Tanzania!: July 2012

So…this week was quite the adventure! I mean, how many people can say that they had surgery in a third-world country on Friday the 13^th? : ) Haha…

For those of you who don’t know the full story yet here it is:

For the past month and a half I have been having these weird pains on my left lower back, side, and stomach. These pains would hit at random times and only last around an hour. We had no idea what they were but narrowed our suspicions down to either an ovarian cyst or kidney stones. Last week on Tuesday after I got home from a day in town the pain started again…so I curled up to wait it out. After an hour I expected it to go away but it didn’t, then two hours passed and I began to worry. After three hours I was just ticked. By four hours I was throwing up and couldn’t keep down any pain medication. I was in the worst pain I had ever felt. Looking back I probably looked like a crazy person because I couldn’t sit still and was just rolling around my bed trying to figure out a solution. At one point Heather brought me up a piece of bread and some pain pills to see if that would help any. Well, I tried to eat a bite of bread but like I said, I couldn’t keep anything down. I got up to go throw up off of the porch and the next thing I know I was laying on the floor with Chanel, Heather, Heidi, and a few others looking down on me. The first thing I thought was “you are kidding me” and the second thing was “poor Chanel.” So, we have had quite the summer here with Team Tanzania. We have had lots of medical emergencies and our country director Chanel has witnessed way too many people pass out. Anyway, I woke up and my hands were numb and kept on going stiff which was super weird and scared everyone. I guess Heather was worried I choked on the bread but I think I just passed out from the pain and the lack of food and water in my system. Well, we called our driver friend Loth and he took me straight to a hospital in Arusha. They gave me and I.V., ran some tests, and shot me up with some pain medicine. Ahhh I was so secretly thankful I passed out so that I could get some pain medication! So me, Heather, and Chanel spent the night at the hospital and I was released the next day. I was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection and sent home with some pills for that. We knew it wasn’t that though, so I went and got an ultrasound at a women’s clinic some of my teammates volunteered at for a while. She found a cyst that was around 10 cm on my left ovary and that she wanted me to go to another place to get this confirmed. She said if they confirmed it then she would recommend I go home immediately. So we headed to the x-ray center where I had to have another ultrasound. Ugh. Ultrasounds are not fun let me tell you. Especially because drinking 6-8 cups of water to fill up my bladder hurts when there is already 10 cm of who knows what filling up my stomach! Anyway, this doctor found the cyst and confirmed the prior diagnosis. So we headed back to the women’s clinic and right when we got there I threw up and my pain became unbearable! In the long run, this pain is what saved my summer! : ) The doctor at this clinic said it would be too dangerous to have me fly home and that I needed surgery as soon as possible. We decided that Nairobi, Kenya would be the safest bet so we arranged transportation and I headed there with Chanel and Heather. That night at the Nairobi hospital I got another ultrasound, was told that I needed surgery as soon as possible because a cyst my size is very dangerous, and was also told by some other doctors that surgery would be a last resort because my cyst isn’t that dangerous. Yeah, we were just as confused as you probably are right now. But we scheduled a consultation appointment for the next day and spent the night at a hotel. The consultation the next day went much more smoothly and the doctors we met with were awesome. They went through my whole history with me and helped us come to the decision that surgery was my best bet. I was really excited because I wanted the pain to go away! Seriously, looking back I am surprised at how not-nervous I was to have strangers slice into me! But at the time I honestly would have done anything to get that painful twisting water balloon out of me! Ok this story is getting long…so basically I had surgery the next day at 6:00 and everything went great! I am back in Arusha now, taking it easy while my stitches heal. My team has been so awesome through this all, especially Heather and Chanel who spent so much time taking care of me. We projected the DVD of my surgery onto our wall the other night and enjoyed that as a team…who knew we would all become so close? : ) I don’t have time to read through and edit this post so you will have to forgive me if it doesn’t make sense! I just wanted to update my blog quickly while I am here at the internet café!

