sorry so long

sorry i haven't written for a bit. been busy...
so for work, i start my first full day at east africa law society tomorrow. it's a human rights ngo for east africa (tanzania, uganda, and kenya (they want to include rwanda by the end of the year)). i'm excited and happy. they used to have a program assistant that they don't have anymore so it sounds like there's a lot of stuff to do. the man is very energetic and interesting so i'm happy. my roomate r used to work there before she switched to the rwandan tribunal and she really liked it...
i also kind of wanted to work for a place called chawakua that does hiv awareness/counseling but has no funding. i think st is going to work there. i told him i'll help him if he ever needs any. but i really liked the lady that works there too.
sunday was the best day of my life. not my life, but best day here so far. went to mt. meru for hiking with r, her boyfriend s, yuzzo, st, this guy bobjulie, and a girl named anita that i just met last week. she's friends with s and goes to school here. i thought it would be a picknicky type of hike so i wore shorts which i regretted immediately. it ended up being a day of very jungley full-body-climbing. st and anita went back to the car because it was too steep. it was really fun though. i feel like i'm getting to know people better and it's fun to do different things. the boys that i've been around have a very adolescent sense of humor though- don't know if it's everyone or just the people i'm around... anyways, after hiking we got a flat tire on the way back into town. once again, i regretted wearing shorts again for a different reason. no one wears shorts here and it was funny to be standing by the car for so long. so they fixed the tire, we went home, and then went to a barbecue and there was an outdoor band playing. then yuzzo went up and sang and he was sooooo good. i was really happy. i love to see anyone i know do anything that they're good at. oh, one of the un people got jumped by 3 guys outside of the barbecue. they kicked her once, and grabbed her phone, and tried to get her bag but didn't because it was under her arm... scary, i know. my roomate r had a bad experience last week where she was walking through a bus stand area where everyone tries to make you get on their bus (dala dala) and someone pulled money out of her pocket. she grabbed it back and then he put his fist up to punch her in the face but then people on the bus started shouting and she ran away. i hear lots of these stories but i feel like if something like that happens, it's just going to happen. at least you know that all people want is a little bit of money, they're not just trying to hurt you for no reason. i'm more scared in dc because you hear stories of people hurting people for no reason.

but i really love being here. i feel really lucky. the people and the place are soooo wonderful.

sg and j are back from the trip with her parents so the house will be more full. i also switched into a room yesterday and unpacked all of my stuff. i hung up the christmas stars that i bought in india and they look very cute. oh yeah, i bought tickets to zanzibar for when sebby visits. it's funny to have to pay for everything in cash. it was funny carrying 400,000 shillings to the airline to pay for the tickets. it definitely makes you think more before buying.

ok. i'll stay up to date with this. i hope everyone's healthy, happy, and great.

love, Ganga

been back in arusha

hi!
not much news. things are pretty slow moving over here. hope to be placed/settled by next week, or maybe mid-next week.
it's fun to be back in arusha but i can't sleep in the night that much 'cause of the bar that opened up right next to the house. i've been lying awake for a lot of the night for the past few nights and then taking a nap in the afternoon. the girl i share the room with for now, a, came home and slept in the room last night and i have a feeling that she won't be coming back anytime soon. she's really nice, cares about the environment a lot, and pretty interesting/seems to have had an unconventional upbringing.
so i made an effort to become friends with the other new volunteer, st, because we spend and will be spending so much time with each other. i told him that we should probably try and be more friends than we are and he said okay so then the next night i asked to see pictures of his family and friends and asked him lots and lots of questions about them and the next day it felt like we had made some progress... so that's good i guess.
my friend that i text with, yuzzo, came over last night for a little. i'm happy he did, and i hope he wasn't bored because st and i get used to staring at each other and not talking for a long time.

yeah, so not much news. just waiting for a placement and a room that's not the one that's basically in the new bar...

going tomorrow

i could see all of mt. kilimanjaro today. it was unbelievable. most of it is above the clouds.

moshi's been growing on me. it's quiet and a little lonely but so pretty.

