The Wind Begins to Blow

Less than two weeks!

Feels far too surreal to even be true.

So - welcome! This is my first time ever putting together a blog, and I'll admit, I'm a bit intimidated. Plus, the first post is always, without fail, guaranteed to be wonderfully --

AWKWARD

-- so now that we have that taken care of and established, we can move on the meat of the matter, key of which being that yes, indeed, I am headed off to the fabulous continent of:

Africa!

in 12 days, and will be over there for the duration of fall semester, officially returning to the states on December 23rd, just in time for the absolute culture shock of American Christmas season.

The itinerary includes:

• A three week homestay in Nairobi, along with Swahili and general African history/culture (broad, I know) classes. This will be our first immersion, hopefully gentle, to the very different style -- and quality -- of life experienced by a huge proportion of people. It will also be incredible to see what a major metropolitan area in the third world looks, feels, sounds, smells, and tastes like (never underestimate the power of the five senses) -- to find the humanity shared by all of us in the visceral context of a world very far removed from our own. I also hear that our hosts drink seemingly unlimited amounts of Chai Tea, for which I am very excited already. Hopefully some of your postcards will be written in Swahili as well!
• For the next three weeks we'll be traveling down the Kenyan coast, through Mombassa, Pemba, and hopping over to the island of Zanzibar. This spell of time will include another homestay (on Zanzibar I believe), and ample amount of time out on the reefs of the Indian Ocean, snorkeling around and learning, extensively, about the coral reef and coastal ecology of this fragile and beautiful environment. We'll be practicing our Swahili in real time, with locals of the coast, and also getting our first dose of Islam and what is called the "Swahili Coast." Swahili is a hybrid language -- it was developed to facilitate easy communication between the Arab/Indian traders and the Bantu language-speaking people of the East African coast, and thus is a fairly simple language to pick up. Incredibly, most Africans are trilingual -- speaking Swahili, English, and then their tribal language, oftentimes a few tribal languages. Most Americans are what? -- monolingual? Yes, very much so. Let's work on that one...
• After getting our dose of swimming and discovering the African coast, we will embark inward, heading out into the proverbial "bush" for the next three weeks, in the vast expanse of the Serengeti National Park and the Ngorogoro Conservation Area. Doing what? Safari, of course! We'll skirt around Mt. Kilimanjaro (and if I'm not mistaken, we'll be camping very close to it, and watching the sun rise and spread across the plains around it), and spend a glorious (and insect filled) spell of time observing the majestic and awe-inspiring power of the world in-the-raw. Going to sleep under the vast panorama of stars like you've never imagined. Waking up to the lions roaring. Getting incredibly carsick on in the Range Rovers. Following elephants and prides of lions. Feeling the ground tremor beneath the feet of thousands of gazelles and wildebeests. Fighting off tse-tse flies. Dancing with the guides. Feeling that, absolutely so, you are alive. Aware of the thrumming energy of all that life around you. And how incredible that moment is. Obviously, I'm excited.
• Our next destination will be Loliondo, Tanzania, just outside of Serengeti National Park, where we will have a week-long homestay with the Massai people, integrating ourselves -- as best as our painfully white selves will be able to do -- with the family, helping with chores, cooking meals, sharing stories, and partaking of a slice of life that is all too overlooked. Very excited to experience to humanity of these tribal, loving people.
• At this point, the group will split into the environmental studies/biology side and the general culture side. The environmental side will go back out to the bush to conduct our own independent research and field studies (I am hoping to do something involving chimpanzees!), and the general culture side will go back to the city of Arusha, where they will develop their own projects concerning urban and social issues. After two weeks out in the bush for my side of the trip, we will head back out to the coast to do a similar independent research project in the coastal areas.
• For the very last two days of the trip, the entire group will reconvene in Nairobi to present our projects to each other, wrap up, say our goodbyes, and head our own separate ways. My faithful (and dashing) roommate Anton, and I, will at this point embark on our own two week independent trip, which will hopefully entail rafting the headwaters of the Nile and backpacking in the Usambara mountains.
• The trip will be concluded by traveling back to London for a few days right in the Christmas rush time of year (the 19th - 22nd), re-aquatinting ourselves with Western society, kicking it around the city for a bit, picking up some British slang, and flying back to the States!

Whew. Amazing the directions that life takes you, when the circumstances present themselves.

My contact options will of course be severely limited when I am over there -- I will not have my cell phone, for example (though I will have an international cell phone) -- and internet access will be predominantly in Nairobi and the various other cities that we stay in. Needless to say, my update on this blog will be intermittent come midway through the trip, as I will be out with the elephants and lions, and not with the wires and computers. But....

Mail still works! Not that I will have a postal address of course, but all of you still do! I am not certain what postage costs from over there, but -- I will do my very best to send a postcard to all who are kind enough to send me their mailing address (psst...this means you should send your address to me on facebook or by email...). You can also request if you want the message written in Swahili (with a translation) or if you want the postmark to come from Kenya or Tanzania. Options, options...

This is also to say that I will dearly (quite honestly) miss you all, and that you can be sure I'll be thinking of you (and the various comforts you are enjoying at that present moment ... like not having to swat away unnamed bugs ... ) often.

Also! I will have intermittent access to facebook, like I said, so by all means -- please continue to write messages to me, post things to me, keep me in on what you've been up to -- it'll help to keep the sure-to-occur-at-least-once homesickness at bay.

And with that long winded post -- look for more soon! I'm sure I'll use this blog to post more random things throughout the upcoming weeks, whether they pertain to Africa or not.

Lovingly yours,

Zach