Names have been changed

Day of the girl drama and Daniel's departure. October 17, 2011. Daniel was terminated from CCS today. He's done every drug in the book, save for crystal meth, and he's addicted to cocaine, alcohol, cigarettes and weed. I wonder how a kid from a small home and town becomes so messed up. I don't think I've ever seen him sober, but I remember the first time I met him perfectly. all the new volunteers were ushered into the common room after being picked up from the airport, and Monica, Jacob and Dan stood out as the slightly more confident and assured in their place in this tiled house. I thought he was cute, shaggy blonde hair and hunched shoulders, a blue baseball cap on his head. They were going out, it was Saturday afterall, and I resolved to get to know him. We became acquainted the next day, and he took Miami Madison, Lydie and me out to sketchy cool bar where we listened to eighties music under a twirling disco ball.  He offered us acid and coke, and I thought he was strange. I lost all attraction for the weird, sad creature that pretended like he knew everything. Dan doesn't have a plane ticket home, and seventy five dollars to his name. He's eighteen, and paid for this program by dealing drugs. Lauren thinks he came to Africa with good intentions, to get clean, but as some say, your problems follow you wherever you go. I think everyone here is running from something. Dan reminds me of the little grey cat that begged for food at the second campsite we stayed at this weekend. No one liked the cat, it was mangy and covered in fleas and ticks. People shoved it away from the table, ran it over with plastic chairs in an effort to get it away from Madison Vermont who is allergic to felines. It turned turned away from bits of pineapple tossed into the sandy brown dirt. I'm not sure why I connect Bakka, cat in Swahili and the name that Jenna gave it, to Dan, other than I both dislike and feel sorry for the wretchedness of their situations. 
I loved our safari. I saw lions mating, elephants pooping, birds swooping, hippos flapping their ears in a rare display of movement. I visited a Masai village and was confronted with tradition. We drove off the main road back to Arusha onto a dusty one lane path, crossing desert to come to a collection of thirteen huts in the middle of a large grey and gold plain. People are called from the huts, arranged in a circle with a pen for animals in the middle. About fifteen Masais, both male and female, form a horizontal line in front of our disheveled and weary pack. They bounce in place, jump, and chant in a foreegin dialect. All are wearing bright cloths, Masai blankets as they are known to tourists. Men and women wear jewlwery, and the women come to put their large stiff beaded white necklaces onto our sweaty necks. We jump and dance with them, and then are divided up into two groups to take a tour of the huts. Our guide speakslittle English, but talks slowly and deliberately in a soft, creepy tone. He explains that one man owns the village. The man has eleven wives and fifty two children. He himself is married, twenty six, and no children. The hut was tiny, and hot. I sat with Lydie on a bed made of cow hide. We could barely see the faces sitting two feet away, but our eyes adjusted and we watched the man wipe his forehead, the sweat reflecting the red of his draped blanket. They eat only meat, milk and blood. Very little water. They do not eat vegetables because to them, that would put them on the same level as the cows. The man who owns the village is out to see a friend. The women build the huts and make the jewelry to sell. They may not marry outside the tribe. People may go to university, but must return. Female and male circumcision is practiced. For males, it happens at twenty, and he wrote the numbers with a stick in the dirt so as not to get them wrong, and female at seventeen. Women marry at twenty, men later. There is a doctor here, a witch doctor, who does the circumcisions. We asked him question after question. We squirmed with answers, from the heat as well. He asked, are you hot? Is it different in your culture? Yes, yes. Very. We left the village, some buying beaded bracelets and Christmas ornaments, feeling disconnected and powerless. How do you change someone? How do you change a nation, a culture?