learned that there is no respect for lines...people literally will just walk in front of you in the check out line. They don't say anything, they just assume that they'll be faster than you. It's ridiculous.

After a quick flight on FastJet to Mt. Kiliminjaro airport, we stayed at the Outpost lodge for less than 12 hours to start our trip! Not a bad room!

Our driver picked us up bright and early to drive us to Arusha to stop for supplies. There were so many colorful wardrobes...I liked this tie dye one.

After a quick grocery store stop, D and I went to find a bathroom. She asked this guy for directions...apparently he's security. Ridiculous arsenal. Are you going to take me down with that thing if I use too much TP?

Sign for the women's bathroom...

 The amount of items that the women (mostly women are the ones doing this) carry on their heads is insane!

The views on the way to Lake Manyara were breathtaking!

These are the Masai people at a cattle auction. Cattle are holy ground for them and in the country/rural areas like where we were, it is how they make money. When a boy comes of age, his father gives him a few grown cows. The boy then comes to the cattle auctions and trades the mature cows for more younger ones and continues in this way to build his herd. The Masai are easy to spot because of their red and purple (men) and royal blue and purple (women) traditional attire. Not all Masai dress like this, but those who live in the traditional circular huts do.

At one of the markets (food markets) we passed, these boys were bleeding the goat after it was slaughtered. The Masai also drink the blood for good luck or some tradition-gross.

After a yummy lunch we headed out in our safari vehicle!!

 Our driver/guide was amazing (not that I have anything to compare him to) and took us to a variety of remote spots and we were able to see a TON!

The zebras always stand head to tail like this.

The rhino was so far away!

I'm not sure if there's a technical term for this, but these were the blue balled monkeys...all of them (males) with turquoise blue balls. It was amazing, seriously.

This giraffe was so old! She kept bending down to drink water and had to slower lower into a straddle position.

I was so intrigued by the baboons-their butts look like plastic!

Mommy and Baby Mongoose

Peek a boo!

The Lake was GORGEOUS!!! There were thousands of flamingos...I wish we could have gotten closer-this is super zoomed in as it is. But you can see the expansive beauty of this country.

We searched for awhile, and eventually had two encounters with elephants. After the first one, where we saw at least 8-10 elephants and they were pretty close, we were just enthralled and never thought we'd beat it. Then at the end, we drove out aways and found a literal herd of elephants and they were sooooo close. They kept walking towards our truck, and we had to keep backing up. They literally were within 4-5 feet of us. Insane! Ready to trample at any time!

Apparently when they flare their ears they aren't happy...uh oh!

oh the eyelashes!

 The baby elephants...to die for!

Dad got creative with the (gazelle or dikdik-i can't remember) antlers at a pit stop.

 Lions! They were SO far away, it took me a minute or so to even find them.

Elephant encounter #2! The close one!!!

And then we saw giraffes that were very close too! One crossed about 10 feet in front of our truck. We hung out as late as we could in the park, so it was much less crowded and many of the animals started to come out of "hiding".

The hotel we stayed in the second night was awesome! This is our little bungalow-D and I had the room on one side and mom and dad had the other. The beds were SO comfy and had awesome down comforters (a true luxury when we'd been sleeping with sheets for the rest of the trip) which were needed because it was cold up north where we were!

 Day 2 of the Safari was in the Ngorongoro Crater. This buffers the Serengeti and is one of the more popular safari stops. It's enormous and beyond beautiful. No picture of video could capture the natural beauty and vastness that is this old volcano. 

Little did we know that the president had been visiting in the crater for the past few days (there are a few hotels along the rim and some Masai villages inside the entrance-no one lives down in the crater where the animals are most prominent) and we had to wait for him to leave before we could enter. It was amazing the lack of security compared to what our president has. If Obama was leaving the crater we wouldn't have even been allowed by the gate-or within a 1 mile radius! 

These Masai were doing typical chanting and dancing for the president as he drove out.

And there's the president is his non-fancy car:)

Driving in along the rim.

