All I Want For Christmas
11/24/08
I was walking home from campus today when about half way home my eyes started to well up and I had to fight back the urge of wanting to curl up in a ball and sit under a tree for a while. Somehow I knew that wouldn’t have been of any help, so I gathered my composure and continued hiking. I mean, in all seriousness, today is my birthday and I should have no worries, right? So, I don’t have worries, but selfish wants and I have decided that all I want for Christmas is my little man MADDY (I will even take his sidekick, Hayden) for at least 2 days and 1 night. It’s a lot to ask for, I know, but I have decided that I don’t want to share him!
Baba is still out of town and should be home next Wednesday. His father is doing much better and should be going home soon. Mama had to attend another viewing and therefore dinner was prepared by Haika. I love Haika’s cooking and have to come to trust it, so I didn’t mind either way. Megan, Mallory, and Lindsey came over for a little get together and we ate dinner and then devoured some delicious cake. I received lots of chocolate, some earring’s, a necklace, and two shirts. Mama came home at the end of our little celebration and I was able to talk to Baba briefly on the phone. It was pleasantly nice and our host family is incredible.
12/3/08
This will probably be my last post from Tanzania. Amanda has asked me to do a follow up once I return to the states, so I just might write one or two more when I come home. School has been finishing up or something along those lines. I had my drumming final yesterday which I was completely oblivious too and it was followed by my psychology exam. I had a minor incident after my psychology exam, but I will describe that in a bit more detail later. I was supposed to take my piano exam today and be finished, however; it had to be postponed until tomorrow. I finally was able to get in touch with my history professor and he has asked me to write two papers when I return home and email them to him sometime in January. That was a sigh of good news! Tomorrow I will go pick up my clothes from the tailor. I had several items made and they should be done tomorrow morning! I am so excited to see how they turn out! We will go out to eat dinner with everyone tomorrow night as my birthday dinner since we weren’t able to go on my actual birthday. Amanda leaves Saturday morning which means I can party in my room and trash her bed for leaving me before I actually leave.
As most of you know, Amanda had a little scare about three nights ago while walking home from campus. It was a nice reminder and with that I started to realize how lucky some of us have been. Then I realized, wait, most of us have had some minor incidents. Phones snatched, wallets taken, passports held ransom, dorms broken into, bags slashed, girls attacked outside of dorm, girl attacked inside of dorm, and one of the most recent prior to Amanda’s was a rape. Not bad, right? Yeah, please!
With that said, I nearly jinxed myself. I hadn’t had anything significant happen aside from my bag being slit. I didn’t loose anything nor was I harmed in any shape or form. However, last night gave me a scare I will never forget. Don’t worry, nothing happened but the potential was there. It shook me up a little bit (maybe a lot) and when I came home and found Amanda wasn’t home, I totally lost control and started crying. I was angry more than anything and had nobody but Haika to talk too. I love Haika, but when she asked why I was crying and not coming down to eat dinner all I could tell her was turn off my lights and leave. How could I translate something as complicated as being verbally sexually harassed in a professors office after taking a final exam, forced to give a hug which could have been much worse and then attach that with my concern of walking home in the dark while receiving outlandish messages from this professor about wanting to make love to me before I returned home. I would not have been as angry, disturbed and upset if it had happened outside of the school, but a professional setting where I thought I should not have to be concerned about my safety? I should have felt safer and perhaps that is what has startled me immensely. I waited at least three hours for someone to come home which felt like an eternity and didn’t feel it was right to tell Baba on his first night home, but he knew I wanted to chat with him in the morning. Welcome home Baba, Amanda had to mace two men in our neighborhood and I was sexually harassed by my professor.
::sigh::
Woke up early after going to bed late and printed out my essay about what had happened. Went down stairs and laid on the couch waiting for Baba. Anxiety was in full force and I wasn’t sure if I had maybe overreacted. I let Baba read the essay to see what he thought about the situation. He was infuriated, asked for the professor’s number (he wanted to call him right away!) and said what I needed to do. I have spent my entire day meeting with different people and talking. Started off with Mama Kaaya from the Links Office and then off to the Dean’s. Spoke with three people in the Dean’s Office and arranged a meeting with the Secretary of Psychology. Conveniently in this meeting with the Dean, the professor called me and while I didn’t want to answer, everyone else instructed me too. He apologized and asked me not to report him. Oops, already in the process my friend. He was concerned he would loose his job and chances are he will loose his job. I almost feel bad and yet I must remind myself that this isn’t acceptable in any culture. ::Deep breath:: We had about an hour for some lunch before meeting with the Secretary of Psychology. Spoke with her and I am now home free and thinking about a nap before dinner with Mama Kaaya. The Dean, Head of Department, and Secretary are all meeting with the Vice Chancellor tonight. So here I am and I must say I haven’t personally seen the university act this fast in any manor. I am not sure if it’s because I am leaving in a few days or because of the actual situation but, I am most thankful. As Amanda says, I finally have the right to stomp my foot and be an American and I am doing just that.
