Snakes, Camels, Cars, and Cooking

I still haven’t written about the adventures of last weekend. 

Friday we went to Mt. Meru hospital again.  In the morning I fixed a centrifuge with Lucy and Ray and in the afternoon I worked on a hospital bed! 

Miguel (our engineering instructor), me, Lucy, Ray

Saturday we went to a snake park with some of our friends, and because we are volunteers in Tanzania instead of tourists, the entrance fee was 2,000 tsh instead of 20,000 tsh! 

We saw a ton of extremely venomous snakes, as well as a refuge area for injured animals including owls, vultures, baboons, and many sizes of both crocodiles and alligators.  Despite my fear of snakes, I held a little one!  But then I started to freak out as it began to move in my hands and up my arm.

Lucy was much braver and let the snake crawl throughout her hair.

But the highlight of the day was that I rode a camel for the first time! 

It was the weirdest feeling having the camel stand up and sit down, so we caught a lot of great faces on camera.

We left the snake park after all of us had ridden the camels and then we waited by the side of the road for a dala dala to pass by.  Instead, we noticed that a big car event was going on just up the road so we walked for about 5 minutes and came upon the Saba Saba Championship Car Rally!  It was really cool to see the cars taking off on the desert portion of the race.

Sunday, we spent the day with family.  We went to church early with our mama and it was interesting to hear a service entirely in Swahili.  The live music and choir were really fun and lively!

We spent the rest of the morning learning how to cook sambusas (the same thing as samosas).  We had a huge feast for lunch!

It was a wonderful weekend!