Landed safely in Arusha

Hamjambo marafiki!

I am safe and sound in Arusha, although definitely exhausted. I landed at 7:45 PM at Kilimanjaro airport after a loooong day of traveling on Sunday night. My journey started off with a little rerouting incident. It took about an hour and a half to get it straight. Luckily, it turned out that my new flight was through Boston, which left me with longer layovers and less flight time. Unluckily, my neighbor on the flight from Boston to Amsterdam was talkative and more than a little tipsy. So I got to hear for an hour about his drama with his "soon-to-be ex-wife."

Anyway, now I'm here and am in the middle of my second day of orientation. We had Swahili lessons both morning which were good refreshers for my novice skills. Yesterday we met most of the GSC staff and in the afternoon went on a walking tour of Arusha. The morning was very chilly, but the walking tour was in the afternoon, so I had to shed my fleece and scarf! We experienced out first "daladala" ride, which is the local transportation here. They are vans which the conductor packs with people and the driver drives recklessly. There will be many more daladala rides for me here! Today we met a Tanzanian man named Listone who is living with HIV. His wife and his first child are infected also. It was very interesting to hear him talk about the role stigma plays in relation to Tanzanians living with HIV. His family and friends for the most part are very accepting of his condition and help his family as much as possible, but there are many stigmatized people with HIV who do not treat themselves well and are not treated well by others. We talked a lot about the perceptions of HIV in America and in Tanzania. I definitely learned a lot from him and it was very valuable to hear his perspective. For lunch we went to a local Tanzanian restaurant and I had "pilau," which is brown spiced rice with "nyama ya rosti," which was basically beef in sauce. It was delicious and only about 5,000 Tanzanian shillings which is around $3!

Last night and tonight we are staying in a local hostel, and tomorrow evening we meet our homestay family who we will stay with on weekends and occassionally during the week for the rest of the trip. I have no idea who they are yet, so I'm very excited and a little nervous!

Hopefully I'll be able to update more often and maybe even with pictures if I can figure out how to upload, but no promises. You may just have to live with words!

Tutaonana baadaye!
Lexa