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One year ago I was alone, saddled with bags, inside Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyetta airport, watching the last of the travelers filter out as the airport closed for the night. I had just missed my connection to Mombasa, where I was supposed to meet my friend Mary. She wasn’t answering her cell phone. As the luggage carousel sputtered to a halt, the touts and taxi drivers sprung on me like jackals on a carcass. No, I didn’t need a safari. No, I don’t want to ride an elephant. Just get me to a hotel, please, somewhere I can sleep. I was wrecked after ~20 hours of travel, and I (stupidly) hadn’t planned for the occasion in which I missed my connection. The last flight out.

I zeroed in on my guy, one of the better dressed of the lot. He explained that he ran a tour company, and that he could show me some rooms. Wouldn’t I look at some pamphlets in his office? Dubious, and only marginally reassured by the fact that his office was in the terminal itself, I followed. I have a place, my friend told me to go there, I said, can you just help me get there? No, he said, that is too far and they have no room. Please, look at these nice places. Very nice, and not too much. This one, I said, looks fine. How much? Two hundred dollars, that’s a good price (no, it’s not). Somehow I got him to go for half of that and pick me up in the morning. The room was dirtier than a dorm room, and about the same size. Whatever, there was a bed with a net on it. And a prayer rug, just in case.

That’s how I started a five week trip to Tanzania as part of IBM’s Corporate Service Corps program, a trip that a year later I still think of often, if not daily. It was an incredible experience, and I’m incredibly grateful that I had a chance to participate. I long to go back to Tanzania, who knows what the future holds.

Photos:

More photos on Flickr

Slowly sorting through all the video I shot while in Tanzania. This is one of my favorites, two elephants playing in the mud at Tarangire National Park.

Before departing for East Africa, I purchased a Nikon D90. I had wanted to experiment with a digital SLR for a long, long time, and the trip was the tipping point for me. I only had a few weeks to learn the basics (how to focus, the different shooting modes), and I still had almost no idea how to use the thing when I arrived in Kenya. Nevertheless, after 30 days I had taken some 3000 photos. Most were crap, or alternate exposures, different compositions, etc. When it’s all said and done, after editing and deleting the bad ones, I’ve got about 1500 photos from the trip. They won’t win any awards, or even come close to what a real photographer would produce, but I think they do a good job of documenting the experience.

I cannot say enough good things about the D90. It’s a wonderful camera, and very, very easy to learn the ins-and-outs of it. Today I purchased a 50mm lens for use around town. The 18 – 200mm zoom lens I used in Tanzania was great for safari and touring the countryside, but it’s a bit heavy and bulky for everyday walking around. Also essential was the Nikon lens pen, and the Zing case (hat tip to Craig for that one).

Flickr sets:

• Visiting Mary in Mombasa – my pre-CSC travels to Mombasa to visit my friend Mary.
• Safari – the team took a three day safari in Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro Crater, and Tarangire Park.
• Team photos and sights around Arusha and the Institute
• Visit to Arusha Primary School – the team visted the school and talked to the students one morning
• Around the IAA campus – photos I took to help them with some marketing materials, and to document the campus
• Trip into the Mangola bush – Abarani, Bakiri, me, and other took a day trip to visit a bush village near Mangola.
• Zanzibar – After I left Arusha, I spent three days by myself on Zanzibar, an island off the coast in the Indian Ocean. I explored Stone Town, Nungwi Beach, and a local spice plantation.
• Visit to Karim Childrens Centre – the team visited an orphanage in Arusha to meet and play with the 11 children there. They stole our hearts.
• Trip to Dar Es Salaam with IAA – the IT staff of the Institute of Accountancy Arusha took a three-day field trip to Dar Es Salaam. I tagged along for the fun.

And a slideshow of the highlights:

Between the frantic bustle of overloaded dala dalas (minibusses) and burly 4×4s shuffling batches of tourists off on safari move a eclectic mix of bicycles, filling the transportation gap for a large majority of the population here in Tanzania. The small, nimble bicyclists fight drivers and pedestrians for space on congested streets. The bicycles are usually loaded with a passenger on the back (one ride is a few hundred shillings, or $0.25) or a bunch of bananas on the way to market. The roadside is full of cycles repair shops where you’ll see men (always men, never women) fixing flats or truing wheels. It’s certainly no Amsterdam — riders are at the bottom of the road food chain. Accidents are common, as the riders must jockey for position between exhaust-spewing cargo trucks and men pulling carts overloaded with sisal and bags of cement.

Most of the bicycles in Tanzania, like the automobiles, are imported from China. They are heavy, up-right city cruisers with beefy 26″ wheels and thick tires, a requirement for the often potholed, uneven roads in the city. Riders will decorate their machines with tassels or bright-colored fabric trailing from the seat post. All bicycles have full fenders and mudflaps.

In Dar Es Salaam, I noticed a large number of tricycles, usually with a meter-long platform on the back. These vehicles were always manned by at least two people: one to pedal, and one to help push it up steep hills. Very few of the cycles here have multiple gears, and when they do, the derailleurs are often broken or full of dirt.

