Safari Elfu Mbili na Kumi na Moja!

Officially past the half way point of training our calendar included a much anticipated “trainee directed activity.” The time is intended to allow the group to do whatever we please, but as with every group before us, we chose to go to a nearby national park on a safari! Initially I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was really hoping that the part wouldn’t be fenced or gated in anyway, which luckily it wasn’t. In fact, it was a lot like the wildlife refuge I grew up next to in that you can more or less just drive into the park area on a road that passes right through. There is, however, also an official entrance to the park with a small office that does charge admission, but it was only $20 USD and got us a lot closer to the wildlife. The rate was good for 24 hours so we chose to go both late in the evening, around sunset, and early the next morning when we were told the animals were most active. Even before entering that area of the park however, animals were visible from the road. I was the first on our bus to spot a group of impala. Then we saw warthogs, a giraffe and zebra. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to see all of the animals! There were so many! How I was seeing these animals was also hard to believe. These were free animals living as they naturally do. No cages. No “feeding times”. No souvenirs. It was amazing! Mikumi is actually one of the smaller national parks in Tanzania so it isn’t very tourist heavy and our group was one of very few in the park.

We spent a lot of our initial time in the park waiting to see a simba (lion) that was protecting a recently killed twiga (giraffe). The vantage point we had wasn’t great and the most we saw was her ears and tail once or twice. We had more luck the next morning on the opposite side of the deceased twiga. (see my photos on flickr!) We also saw hippos, crocodiles, baboons and elephants on the second day. I still can’t believe that seeing these animals is normal here. If the fact that I’m living in Africa hadn’t set in by this past weekend, it certainly did after the safari.

On another note –

Teaching has been going incredibly well. I love it. Last week I covered file types, naming files and photo editing/drawing software with my form one students. I took photos with each of my classes and loaded them onto the computers in the lab. Then, after doing an activity in which the students created and named their own files on note cards and filed them in the folders that I brought to class, I directed them to find the photo of their stream on the computer. I’ve noticed that every class I do is better as time goes on. I get to do the same lesson 3 times every week and I’m pretty sure my Thursday class always gets the best lesson. In fact, last week Kihonda didn’t have power, which meant no computers in class. I was slightly worried about how I would fill the time, but had back up plans in place. Surprisingly I think it might have been one of my best classes to date. We spent more time on the activity and I could SEE them getting it. Which felt amazing! I also got to cover how to open and save the files by drawing diagrams on the chalkboard. I know the students were a bit disappointed that they couldn’t use the computer (they asked if they could come in on Friday or Monday) but I know they still enjoyed the class and I really think they learned something.