we've been meeting with a lot of great organizations. yesterday we met with one called kwieco that does a lot of public education of women's/children's/rights in general and provides legal assistance to people who can't afford it. it seems like a place where i would ideally like to work for the rest of my life. but for a volunteer, the project is very openended and they want someone to create a lobbying/research department and that's a little overwhelming...
part of me starts to feel really deflated and useless during the meetings because the need for staff/skills/etc is so much and i am just one person with basically no skills and no time to invest...

anyways, stay optimistic.

today we went to a home for street children called mkombozi that was started in '97 by two volunteers. it's grown so much in the past however many years and houses almost 100 boys. it's very well organized and very effective. some of the boys that have grown up there come back and help with the children that live there now. it seems like a really nurturing environment and there's no attempt at "rehabilitation", just support and assistance in what the boys express interest in. a 12 yr. old boy caught me by surprise when he ran up to me and hugged me for a really long time and then kissed me a lot of times on my forehead and head and then made me do the same to him. he just came running from across the street. then he did the same to sg and st.

sorry this is so disjointed. i'm kind of sick of this blog and typing. and i don't know what i think about anything.

now that i've slowed down to the pace of moshi and love how pretty it is, i'm nervous that it'll be hard to go back to the hustle bustle of arusha. i just don't know which place/organization to pick.

i think i'll end up in arusha though just because i don't want to read every night from 5 until 10 which is what i've been doing in moshi. we'll see.

if you're reading this, write me an email. friendship is a two way street.

love, Ganga

more moshi

sorry if i sounded really homesick yesterday. i feel a lot better today.

we met with a small ngo called white orange today that does aids awareness/prevention with adolescents and parents in moshi and some surrounding rural areas. the director seems like such a goodhearted man that if i don't find another place that i feel more connected to, i'll pick it. the only reservation that i have is that i'm only here for six months and that is not enough time to effectively accomplish stuff in that type of organization. they are very new and not very structured. i feel like i'd need to be here for longer to be of use. we'll see though. we have more appointments later this week and early next week.

the boy volunteer, st, who i'm absolutely sick of at this point was vomiting yesterday. i felt bad for him. we ate some kind of old food that hadn't been refrigerated that well because the electricity was gone for a couple of days so maybe that made him sick. i'm not sure. he says he has a sensitive stomach. our orientation guide, sg, left to go back to arusha tonight for one night to meet his girlfriend, j's, parents. they pretty much plan on getting married so it's a big deal for him to meet them and he was nervous. he's coming back to moshi tomorrow morning. the older girl, t, that lives here in moshi is kind of warm and unintentionally cold at the same time- she kind of reminds me of an exfriend of mine (some of you may catch this reference) and it makes me wary... but overall she's nice, just seems very reclusive and untrusting of people in general...

moshi's really pretty. and a few of my hellos were returned today. so i feel a little better. i got stuck in a greeting back and forth thing with an older woman on the way here and we each greeted the other 3 times and then i started laughing.

i'm reading a book that they have in the house called a million little pieces and it's gross because the man describes himself vomiting so many times. it's about a man's recovery from drug and alcohol addiction.

not much to write today. i just keep coming to use the internet each day because there's nothing else to do. but if no one reads this, and i can tell by whether there are posts or not- i'm going to stop writing.

ok. take care everyone. bye.

still in moshi

there are a couple of things that i forgot to mention about arusha last week and i'll say them now while they're still fresh in my mind while time stands still in moshi.

first of all, i'm here with the other new volunteer and the orientation guide, sg (who dates j- a volunteer in arusha). it was really fun to go around with sg in arusha because he's from there and knows tons of people and invited us to his house for tea a couple of times so we got to meet his warm family and some of his cousins. while there are more pickpockets or whatever in arusha, there are also a lot of really friendly people that are open to talking all of the time.

oh i forgot to mention that i met a kilimanjaro guide that told a really sad story about two people in his last group dying from a rockslide. he was an interesting man and seems like he'd be a very motivational and reassuring guide. the oldest person he's taken up was 78 and the youngest 12.

