Last day

Today is connor's birthday and our last day in Zanzibar and our last night sleeping in a bed till we return to Morganton Saturday night! the weather is cloudy and a bit rainy today, but maybe it will clear later. hopefully. all in all we have had great weather, so no complaints. we leave here tomorrow morning for a 12 noon flight to Dar es Salaam where we have an ungodly layover of about 10 hours! only if we can precheck our luggage will we be able to do anything.
our flight is overnight to Amsterdam and there we have a 5 hr layover again. then to Detroit and CLT. we should be back sometime around 9 or 930 i would guess.
well today will be spent playing pool and ping-pong and hopefully swimming. Mark & i did get a short workout in yesterday for the first time in about 10 days (since we left on safarari). we have been eating like we are in serious training for something though! will have a lot of work to do when we get back!
oh Connor will get a cake at dinner time and we got him a little gift, though he knows the diving instruction was his ultimate gift.
we will touch base when we hit US soil. we are looking forward to seeing everyone. we had an awesome experience and feel quite blessed!
Love to all!

so now Blue Bay resort

well we weren't in Moshi anymore. this place is pretty nice but it is definitely a westerner's resort. not so much African culture anymore. the rooms are spacious and beautiful, there is a large pool and the ocean is beautiful!
During high tide the water is all the way up to the wall. During low tide, it goes to a sand bar about 1 mile out! the boys walked a good way out and saw a couple large red starfish, but ella's and my flip-flops didn't do well when the water was a little deeper and there are a lot of sea nettles all over the floor. the water is clear and the blue colors are brilliant! when the water came up again in the afternoon, the kids had some fun in the waves, though they were reported to be NOT anywhere near the Jersey shore waves. i liked the warmer water though!

Diving and Snorkeling

We got to the dive shop about 845 a.m. and got our equipment. it turned out we would all be on the same boat and would go out to the Zanzibar channel as we were on that side of the island. this side is much calmer than the Indian Ocean side as you would guess. there was one other diver on our boat. We all got "shorty" wetsuits to wear as the water was a little cooler out there. It was about a 20 min ride to the coral area around a small island and the Brazinskis premedicated just in case, cause you know how we all are. I was feeling mostly better but took my zofran too to make my stomach all better.
We got to our spot and the divers suited up ( i got pictures!) and then the snorkelers and we went in. It was amazing for all! you started seeing really cool fish immediately and there were large schools of tiny fish. Just brilliant! After an hour the divers came up and we had a warm-up in the sun and the most amazing fresh fruit you could ever eat! Pineapple, mango, papaya, oranges and the new favorite of the kids, passion fruit! also all these fried somosas and potatoe things and sweet breads. the divers would have no problem sinking after that.
we went out for one more session after that and the divers practices more of their techniques and the snorkelers floated around and tried to stay warm while looking at really cool fish. we did see a very large clam w/ a wavy mouth too. no large predators though :)
after our dive we went back to the hotel to gather our luggage to go to the resort, but couldn't leave till the boys got their diving cards! i'm sure you can see that even though Connor had his dream come true, this has just fueled his fire!!!!!

Blue Bay resort

well as i was saying before, we went to check out the One Ocean dive shop and Mark, Connor & Michael decided to sign up for the 2 day course which allows you to go to 12 meters. as i was not feeling great that day, i stayed w/ Luke & ella who were too young and we signed up to go snorkeling the next day. the boys stayed there to start their video and we left to find something to do. Turns out we ended up going on a Spice tour at a local village (set up for tourists of course) and Luke & ella really ended up enjoying it. the guide was very interactive and another man was constantly making things out of banana and coconut leaves and we ended up w/ hats, a tie, necklaces, rings and watches! also got to smell, feel and see all our favorite spices. cardomon, vanilla, cloves, tumeric, ginger and a cinnamon tree to name a few. then tasted fruits at the end and then of course went to the table where they were selling spices. i did my part to support the village! after that our taxi driver took us to a small hotel where we had lunch ( i mostly had sparkling water) and the L & G swam in the ocean for about 45 min until the driver had to get back.
i went straight to the bed when we got home and they watched TV till the others came home from thier class. needless to say Connor was more hooked than ever and they were looking forward to the next day!

