Tyler!!

In just a few hours, I'm hopping on the shuttle to Nairobi to go pick up Tyler from the airport. I'm SO EXCITED! It's the best post-Valentine's present ever. He and I are going to Zanzibar next week together, and hopefully will get to go camping the next weekend. To celebrate, I am posting a picture of him and Rusty, one of his dogsters back in Florida. If you don't hear from me for the next couple of weeks, this is why:



Things are going wonderfully for Umoja. Our new school has opened, and on Saturdays, it's absolutely overflowing with children and parents of all different backgrounds who are there for the art, dance, and music classes taking place. It's quite busy the rest of the week, too -- and with a kitchen to make tea, a nice new electric piano (thanks Mom and Dad) to play on, and great people around me, it's a fantastic place to teach. I wish all of you could see it!

pictures from our Meru climb!

I've taken more than a month off from my blog (mostly because I took about 3.5 weeks off from Africa ...), but what better way to jump back in than to show some photos from the recent hike that Mom, Dad and I took? We all struggled our way to the summit of Mount Meru, which is 14,900 ft above sea level. Yow. The mountain is absolutely beautiful in all its diverse landscapes: lush green forest, open grassy sections, and moon-like craters and slopes as you get closer to the summit. We got rained on, we hiked for four hours in the dark, and we pretty much all got altitude sick ... it was intense. I'm not really ready to flesh out the entire narrative of the hike, so here's hoping the pictures will tell some of the story.

(P.S. Mom and Dad are chilling out on Zanzibar now, which is the beautiful, relaxing island off the Tanzanian coast ... and pretty much the exact opposite of climbing a mountain. I am happy for them. They went snorkeling yesterday. Yes!)


This field at the base of the mountain was a beautiful beginning ... and we saw a buffalo skull displayed prominently on a log. This was a fashionable thing to do on Mt. Meru, apparently. There are LOTS of buffalo on the mountain.


After a fairly low-key three-hour hike, we arried at our first camp, Miriakamba Hut. From there, Dad and I took a very short side hike. We saw a lot of baboons (which I failed to photograph successfully), but also got a beautiful view of the ash cone, an old lava-related formation below the summit of Meru.


When we woke up that morning, the sun was casting a really nice light on the summit ridge.


The hike to the next camp was more than four and a half hours. We arrived there (around 11,600 feet) and after a brief rest (and waiting for the rain to pass), did an acclimatization hike to Little Meru, a minor peak. Of course, the clouds kept us from having any really great views, and as soon as we reached that peak, the rain began to come down again. So we broke out our matching, five-dollar ponchos, which would continue to haunt us with their crappiness. Don't we look cute, though?


That morning we awoke at 1am for a 2am departure for the summit. Yikes. After a grueling, psychologically unsettling, nearly seven-hour trudge to the summit, this was the view we were rewarded with.


Still and all ... our first-ever hike of this magnitude, and we all made it to the top: Socialist Peak! Haha!


The descent was really difficult. But, now that it was daylight, we did get to find out just how incredible and other-worldly the hike had been. It looks like we're on a crater of the moon!


We had to descend all the way to Miriakamba, the first camp, and we were all exhausted. A certain someone whose name rhymes with Bark had been vomiting from altitude sickness (!), we were all totally exhausted, our gear was wet ... we did NOT want to hike downhill anymore. But we did, and slept a pretty solid night at lower altitude. The morning views of Kilimanjaro were definitely worth it.


On the way down from Miriakamba, our final descent, we took the "scenic route" and got to see lots of incredible Colobus monkeys, blue monkeys, a faraway giraffe, etc. We also got to stand under the HUGE Fig Tree Arch.

That's all I've got for now -- hopefully more pictures to come, we're going on a short safari this weekend! Of course I'm having more adventures with my parents than I have living here for the past several months. Lots of love to everyone at home.

in nairobi

My Emirates Airlines visit today, the sole purpose for my 2 entire days spent twiddling my thumbs here in Nairobi, was so frustrating, it was hilarious. Nairobi is a real city, with skyscrapers, and after arriving by taxi I ascended to the 20th floor of View Park Towers to see an Emirates rep and move a flight. Somehow, in a masochistic twist, I decided to walk past all the efficient, beautiful women Emirates employees (they make them wear these gorgeous hats with swaths of white gauze - very chic), typing rapidly at their computers, and sit down across from a Kenyan man who was just sort of blinking at me.

He began to enter my surname into his computer at a speed that even 'hunt and peck' does not adequately describe. M-C-S-W-E-E ... he shyly looked up at me and proffered up my passport for me to look at.

'Oh ... is a mistake? I thought it was supposed to be a T.'
'What?'
'Are you sure ... this should not be a T? They make a mistake?'
'Who made a mistake? What?'