Hope to see you all sooo VERY sooon! XO XO XO
12/6/08
My last week in Africa has been amazing. I am extremely excited to be coming home and yet very sad to be leaving my African home. I have really come to love and enjoy this family here. I learned last night while talking with Baba that he was the first to confront this professor. It was comforting to know that within two hours of me confronting Baba, he went straight to the professor. It definitely put a smile on my face.
I haven’t been sleeping much lately. Yes, I know that’s a little bit of a shocker right. I raided Amanda’s music before she left. I must say, it was quite sad to watch her pack and then see her leave. I hope they make it home safe and to Amanda’s parents—I hope your travels go well! I will be most excited to read your postings when you return.
Packing is proving itself to be nearly impossible. Had I not packed my entire room before departing America this wouldn’t be such an issue. Eh, I will make it work and I am sure I will have to pay at least one overweight fee. I have given Haika two pairs of pants, sneakers, and my sandals. I am leaving my shampoo with Amanda since I packed an excessive amount and she never washes. Actually, there is plenty enough for any visitors she has unless you’re picky. I doubt she will even put a dent in the bottle. I will leave lotion and spray with Haika too. Amanda would be going crazy if she saw me packing right now. My indecisiveness at this point would probably have her wanting to commit suicide-no lie! I can’t decide which will be best for carry on and which luggage should be massively heavy. I pack it one way and then change my mind. I unpack it and repack it. Nope, that doesn’t work either. I keep switching it up and it’s driving me crazy which is why I know for sure Amanda wouldn’t be able to handle this!
As some of you might know, I have been hunting down Maasai shoes. Had I known better, I would have bought them in Arusha where they are much cheaper, but instead I waited till I returned to Dar. Mama Dorica has been hunting down these poor men, hassling them and then telling them it’s too much. They want to charge me 12,000 shillings and one Maasai man demanded his friend remove his shoe to sell it to us right there! It’s been quite the adventure and last night we decided Amanda would buy them in Arusha and send them back to me. Well, today on our last minute errands we found two Maasai men. Mama Dorica stopped them and asked them if they could make me the shoes. They were shocked—an azungu wants our shoes to take back to her country?! They had me try them on and the only thing they could say was how great they looked on my feet. Wild! As they walked away with enormous grins on their faces, Mama Dorica tried to ask them something else. She had to literally honk at them to get their attention because they were so wrapped up with the excitement of making an azungu shoes?! Sijui! So as I am showering Haika comes up and tells me that the Maasai are here with my shoes. I toss my clothes on, walk down stairs and open the door. There say SIX Maasai men at our front door! They were laughing and in complete shock, but they only had 2 pairs. They tried to raise the price, but Mama Dorica yelled at them and said that’s not what you told us before. Go Mama Dorica because I got the shoes for 5,000 shillings!!!! I was so excited! So I was able to finish all my last minute shopping today and get my shoes!! Whoo HOOOO!
I will be home soon my loves!
12/24/08
Well, it’s Christmas Eve here in America but to everyone in Africa—Merry Christmas! I hope your goat is as yummy as my Turkey! Oh wait, I am home alone with no roommates and I have no Turkey to eat. Ah, but… Hakuna Matata!
I plan on working through the holidays—after all, this is why I came home early. I am meeting my family on Sunday because that’s my only day off. It has been great to see all the kids and how well they have improved! Isaac is holding a pencil and writing legibly! I never imagine in three months he would have made that type of progress. Maddy is…well…basically…NORMAL! Lucas is reminding me a lot of Maddy and Adam is still a sassy man that makes me laugh!
Adjusting back to life in America hasn’t been to difficult. Amanda said it would be more difficult but most days it’s almost like I never left. I don’t know if it’s because I came back and jumped straight back into work or what else it could possibly be. I noticed a difference in prices. Gas is incredibly cheap and food is incredibly expensive. On my nine hour layover in Detroit I stopped and ate at Chilli’s. I about died when I went to pay! I must say that washing machines are amazing and when I started to wash my clothes I definitely started sneezing. I am truly allergic to Africa!
