And the Winner is…

A while back I wrote (here) about entering a photo contest with photos from my Tanzania trip. Guess what? I tied for 1st place!

There were 244 entries and the sorted them into three categories: people, places and animals.  123 of the entries were in the people category.   The rest were pretty evenly split between the other two. It was pretty cool to find out that I won. 

(I cropped out the head in the lower right corner for the contest.)

Dream Job

If anyone were to ask me what my dream job would be, I’d say that I’d love to be a travel photographer.  I started traveling internationally when I was 17 years old.  Every since, I’ve been hooked on travel.  I love to explore other cultures, see how others live and just learn, learn, learn.

I usually try to flee the country every summer for someplace new and interesting.  Several years ago, I used to do it with students and I got to travel for “free.”  Free is a relative term in this case…  It’s one helluva lot of work to travel with teenagers!  My travels have brought me to every continent except Antarctica.  Antarctica is not making it onto my list of places to go, but I wouldn’t turn it down if someone else wanted to pay for it. 

This past summer I went to Tanzania.  In November there is a Fall event and there is a photo contest.  It’s only $15 to enter the contest and I know it’s going toward a good cause.  So here are my five photos…

I saw these two off in the distance while we were at the main church in Irindi. (I had uploaded this to flickr a while back, I did crop out the head in the lower right for the contest.)

This is a Masai woman. I have no idea of her age. I just think she’s beautiful.

Whenever we would come or go, we were always greeted with song and cheerful waves hello or goodbye. These are many of the children of Irindi who sang and danced and played with us.

We had a wonderful interpreter. He is a retired pastor. He is the interpreter for many groups from my area, so even though the picture isn’t the best I’ve taken, the subject is the reason for the entry. This is the “Kiponda look.”

There were five of us traveling together. Three were in the same family. This is one of my favorite photos that I took of them in Zanzibar.

The contest isn’t until November 7th. It would be cool if I won or placed. But what I really want to do was share these wonderful images from Tanzania.

My two cents

President Obama is going to make a speech on the first day of school.  Apparently he’s going to encourage the nation’s youth to do well and succeed in school.  This message is not political.  It’s common sense.  It needs to happen.

I just spent 3 weeks in a country where they actually value education.  They know that the only way they are going to get ahead is through education.  Teachers are respected.  Students aren’t misbehaving.  I saw no evidence of ADD or ADHD.  At Image Secondary School, I saw what the mathematics teacher was teaching.  CALCULUS – integrals with trigonometric functions. I was extremely impressed with what they were doing, especially with so few resources.  And you can bet those kids really know their stuff – they don’t have calculators readily available.

What was the debate team working on?  “Science and Technology have brought more harm than good to third world countries.”  I would have loved to hear that debate.

It is a privilege to go to secondary school in Tanzania.  It’s a boarding school situation, so the students have to be very responsible for themselves.  They have dorm rooms, they do their own laundry, they study, study, study.  They take their education seriously.

So if President Obama wants to encourage our students in the US, I see absolutely NO problem with that.  I’ll be tuning in.

Songs in my head

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Originally uploaded by certainabsurdity

Excuse my lack of expertise about posting video. I took several short videos in Tanzania. I wish I would have taken more.

Because I like to travel light, I purposely did NOT take my iPod. There is just way too much happening to be tuned out and in your own world. Having an iPod would have just seemed stupid. When you drive up to a place and they start singing, why on earth would you want to listen to anything else?!?

Take a listen…

Who needs an iPod when you sing like this?

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Originally uploaded by certainabsurdity

This video is how they welcomed us at Image Secondary School.

It’s been a long time…

since there has been a good travel climate for Americans.  I’m sure there are people that would argue with me.   I don’t know why, but it didn’t occur to me until we were almost done with the trip that this was the first time I’ve been out of the country since Obama was elected.

It’s pretty easy to say that I stand out in Tanzania.  For obvious reasons, I don’t blend in.  I walk into a shop and the scene plays out something like this:

Shop worker:  Karibu. (Welcome)

Me:  Asante. (Thank you)

Shop worker: I have small shop, small prices.  Where you from?

Out of habit from the last 8 years I quietly mutter:  U.S.

Shop worker’s face lights up:  BARAK OBAMA!

Now when they want to get your attention you are called “Obama sista” as you walk to another shop without a purchase.

As I got a henna tattoo on my foot, I have a conversation with the woman doing the artwork.

Henna artist:  Where you from?

Me:  U.S.

Henna artist smiles and says:  Obama

Henna artist:  Can I tell you a secret?

Me:  Sure.

Very proud henna artist:  He from my tribe.