I looked at my name.

'No, that's correct.'
'Oh. ... You see, I thought it should be a T.'

MCSWEETEY?

This was a bungled flirtation attempt so terrible, I started cracking up right there. He also chuckled, probably thinking he'd done a great job.

He then proceeded to take an HOUR to change the date of my flight, turning frequently to the beautiful Emirates lady next to him for help. He wrote confirmation codes on various scraps of paper, often used an ancient calculator to add my date-change fees (at least ten times), blinked at the screen, and typed about 2 characters per minute. At forty-five minutes I was ready to tear my hair out.

'Should we get someone to help us?' I asked him, trying not to be rude, and trying not to scream.
'No no, I am just finishing. Juuuust finishing.'

So there it is. I had to tell someone. I waited an hour for Emirates to change my flight. I told my Taxi driver. 'Maybe he is Tanzanian,' he said. 'Tanzanians are slow.'

off to Nairobi, 48 hours early ...

Happy (belated) Birthday Dad! I called yesterday and woke him up on his birthday. Lucky number twelve.

I'm headed to Nairobi tomorrow afternoon, taking the first step of my journey home, a little earlier than expected. It turns out I've got to make a date change for my flight home at the end of the school year, and you can ONLY do it in person, at the Emirates Airlines office in Nairobi. Kind of a long story, but some of their bookings are still made the old-fashioned way. So, to catch them during business hours, I've got to head up to Kenya. It's a bit hectic, and I definitely didn't finish all the Christmas shopping (!) I'd intended to do here ... everyone is going to get Kilimanjaro tea bags for Christmas.

In addition, I've been feeling pretty sick the last few days, with bad body aches in the afternoon and feverish nights of sleep. But today I got malaria tests from 2 separate, reliable clinics here in Arusha, and they're negative. I've probably caught some little thing. But it wasn't a fun way to spend the day, sitting in waiting rooms, getting hot flashes. I had an interesting discussion with the "doctor" at the first clinic, who didn't examine me, asked about 2 questions re: my symptoms, and asserted that Ortho Tri-Cyclen is not a drug or medication, but a "supplement." This is the same doctor who, despite my negative malaria lab test, prescribed me an intense 4-day anti-malarial course.

Sigh.

Hopefully I'll feel better so that I can explore Nairobi a little bit before I fly out Sunday night. There's supposed to be fabulous shopping, Indian food, and a big proper movie theater ... otherwise, I'll be holed up at the Backpackers, catching up on my Z's and dreaming of a snowy NYC arrival. In less than four days, I'll be filling up the hug tanks at home in Mansfield!

1. Rock Star has returned. He appeared the other morning, lounging casually on Jessica's bed as if nothing had happened. "Where have you BEEN!?" I asked him. Only a few missing whiskers suggested some kind of wandering adventure. We were overjoyed to see him, and I basically let him walk all over my laptop while I tried to work.

2. I have one more day of teaching left before I enter Christmas Shopping Mode. I'm so glad to be out of the glare of American Christmas-shopping mania ... but people still like presents.

3. I'm thinking of having a little benefit concert of my own while I'm back home in the Boston area -- so, open call to my musician friends from around there. Want to play on a benefit, and maybe even help me put it together? Something low-key, but where we could try to make a few hundred dollars to assist in the transport of our new electric piano from the US to Tanzania. That stuff's expensive ... so give an email if you'll be around Boston for the holidays, and would be willing to donate your artistic talents to a little gathering.

Jingle bells, ho ho ho, etc!!
Love,
Ellen

oh no!

This morning I realized I haven't seen Rock Star in three days!
What if they actually killed him!?

Oh no, Rocky ...

1. We gave a benefit concert on Friday and raised $600! It was a fantastic success in terms of turnout and it felt great for all the Umoja staff to give performances as a team, to put on an event for the community as an organization. Hopefully we will do another in January when Mom and Dad are here.

2. I'm counting down the days til my departure (less than two weeks now) like a giddy schoolgirl. It's been far too long since I saw Tyler, my parents, my siblings -- including my little brother who just finished his first semester of COLLEGE -- and the prospect of all our amazing family traditions at Christmas makes me feel warm and tingly. Unfortunately Molly won't be around for the holiday because she's having an awesome adventure on the West Coast ... that's really sad, but I'm also super excited for her to be traveling.

3. The music school is in stressful transition as we attempt to schedule all our students into the new space. Juggling twenty people's (or more) different hectic schedules, unpredictable commute times, traffic, children who can't focus past 5pm but don't finish school til 2:30 ... has been extremely stressful for me. Dealing with displeased, demanding parents isn't my idea of a good time. So I am just praying to finish the damn schedule and be done with it. Wish me luck.

Hopefully SEE some of you SOON.