Connor's dream come true & "maybe the tuna wasn't a good idea"

well first, last night we went down to the gardens, which is a plaza w/ tons of people and food vendors grilling all kinds of seafood and other foods (not where the tuna was). lots of good people watching and there was a large group of men and boys jumping off the sea wall doing flips and belly floppers and just being goofy. the boys wanted so bad to jump off too but it was all locals and probably not the safest thing besides. the water didn't look all that deep! mark had the boys try the local sugar cane juice and it actually tasted pretty decent. after the fact it hit us that they were mixing it w/ water that who knows where it came from. mark hit them w/ a dose of antibiotic just in case they started having symptoms but lucky for them, all is well on the "southern front".
We came back to the hotel where we have 1/2 board, for dinner and then watched the world cup. i ordered the tuna for my dinner and i think lost my mind when i thought nothing of eating it slightly seared. morning came and the southern front was not happy. i must say that i am not sure it was the cause as my main issue has just been nausea, but mark started me on Cirpro anyway. zofran is helping too.
.
On a more fun note: we set out in the morning to investigate the local dive shop. oops to be continued.

Africa house hotel

moshi to Zanzibar

hi all
we made it through the safari feeling like shaken paint cans in a dust bowl but it was awesome! saw just about everything but a black rhino, which is pretty rare. we are at the airport right now waiting to fly to zanzibar. hopefully will have some internet access there. didn't have any at our lodges on safari and certainly not at our public campsite the first night. the truck only broke down 2 times on safari but lucky for us our driver/guide was also a top notch mechanic. the first time was after we made it to our campsite, so we were just delayed getting into the park. the second time a couple days later was in the Serengeti on our way back to the lodge after we had seen lots of lions! but no worries we are all here.
let's see, animals we saw: lots of zebras and gazelles; impalas, dik diks, a leopard lounging in a tree w/ her dinner, a gazelle hanging on another branch; water buffalos, heart beasts, many birds, hippos, giraffes, wildebeasts, hyenas, jackells, and 2 cheetas hunting and stalking a herd of wildebeasts. we got to see the chase but they were unsuccessful and eventually all moved too far away to see.
more details when we have more time.
off to the coast.
love to all!

4th of July

The new Orthopaedic Overseas family came in last night and we met them on the road as they were heading from the grocery and were headed to the internet cafe. (Lucky for us the power came back on by the time we got there.) the other guy Paul is just extra it turns out. he had been in Malawi for 3 wks before he came here. well the new family has 4 kids too. 3 boys, 1 girl. it seems to be the standard of families here. they had been to Bhutan 4 times, the last being in 2005. the 3 families of 4 kids and 2 or 3 other stragglers are meeting at our houses for happy hour and then we are going to invade El Rancho for dinner. we are thinking we need to warn them!
tomorrow we play tourist and go buy trinkets! then we are off. once we go on safari, i do not think there is internet in the lodges. there definitely won't be in our tent the first night!
will post when we can. we fly to Zanzibar on the 11th.

Friday

not much to report today. Mark decided he had enough of work ( or not working/cases getting canceled) and slept in. i got my running back up to 6 miles. the kids played itouch, psp, etc, so not much different than NC. going to try to find some bright African prints on some kanga wrap skirts tomorrow. need to go get milk again. those little 1 liter boxes go away fast! going out to dinner on the 4th of July w/ the Minnesota family. hope everyone has a great weekend and 4th!

A La Mode cafe is back up! yeah! getting some samosas to go. yum!

the people you meet.....

The next doc w/ Orthopaedics Overseas came in a few days ago. he is single and is staying at a nearby hotel. found out he graduated a year behind Mark at Georgetown, played poker w/ guys at the house i lived in and did his intern year (& residency) at johns Hopkins w/ Michael Lawton, my brother-in-law and remembers Suzanne, who also worked there. so strange! his name is Paul Axelwood (or something like that)
My stint as a PT is over. very short but that was fine. very disorganized for just popping in. took the kids the very cold pool at the international school w/ the Bowers from Minnesota and will probably go over to the orphanage this afternoon with them.
mark might be going on a goat roast w/ some Tanzanian med students & residents. we might go too. we'll see how it all pans out.

the Hash

No we are not back in Amsterdam! Sunday we joined up w/ the family from Minnesota and went to find the Hash which is put on by local mzungu (white people/westerners) and is hosted by a different person every 2 wks. It is an international activity where there is a "hare" who sets a walking and running route (5k and 8k) and marks it w/ spots, occasional arrows and "x's" made w/ flour. when you hit an "x" you have to fan out in different directions to find the next dot to make sure you are going the right way. if you are ahead of others, you might make an arrow to show the stragglers which way to go and save them some time. since we couldn't even find the start house at first, we got some help from those in front. but at the first x there was no help and Mark had turned around too soon before the flour dot and we spent about 15 min going no where till we finally figured it out. it was a great way to see little nooks and crannies of the area around us and to be laughed at by locals who had seen other mzungu before us, though some did help us when we mimed "which way did the runners go"? Gabriella walked w/ the other family and all the boys ran. we caught up to the walkers where the trails merged and made our way back together to the house for sodas and beer. there we got to meet the ex-pats that were regulars to the hashes and we were told this was a tame one. they sometimes have to go thru rivers and climb over rocks and sometimes the "hare" can trick you and make you do extra before you see the flour sign telling you to go back!
glad we got to experience it. we will be heading to Zanzibar after our safari when the next one occurs.
the orphanage was OK. mostly toddlers were out who were very cute but you had to watch for the ones not potty trained as they don't put diapers on them!
Gabriella says hi to all her girls! Bella, Madison, Mary Margaret and Elizabeth.
luke is bored watching me type. poor guy.
will post again.
we go on safari in 1 week from today!

