First Day in Arusha/Tanzania

The day had finally come. The journey had started.  Starting at 11.15 am (EST) from the Washington DC airport and a journey of about 17 hours finally got me to the Kilimanjaro international airport. I am glad I had Lyon, one of the guys in the EWH program to share this long journey. We encountered some problems during our journey: the flight was delayed, the connecting flight management was a mess and finally when we arrived some people in our groups were missing their luggage. But, everything seemed to fade when we got into the van and made our way to TCDC, where our host family was waiting to pick us up. As we traversed the road, it reminded me of my native place in India.

The sunflower plants, the banana trees, the left side driving, made me feel that I am back in India. On our way some of us were trying to learn some basic greetings to greet the elders. It was fun to watch everyone trying to learn the word shikamoo (usually for greeting the elders). The entire time in the bus they tried to remember that word, but it proved to be worth the effort as our host families were really happy to hear us greet and replied us with marahaba.

At TCDC before we were assigned to the host families, we met some other group of students from Denmark from our program. We chatted and exchanged names, discussed our backgrounds until my name was called and I was assigned to DaDa (sister) who had come with her niece to pick me. We discussed on our way home about the similarities between things in India and Tanzania. I was welcomed (karibu) with a juice of watermelon and mango, which was refreshing. The lunch was delicious with some spaghetti with green peas gravy, fried potato chips and mango pulps. Didn’t that make your mouth water?(I will upload some pictures next time which will definitely make your mouth water). Ohh!!I forgot to mention, some of this lunch was prepared on a charcoal stove (again similar to rural India).

I thought of taking a shower, I mean to bathe and again it shared similarities with bathing style in India with bucket to take a bath and a squatting toilet for you know what! I was so tired that I went to bed at around 9.30 and slept straight for like 9-10 hours. This is how much I can tell you now. Will let you know about the swahili lessons and lab sessions in my next blog. Till then kwaheri (goodbye)!!