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.