Karen's Summer 2011 Travels

After one cancelled flight, one missed connection, several delayed planes, 7 total flights, and one lost luggage, I am back in Tucson! It was quite a long journey back but I am so relieved and happy to be home. I can't wait to catch up with everyone!

Another successful day in Rome has passed. Today we visited the Vatican, where we saw the Sistine Chapel, St. Peters Basilica, and lots of art. It was quite a transition going from my homestay in Ngolley with no water or electricity to seeing one of the most extravagant and huge buildings in the world!

We also explored around the city and ate some fantastic pizza, went to the Trevi Fountain, and walked the Spanish Steps! Rome is so beautiful. Everywhere I turn there is more amazing architecture and cute streets to explore. Tomorrow we will have a more relaxed day of touring and then we leave our hostel at 3 am to catch a 6 am flight! Can't wait to be home!

Exhausted but satisfied after our first full day in Rome. We have had some great pasta and gelato, saw the Colosseum, Forum, and many other beautiful ruins/touristy stuff. Tomorrow we are planning to go to the Vatican and the Trevi Fountain. Our hostel has allowed us to meet some interesting people from all over the world. It has been a fun change of pace, and Rome is beautiful. Still, I can't wait to be home!

So I thought yesterday that I wouldn't have any more time online but I do have time this morning for one more quick update before leaving for Europe.

A lot of my volunteer friends have left already and it's been hard to say goodbye. I have made some great and lasting friendships with some wonderful people. We have grown to be like a family and they have inspired me in many ways. Throughout this journey I have also had a lot of opportunities to learn about myself and grow as a person.

Thinking back on my time, I am very proud of all my village accomplish. Ngolley was definitely poorer and smaller than many of the other villages, but we were still able to teach over 50% of the population of our village and beat the previous testing record 7 fold. I also had some great learning and bonding experiences with the villagers as well as the teaching partners and volunteers.

I'm also surprised and excited about how much Swahili I have picked up. It will be fun to teach a little to the folks back home.

I wanted to say thank you again to all of you who helped donate and have supported me. I will be seeing you all very soon!

It's hard to believe that I am done with my SIC program! I have so much to update, but only a few minutes to write. It was very emotional and hard saying goodbye to my wonderful homestay family, but it's exciting to be on the home stretch! Some highlights of the last couple weeks:

We had our largest teaching yet: a group of over 300 people at a Seventh Day Adventist worship service. We even got to use a generator powered microphone and broadcast our teaching to the entire village! We also did an impromptu teaching on a bus that broke down on the side of the road near our homestay, which was random but very successful. We finished up our primary school teachings as well. It made me smile when I walked through the village and heard kids repeating the chats and singing the songs that we had taught them about HIV prevention. I guess they must have been pretty catchy and stuck with them!

We had an incredibly successful testing day where we tested 155 people in 6 hours. This was a substantial increase from the previous SIC testing record in Ngolley of 20! Of those 155, there were 2 new cases of HIV.

We taught about 900 people total in our village alone, and over 3,000 if you add up all the teachings from all the volunteers in each of the 5 villages.

Our team successfully distributed condoms to 16 different small shops to encourage safer sex practices, and I have high hopes that this will kickstart increased access to family planning materials.

I spent the evening of 4th of July doing something very unexpected...I witnessed an exorcism!! Very interesting and creepy stuff, and not your typical independence day!

I also survived a 4 hour Swahili mass, walked miles to all the other villages on our program, and got to have a blast playing with the kids at my homestay.

We had a celebratory "feast" on our last day in the village, and I was delighted that it did not include the typical ugali (a water and flour paste) and goat intestines! Speaking of food, I was lucky to have only had an upset stomach a couple times, and actually enjoyed many different dishes I sampled.

Now I am back in Arusha saying my goodbyes to all the wonderful friends I have made during my time here. Our closing dinner was fun but bittersweet and now I'm just getting ready for a brief vacation in Italy before coming back home on the 22nd.

I would love to write more but my time online is up. I can't wait to hear what everyone back home has been up to, share more of my stories, see all of my friends and family back home and show pictures. Hopefully I will get to post one more time in Rome, but if not, thanks for keeping up with my updates!