Day 2

In Tanzania. It seems unreal. It's beautiful here, luscious and dry at the same time, and the house is amazing and clean. There's a huge garden that surrounds the property, and there are many people that work for us here. We have three cooks, three housekeepers, gardeners, and drivers. It sounds excessive, but that's the way things work here. Apparently there's a happening nightclub that we're going to go out to at some point. We start work tomorrow after two days of orientation, and I'm excited to start. I met the woman who runs the nursery school, Mary, and her daughter, Aika, who teaches there, and they are friendly and passionate about the work they do. I've made quite a few friends, and the local people are really lovely. We've gone to the local market, where we were immersed in smells of tomatoes, fruit, and freshly slaughtered livestock. We also took a tour of Moshi, the town next to Karanga. The only thing to detract from the experience is the men... they're all very forward and most of them believe that women are inferior to them, and therefore treat us as such. Also, there's no sense of a personal bubble.. it's like your body is free to touch, which is definitely something that's hard to get used to. Less homesick than before... will try to get my blog post from yesterday from my iPad onto this. It's less hurried, and more detailed about our journey (and I do say journey because I believe I gained years in the spaces of hours) to Karanga.

“To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted." - Bill Bryson

Three Days Until

I was given a book today, "The Great Railway Bazaar," about Paul Theroux's journey across Asia on train. On one of the starting pages was a quote:

"I decided that travel was flight and pursuit in equal parts."

I don't know what I pursue; knowledge, life-experiences and "reevaluation of life goals" are vague terms, ones I can't take to heart, or actively seek.

I know what I flee.

The autumn leaves are falling like rain / Although my neighbors are all barbarians / And you, you are a thousand miles away / There are always two cups at my table. -T'ang Dynasty Poem

Tickticktick: One Week

Tomorrow will be one week before I leave. I've done my shopping (dressing down my wardrobe, so to speak), picked my essential electronics and books to bring, and now I'm just combatting the worries that arise when friends and family members offer suggestions like, "don't be the girls from Taken." Noted, thanks! I'll be in Tanzania nine weeks, eight of which will be spend in a program working for Bridge Nursery School, teaching children aged 2 1/2 to 7, a time when I hopefully won't be abducted and  forcefully addicted to drugs, all while trying to maintain my virtue and innocence before my dad rescues me and takes me back home to meet a pop-singer.


Last night, Alex came over to ask my mom, who apparently contains psychic abilities according to a raspy Atlantian fortune-teller, to read her tarot cards. Skeptical though I was, I was intrigued. This summer, I've been reading Michael Shermer's "comprehensive and provocative theory on how beliefs are born, formed, reinforced, challenged, changed, and extinguished": The Believing Brain. (Amazon)  Look it up--a great read. Anyway, with a skeptic's voice in my head, I wanted to know what Tarot card I would be.

There, on our worn and rustic kitchen table, sitting on patterned seat cushions with fruit cleared to make way for our reading, it was revealed, by divine coincidence or a stroke of luck, that I am the traveling fool, haphazardly bumbling through places, and young enough to continue to metamorphose.

I asked of love, of course, and I am bound to the king, continually rejecting the pages that will not suffice.

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move. -- Robert Louis Stevenson