Settling In
In my last post I discussed a little bit about the type of work I will be doing while I'm at the ICTR. Now that I've settled in I guess I'll talk about Arusha and some of my travel plans for the summer.
Arusha is a small city with about 300,000 people, and its 1400 meters above sea level but you can definitely feel the altitude when exercising. Mt. Meru the tenth highest mountain in Africa can be seen from almost any point in the city on a clear day and it is absolutely a fantastic site. Arusha is one of the main cities people who are about to go on Safari stop at, so the city always has a large number of tourists. Also there are many NGO's and other organizations so I have had no problem meeting other Americans.
The World Cup begins today and you can really feel the enthusiasm around the city. From the local barber who cut my hair a few days ago to one of the Cameroonian Judges who I was talking to, World Cup Fever has swept over Tanzania. For the most part Tanzanians are rooting for all of the African teams (Cameroon, Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Ghana). I'll obviously be rooting for the USA. I'm anxiously waiting the USA v. England match on Saturday, a few of the interns have already made plans to watch the game.
As for my travel plans, next weekend I'm planning on going on three day Safari to the Ngorongoro Crater and Sarengetti, which is one of the largest game parks in the world. In July it's tentatively planned for a group of the interns to climb the Machame route of Mt Kiliminjaro. At almost 19,000 feet and no real advanced mountain climbing training needed I think climbing Kiliminjaro would be a great physical challenge and experience. Those are the big trips that I have planned for the summer but hopefully I'll go on some other smaller weekend trips.
As for work at the ICTR, the oral judgment for the Munykazzi case should be delivered by the end of the month and then the written judgment should be delivered a few weeks later, so our working group is pretty busy. After working on the Munykazi case I will likely move on to another case where I'll hopefully get to sit in on an actual trial.
Until Next Time
Brook