the night of the killer ant invasion.....& mt Kili

OK so i know you want to hear about our trek to the base camp first, so we will hold off on the ant story. it's at the end anyway. we are at a different internet cafe today due to it crashing at "a La Mode".
We set out in the morning w/ a 10 min wait while the driver fixed the windshield wiper on one of the trucks. not a good sign. Mark was w/ Luke and michaeil in the nicer truck and we followed. first lost them when we had to get petrol and then had to get water (maji) and then our truck kept getting slower and after a couple stops, it just stopped. (TIA/this is africa) what to do. when it looked like it would go no further, the other guide came back to get us after dropping off mark & kids. so that was the journey to get there on a cool very rainy day. we checked in at the entrance of the park and then set off w/ our 2 guides who carried our lunches and water.
the first leg of the trek up Kili is 7-8K (about 5 miles) & is in rainforest and gets 3300 millimeters of rain/year. so we were experiencing it as it should be. after we got going we finally warmed up and then started going up. it is a really nice trail that we went up. very well maintianed. the wildlife we saw were pretty much ants (really mean looking ones) and the Blue monkeys. They were very cool and we saw them very up close (like 10 ft) when we went back down. got to see them eating, swinging, jumping and doing the dooty!
gabriella was quite the trooper and only had to be carried by the porter the last 10 minutes before we got to Merengu Hut for lunch. Luke's energy kicked in after 2K and he and Michael had to be slowed down several times.
the huts were nice. we ate in the communal dining hut and met a mother and son from Texas who were on their way down. the son, probably in his early 20's said it was the hardest thing he has ever done and we over heard a group of men say that they just wanted a flush toilet. Fortunately we had luke and ella here so that we could be proud to say we summited base camp!
the hike up was about 3 hrs and down took us a little over 2 as we watched the monkeys some more and messed w/ an ant line (how we think our bad karma came back to us!) it was pretty slick on the way down due t0 the rain that continued behind us and ella's lower legs were a nice slimy brown!
we were looking forward to our hot showers as we piled into a larger but much slower truck for the ride home. when we got home and inhaled what food we had we discovered that our housekeeper turned off the hot water tank (saving energy :) so we went to our favorite Indian restaurant, El Rancho! (the mexican chef never showed & they kept the name)
again looking foward to showers we arrived home, i unlocked the door and then was suddenly bit by an ant. after yelping, we looked down and saw ants everywhere and we where jumping around like we had ants in our pants! cause we did!!! well luke and i did and we ran to our rooms and stripped down only to discover that they had made a linedown the hall to our empty room, the bathroom, M & C"s and mine & mark's. so we had a stomping party and had quite the pile of dead soldiers when we were done! never did find food or anything else they could be coming to but they have not returned. :)
OK off to an orphanage for a couple hrs to play today.
Gabriella says hi to Madison! thanks for checking in and definitely a playdate when we return!
love to all and will check in again.

just another day

the kids worked in the OT dept a little more finishing the therapy game, but were quickly taken by kirsten to ride the dali dali (the public mini bus) just to know how to do it and then went to the med center's farm. they said it was very stinky! i went to PT for a bit but felt a bit more useful yesterday when i actually treated a couple patients. one time w/ a student. today i tried to help the PT from the UK evaluate a woman. it can be a bit tricky.
mark went on ward rounds but soon regretted it. a lot of suffering and the rounding of patients moves very slowly. he presented another of his lectures to the med students today and so felt he was getting a lot of teaching in.
found out the kids and i cannot hook up w/ the next group of visiting students coming in to work on building a class in the community. it is a group that didn't want to mix w/ other schools so we have to figure out what else to do next week. maybe we will go to the pool a bit. it didn't seem too cold. :)

we are looking forward to our hike up to the first base camp on mt Kilimanjaro this Saturday. we will be picked up early in the morning by the guide who is taking us on safari and will return that night. we have only been able to see Kili 2 times as it is usually cloudy and when it is partly cloudy, the mountain is still in clouds. it is really incredible though. absolutely huge!

well stay tuned for that adventure. all are presently well

Get well soon Nana!
love to all!

hospital ward visit

this morning we met a German worker at the hospital (she is there for 4 mos) and she put G, L &C to work making paper mache domino blocks for a therapy game in occ. therapy and then took Michael and i to the orthopaedic ward to meet the PT and see how it was. there are people everywhere and the ones in the hallway beds are on something like and army cot. in the ward rooms the beds are a little better but there are up to 10 in a room. they stay a very long time awaiting surgery. that is very typical. we met another PT who arrived from england a few days ago and had just graduated from school and will be working there for 6 months. he is learning kiswahili as he goes. we then went down to the outpatient area where the most common ailment is chronic low back pain. a universal problem! there was a short wave diathermy machine being used that i think i learned about in PT school but is not used in a very long time. i wouldn't know how to operate it. ( they are used to provide deep heat but are from the very days of PT).

