Colin Has Visitors from Home

The Harari family from Madison, Wisconsin plus Uncle Jimmy from San Jose, California made a trip in July 2011 to visit Colin during his Peace Corps service in Tanzania. This trip also included a 7 day Safari in the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater regions. Below are some impressions and photographs from this incredible visit to beautiful Tanzania. 


A Few Words From Sarah (aka Mom)
It has been hard to put into words how much we enjoyed this trip and harder yet to choose one or two favorite parts of the adventure. Truly, the whole trip was eye opening and inspiring. Of course the very best was seeing Colin for the first time in 10 months, being together as a family, with the addition of Uncle Jimmy as the cherry on top! Colin surprised us by meeting us at the Kilimanjaro airport upon our arrival. We hadn’t had much contact with him in the previous couple of weeks since he was backpacking in the mountains with friends since early June. We didn’t easily recognize him either since he had grown a beard, his hair was long with a woolen cap perched on top of his scruffy head. He most closely resembled Tom Hanks…. from Castaway. He remarked that he was doing his very best to look his most unkempt at our arrival just for the shock value. Success!

The safari landscape coupled with the STUNNING array of animals was an absolute favorite. How could it not amaze? Indescribable beauty and crazy Lion King animals, everywhere and numerous!  My personal favorite? The ngiris (or the warthogs) because they were ridiculously funny looking and scaredy britches who high tail it into the high grass at the first sound of approaching danger with their skinny tails stuck straight up into the air like antennae. Our guide told us their Swahilli name was pumbavu, meaning foolish or stupid, because they often started running away and then, in mid sprint, forgot what they were running from, turn around and run right back toward the danger (ie lion). Needless to say they are not at the top of the food chain, but highly entertaining nonetheless.

And besides traveling to Colin’s beautiful village and seeing him teaching Physics to 60 kids at a time (that was ridiculously fun)…my overall favorite memories center on the many colors of Africa.

For me, the beauty of Tanzania lies layered in the Serengeti landscape, the red clay of Karatu, the white caps of Mt. Kilimanjaro, the green valleys of Ngorongoro Crater and mountainside village of  Chome, the deep dark skin of the Maasai men herding their cattle across the desert, the bright red of the their “shuka“ contrasting with the desert landscape; the intricately beaded necklaces and earrings of the Maasai women, the beautiful wrinkly faces of the elderly, the bundles of green bananas, red tomatoes, golden corn and hay being marketed and transported by bicycle throughout the country. But my favorite colors of Africa were found on all the beautiful mamas of Tanzania. Their bold, colorful Kitenge worn as skirts, dresses, headdresses, blouses, baby wraps and often topped by a basket full of market goods or water buckets. Always seen was a constant stream of mamas; walking, working, moving, in their beautiful colors along every roadside and through out the hillsides. As Julia remarked, “the Mama’s rock!” That they do!

Thank you to Colin for being such a superb and patient host (especially in my hunt for Kitenge to bring home) J Your family herd of white rhinos are forever indebted, even if we ruined your street cred as a local!

Note from Uncle Jimmy:

We spent a few days in Chome, which is the village where Colin lives and teaches school.  There are no population or welcome signs as you drive up the incredible gravel mountain road to Chome, so we are guessing there are 5-8 thousand people spread out across the hillside that live there.  After our brief stay however, it seemed clear that Colin has a potential future career as the Mayor of Chome.  Everywhere we went, people would stop and chat with him in Swahili and give him some funky handshake as though this was their long lost brother they had not seen in 20 years!  They would laugh, talk, shake hands a few more times, and then move on. This happened about every 5 minutes as we took a long walk through the village one evening.  Since all the back and forth conversation took place in Swahili or (a local Chome dialect), it is hard to say exactly what they were talking about.  Colin has clearly been accepted into this town and the fact that he is a white guy physics teacher from America who actually speaks decent Swahili seems really fascinating to the local community.

Attached are two photos showing Colin chatting it up with a few locals. Also attached is a photo showing the department heads of this secondary school.  Notice the Physics Department head, Mr. Colin. Yup, that is the future Mayor of Chome. Apparently Harari is hard to pronounce so they stick with his first name. (Those other names look a lot harder to pronounce to me????). We had a great trip and Mr. Colin was a great host.  Housing us, cooking for us, and generally making sure we did not get lost. I encourage you to visit the Mayor of Chome - although the Chome Manor where Colin lives (story for another time) is a little spartan. After one night sharing a bed with Mr. Colin since beds were scarce, I opted for the floor since he likes to point his new fan directly across his bed that makes it feel an arctic wind tunnel. Good for keeping the mosquitos moving along however. 