i didn't talk about the indian community in arusha either. it seems very very isolated and closed off. it seems like they basically pretend like they live in india. i met some people my age and they were born and raised here but have indian accents. it seems like tanzanians don't like indians very much, or some of the UN expat community because they live in a bubble. i met one aunty and she said she'd come and get me to go to her house and she sounded very concerned that i just came here- but then she stood me up. maybe she was scared to come to where the visions house is... just kidding. but it is rude that she stood me up.

i don't know why but i hate moshi so far. i feel really sad and lonely and bored here. i woke up at 4 this morning terrified- i know that's horrible to say- because i heard a lot of men singing and shouting really loudly. i stayed awake until everyone woke up naturally and then asked about it. it's a police academy training in the mornings. how silly of me to get scared. i just feel a lot more like an outsider here and kind of generally unwelcome. people aren't immmediately friendly and trying to talk like in arusha. i don't really want to be in tanzania and live like a hermit. i want to talk to people.

i'm still split though. the moshi nightwatchmen drinks coffee and stays awake all night and the arusha one falls asleep on the roof sometimes. i feel bad for him. he has a really hard life. he has kids and works odd jobs during the day and then has to try and stay up all night. and he's really sweet and friendly. basically, i feel like i had friends in arusha and i miss interacting. besides the girls in the house, i also made another friend named yuzzo who i text with. he raps in swahili and he takes it very seriously and he's supposed to be really popular locally. anyways, it's little hints of friendship, livliness, laughter that make time pass a lot more quickly in arusha.

but i am still a little nervous about ever ending up sleeping in that huge empty space of a house alone but sg said that i can call him and tell him to sleep there or call make arrangements with one of the girls if that should ever happen because his girlfriend j is almost always sleeping there, unless she decides to go out of town...

oh, and i'm a little nervous about arusha because a bar is being built right next to the house and there's only a very low wall there and sg said that people might jump over it either to come to the house or to try and sneak into the bar. he's super cautious and gives a LOT of safety advice and always follows it up with lots of scary stories. but maybe he's just paranoid. i don't know.

but i don't want to be depressed in moshi and just read books and be with personalities that make me feel like i'm in a daze...

so yeah. i'm homesick.

we met with kilimanjaro porters assistance program today and it's a great seeming organization but they only want someone part time but it made me excited about the meetings coming up with different places. while we were in there, there were two men in there who cycled to south africa from france and then took a bus here because one of them got sick with malaria. and they're cycling back too. it's taken them 4 months. a lot of sleepless cycling..they wanted to hike kilimanjaro in 2 days and it usually takes 7 but they told them that it won't be possible.

ok. bye for now. moshi's boring snoring.

dilemma dilemma

hi. sorry i've been bad at keeping this up to date. it's just hard to motivate to go use the internet. once i'm settled somewhere i'm sure i'll get into a routine of doing it, or not at all. best way to get in touch is calling. my cell phone works here or there. seb/my mom have the number.

i can meet and greet in swahili and speak a little in the present tense. it's a hard language, but very interesting.

anyways, i have a lot on my mind. let's see where to start. i've spent the last week or so in arusha and had a wonderful wonderful time. the people are very friendly, everyone wants to talk and i got to go out a lot in the nights with one of the roomates, r, and her boyfriend, s, who i think i've mentioned before- half tanzanian, half finnish. it was really really fun. but the other night i made a promise with God that if he got me home safely that i'd make decisions that were safer and not just based on seeming funness. that night we went to a local place called active that's in the supposed bad part of town where s's friend was playing music. it was great. a really fun place with reggae music and in the middle of the music there was entertainment where men wore fake pregnant bellies and bathing suits with layers and layers of shorts on top and took some of them off while dancing and pretended to play horns and stuff with their bums. i'm describing it badly but it was a high energy comedy dance with music in the background. then there was another one that s translated the words to that was about getting aids. and we danced a lot too and r was really nice about not making me dance with strange men. we traded a lot. but then it was weird since i was there with two couples i obviously chatted with a lot of people and i'm super open and friendly here and am so curious to talk a lot to anybody that will talk to me- but then it got confusing and one of s's friend's that i had talked to for a bit told me that he might hit another one that i spoke to later and s told me that he was having trouble explaining to people that i have a husband at home. whatever. it was confusing and i realized that it's probably weird to go out as a single woman here and it's hard to tell how my friendliness is interpreted and how i should/would communicate clearly... whatever. we got home with a very scary drunk ride and i promised God that i'll think about things more. it's hard to decide to stay in arusha with all of the girls having boyfriends etc... i wonder if i'd be home alone a lot etc.. basically if i decide to stay there, i'll work with the east africa law society that does human rights work in east africa. it sounds interesting and i'll meet with them when i go back next week for more swahili.

