The stress is building...
Last week was paradise. We trucked happily to Ruaha, bouncing along in the back of the Green Bomber, singing merry songs and playing silly games and having a good time. We sat on porches in front of little stone chalets and watched hippos play twenty feet away in the river while zebra and impala and giraffe came down to water. We ate fine British meals and played bottle-cap poker while watching hyraxes scamper over the rocks. We went on game drives in open-air, stadium seated land rovers while sipping fine soda like Fanta Passion and Stoney Tangowizi. At night the hippos came up from the river and you never knew what you might run into on the path after dark...
Yesterday, we had our own church service, with two guitars and a banjo and an African drum and small clay pots. We played the Danes at soccer and watched a projected movie (a Masumbo first) where men in ultralights followed migrating birds. Today, we were tested on crocodiles and flamingoes babboons and the social life of the incredible naked mole rat. And we prepped. And tonight we pack.
Because tomorrow we leave at the crack of dawn for a little town, accessible only by Land Rover over a motorcycle track, an hour into the hills outside of Mbeya. There, we will split into pairs and walk off into the hills to meet our host family and begin our homestays with the Wasafwa. We will spend eight days sleeping, eating, drinking, and hopefully working and talking with our hosts, trying to make friends and cross cultural barriers and gather anthropological data. No professor, no cultural brokers, no schedules, no translators, nothing but you, your tentmate, and your new family.
Excitement and anxiety...but mostly curiousity. Who knows what the next eight days will bring?