We have seen these really cool birds over at the international school. they are black and white and like a tucan and are the size of eagles. some cool bugs but not many other interesting animals. hello to madison from ella!
simone, thanks for posting. we miss you and can't wait to see you next month!

saw how chickens get to the table!

Posted by Connor

so we were eating dinner and michael's friend came in and my dad answered the door. dad said that we were eating dinner and he left. after dinner, ella yelled to the house from outside: they're doing something to a chicken!!! i quickly put on dads boots and shuffled to the house keepers house. michaels friend was holding a chicken down. he started moving the roosters neckfeathers around. i asked his mother what they were going to do to the chicken. she made some neck slitting motions and said something about preparing. michael's friend took a knife and began to cut off the chicken's head. the whole family was watching now. and dad had brought the camera. it was bloody and its spine was poking out a couple of inches. it had a seizure even though its head was gone. we took lots of pictures, plucked and not.

the weekend

Today is Sunday and the weekend is fairly quiet. We spend a lot of time taking a taxi to the grocery in town. the A la mode cafe is about a 15 minute walk from our compound and we walked here today after we walked to the ATM at the hospital. opposite directions. we can find some great veggies here. got beautiful eggplant \(haven't made it yet) tomatoes, onions, green tangerines, cucumbers, dried beans, fresh peas and bought mini bananas from mama who came to our door. we buy frozen chicken from a grocery in town and i made chicken w/ tomatoes, peas(yummy) and carrots w/ rice. also bought some jarred classico red sauce and have had american pasta a couple nights.
Everything Mark sees is complex and old as in they broke it a long time ago and it healed in that bad position. there are 90+ patients on the ortho ward and 2 main surgeons. don't get injured in a developing country. things move slowly there but the staff is nice.
not sure what we are doing MOnday. might hook up with the school again by the end of the week and finish the school building w/ a new visiting school. M & C may volunteer in occupational therapy.

Today we met up with the school again and went to paint another primary school around \moshi. We painted it blue so we were fairly blue too. Much less work than yesterday. in the afternoon we visited an orphanage for 0-5 yr olds just for about 45 minutes. Gabriella said the babies were cute. \the kids were all working hard on both projects. \tomorrow we go back to the school and put up cinder blocks and who knows what else. \the afternoon we will most likely go on a village tour with the program and after that we have no more scheduled activites. \met up with a family from \minnesota and might go to the orphanage again w/ them in the future.
We are all well and the kids are playing a lot of futball with the neighbors.
Connor- "Strenghth training and charitable work, the best combination!"
Till the next time we can get to a internet cafe.
love to all!

hard manual labor good for the soul

A good 2 days. We hooked up with the visiting schools program at international school Moshi which is a 10 min walk from our house. Yesterday we rode the school bus to a village and dug ditches, hauled rocks and shoveled sand into 4 different piles of 120 buckets! the school children would come over and help get rocks from the large pile and bring them over to the trenches where they had to be layered. We were building the foundation for a classroom building. We looked like we rolled in the dHelirt when we were done and don'tknow if our clothes will ever be clean again. Needless to say we slept well and were (well i was) quite sore next morning.
the visiting schools are from \dubai, Helsinki, Nice and uh we don't remember the 4th. They, the students and teachers, have all been very nice.

we made it!

Hi all!
Internet access will be spotty as our laptop is not charging. might've fried something already. TRying to learn the city. Did a lot o napping yesterday. will check in with the hospital today and then try to connect with the International School Moshi. Ella's suitcase arrived this morning. 1 out of 11 not bad for making it with us. Nothing too exciting yet. Lots of grocery shopping. Love to all. Oh we have our own free roaming chickens and roosters to wake us each morning!

D Day 5 days

Took the first round of malaria pills. Gabriella took 15 minutes to take hers w/ it stuffed in ice cream and followed w/ water and more ice cream because she didn't swallow it whole! thank goodness these are once a week. ( as per last adventure, Gabriella will provide the most antics!)

Getting Ready to go...

3 weeks until we leave. Just working on malaria meds and wanted to get the blog setup checked off the list!