Here are some pics! : )

at lunch with our friend John John!...who knew later this night I would be laying in a hospital bed?

while in Nairobi we went to get henna...we were soooo excited...until we actually got it. what a joke.

just chillin at the hospital with my newest friend Albert! (thanks Heather and Chanel!)

ugh. after surgery!...you can tell we had a rough week!

to pass the time we treated ourselves to pedicures at the hospital salon : )

cute socks and sands Chanel

our feet have never been cleaner!

this is how we transported my flowers home from the hospital! i am surprised they made it alive!

: ) Thanks Kate and Tess!

also this week me and Heather got our hair braided by our friend Elias! it took 11 hours!

we also saw the African Acrobats show this week!

our favorite festive outfits : )

i dedicate this picture to kate! : )

this little cutie is Neema, and she is always pullin this face!

Time sure is flying! I can’t believe it has been another 2 weeks since I last wrote. There is a lot to tell so here I go…

The last few weeks have been so awesome! On the 26^th of June some of the girls from our team went with a partner of ours named Good Luck to make jewelry with Maasai women! Our whole day was awesome; it started out with our journey to theMaasai village where we got to hike through a river and follow some baboons through some trees! After we arrived we got straight to work stringing colored beads on long pieces of wire with the women there. It was so neat! They would sing us songs in Maasai and then we would sing them some songs. They didn’t know English but we made some friends anyway. While we were beading we got treated to the best juice which was passion fruit, orange, and avocado and some grilled maze, which is everybody’s favorite. After we were done they gave us some mua, which is sugarcane. Before we left they sang us a few more songs, showed us a dance, and gave us some bracelets to keep. It was probably one of the neatest things I have ever experienced! Anyway, on our walk back Mama Zion taught us one of the Maasai songs that the women had sang. So now we know one of the most common Maasai praise songs and we even looked back on our videos and now know the dance to go with it. Another thing that made this day so awesome was that on our scenic walk back we saw Mt. Kili far in the distance peeking out of the clouds! This was pretty neat because it is always hiding! Ok, the final thing that made this day one of the best ones so far was that we were running late and it was approaching dark so we got to take a pikipiki, or motorcycle, home! I don’t know why they are so fun to me but they are! It also makes me laugh that so many people stare and yell out “mzungu” then laugh. Why is it so funny to them when white people ride pikipiki’s?

Well, the day with the Maasai women was the highlight of last week. But we also went to Kitulezo a few times to teach and then on another day Heather and I went into town with Good Luck and Zion to find some suppliers for our jewelry business. On Thursday we started our journey to a place we like to call paradise. It began with a 10 hour bus ride to Tanga, which is on the East coast of Tanzania. When Heather, Kate, Emily, Tess, and I hopped on the bus at 7 o’clock in the morning we were expecting a 4 hour bus ride, so you can imagine what we were feeling after 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 hours on a completely stuffy, hot bus where nobody will speak to us in English or tell us what is going on! Haha…wow. Anyway, so after we arrived in Tanga we found a hotel and basically did nothing for the rest of the night. You know, when you have to be inside by dark, which is 6:30 here, your nights are kind of lame. But things got more interesting on Friday; we woke up early and took a daladala to a little place called Papony. We were the only 5 people to get off the daladala at this stop and after we stepped off it zipped away. We looked around and couldn’t see “any sign of intelligent life anywhere” (name that movie). Anyway, it was funny, all there was was a sign that said Papony on it. So we followed the dirt path, saw some cute little monkey’s crossing the road, and then without even knowing it at the time, found the best place to stay on the whole beach! We got to stay in a spacious grass hut called a banda and had the beach all to ourselves for the whole day. We relaxed, picked a coconut, did some acroyoga, looked for seashells… On Saturday we went sailing on a Dhow into the Indian Ocean with 3 Tanzanian sailing pros. We stopped somewhere in the middle of nowhere to go snorkeling. It was so awesome! We saw lots of fishies and got stung by a few things too. After snorkeling we went to a little place called Sand Island. This was our favorite part of the whole trip! It was a pile of sand they like to call an island in the middle of the ocean. We stayed there for maybe 45 minutes because by the end of that time our little island was sinking! The water level was rising and when it does the island disappears (for all you Lost fans, “the Island” was moving)! Anyway, after our journey on the ocean we packed up our stuff and left paradise on the most packed daladala I’ve ever been on. We spent the night at the same hotel in Tanga and then got on a bus back to Arusha the next morning. : )Oh but I just remembered two notable things that happened in Tanga the second time we were there… First, we got to ride on a little vehicle called a bajaji (who knows how it is spelled!) which is a cute little car thing with three wheels. We didn’t even need to go anywhere, we basically just took it on a joy ride…haha…the driver was so confused! Second, I saw a chicken cross the road!!! Why? I actually don’t know!...but it could possibly have been to get to the other side!

