i cannot believe i'm leaving for AFRICA in under a month! things are finally coming together. i've booked my tickets and safari, done most of my shopping, and have (for the most part) figured out the projects i'll be working on.
i'm going to be in arusha, tanzania from february 14-march 31. while there, i'll be volunteering at a secondary school for aids orphans. i'll be starting up a cross country team and working with their choir, as well as doing a few little things here and there. i'm pretty much completely unqualified to do either project, but it'll be fun. i love running and i love singing... i'm just not entirely sure how to teach those things. hopefully the kids won't be too speedy, as i've let myself become quite the chubosaurus over the holiday season! i've been trying to log as many miles as possible and will continue doing so until i leave... thank goodness for treadmills. i'm not nearly brave enough to attempt a run in this -30 degree weather!
i'm going with an organization called peace house africa. i get to live on campus, eat with the kids, and basically just help around the school. i've spent the past six summers coaching tennis for kids ages 4-17 back here at home, so it will be fun to compare coaching kids in etown vs. coaching kids in africa! i can't wait to meet the kids and hear their stories. i'm also definitely looking forward to the three day safari... hope the animals/the people i'm going with won't mind if i sporadically break out in lion king medleys. the other cool thing i'll be doing while there is taking a group of kids to watch the mount kilimanjaro marathon and running the mount kilimanjaro 5k on march 1st.
on march 31 i'll be heading over to madagascar until may 14. i fly into the capitol, then to a city closer to our site, and then take a 9-70 hour car ride to get to where we'll be staying. the length of the journey depends entirely on the weather, as most of the roads are unpaved. needless to say, i bought out walgreens' supply of dramamine (no joke, i actually bought EVERY single package they had). we are pretty much in the middle of nowhere... the nearest airport is (obviously) 9-70 hours away, as is the nearest hospital. there's not even a postal system where we are, so we've been asked to bring newspapers and magazines so that the people who work there full time can have some sort of connection with the outside world.
while in madagascar i'll be volunteering with an organization called blue ventures. it's a marine conservation program, so we do a lot of research regarding fish/coral reef population and things of that nature. it's also a big fishing community, so we work with the villagers to teach them how to fish more sustainably. the best part of this trip is that most of our research is done underwater... so i'll be scuba diving 5 out of every 6 days i'm there!!! sting rays, sharks, dolphins... it's going to be incredible. we also live directly on the beach. it's basically the best research site ever.
now that the yucky parts of the predeparture process are mainly over, i am getting more and more excited to leave. finding travel/medevacuation insurance when you're not a full time student, have graves' disease, and will be scuba diving is quite the process. plus, the whole vaccine thing basically makes me feel faint just thinking about it. i only had to deal with 5 needles, which is less than i might have needed. i have already had the typhoid vaccine and lucky for me, there's a rabies vaccine shortage in the US! whoo! that one's a 3 shot process, so i was pretty happy about that. note to self: stay away from rabid animals while abroad.
but anyway, i can't wait to go! i'm excited to do something more than hanging out in dorms and taking classes that involve things like speaking norwegian, talking about madonna, learning how to learn, counting animal poop and making sex toys out of clay. (yup, all of those things have happened). i feel like i'm finally going to be doing something that matters. plus, it will be nice and toasty warm :)
i've gotta make my own luck. i've gotta find my own way. i've got to see that there is more to life than just existing. i wanna be living. it's gonna be a better day. --saving jane
the joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. --alexander "supertramp"
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