All over Tanzania we found people excited about Barak Obama.  Being a political lefty, this made for a fun travel experience that I haven’t had in a long time.  There were even kangas (cloth used for a skirt, tied at the waist) with his photo and printed in Swahili at the bottom was something that translated to “Obama, hope for the world.”

This is a Masai boy in secondary school. Check out his belt.

This is a woman in Irindi. I told her I liked her bag.

Back Home

Dear Reader,

If you have been looking for me during the past 3 weeks, I’ve been on an amazing adventure in Tanzania. I’ve had many of those experiences that words can hardly describe. During the course of the next few weeks, I will do my best and post my thoughts here.

I think any trip to Africa changes you forever. It is so completely different than the U.S. The thing that struck me the most was how wonderful the people are. They are extremely poor, by our standards, but they have more joy than I have ever seen. It really makes me contemplate our value system here. I kept saying to myself that we’re really f***ed up in how we measure success. I’ve seen lots of proof lately that material wealth has nothing to do with how happy you are. I knew it before… this just made it crystal clear.

So I will be writing on a variety of topics. I’m trying to wrap my head around a lot of it still. But I’ll give you some serious, some funny and some informational stories about my trip.

It’s fun to be gone, but it is always nice to come home. Thoughts on Tanzania will be coming soon.

Travel Wishes

I got the coolest email from my yoga instructor.  She is an amazing woman and spent time last summer in Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya.  So she knows what my travels will be like from personal experience.  Here it is:

I honor you and I will think of you.  May you be kind to yourself even when there’s great confusion around you or in you; may you be generous to yourself even when there’s no toilet paper; may your choice of shoes for the journey serve you perfectly; may you find safe hiding spots for your cash; may all your flight connections connect in all the right places and in timely fashion, and may all those you meet reflect back to you your good intentions and open heart.

I leave on Tuesday.  I’ll be taking this with me.

Tanzania Bound

I’m in the process of getting ready for this summer’s big adventure.  I’ve had round two of my shots.  I’ve gotten some special clothing.  And I’ve started to assemble the minimal amount of stuff I’m taking along.

I haven’t said much about what I’ll be doing and where I’ll be going up until this point.  I’m going with four other people from my church.  There is a companion parish that we sponsor in Irindi and we like to send a group to visit every few years.  Every year, our congregation sponsors students at the Image Secondary School.  We will be visiting Image as well as Tumaini University.  A few years ago, Sunday school students raised money to buy goats for some Maasai people.  Hopefully we’ll be able to go to the Maasai preaching point and see the goats.  We’ll also see other preaching points and have fellowship with the church members.

I’m traveling with two women that teach at a local University.  They teach Nursing and Occupational Therapy.  So because of their interests we will also be visiting Ilula Health Center and some medical dispensaries in Tungamalenga and Mbuyuni.  There is also Neema Crafts in Iringa, where people with disabilities make various art and crafts.  The link is very cool.  Much better than any explanation I can give.  We will be going to the Isimila Stone Age Site as well as sampling life in Iringa.

After Iringa, we are heading to Ruaha National Park.  There are a few cool informational videos on the link.  It’s in central Tanzania.  We’re staying at Mwagusi Safari Lodge.  This will be the most upscale accommodation on the entire trip.  But if you’re going to Africa, you better do some sort of safari!

After the safari, we go back to Iringa for a night and then we’ll travel back to Dar es Saalam.  We’ll spend a night in Dar and see what there is to see there before taking a short flight to Zanzibar.

So at the end of the trip, we’re going to get a little beach time.  When I found out where we were staying in Zanzibar, I thought to myself, “Hmm… could we stay here the whole time?”  There seems to be a lot to do on that island.  We’ll be staying at a guest house near the northern tip of the island.  On their site, it lists lots of activities to do while you are there.  I want to do the Spice tour and check out Stone Town.  Checking out the sea turtles and monkeys looks cool too.  Heck!  I want to do it all.  And I’m for sure coming back with a henna tattoo.  I won’t do the real thing, but henna should be fun.

I hadn’t actually looked up many of these places online until writing this post.  I must say, it’s making me even more excited to go.

$11.62?

I went to pick up my travel prescriptions today. I was a bit surprised to find out that my insurance would only cover 30 days of the malaria prescription. The travel nurse, prescribed 31 pills. So they filled it as two prescriptions. One for 30 days and the other for 1 day. How much did that one extra pill cost? Yep. $11.62. The calculation for 31 pills was giving me a few extra. In reality, I should need a minimum of 28. Because of the time difference, they give you more than needed.

Did I get the extra pill? Nope. It’s a good thing I’m not going on a longer trip.