got to moshi yesterday. my hands are tired from typing. there hasn't been electricity yet 'cause of a storm i think. just in our house. but moshi's very green and beautiful and a much slower pace. i'm meeting with a couple of organizations this week and i have a feeling that if i work here, i'll pick kweko which i heard is very underfunded so maybe hard to get stuff done- but also a place that needs the volunteer work more. . so we'll see. there doesn't seem to be anything in between the two places. it's either pick something beautiful and quiet and pretty lonely but safer. or a fun city that's fun part of the time but lonely in that busy-ness around me but i feel lonely way... we'll see.

the people in this moshi house are a couple who are away right now. and a ten years older than me girl who seems nice but kind of awkward/scared and this volunteer boy who's new like me who's probably going to stay here. he's nice but nerdy-ish. i really don't know what to choose...

if i pick arusha, i'll definitely meet more people, interact more- but don't know if i'll start making bad decisions like travelling in cabs alone at night. but then i don't really see another option. other than staying home unless i go with someone and their boyfriend and come home with them. and if i'm just going to stay home in the evenings, might as well stay where there will be other people at home too even if they want to be left alone...

maybe i'll just base it on the organization/work environment/people that appeal to me.

ok. miss you. love you. bye.

first real day

hi! got in close to midnight last night and today's been my first real day. i was nervous that no one would be at the airport for me, but i walked out with my luggage and stood staring at the different cards when someone came up to me and asked if i was looking for visions in action. the house has three girls already living there and maybe a boy that's new like me. we're staying here for the first week and having intensive swahili- which we had this morning for 5 hours. it seems interesting but very very hard... only one of the girls was home last night. but she's really friendly and she dates a guy from here that's our orientation coordinator who also has an easy to get along with/great personality. the other two girls also have tanzanian boyfriends and mostly don't sleep at the house. i might end up sharing a room with one of them if this boy and i both pick to stay in arusha instead of moshi. supposedly there's more action here... i don't know. i haven't made up my mind completely. i like this girl and her boyfriend though and i heard that the other house is a couple that came here together and a woman about 10 years older than me- so we'll see. oh yeah, i also heard that they're pretty quiet. so far, the only bad culture shock/rebel against my decision feelings that i had were on the plane. and i'm a little overwhelmed with the swahili, but our teacher is great and friendly and it's only me and the other new boy doing the lessons so it's very interactive...
i miss my mom a lot. i was sad to say bye to her in the airport and i kept thinking about it on the plane. and of course i miss sebby too.
i hope this experience is good. i'm applying for an internship with the ICTR so hopefully that works out. otherwise i want to work in a women helping nonprofit.
i need to buy some food. i've only had a power bar and a piece of bread because i don't own any of the food in the house. i'm going to get some noodle packets if i can in a minute.
the house is a lot bigger than i expected and there's hot water for the shower if you heat it in advance. it's kind of like the house we stayed in in costa rica, but not as nice.

i miss everyone

leaving on a jetplane

got back from india two days ago and going to tanzania today. feel a little sick to my stomach (nervous, excited?)... i hope it's a lot of fun. i was sick of the drudgey go nowhere office life... so i think this'll be good. seb was in town for the past 2 days and it was great to see him. and fun to hang out with deetsquad and family.

also, india was great. but sad to say bye to kav but she's happy i think.

ok. let's see if i "blog".