This is a traditional Masai village. The houses are made with mud, hay, etc. now (predominately the women's job) and are more permanent, but the Masai were historically a nomadic people and they made these circular huts and placed them in a circle, putting their herd of cows in the middle to protect them and keep them from escaping.

And this is the definition of indescribable beauty! We were up so high looking down into the crater.

It was a 10 minute drive from the rim down into the crater, and there was such a variety of trees, etc.

The Wildabeest were everywhere. And always with Zebras.

One of the two types of Gazelles...Thompson I think.

The zebras were running in the water. It was literally magical!

We saw two groups of lions in the Crater. The first was much further away than the second. Check out the size of her paws!

We saw a couple rhino's-they were so far away, this was the best I could get even with the zoom!

The lake where we stopped for lunch had a TON of rhino's but they were so hard to capture-they rarely even came out of the water this much. They were just interested in getting air and going back down.

Yeah...this was the women's bathroom.

The crater is so big that a downpour rolled in in one area and I kept thinking we were going to hit it (as we were driving towards it) but we only ever got little droplets! This picture didn't even do the coolness of the sky justice.

Right near the downpour was this amazing discovery! Two mama lions and their cubs. They started out further away from each other, and then one got up,  sauntered over to the other, and they NUZZLED! We also saw one of the cubs get up to go nurse. To see these amazing animals in their natural habitat was just amazing. I learned more about these animals and this place in 2 days than I did during any class in school. We spent 9 hours in the car this day and it maybe felt like 3. I was just so enthralled. And if you know me, I'm not a lovey dove animal person-but this was incredible!

A herd of water buffalo

You can see the difference in color and tusk length of these elephants compared to those at the Lake the day before. Some of the tusks on these guys hit the ground!

The zebras were also much more stark and black and white than at the Lake because there wasn't as much dirt.

The elusive jackal

All of the water buffalo look like they are dead...they're huge!

LOTSA flamingo's in the Crater too!

Hyena's

The ostrich was by far the funniest animal that we saw. Males are black, females are gray.

This was the one time I was actually a little nervous. We were about 6-8 feet from this elephant in the crater. And down in the crater, there's nowhere to go if they start to attack.

Pumba! Warthogs!

I could not capture the coolness of these trees-they were just super tall with these amazing canopies at the top, and they were all clustered together to provide shade for the animals.

The last hotel we stayed at was on the rim of the crater. You were not allowed to walk around by yourself at night because the animals frequently roam the grounds. I figured that maybe if we were lucky we'd see something...when I say that there were like 20 water buffalo, if not more, I'm probably under-counting!

This was hysterical to me-"cream of farm" soup! That's what it was written as on our menu cards! It was actually really good creamy vegetable soup.

Some of the buffalo the next morning-we were up early before dark so they were still there

The clutch on our truck went while we were driving through the crater, so it made the drive back interesting because we couldn't really shift gears unless the car randomly changed. We could only stop on a decline so that we could be sure to start again. The police are totally corrupt and the conduct random/routine traffic stops. You're supposed to stop and then they inspect stuff and if there's a "problem" you get a ticket, or sometimes they offer for you to bribe them. This obviously isn't encouraged. We got stopped at least twice on the way to the Lake, and on the way back to the airport from the Crater we got waved down to stop, but Abbas, our driver, blew right through! I think he was scared we wouldn't start again, or that we'd get ticketed!

Bananas and RED bananas were a common produce in this area.

Common mode of transportation. We saw an 18 month old boy doing this with his father...I couldn't believe it. Although when car seats of any kind are not required or used, I shouldn't be surprised.

This area also had crazy termite hills everywhere! They are quite the complex and sophisticated bugs I guess!

There are almost more pikipiki (the motorbikes are a type of public transportation) drivers than people who can afford rides.

The daladala's (bus) are another mode of public transportation-no matter what, there is always more room. The guy yells out the window to see who needs a ride.

Like many third-world and developing countries, there is not a middle class here. There are very poor, and very not poor. This was a view on the side of the main road in Dar from the airport back to D's house.

