Norbert's Story

Norbert Shayo is one of our local volunteers but before working with us he was a beneficiary of our partner organization Faraja. His mother died in 1999 and father in 2000 from AIDS infections, and sadly Norbert got his HIV from them. He has an older brother as well as a younger sister but at the time of his father’s death there wasn’t a way for them to stay in their home. They moved in with Norbert‘s uncle and aunt, but she was very discriminatory towards Norbert and his HIV. His older brother didn’t have education at the time after not scoring high enough to go on after 4th level. They were stuck living with their aunt and uncle for 2 years and a half.

Norbert started out going to Faraja after his Aunt introduced him to their programs to get resources for school. His older brother was able to be sent to school through Faraja and eventually went on to attend teacher’s college. He is now finishing his first degree in Arusha and comes down to Morogoro to visit. Norbert was a part of Faraja’s programs with other youth attending their workshops and education sessions before being introduced to YCI.

He wanted to join with us to start giving back to the community. The work the Faraja staff do was inspiring and made him want to work in NGOs, and he is now one of our local volunteers. He is an excellent translator and asset to our team. I didn't actually know Norbert even had HIV for the first few weeks we worked here and he never lets it hold him back. Even when he has been sick and not feeling well he presses on until he literally has to rest for a day and it's really inspiring, especially as someone with limitations myself. With our HBC ambassadors especially Norbert has been a fantastic help simply because he already knew most of our members and was able to communicate that much better with them I don’t know what we would have done without him and I can’t wait to see what else he will accomplish in the future.

Norbert at the office with us

Franki and Norbert - our awesome team mates!

My House

This is my house and my neighbourhood. We're just a little bit off of the main road (Kilakala) - we walk  through a little alley way and then our house is right infront of us. It's a quiet little street and all the kids  always seems to be at our house hanging out with Ashi. Robert's friends live all around us too .. Nassoro is across the street to the left, and Michael and Said live behind us. At least one f them is usually over too.. our house is the party house :P

Part of the alley we walk through

I always almost fall here everyyy day... you'd think I'd be used to it now :P

My house! :) we have a neat little tree wall infront of it :P 

Sophia doing laundry and Alphonse playing with a tire :P

Our clothes line and water tap :)

Going to the Club

Me and the boys decided to go to a club on Saturday night to go dancing and we had a BLAST! It's called 4 Star and we all hung out at the house for a bit before then took off there for the night. I had thought we danced for about an hour but when I looked at my phone it was 4 in the morning... Danced  solid for at least 3 and a half hours!!! I'm definitely feeling the soreness today :P. The guys protected me from all the creeps too which was nice - especially Michael. I love these guys! :)

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Me and Michael - He's a sweetheart ... He always keeps me and Linda safe!

Michael and Robert in their club clothes :P

Robert, Nassoro and Said (who randomly turned the wrong way...) before we left

Robert and Said... He realized where the camera was :)

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Me and Nassa... my "husband" is the running joke

Q&A Part 3

What is the plumbing like - do you have running water in the houses?

We have a tap that we get water from outside and a ton of buckets full of water in the house that everyone uses for cooking and washing and drinking. Every few days our dada fills them all up again after the water has been used. I'll grab pictures of it for the next post :) Our toilet doesnt have running water and neither does the house itself. I'm pretty sure there's no septic tank so it's a little bit of a mystery but i'm happy with it being that way :P

Do they drink it or is it just for bathing?

Yea they drink the water from our tap outside but we dont - we buy bottled water because theres no way we have enough time to get used to it here. Their water isnt filtered nearly as much as ours is .. In the villages they just drink water right out of the streams coming from the mountains which is pretty neat to see

Are there septic tanks where there are toilets?, like in the restaurants you go to?

Restaurants all usually have sit-down luxury toilets and running water and all that jazz but anywhere average doesnt have anything like that... Again, the plumbing is kinda a mystical entity and i'm keeping it that way :P

Will you get a chance to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro…is there snow on the peak this time of year?

We didn't climb Kili but we were in Moshi town what's about 20 km from the gate to Kilimanjaro National Park. Sadly because it's winter its reeeally cloudy a lot of the time especially around the mountains so we didnt get to see it. Because it's the middle of winter here I would imagine there is snow on the top right now, but climbs take a minimum of 5 days up Kili and they're also very expensive.

As a side note, Kilimanjaro means something like "little hill up to the top" because it's such a gradual climb. We learned that a while ago :)

Explain the kitchen!!

Everyone was asking me a lot to explain what all that was in the post before hahah. Basically there's a big can that's "the stove" and they light coal fires in it for cooking. The pots and pans are just stored against the wall and food is always bought fresh every day. We have a fridge but it's just used to keep their drinking water cold most of the time or for cooling down fresh cut fruit for desserts on occasion. All the utensils they use are just hung on the wall or stored behind our Dada's bed. They really don't use anything else. It's very basic but the food is 10000x better than in Canada.

How do you do your laundry?

