Tanzania & Yaounde

Tanzania

 

There comes a point in every underemployed guy's life where a vacation is needed, or at least desired.  Channeling my inner George Costanza, the time has come for me.

 

A few other PCVs and I are heading off to Tanzania for a week of large animals and the beach on Zanzibar.  The flight isn't just a hop, skip, and a jump from Cameroon.  It's about seven hours from Yaoundé to Dar es Salaam, the capital, which includes a stopover in Nairobi for an hour or two, kind of like when flying from Europe to Cameroon, you stop in Douala for an hour before ending up in Yaoundé.  We're crossing the entire continent, and we end up in the Southern Hemisphere, which I'm excited about because I can check off "Southern Hemisphere" on my places-to-go list.  (Also on the list: Israel, Central Europe/Scandinavia, Argentina, and your mom's house.)

 

Once we get to Dar, we take another flight to Arusha, the main Tanzanian city in the north (Dar is on the coast), where the safari company will pick us up.  We originally wanted to go to the Serengeti, but we ran into the problem of it being more expensive than we thought and having an unaccommodating tour organizer that another PCV put us in touch with that wouldn't budge on a price and didn't really give us any alternative suggestions.  (Reasons for the problems with this tour guide I think stemmed from us not being high-end tourists that he usually does business with.)  We found another safari, the one we ended up hiring, who came up with a more budget-oriented trip that includes a whirlwind tour of just about everything tourist-related in northern Tanzania except the Serengeti and Mount Kilimanjaro, where, as Al Gore loves to point out, there ain't no snow there no more.

 

We're going to go to Lake Manyara and Ngorongoro for three nights, then we go back to the Arusha/Kilimanjaro airport and fly directly to Zanzibar.  On Zanzibar, I believe our plan currently is to spend two nights on the north side of the island, then one night at Stone Town, after which we'll take the ferry back to Dar es Salaam and fly back to Yaoundé with diligent notes to give to the Cameroonian Ministry of Tourism with the title being:  This Is How It's Done.

 

(Our Zanzibar plans are a little bit up in the air because of problems with the aforementioned original tour guide.  In addition to not finding us a cheaper safari, he wouldn't offer us hotels that were less than $75-100 for a double room, ridiculous when you can go online and see numerous hostels and hotels for 30 bucks at the most.  We gave him names of the cheaper hotel/hostels we wanted, which he said he could still book for us, but I don't think he ever did.  Now we're throwing ourselves on the mercy of the new safari company, Tanzania Adventure, or going to have to make online reservations between now and Thursday.  On va voir…)

 

 

COS Conference/Yaoundé

 

What really is exciting about this vacation is that it's the Beginning of the End.  We chose early August for a vacation because we're linking it up with our Close of Service Conference, which is in Yaoundé from August 18-20.  (COS Conference from here on out.  We also use COS as a verb to say when we go home:  "She COS's in June.")

 

The COS process, according to our handy COS Handbook 2008, starts at the conference and is where we start the process of getting us ready to go home.  We fill out forms, have COS procedures explained to us, and, most importantly, determine our COS date.  The three dates are already chosen, so it's up to the 25 or so of us COSing at the normal time (some people are COSing early for various reasons) to choose amongst ourselves who goes when.  I'm forecasting that this will either go eerily smoothly, or turn into a passive aggressive Lord of the Flies-like situation.  I'm looking forward to it as a social experiment.  A few of my friends and I were saying that we'd just choose the third week to avoid any friction with other volunteers and be able to COS with people we want; but, as it turns out, the second week is probably the best for me, so that's what I'll be aiming for.

 

Other than getting our pink slips, the bestest part of COS Conference is that instead of us staying at the volunteer hostel within the PC Cameroon HQ, the case (pronounced like "cause"), which, despite a kitchen, TV + DVD players with numerous movies, and three computers with Internet, is one of the dullest places in Cameroon, Peace Corps puts us up for three days/four nights in the second nicest hotel in Yaoundé, Mount Febé.  (The Hilton is the nicest; there's even an elevator.  I'm not sure if Fébé has one, but I'll get back to you since this is important information.  In case you're wondering, the only time I've been higher than the second floor of any building these last two years has been in September 2006 during our first week in country at the Hotel Jouvence; at the Yaoundé Hilton one time for Happy Hour; and while in Paris for Christmas.)

 

Mount Fébé is near the US Embassy and I think has a golf course nearby, so it's in a nice part of town.  It has a pool, and all of our meals are provided for us, which is really exciting.  I always feel a like a rube heading to the big city for the first time whenever I go to Yaoundé: traffic, food, big buildings, and hot showers.  I'm pretty sure there'll be a session during COS Conference about readjustment to America because it's obvious that I need it.