First Days of Travel
Sunday, August 28th started off bittersweet, as I had to say goodbye to friends and family that I have never been away from for over three months. My mom, stepdad Dan, and I left for JFK around noon. Upon arriving at the airport my mom and I went to check my bags and low and behold it wasn’t the checked baggage that got me but the carry on! I have never seen an airline (KLM Royal Dutch Airlines) check the carry on baggage weight before! They foiled my whole plan as I tirelessly and frantically spent the whole week before the trip getting both my checked bags under 50 lbs and way overstuffing my backpack and carry on purse (keep in mind my purse was literally stuffed with all the textbooks and reading material I brought with me.) So after all that we had no choice but to make one of my checked bags overweight and pay a fee. So I guess we learned our lesson!
Otherwise, the flights went smoothly. For those of you who didn’t know already, I went on the group flight where the 35 of us from across the country, give or take a couple, met up either at JFK or Amsterdam and all flew together. My first flight took about 7 hours to Amsterdam and left about 5:45 PM. With the time zone differences we landed about 7 AM Amsterdam time and then a layover until 10 AM. My second flight to Kilimanjaro International Airport was about 8/8.5 hours and by the time that landed it was 7:45 PM in Tanzania on the 29th. This flight I was actually able to sleep a few hours and had the luxury of window seats on both flights, with nobody next to me on the second one. Also, apparently KLM serves ice cream to their passengers, which was awesome no doubt. The coolest part of the flight was flying across the Nubian Desert in Northern Africa. It amazed me how that much land could be so sandy and barren with no signs of human inhabitance. Coming from America, I don’t know if I have ever stopped to think about how there are still places in this world that are mostly untouched.
After finally arriving in Tanzania we stood in line for about an hour to get our tourist visas and claim our luggage. Both my bags arrived on time and I felt a large chunk of the day’s anxiety melt away. We met our student affairs manager, Becky, from SFS outside the airport where we proceeded to throw all of our baggage into the back of a big truck. I knew I was bringing a lot with me but it didn’t occur to me until then that 34 other students had just about if not more luggage than I did and we would require an entire truck just for luggage alone. And after what felt like forever, we could finally leave the airport and we piled into about four safari Toyota Land Cruisers. From here, we still had about an hour’s drive to Arusha, the city where we stayed for the night before we would head to camp the next day.
Driving in Tanzania is nothing like driving in the states. First of all, they drive on the left hand side of the road. Second of all, there are no stop signs, stoplights, streetlights, just lots of speed bumps to slow people down. The roads are mostly straight and there are very few places to take a left or right turn down another road. People drive fast and the vehicles ride rough, tending to bounce all over the place especially in construction areas or where the roads are only dirt. Tanzanians love passing each other, and since there is no regulated passing zones, it is basically a free for all as long as nobody is coming towards you in the other lane, which I learned very quickly people like to pass anyway. However, I will say, I still feel many Tanzanian drivers are better than American ones (sorry but its true). Once we arrived at the hotel the first bit of culture shock hit me. The hotel’s appearance was not warm or inviting and I felt very out of place and uneasy. We had a quick dinner, which I was barely able to eat much of and then turned in for the night. Feeling both overwhelmed and with the loud rush of traffic still outside even though it was midnight, sleep was difficult and short lived. I was awakened very early to the sounds of incessant honking and loud running vehicles. Feeling both exhausted and nauseous I hoped the day would get better, apparently not until after I took a freezing cold shower on a 60 degree morning.
It is now Wednesday and day three. Breakfast was a little better and I finally started to wake up (cold showers will do that to you). We set out about 9 AM for the 2/2.5 hour drive to our school. This is when I remembered why I came here and things started looking up again.
