Tanzania: Days 6, 7 & 8 (Babati)

so i forgot to mention a pretty big piece of information that happened the night of the funeral.

the whole day, baby queen was crying. everyone just kept commenting on how it felt like queen just knew that something was wrong and that her brother was gone. but at the end of the night she still wouldn't stop crying. long story short, it turns out that somehow queen had broken her leg. yeah i know.. like what? no idea how that happened. poor queen. we didn't fully understand what was happening but all we heard was a lot of yelling in swahili. finally, kabalo's wife, adina, left the city with queen and some of her family memebers. they decided they were going to travel a few hours away to adina's hometown and visit the hospital there.

little did we know that we would never see adina or baby queen again. we think kabalo and her were having marital problems after king died, and so adina never came back. but the day before we left, kabalo was talking on the phone to her and we got to say goodbye to her over the phone. she was seriously such a sweetheart.

day 6

that morning regina told us that we would be traveling to her hometown (the city of babati) and staying with her mom for a couple days to give kabalo some time alone. this sort of stressed me out because traveling in tanzania is just a struggle. for starters, you ride on these little vans (looks sort of like those big white, 12 passenger vans here in the USA) except they are not nearly as big or cozy. then you squeeze as many people as you can into these little cars. i'm not even kidding, i think the most people we fit in a car once was 23 people. sometimes there aren't doors on the van so people are standing with half of the body in the car, half out. people are sitting on each others laps, people on the floor. just the most crammed position you could be in. and the worst part is that you're stuck that way for a few hours because it's never a short ride. sweaty and smelly. also, tanzanian's are CRAZY drivers. to this day i think one of the greatest blessings from that trip is that we never got into a car crash. it's so common there and it's always happening because they drive so nuts.

so after a long day of traveling, getting on and off multiple vans, busses & taxis, we finally arrived in babati. i actually really loved babati. it's more rural whereas karatu is more city like (that's a horrible way to explain it) but karatu just has a lot more people, more crammed together. and babati was more spread out and had tons of banana tree farms. it was a lot more green whereas karatu is very, very brown. we arrived at regina's mother's house who is actually the chief leader of their community. their house was pretty big and alexis and i shared a queen bed together that had a way thicker mattress and it was the best night's sleep we had had since arriving in tanzania. we were definitely spoiled in babati. we got to take our first bucket shower and it was even with warm water that they had heated up! and we had a great dinner where i had one of our first experiences with chips, aka fried potatoes, aka closest thing to french fries you will find in africa. i was in heaven. i ate so many of those chips. and we had pasta too (well, just noodles but still, it was awesome).

they even had a small tv where we got our first dose of spanish soap operas, also known as the best thing ever. it was the only station that was in english and it was hilarious. we were all on such a high from being full, clean and feeling safe. we even went out and explored around their house and the beautiful banana trees.

day 7

we had the opportunity to visit their local church where regina's mom helps out a lot. they have a disabled community there and we had the opportunity to meet them all. sadly though, alexis got sick and was feeling really light headed. meanwhile the preacher is having us follow him as we walk around the entire room and he introduced us to every single person that was disabled and explained their disability to us. alexis is literally blacking out on and off and her arm is on my shoulder and i'm just praying that she doesn't completely pass out on the floor while trying to help her stand. finally it got too bad and alexis and i left and sat outside. we then took her back to the house and got her some medicine, water & food and let her sleep. we're not really sure what was wrong but we were both basically always sick with something during the 6 weeks we were there.

regina was the best. seriously so funny. she loved posing for the camera.

^^ it's unreal all the stuff the women in tanzania could carry on their head. from fruit to shoes to rocks to dirt to bottles to anything and everything. i don't know how they did it!

^^ this is the typical face of lockee.

^^ regina just posing again for the camera!

^^ they're just thinking who the heck are these weird white looking people? we legitimately scared some of the kids. i mean if you had never seen a white person before i guess it would be scary haha.

^^ regina took us to visit some of her friends in the community. it was sad because the husband of her friend had just recently been killed... the government had suspected that he was participating in elephant poaching to get their tusks. from what we were told, the police came to their house one night and beat him to death.. it was chilling to hear it all. we even saw his grave in the backyard. made me really sad for the kids. regina explained to us how corrupt the government is here.

one of the hardest things ever was seeing all the stray dogs and not being able to pet them. i love dogs! they were all so skiddish though because no one had them as pets and a lot of the people would throw rocks at them so they wouldn't get close to you at all. (insert heart breaking emoji)

^^ this picture sums up tanzania for me... the satellite dish on top of the house that doesn't have running water...

at regina's mothers house before dinner. that shed to the far right is where we took our bucket shower.

^^ exploring their backyard and all the banana trees

seriously alexis is the best ever. there is no one else i would have rather gone through that experience with. i can't think of any other friend that would have been able to survive this trip either haha. alexis is the strongest person i know. she took care of me so much. alexis always comforted me when i felt scared and put on a brave face for the both of us. she's the greatest person you will ever meet. we spent every second together for 6 solid weeks and at the end of it, i loved her more than ever! i just laugh thinking about all the crazy things we went through together in africa. no words can fully describe it. alexis is a gem. i'm so unbelievably lucky to have her as my best friend.

^^ this was regina's daughter

 ^^ one night after dinner regina's mom and sister started dancing to music. regina's sister taught us a dance and we all ended the night dancing and laughing. babati was a really good trip for us.

day 8

sadly, regina's brother was involved in a horrible bus accident. (like i said earlier, tanzanian's drive crazy). but he was on a big bus with about 50 passengers and regina's family couldn't get in touch with him. from the news all they could gather was that a lot of the passengers died. it occurred in a city that was really far away. luckily they were able to finally get in touch with their brother. he had survived (thank goodness) honestly a true miracle because only 3 people survived that bus accident. regina was supposed to come back with us to the city of karatu but instead sent us on our way alone and she was going to visit her brother in the hospital on her family's behalf. luckily her brother ended up being okay. but then sadly her sister's baby (pictured in the photo next to alexis) passed away and regina never came back to karatu.

the long day of travel back to karatu turned out better than expected. we were grateful to have lockee with us because he has a lot more experience traveling around africa than we did. plus he knew a lot more swahili. remember those tight squeezed buses i was talking about? on the ride back there was a maasai woman standing next to lockee. the maasai people are the indigenous, nomadic people of tanzania. they don't speak swahili and they wear their traditional clothes and continue their nomadic practices. for a solid hour on the van this maasai lady's ear/earings were swinging and smacking lockee in the face. i think he was also handed a goat to carry for part of the ride too haha. literally such a funny sight. i wish i could have taken a picture of it. so i just googled a picture to show you guys an idea of it.

^^ (regina's daughter, alexis, regina's sister and baby, regina, regina's mom, me)

^^ now imagine that ear/earing smacking you in the face for a solid hour haha

so there we had it... our first week in tanzania, done.
such a crazy week. we knew 2 babies that died, 1 person that almost died, attended 1 funeral, met several people with malaria and hiv/aids, and had a huge culture shock. alexis and i kind of felt like we were bad luck... when we were able to get in touch with family or friends most of them just told us "oh i'm sure it's fine, you'll get used to it" there could not be a more frustrating thing to hear. there we were, feeling so unsafe, being lied to and in major culture shock and other people, in cozy, comfortable america were telling us that it's fine and to basically suck it up. there was no way to fully explain everything that was happening. i am leaving out SO many stories and details. but it was definitely an emotional roller coaster. looking back on it all we both laugh. but it was definitely not funny at the time.