Final preparations for my first trip to Tanzania

After the trip to Duluth, the summer continued on as I raised the money for the trip and prepared to go. The majority of my preparations consisted of getting the children taken care of while I was gone. Good friends of ours went through an abreviated foster care licensing process so they could watch our foster daughter on occassional overnights as needed while I was gone. Since they would be watching our own children once in awhile this made sense. Next, I sat down with a calender, wrote down all of the children's appointments, which mainly consisted of our foster daughter's bio family visits and therapy appointments, and Shannon's schedule. Then I went through and figured out who the children would be with and when. As they were homeschooled this was a pretty major deal. I spent hours and hours on this. Also, at that time, Shannon's schedule was crazy. He was working for a helicopter crop spraying company. The hours were long and the days were irregular, depending on weather, so I needed to have back up plans in place as well.

I did some clothes shopping. In Tanzania the women wear dresses and skirts. I needed to buy clothes that would be acceptable for me over there. I also bought a lot of Dramamine. I had heard that the travel in Africa was rough and I was terribly concerned about this as I get motion sickness very easily. In fact, here at home, even when Shannon and I are together, he has me drive because my stomache is so sensitive. He prefers when I drive anyway as he does so much of it for his work.

One thing I didn't do, that I wish I had, was learn at least some Swahili. I hated when I was over there being unable to communicate with people all around me without an interpreter present. 40 years ago, when Tanzania gained their independence, the president at that time, in an effort to completely unite the country and get rid of any tribal divisions, declared Swahili the official language. All school classes were taught in Swahili. English, as well as native tribal languages was not allowed. It has been only in the past 10 years that English is being taught in the schools as a subject. This means that few adults speak English and the children, even though they are learning it, are not getting enough practice to speak it well enough to be conversational.

Before I knew it, it was time to leave for Tanzania.