The reason I didn’t write this last Monday was because I was out of town. After we got back Sunday night from our vacation we packed and went to sleep because the next morning we left bright and early for “the water project.” The water project is a team project lead by Jen and Landon where we would be drilling a well for the community of Magara, which is a village near Lake Manyara. Jen and Landon are both engineers at Utah State and are the power couple on our team! They kind of remind me of Brock and Jashley because they are both super smart! Anyway, on Monday we arrived in Magara, got situated, set up the drill, and began drilling! Once the drill is all set up it is just a matter of spinning and cranking. I won’t even try to explain how the drill works because I don’t know how without confusing everyone. The most important things to know are that you dig 3 feet at a time and then you have to add another pipe, there has to be water flowing through the pipes and hole at all times (which gets you really wet and dirty), and our end goal was 105 feet. Only five on the team went on Monday to begin drilling. It was me, Heather, Kate, Landon, and Jen who travelled there with Spear, who is the owner of the company that drills wells and is also our Branch President. The six of us drilled Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday with the help of some men from the village. The rest of the team arrived in the afternoon on Wednesday and we finished the digging! On Thursday the team hiked to a waterfall nearby which was so neat! Really, it was a series of waterfalls with different pools. Chanel, Kate, Tess, and I climbed up as far as was physically possible but then had to turn around. It was pretty intense…at one point we climbed up a basically vertical rock where we used vines and tree roots to pull ourselves to safety! This place looks just like the scene during HakunaMatata on the Lion King!...we even did the sassy walk like Timon, Pumba, and Simba across a horizontal log! Haha… Anyway, on Thursday they put down the pipes for the well and on Friday they poured the cement pad around the well. Oh and something kind of funny happened to me on Friday. While we were at the well sight hanging out I was holding this adorable little girl when I noticed something wasn’t quite right. She peed all over my leg!!! HA! I mean, it was gross, but I will admit I found it kind of funny. She looked so guilty, the little pill. Our cook, Pendo, said it was my gift (or jift as they say) from Africa. Haha…

On Friday after the cement was poured and we put our handprints in it, some of us headed home but due to what we call “Africa time” we didn’t get home until like 9:00…there’s no hurry in Africa! Yesterday we spent the day in Arusha and I must say it feels good to be home! : ) As far as the well goes, it is finished except for the pump handle which will be coming in soon and then we will go back to do an opening ceremony with the village!

Alrighty! Here are some pics!

stringin beads with the Maasai women!

Mama Zion, Good Luck, and me

the Peponi sign in the middle on nowhere!

so happy to have finally arrived at our destination

our beach : )

our banda!

you know, gotta do the classic

this my dear friends, is Sand Island. doesn't the water look just like the advertisements?

that is our beautiful Dhow parked in the middle of the Indian Ocean at Sand Island : )

acroyoga on Sand Island!

Brai and Gma Jo will especially love this...so this is the well we used for clean water all week at the teacher's house we stayed at in Magara. now, the goats are always roaming around and eating but one day we peeked over the hill and this is what we saw!...goats stealing water from the well!!! my favorite is the one pumping the water!