First week in Arusha
March 24th, 2009 • ICTR Internship, Personal
It’s been two weeks since we arrived in Arusha, and already we’ve moved house, being to two Churches, and I’m about to head off on a retreat for three nights with the ICTR. It’s been an interesting two weeks as we’ve got to know Arusha, Tanzania; and we’ve met some very interesting people.
What follows is a brief overview of our first week.
Day One
We landed at Kilimanjaro at about 11am in a small little Precision Air plane after a one hour trip from Nairobi. Kilimanjaro Airport is a fantastically small airport that is little more than a departure area. We lined up for our visas – “Australia? Kangaroo?” – paid our US$50 and were on our way. I’m sure glad we waited until we got to Tanzania to get our visas too, our Canadian friends ended up buying visas three times! Once in Canada, once at the border, and once more as they needed to get ‘volunteer’ visas to be able to volunteer in Tanzania.
We then loaded ourselves into a waiting minibus and were taken on a ride from Kilimanjaro Airport to Arusha. The airport seems to be right in the middle of nowhere, a one hour drive from Arusha, surrounded by nothing but the occasional dilapidated house or wandering donkey. The roads rapidly filled with people and cars as we approached Arusha, and we got our first taste of a ‘complimentary African massage’ – the government had recently installed insanely big speed bumps on the main highway after a bus ran off a bridge killing over 15 people. Along the way our driver also gave us our first Swahili lessons. Donkey is “ponda”.
Finally we arrived at BaseCamp Tanzania. A Canadian guest house for volunteers. It was a sleepy Sunday, but we still got to know a few of the extroverted Canadian volunteers – who were doing everything from teaching in schools to training pharmacists! They took us out that very night for a Tanzanian BBQ at Khan’s BBQ/Auto-mechanic. I’d recommend the “chicken on the bonnet” plus a passionfruit juice.
That night we realised the mosquito net we bought from home wasn’t quite going to fit over a single bed despite being labelled a “double”. So we had to gaffa tape together two mosquito nets, use our washing line to peg one end up and then make a hole in the ceiling to get the other one up. Plus Clare spent an hour sewing up all the holes in the mosquito net we found in our room. Thankfully the DEET was working well even if the nets weren’t.
The First Week
The next day I jumped straight in and took myself to the ICTR on Monday morning. As expected, they weren’t quite ready for me. After a few hours I managed to get my UN Intern ID sorted and then I was on my way home again because nothing else could be set up until Wednesday (Tuesday was a public holiday).
Monday night saw two Canadian birthdays so we head out to ‘Masaai Cafe’ for some authentic wood-fired pizza. And ‘soda’ out of a glass bottle. I’m shocked by how much soft drink I’m now drinking – all because of those addictive glass bottles.
Tuesday as a public holiday, but Central Market was buzzing so Clare and I headed out to try and bargain for mangoes. We managed to get two mangoes for TSH300 – an absolute bargain down from TSH2500! It’s always tempting to stop at one of the street vendors for fruit, but the language barrier, combined with their lack of small change and habit of selecting all the worse pieces of fruit for you, mean it’s often not worth it. The worst part about Central Market is that there is no refrigeration so everything just sits out in the sun. Fruit, vegetables, dried fish. Not only does that mean nice, fresh lettuce is non-existent but also that the smell of dried fish permeates every nook and cranny of the market. Mixed with chicken excrement, it’s one of the more memorable smells of the city.
Wednesday I headed back to the ICTR and got set up with an office, an e-mail address and met the other interns. There’s a few Americans, a Canadian, three Germans and a girl from Scotland. No work to do yet though, that’ll have to wait until Thursday. I spent most of the day reading up on the case I had been assigned too.
I managed to fraternise with a Defence intern over dinner on Thursday night. He’s not working on the same case as me so we should be fine… We had Chinese, straight after the meal one of the regular Arusha blackouts happened. They often occur from 8pm to 8am on weekends, but I guess we were just lucky.
Friday and I am doing research for our case. Not sure how to work out what I can say about here, so that’ll have to wait for another post. Had our most ‘western’ meal tonight – at an Indian place called The Taj. Extremely grateful for good Indian food!
Finally we got to the weekend. I have hazy memories of Saturday, but Sunday we decided to try and find a Church. We first tried to the Lutheran church at 8.30am, but it turns out all their services are in Swahili. We then headed to the local Anglican Church, and arrived about an hour and a half before the service started! But it was worth the wait, a very lively two hour service with lots and lots of music and singing. Although after travelling half around the world, I wasn’t expecting to be listening to a priest from Sydney in Arusha!
That’s one crazy week down, 24 more to go. I’m very excited about working at the ICTR and Arusha is a…livable city (more on that later). Work is now pouring in for me, and Clare has settled in after a bit of a rocky start having to deal with homesickness, food-sickness and recovering from jetlag all at once. For Clare’s take on our time here check out her blog.
While I can’t imagine myself choosing to come to Arusha for a holiday, I think we’ll end up enjoying what Tanzania has to offer – can’t wait for the rainy season.
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