Saturday, June 26, 2010

The Beginning of the End

Despite the fact that I have three and a half weeks left, it feels as though my time here is coming to a swift end.

Friday marked the end of the term for the students here in Kitete. They took their final exams (or terminal exams as they call them), packed up their bags, and headed back to their respective homes. It is hard to imagine that I will never see most of these students again. In just five weeks, we have all become great friends. Hopefully they learned something too.

Before they left, we had a big end of term celebration. We even slaughtered a goat for the occasion. I was supposed to participate in the slaughter, but there was a miscommunication about the time of the deed. I guess I will have to stick to chickens (for those keeping track, my chicken kill count is at three). We had a big feast, they thanked us for teaching them, and we gave them some parting advice.

With the students gone, life is slow here in Kitete. There is not much work for us to do here. We can’t exactly teach without any students. Instead, we are preparing to travel. Monday we will be visiting Lake Manyara National Park, which is full of giraffes, rhinos, lions, etc. Then on Thursday we will head to Nairobi, Kenya for a week, Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar for a week, and then back to Kitete. By the time we return from travelling, we will only have one week left.

The experience has been amazing thus far, and there is still so much left to see. In fact, I came across a wild elephant on one of my runs last week. It had wandered out of the forest to eat some of the farmers’ wheat. I watched from about 50 yards away, having been warned that elephants are actually very dangerous.

Tanzanian Fun Fact: Tanzania is home to over 130 tribal and ethnic groups. These groups range in size from only a hundred thousand to two million. Most have their own languages too. The people here are the Iraqw people, originally from Ethiopia. I don’t believe they are of any relation to the Iraqis in the Middle East!

2 comments:

  1. Good to see you can out run an Elephant, enjoy the Indian Ocean I'm so jealous!

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  2. Hey Greg!

    It has been quite some time since we have spoken but I love following your blog. I plan on joining the Peace Corps when I graduate so reading your posts is very exciting and inspiring to me!

    Enjoy your last few weeks!

    Ashley Scott

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