Time to Go!!
Finally the day has arrived. I had packed and repacked the day before. I felt I was taking far too much clothes so I edited things down a bit and reconfigured by camera bag a little. I opted to check my normal carryon roller bag so I could focus 100% on my camera backpack with all the toiletries needed for flying for well over a day.
Of course it was a last minute scramble for me as I was churning out the last of the Dubai videos as I wanted to have them queued up in the internet before I left and uploading took far longer than I would have liked.
My uber came to pick me up, with one last little kitten petting moment and I was off to the airport. I was leaving my fur kids for 2.5 weeks! Got to the airport with no issue, I have Clear so airport security was a breeze. My flight was from Minneapolis to Amsterdam and then Amsterdam to Kilimanjaro airport. My flight was uneventful and landed through to Kilimanjaro at around 8 PM (roughly 2 9 hour flights with 1 layover and initially airport time so roughly 24 hours since I left my house).
So upon arrival, I had to wait roughly 2 hours to get through the whole visa, entry process. Per previous post, you can do your visas upon arrival but be prepared to wait in an unstructured mob to get through the non-existent queue. While waiting for that process, it took my phone about a good hour to sync into having any sort of connection to the local service provider. Once I was connected in with good old trusty WhatsApp, Angel and I were able to connect. We had already arranged that she would send their driver Mr. Philip to pick me up as her parents were arrive around the same time in from Kenya so they were picking them up. A little drama she was encountering is her parents weren’t at the bus station and as they did not have a data plan she had no way to connect with them to find out where they were.
I was able to quickly find Mr. Philip when I was through and off we were to Angel’s house. Mr. Philip and I enjoyed the 45 minute drive. It was already quite dark out so I wasn’t able to see much of the landscape but I could already tell that I am happy I don’t have to drive here. Lots of people just walking down the roads that due to the darkness of the night kinda creep up on you and people will drive on the wrong side of the road often, bearing straight down on you, as they are building new roads and people may not quite get the new process of where they need to be yet. So a little heartpumping here and there. Probably hadn’t helped that I hadn’t slept for over 30+ hours at this time.
I arrived at Angel’s home and thankfully her parents had been located so they were there, having arrived about 30 minutes prior to my arrival. As tired as we all were, as most of us haven’t seen each other in months/years we were far too excited and some catch ups were needed. Oh and I mustn’t forget Angel is the ultimate host. She arranged for us to have our own rooms, adjusting her 2 little ones into their room. Totally unnecessary but a wonderful gesture. Also she had given each of us little gifts. I got a traditional Masai bowl, a handmade purse, a few congas, a wonderful beach towel and some amazing local lotions. I cannot say this enough, she is the best and I’m so happy our paths crossed in life and our friendship has continued throughout the years.
Official Day 1 – Arts and Crafts/Jet Lag
So it’s Tuesday now and we have a busy day ahead of us. Angel’s oldest, Aidan, is still finishing up his 1st year of school (I think it relates to our view of Kindergarten) and there is a school assembly on Wednesday evening. Part of the school assembly is Aidan needed to have a costume of what he wants to be when he grows up, which is an astronaut. So Miss Paula (Angel’s mom) was tasked with creating the costume and Angel and I had to go out and find a helmet (we scrapped the papier-mache idea for a small bike helmet) and some duct tape to cover boots/gloves to make them look silver. Mr. Philip helped point us in the right direction to find the items and we did have a chuckle at the process within the hardware store. One guy to ask for the item, another person to grab the item, another person to bag the item and then you have to walk to another counter to another person to pay for the item and then you can collect the items at another counter with a different person. Thankfully we found all the items that we needed so we didn’t have to do an arts/crafts item for the helmet.
Angel had arranged for us to have a nice lunch at the Blue Heron. This was a wonderful little restaurant that has an outside eating area that was very parklike. We had some friends joining us for lunch, chameleons and all different varieties of birds. I particularly enjoyed watching the mousebirds flying about (maybe a robin sized bird but with very long tail feathers). Angel left her parents (Paula and Bill) and me there for awhile while she went to pick Aidan up from school and we enjoyed a leisurely afternoon.
The rest of the day was pretty relaxed, I had a few naps to overcome the lack of sleep and overcome jet lag. The more interesting part of my night was I was about to jump into the shower (we alternated morning/evening showers due to the amount of hot water available per water heater output), I noticed a little baby snake or two was slithering about the tub. Um, no. Let’s just say I skipped this at this time, while I am all about sharing I don’t think a shower with a snake (even though it was tiny) was on my list of things to do in my life.
To Market to Market We Go
So we have planned for a more adventure day to explore Arusha. So in the morning off we went to the Masai Market, but first we stopped to get some money. Here I hit a snag. I never do this but I opted to not bring my debit card, not even thinking I would need to take money out. So here I am at the ATM with my 2 credit cards and I do not know what the pins are for these cards. No money for me. So all of us were banking with the Bank of Angel, but alas she herself was having some issues as her bank was acting like her information wasn’t correct. So we were in a bit of a pickle but didn’t stress too much about it at the time as we should have enough to get us through the day and will worry about this tomorrow. While we were enroute thought I did make a few calls to my cards so I could change my pin on the fly so the next time I was near an ATM I could get some Shillings.
At the Masai Market, Angel and Paula were doing some hard negotiations for Conga’s (traditional fabrics so they could make clothing later as Paula is a bit of a seamstress). The market was so colorful that it was enjoyable to watch. Mr. Philip came for us about halfway through as Angel had suspected that her dad may not want to stay too long at the market and would enjoy a nice bookshop and Mr. Philip has all the good shops to go to as he likes to go to get coffee and exchange ideas during the early afternoon. So off they went but seemed to be back soon enough to collect us.
From here we went to Via Via, which Angel expected may interest me more. I will say from a cultural standpoint they really promote art. Between the carvings, the fabrics/clothing, the beadwork and the paintings there is so much to take in. Via Via is more aligned to promote some of the local artists paintings. I found a few items that caught my eye so I picked up a few paintings to take home. Due to size I had them take the canvas off the frame and roll up the painting, figuring my sister who is so artistically talented in her own right who has done paintings herself can probably help me with getting the pictures restretched back onto a canvas frame.
We dropped Angel’s parents and Leila (who was an amazing trouper through our shopping escapade) back at the house so they could all take a nap before the evening activities and Angel and I went to grab a late lunch and to catch up. Gregory picked us up from our lunch spot in the family vehicle. Pepe, his little mule. If you have seen Romancing the Stone you will get the reference. To top it off we had a Pepe moment as well as we bounded quickly over these rough roads and going top speed to head off get Aidan and head to his school’s assembly.
School Assembly
So Aidan goes to the Breaburn International school, which seems amazing. It goes from our view of kindergarten to 12th grade and all grades were a part of the assembly and it was a great way for the kids to show off all of their accomplishments for the year and to wish the graduating seniors off for the best. Which all of them had been accepted into some rather prestigious universities across the globe.
My favorite moments were a group of kids with their presentation of “I’m walking my iguana” and the finale which featured Aidan himself in a rocket with his astronaut costume. One mustn’t forget before the assembly even started they were raising money for the school by selling cushions, those little kids were awesome sales people (cushie for your tushie) and the little girl who was the financial officer was perfect! She is going to be a force to reckon with when she grows up.
After the assembly we had a lovely meal at the Arusha Coffee Lodge and ate to our hearts content.