One bucket has soapy water, one has normal water, and a clothes line hangs up beside me :) haha.. That's pretty much it! I brought a brush that I use to clean our any stains but that's pretty much the whole process. I'm also not very good at it so everything I own here (which is all too big for me now anyways....) will need a few cycles in a washing machine when I get home I'm sure :P

Safari Part Three: Prey

I think one of my favourite parts about this safari was there was never a point where we weren't seeing animals and these are about 1/16th of the pictures I took... I painstakingly found the best ones out of about 650 :P. There were also a LOT of animals... herds and herds of them were everywhere and all mingling with each other. There were a few points where I had to remind myself that this is a real place and not just made by people to get money. The only thing made is the roads and everything else is natural but it looks like someone picked up animals from all over and stuck them in one spot. It was the most surreal experience of my life!!

These birds made the trees look white from a distance and it was really cool :) 

Giraffe (Twiga) :) right next to the road on the way to Oldupai.

BABY giraffe.... there were about 4 of them i think and later we seen a second family of them.

All by his lonesome... such a pretty picture :)

Some zebras (Pundamilia)  

Wildabeast and Zebras eeeeverywhere

Flamingos!! Thousands and thousands of them!! from a distance the water had a pink haze all the way around the edges on all sides.

Hippos laughing?? :P

Look closely in the background.... at the time i never noticed :P

Hippo butt!!

Black Rhino! They're really edangered and Ngorogoro is one of the last places in the world with rhinos in it.

Buffalo and Zebra

Zebras and a Bustard (we definitely thought our guide was saying Bastard at first)

This poor guy looked like he got attacked by a lion :( made us realize the lions aren't so cuddly

Ostrich ... wasn't expecting to see as many as we did

Judgmental Buffalo is judgmental

Ostrich running across the road... they're soooooo silly looking with their naked legs

Crown Cranes ... really pretty birds :) (and a warthog... they're everywhere)

Imalas ... it made me miss my car lmaoo

Warthog ... they run reeeeally silly and derpy. Whenever we seen one it was a comic relief moment.

FINALLY Got pictures of baboons!!! it made me so happy :D

Safari Part Two: Predators

Here are all the animals that eat other animals :)... We were extremely lucky because they were all right next to the road!!! The only things we didn't see were leopards and cheetahs but the leopards are more in the jungle and we didn't stay there long and the cheetahs are closer to where the Serengeti starts. There were actually a lot of lions - I think we counted a dozen that we seen throughout the day - and we got lucky with the vulture and the eagle sharing something bloody next to the road before we left the park. The little lizzard guy is only in this part because before i took this picture we seen one like him running off with something dead in its mouth. :P 

Little lizzard (Jusi) with an awesome orange head - the first time we've seen one like this 

Lionesses!! :D (Simba)

These two were a little farther down the road and they barely moved a muscle with about 6 safari cars around them. Can you spot the second one?? :P

Once again, i love this camera.

Eagle on the left and Vulture on the right... Sooo awesome! We weren't expecting to see these.

I by chance got this picture of it stealing food.. loooove it

Safari Part One = Things that aren't Animals

Ngorogoro National Park is where we went on our safari. It's about 3 hours west of Arusha and we left at 4 am on Monday to get there early enough to see all the animals we could. It's named by the Masaai who live all around the area in their traditional villages and it's basically a term they use when they herd their cattle. They say "ngoro goro goro" to the cows to keep them moving and because they have so many herds there. The Masaai even live inside the park and it was really awesome to see a little bit of what their villages look like.

Ngorogoro Crater used to be a volcano thousands of years ago but it was MASSIVE!! The crater itself looked almost like it was man made to keep the animals all in one spot but it used to be an active volcano until it went dormant and collapsed. Now it's its own self-contained ecosystem and has pretty much every animal you can think of in it. 

The park also has Olduvai gorge that stretches for about 55 kilometers and used to be a river. It only has that name because a scientist in the 1930's came to the gorge and mispronounced the real name the Masaai gave it. It's called Oldupai Gorge named after the plant that grows alllllll over in it. They use it to make baskets and mats and things like that. To the West of the gorge and the crater is the Serengeti and we could see the start of it from the mountains around the crater. There are a bunch of patches of trees then open grassy plains and it was really breath taking. There was one point where we could see out into the open and there was a giraffe walking alone in the distance and that was one of the moments that made me realize it wasn't just a tourist attraction but really where these animals live. 

Words really can't describe how beautiful it is in this country... Reverse culture shock is setting in and I'm not even home yet!

The sun rising on our way to the park. There were some zebras and impalas on the way in as well just chillin by the side of the road.

Baobab Tree - now you can get a sense of how HUGE these things are

A map of the crater... we seen the whoooole thing.

A Masaai village on the way into the park. They live right next to all the animals especially in and around the crater - at one point we seen a masaai herding cattle within 50 feet of zebras and some ostriches. 

 Oldupai Gorge... beautiful view

Meeeeee

Me and the girls surfing around in our safari jeep... the roof came up so we could stand the whole time and after it was open we didn't sit down once.

A view of the road we drove up to get out of the crater when our safari was over... surprisingly it wasn't as scary as it looks :P

At the top of the gorge... this picture definitely doesn't do the view any justice.

Blurry one but these are some Masaai women walking down the road.. they're sooo decorative and I cant wait to find some books when i get home to learn more about the culture. The men wear similar clothes and always have their knives or clubs or spears on them.