Hot Springs and Cold Milk

The only times I have successfully camped (as in the middle of nowhere, in a tent because there is nowhere else to sleep) have been in foreign countries, why is that? We tried to camp with the Wilsons when I was in like fourth grade and somehow that fell through. Bailey, Kevin, Hantho, Tucker and I tried to camp two summers ago but it started storming and trees fell down in the park we were in. But somehow I successfully camped when we were in the mountains of Panama and also this past weekend at some hot springs outside of Arusha. The hot springs (maji moto in Swahili) were wonderful and it was really relaxing to get out of Arusha for a night and away from the crazy amounts of work that we have to do this last week. Our friend Aziz is a tour guide but he is also awesome so we had him set everything up for us and he did it perfectly. There were tents, sleeping mats, and absolutely delicious food. And the hot springs were also wonderful (I wish I could relay the story of my roommate Bailey falling in while trying to find a place to pee in the dark, but I just couldn’t do it justice). So after finally getting our dala dala started on Saturday morning because we killed the battery the night before by using it to light our cooking, we dragged our feet back to the reality of schoolwork. It was a nice one-night hiatus, though.

I know last week I said we were going to ICTR, but that didn’t happen last week. It did (sort of) happen today, though. We went there for our international law class with the intention of getting a tour, listening to a speaker and then seeing a trial. But of course once we finally got in we learned that the court session was closed because of a sensitive testimony and so we never got to see a case in session… leaving us with a documentary and speaker. It was a fine documentary and the speaker was very knowledgeable but it was just not what I was hoping for. Also I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about the quite melodramatic statement that on April 6^th the people of Rwanda awoke to discover that “God had abandoned Rwanda and would not return for 100 days.” Everyone deals with tragedies differently, but I’m pretty sure it can’t be empirically proven that God just straight up left.

Basically I have spent the last week writing papers for all of my classes. This week we have six papers due. Six. Grasp that for a second. And now you understand why I haven’t written much. Actually the real issue is not necessarily not having time to write, it’s more about not having anything new to write about since I’m spending my time writing papers. Although I will say that I have learned a lot of very interesting things in writing these papers. I know I already listed some of them, but the list of all the papers I’m writing are about: Female Genital Mutilation in East Africa, the sewage treatment plant that I talked about in an earlier post (actually two papers about that topic), rape as a weapon of war and its correlation (or possible lack thereof) with HIV transmission, a very unique volcano in Tanzania, and the Lord’s Resistance Army and regional efforts to contain the conflict. Some of you may be thinking that none of that sounds remotely interesting, but I know I made a couple of you jealous with some of those topics :)

I guess those are about the only updates I can give since, like I said, nothing super exciting is happening. Next week is final exams and the week after that is Zanzibar! Please google image search “Zanzibar beach” and tell me you’re not jealous. I’m not sick of Tanzania, but there are definitely a number of things that I’m looking forward to doing in three weeks. One is not having to use a bednet every night while I sleep. I’m getting excited just thinking about how easy it will be to get into my bed. Also, I’m excited to not have to plan showers twenty minutes ahead of time in order to have hot water. And I’m ready for some cold milk. The milk here pretty much always needs to be boiled before you drink it, which only really allows for you to put it in coffee, etc. and not drink just straight. And I want Chipotle.