Blog post 2

Woooot second blog!

Let me just start by my day in Tanzania again.

Day 3, Camp Tanga 2.0
Date: 04-07-2014
Time: 22:40

YES! I finally unpacked my back! Right now I’m trying to sleep underneath a partly ripped mosquito net at another part of Camp Tanga. It’s slightly less beautiful than the other part of camp, but it’s still pretty awesome and luxurious. There are ‘normal’ toilets and showers with plenty of (cold) water. Also, the nice view of the beach and the sea is the same! And oh my god it’s sooooooo hot! Too bad we cannot open our tent because the chance of letting scorpions, spiders, snakes and whatsoever in seems way too big. Actually.. our tent floor has a lot of holes in it and a few of the zippers don’t work properly so.. I guess we’re screwed. Anyway, today we went to visit the village where we are going to start the project next Monday. It was about a 20 minute walk. While walking I was entertained by Ulu, and 18 year old girl working for camps international. She was so nice! She tried to teach me some Swahili, I sucked haha. I now know kigigi is village and schule is school. Of course I tried to show her something from our beautiful European culture, so we took a selfie. Hilarious. I learned that if you have a camera over here, the kids love you.
After lunch (something close to pasta Bolognese!) we went to the village close to camp. We met lots of cute kids that seemed to really like us, and especially our cameras and sunglasses. One of the girls immediately ran towards me and jumped into my arms. She took my sunglasses and started begging everyone around us to take pictures. She posed like a real model and screamed some random words in Swahili, probably meaning sunglasses or something. And she said Mzungu: I know that word! It means white person. They all shout it at us, in an inoffensive way of course, kinda weird though.
When we got back at camp we moved our stuff to the new camp, the one we’re at now. Oh btw, I drank a Kilimanjaro beer this night (so gross compared to Dutch beer) and I talked a lot with the British people and Aussies about weird Dutch traditions. They find Sinterklaas the weirdest of all: soo racist! Anyway, I spoke so much English today that I’m almost having trouble writing in Dutch. I should probably go to bed. No wait, first I have to risk my life by leaving my safe mosquito net and go to the toilet.. sigh.

Date: 13-10-2014
Time: 11:01

Actually today hasn’t really started yet, so I don’t have anything to write yet. This week though, was a nice one. Let’s start with Tuesday. I went to Groningen that day (another lovely Dutch word for our English speaking friends, keep practicing!) to have a drink with the boards of other student associations. Everyone had to dress fancy, we didn’t have to pay for our wine and beer and the goal was to try and ‘steal’ their board members and other stuff. Anyway, we had fun! And more was about to come, because guess who lives in Groningen.. *pampampaaam* Eva! One of the Dutch volunteers I met in Tanzania! J I was really excited to see her again since it was a while ago! We first had a beer with my friend from Utrecht (that’s where I live, remember?) then we dropped her off at the train station and went to Eva’s place. I changed my outfit into less fancy but way more comfortable and we talked and talked about.. I don’t know, everything. It felt all the same as a good old talk between Dutchies in Africa. Of course I wanted to see a bit more of Groningen so we went to a club. We found out it wasn’t really possible to have an actual conversation because of the loud music, disco lights and screaming people. Yeah, we could’ve known that. We went on to a bar, got kicked out because they we’re about to close so we went to another bar. There a real weird girl from London started talking to us about how badly she wanted to learn Dutch and how much she thought she sucked at it. Pretty funny how the one word she actually did pronounce the right way was kut (please Google that). Anywayyy, she wanted to add us on Facebook but we ignored her request, oops. I think we went home after this wonderful conversation and went to bed. Actually, we talked a lot more and then went to bed. The next morning Eva had to go to a lecture, but we had breakfast at the restaurant underneath her room instead. She dropped me off at the train station and went back to Uni while I headed back to Utrecht for an essay deadline.
Long story short: two months ago I saw a few Tanzanian villages and the school for the first time, this week I saw Groningen for the first time! So, history is obviously repeating itself. Kwaheri!