 That's one way to transport lumber. The way they transported things was so interesting.

From the moment our cab left the airport, we knew something was off with the tire. About 40 minutes into our drive we got a flat. The driver proceeded to change it with all 4 of us in the car while he did. I'm thinking there's no AAA in TZ.

 We spent some more time relaxing and hanging out around D's house and school over the next couple of days while she worked. One afternoon we walked by the Sala Sala Quarry. This area is what would be considered a slum. There is no electricity and no running water. Because it is deep in a quarry area, when the rain comes, it floods much of the area. Many of the people that D works with are involved either full time or part time in different ministries there. She had the chance to coach a soccer team for some of the girls from the quarry which was really cool.

 I was so grateful not to get sick at all during or after the trip. The worst thing that happened was this weird balloon shaped bite that I got one night. You are supposed to sleep under a mosquito net but two nights I didn't...oops!

I was so excited that we got to be with D for her 30th birthday! She didn't actually turn 30 until 2 days after we got back, but they had a huge party for her while we were there. There aren't that many parties so when there are, they go big! They had a Tegeta Prom/Masquerade/Glow Stick theme. Tegeta is a market (huge flea market type thing) and is probably the place where many of our donated clothes end up. D and her friends think it's hysterical because there is a huge area with super cheap clothes that are ridiculous, but you see local people wearing them totally normally. D's good friend Jen bought outfits for everyone. The pictures don't do the ridiculousness of the outfits justice! We managed to make a bunch of masks too with stuff that we bought from home. It was a huge blast!

Mom and Dad doing the awkward prom poses

D had a mermaid corset thing and mine was made of raincoat material and diarrhea brown.

The DJ Station. We might be in Africa but we were at the Young Life Africa headquarters...three MacBooks rotating the DJ duties. The family who hosted the party had a student come take "prom pictures" too. It was really cool.

D and her roommates this year.

D & her great friend Aly.

 Glowsticks on the cake!

Everyone prayed for D...it was a really cool time to hear how much of an impact she's had on the people and that place...not that it was a huge surprise-she impacts people for the best wherever she goes!

Impromptu conga line (a few hours after the impromptu limbo) while the "band" played along to Paul Simon. 

Everyone danced, the entire night. The party was still going at 12:45 and we finally shut it down...we had to fly back the next day!

There were laser lights, fog machines, and a disco ball!

I wish I could say it was the sangria, but this is totally typical!

And somehow we captured Jen floating...it was magic!

I am beyond excited that D will be coming home in June for good! Who knows where God will lead her, but at least she'll be home for a bit! After being in Africa and living her life, I am a sad for her to be leaving. Dar was her home and the people there are her family and friends. As hard as it was for her to leave here, it will be for her to leave there. It's funny how that happens! Needless to say, she has a lot of stuff that needs moving...we took just a few extra suitcases on the way home.

The flight home was not the best as we spent most of the 5.5 hour flight from Dar to Dubai and 6-7 hours of the 13.5  flight from Dubai to NYC was turbulent. Most of it was just a little bumpy but there were plenty of parts that were worse. At one point they asked the flight attendants to sit. And that was on the plane that's HUGE. That's when you know it was rough wins. But I am happy to report, that God gave me peace (and free wine) to not freak out. I finally came to a realization that the plane is supposed to bump a little bit and that regardless of what happens, it's in His plan and if I'm truly going to trust him, I have to trust that. Didn't make it easy, but it was a good lesson and will hopefully decrease my anxiety of flygin now. I mean if I can survive 6 flights in 2 weeks, with a total of 40 flying hours I think I'm good to go!

I would be remiss to not mention my amazing husband who was willing to let me leave our 3 year old and 18 month old with him for 2 weeks. We had a lot of generous people who supported him while I was gone too which was great. It was a rough start with Tucker being sick and then Max got a stye in his eye, but they finished strong! Needless to say, I'm not taking any more big trips anytime soon:)