Blog for Colin (Paige)

Everyone keeps asking me, “How was Africa?!” and the only word I can muster up in my vocabulary is…amazing. But that word does not nearly begin to describe how incredible Africa was. From the second we stepped off the airplane in Kilimanjaro, I knew it was going to be stellar because there was a gigantic tree I’d never seen before!

But for me one of the most mind blowing things about Africa besides the wild array of cool animals, and witnessing Colin living there, was the actual culture and people of Africa. We traveled through a good amount of Northern Tanzania and were able to see many of the villages in which people reside (including Colin’s village). It was so amazing for me to watch all these people so completely happy getting up every morning in the wee hours of the morning to farm in their fields and villages, go to their stores and get ready for the day. It seemed like people there were content and fulfilled to do what they did and didn’t have a complaint in the world. For me, it was so refreshing that these people loved life without needing to constantly be on the internet or texting. Every time we walked by someone would be saying, “Karibu!” (welcome) or just sort of waving at the pack of white people in awe. I definitely could not have asked for a better experience, although I’m not quite ready to give up my cell phone forever…

Note from Leah:

Two interesting highlights of the trip for me were learning Tanzanian names and that some of COlins fellow villagers believe that he is a spy. One night at dinner, our waiters name was Goodlove. SOme other names I really enjoyed were Hopeness, Goodness, Prideness, Godspeed and Godsend. As for Colin being a spy, I'm not sure where people form his village are coming from. The typical spy look is very clean adn slick and Colin is the opposite of this. He is in fact the only person in all of Tanzania with facial hair from what I saw. Not to mention, his being the sole white person in his village makes him much less conspicuous. Regardless of whether or not he is spying, I am now assuming that Chome is hiding some sort of huge conspiracy of world hunger solution somewhere within its crater. 

Oh, and one more highschol was Paige double fisting Tanzanian beer at dinner (daily).

Note from Father Harari:

Travel that includes the entire family unit is pretty rare once the kids get to high school and college. This summer 2011 trip to Tanzania, Africa to visit son Colin in the Peace Corps was one of those once in a lifetime opportunities. To connect our family of 6 plus my brother Jim on the other side of the world was truly fantastic. Among so many highlights, perhaps the most compelling included visiting Colin after almost a year away from the US in the Peace Corps, taking a spectacular Safari through the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater regions, and seeing the beauty and challenges that face a developing African country like Tanzania. Here are some impressions from the first of these highlights; namely visiting Colin in his hometown of Chome Village, Tanzania.

The beautiful village of Chome is tucked high in the Pare Mountains some 150 km from the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro in northern Tanzania. The road up to Chome is an adventure to say the least. The thrill and nervousness that we felt making this precipitous ascent in a rock stable, fully equipped safari vehicle triggered butterflies as we thought of the trips made by Colin up and down this rugged terrain each month or so in weathered, crowded local buses. 

For our family, the most striking part of our Chome visit was the warmth and friendly greetings of local people. We took a spectacular evening walk across Chome Village with Colin and his good friend and fellow teacher Baraka who has known Chome his entire life. Seven white americans walking across Chome draws the attention, interest and giggles of children and adults. With Baraka as our guide, and Colin as a familiar face having arrived in Chome in Fall 2010, we made a 3 hour round trip walk across this beautiful agricultural village. Groups of children walking home from school joined us for parts of the trip, adults welcomed us with broad smiles and Swahili greetings. Baraka and Colin took turns explaining this unusual group of visitors. We visited Baraka’s Baba at his home on the other side of Chome (hour walk from the school where Baraka and Colin teach and live). His incredible warmth and bright smile was infectious as he and Colin laughed, conversed in Swahili and shook hands several dozen times during the hour visit. Walking across this rural village with a brief glimpse of so many kind people, the beautiful farmland, simple dwellings and local animals provided a heart and soul for our family trip to Tanzania. Knowing that Colin was surrounded by such friendly and hard working people was heartening. Experiencing firsthand the joyful expression of local greetings to “Mr. Colin” and his family was unforgettable. A few photos from this memorable Chome Village walk are attached here. Hope to get back there someday.