Our trip to the Serengeti was incredible. The beauty of the Serengeti was strangely familiar, as much of it was prairie land. Obviously, the zebras and giraffes weren’t part of our summer drives across Iowa, but anyone who has ever driven across Kansas or Nebraska knows that Serengeti, the Maasai word for “endless plain” isn’t too far off. Because of the size of the park it was more difficult to see animals up close than in Ngorongoro Crater, but it seemed more natural and thus more interesting.

We had the opportunity to stay in a tented camp out in the middle of the Serengeti. According to the national park rules, camps like this have to move every three months and ours had just moved two weeks ago, so we couldn’t have breakfast any earlier that 7:30 for fear that the animals would come.

As most of you know, President Bush came to Tanzania last week. It was interesting, because even though I’m in the country I heard most of the news of his trip from friends and family back in the states. He didn’t come to Karatu to see us but his visit did essentially shut down the town of Arusha, two hours away. Ken, another volunteer, was leaving to travel to Zanzibar that day. He had to walk about 2.5 miles with his luggage to get to the Arusha Airport because the one road to the airport was closed. The president did spend a lot of time focused on malaria projects, which is, of course, an important part of our project. I think some people around the office are hoping we can use that picture of him wrapped in the bed net to make a poster.

At work, I’ve been continuing to work on organizing the MAISHA training and I am eagerly awaiting the results of a Secret Shopper Survey we conducted last Saturday. The results of that survey will help us assess if the first Drug Shopkeeper training was successful and give us an idea of what we should focus on for the next round of training.

Since I last wrote, the volunteer population in the Minnesota office has doubled. Ken, a fourth year medical student from Temple, and Katherine, a soon to be first year medical student, have arrived. Our trip to Serengeti was postponed until next weekend, so we’ve been keeping busy in other ways. I’ve been working on getting a couple research projects started regarding maternal alcohol and water quality, and I’ve been preparing for MAISHA training and a survey for drug shopkeepers that will help me design the next curriculum for shopkeepers who have already had one round of training.

Our trip to Ngorongoro was incredible. I was able to see lions and rhinos, which I hadn’t seen in my travels yet. In fact, the lions came as close as 10 feet from our vehicle. There were also a lot of baby zebra, lions, warthogs, and even baby rhino around. It was hard to shake the song “Circle of Life” out of my head.

The drama troupe that performs at the monthly market day had to conclude their performance early due to rain so the new volunteers missed it. Ken and Karen will leave before the next market day so we went to a local hotel where they perform on Saturday night. They performed a traditional dance from Zanzibar, Southern Tanzania, and did some acrobatics as well. At one point during the act one of the performers bends himself in various directions to fit through a narrow metal cylinder. I think it was pretty stressful for Katherine, who was quite concerned that he would get stuck.

Sunday morning two of the Peace Corps volunteers in the area came over for brunch. Veronica, the Maternal-Newborn Care assistant manager, is staying with us right now because her house isn’t quite ready yet. The chapati she makes is very crepe-like, so needless to say brunch was quite fancy and delicious.

I also found out this weekend that my mother, my sister, and my uncle will be coming to visit me in Tanzania in mid-March, so I’m quite excited about that.

This coming week, we’ll be conducting a secret shopper survey in the drug shops, heading to Rhotia, a nearby village, to do some clinical work and community observation, and President Bush is coming to Tanzania, so we are hoping he will visit us in Karatu on the way to the Crater.

Ngorongoro Crater