I have seen a handful of road bikes in the month that I’ve been here. One early Sunday morning I spotted a group of five or six riders decked out in full kit with older European road bikes. Perhaps they were discussing starting the Arusha Critical Mass?

Hard to believe that my time here in Arusha is almost complete. Today is the last day of real work; tomorrow is dedicated to presentations, handshakes (the cornerstone of Tanzanian business dealings), and goodbyes. Friday is a national holiday. The team leaves on Saturday at various times to go back to their homelands. I’m staying in Arusha for the weekend to visit Mangola, a local village near Karatu, and tour a friend’s uncle’s coffee plantation. Next week I’ll head to Zanzibar for a few days, then it’s back to the States on Thursday, with a pit-stop in London.

I’m happy with what we’ve been able to acheieve as a team here, and I’m very happy with what I was able to accomplish by myself. It’ll be tough not having our daily team dinners and card sessions, or to hear Bakiri’s piercing laugh, or almost being blindsided by a speeding dala dala, but I think we’ll manage.

Dar Es Salaam: hot, crowded, congested, brash, poor, dirty, lively, overwhelming, vibrant, humid, alive.

The title of this post comes from Bakiri, our very animated, very lovable partner at the Institute of Accountancy. I argued that it should not be “land of Kilimanjaro,” but rather “land of Bakiri,” but his modesty, for once, was too much.

Quick updates:

• Most bizarre item I’ve seen strapped on a bicycle rack: a lawn mower. The rider looked a bit unsteady navigating the speed bumps on Njiro road, but he never lost his balance, and drivers, surprisingly, gave him wide bearth. Runners up for the award are: a tower of six suitcases that dwarfed the rider, and a large computer printer.
• Fring has been indispensable in keeping in touch, as it usually much easier to carry the iPhone than the laptop and find a WiFi connection. Now that Skype is available for iPhone, however, I think I’ll switch, assuming I can ever finish downloading the app.
• I made arrangements today with a colleague at IAA to visit his uncle’s coffee farm outside Arusha. I’m unbelievable excited for this, possibly more excited than I am to see Zanzibar. His uncle is on the Tanzania Coffee Board, so you know it’s legit. Expect me to come back with 50kg sacks of coffee.

Sally and Nitish

Rodrigo and Chrstine

Andrea

Nitish

Hiroya

Rodrigo

Hiroya, Andrea, Gloria

Chris (yours truly)

Apologies to Colleen and Christine, I just didn’t get a good picture of you guys.

The team spent Wednesday morning visiting the staff and students of the Arusha School, a primary school in the Arusha city center. We paired off into groups of two to lead projects with the students. Hiroya and I partnered up to teach the kids origami, while other folks did science experiments, played marbles, and danced like vegetables. The kids were a joy to work with, all very curious about who the strangers on campus were. By far the most exciting thing for them was not the activities, or the stuff we brought to share, but rather to commandeer our digital cameras and run around campus taking pictures of each other and the stranger gaggle of foreigners, then clustering around to see the result on the LCD screens.

The campus was a collection of classroom buildings, joined by dusty dirt pathways, and the kids wandered in and out of them between class. At times it was hard to determine if class was really in session, as teachers were sometimes absent from rooms, and children aimlessly wandered the grounds, eager to take a photo or to talk about their favorite singer, Chris Brown. An ancient turtle slowly meandered across a patch of grass, older than the buildings surrounding it.

The classrooms at the school were austere and rather worn-down, without any sort of technology like televisions or computers, or even books and basic supplies like paper and pencils. The desks were battered and uncomfortable, simple welded steel and wood devices. The chalkboard chipped and stained with years of accumulated dust and grime. The walls coated in peeling paint and crude graffiti that sixth graders world-wide are compelled to leave behind. The windows had no screens, and had strong iron bars over them, casting a penitentiary mood over the interior.

Hiroya and I were left largely to ourselves to teach some thirty students, all sixth graders, how to fold origami paper cranes. There was no instructor for the class, and we more or less improvised our entire talk. After much too brief introductions, in which I introduced myself as a guy from the same city as Barack Obama, we launched into the origami. I had only learned the pattern an hour before, so I was only slightly less confused as the students. What began as patient listening on part of the students quickly devolved into barely organized chaos, as they clamored after Hiroya and I, shouting “Teacher, teacher! Is this right?” then thrusting some mangled attempt at folding paper into our faces.

We persevered, however, and managed to reign in the chaos. I found a few students who were quick learners, then dispatched them to instruct their classmates. The few hopeless cases I took pity on and just folded the paper for them. No matter how many times I would demonstrate a fold, they simply just stared blankly at me and motion for me to do it for them. After 40 minutes with this one group (we had only planned for only 15 minutes, and to do three classes), they all finally had cranes, some more majestic than others, a few barely recognizable, one torn to shreds, and patiently shared one or two pencils to draw on eyes, the finishing touch on their masterpieces.

Last weekend the team traveled to Ngorongoro Crater, Tarangire National Park, and Lake Manyara National Park. I’m still sorting through the 1466 photos I took, but for now here are a few highlights.