It’s been a challenge to communicate with Adam’s house girl, Ligia. She speaks Spanish and I have never learned any Spanish therefore when she speaks to me it becomes a huge ugh ugh ugh scenario. I can understand very few things she says to me and my immediate response has been to use what little bit of Swahili I know especially OK and YES. Would love to throw Amanda into a Spanish speaking country before she returns home and watch her stumble. I don’t know what prompted that thought but I really think it would be humorous, right?!
Oh, Amanda, when I got my hair cut they said you didn’t mess it up! ;)
My mouth has been really dry at night to the point of cracking on the inside of lips. That’s proven to be quite painful. I still haven’t gotten back into the routine of showering twice daily. I try and shower at least daily but I haven’t been as successful at that either. It’s only been a few weeks though. I have a hard time putting clothes in the dirty clothes bin because they don’t smell dirty nor do they look dirty but I force myself while reminding myself—Haika doesn’t have to wash these.
Speaking of Haika, I miss her! I tried cooking some food last week and it needed a little more spice, but it was similar. I don’t know how much everyone else enjoyed it, but it defiantly brought a smile to my face! I feel really lucky to have been placed with that host family and I can’t wait to see them all again!
Well, I suppose that’s all I have to say for now. Perhaps I will fulfill Amanda’s wishes in a few more weeks. Till then, to everyone in Africa-take care and be safe; to Amanda’s parents-get prepared and enjoy your travels!
Merry Christmas!
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Before Zanzibar & After
Ok, so internet is being ridiculous! I was going to try and post separate blogs but I think I should just throw them together and hope it loads up! Sorry for the typo’s! Enjoy…
11/11/08
So I posted my blog this morning but I have so much to say and I figured I should start typing before I get yelled at for NOT typing and before I forget or decide not to type. Oops!!
As you know, I hiked to campus today in hopes of finding my piano professor and sure enough I found him! After class I hiked back over to the Administration office to get some internet. I had over 200 emails and over half was junk mail. Goes to show how much I care about that email account. I was able to email Ally about my classes and I have conveniently still not been able to email KEI. Ugh oh, I wonder what will happen with that whole scenario. Just I was about to tap into my Bank of America Privacy Assist my laptop died. I had about 3 notices in my email about suspicious activity with my credit. Yikes! Nothing I can do so I hike home because I am starving and too cheap to pay for lunch on campus. I guess it’s about 1,000 shillings which is nothing more than 1 American dollar, but food is free at home! Amanda was surprised to see me, but probably a bit relieved because this meant she didn’t have to carry my drum anymore. I noticed Amanda had finally cleaned up her messy side of the room, which is leaving me feeling obligated to also clean up my side. Cool off, chow down on some food, and head off to campus with my drum in hand…
I am at the end of our neighborhood when I notice a large crowd of people walking. I take a closer look at where this crowd is headed and I see them surrounding the Udasa club. It was an endless stampede of locals making their rounds on campus. I pick up my pace, curse myself out for not having my camera, and start following the crowd. I actually need to pass by them to get where I am going so as I am cutting through the crowd start yelling NGOME. They wanted me to play my drum and sure, if I was good at it, I would have been more than happy to play. However, Amanda and I were meeting with the boys because we SUCK! I laugh and shake my head with a NO! I am suddenly being approached by a few locals and my thought process: a) maybe I should have brought the pepper spray Amanda’s father gave her which she happened to leave one on my bed today (THANKS to Amanda’s father!) and b) they want to destroy my drum because it looks like I am going to class! One man did take my drum and I was more than happy to hand it over. I was going to put up a fight and thankfully he didn’t destroy it! I finish walking up the hill with a local following me. Our reaction to this strike seems to have gotten most people off the talk of politics. He was asking me all sorts of questions. They don’t have strikes in America? They have campaigns instead? Why are you all fascinated with this strike? Why are all the foreigners taking pictures? It’s crazy, but I remember unions on strike while growing up in Vegas. It’s not like I haven’t ever witnessed a strike, but to be affected by a strike is completely different. This is the first time it has ever affected ME personally.
Anyways, I find Tony who is flaunting some mighty short shorts that are a bright florescent green. I chuckle slightly because I wouldn’t even show that much legs! Minutes later we spot Amanda and head back up to his dorm roof top. We find us a shady spot and start drumming away. [Side note: The dorms across from Hall IIII are filled with lots of Chinese people. Apparently at night they stand on their balcony’s and shout across the Hall’s to their friends. The boys find it annoying and so their payback—make as much noise as they can with their drums.] We have a fairly good rhythm going when Amanda gets a phone call from either her father or mother. She walks away and the boys and I keep messing around. All of a sudden Tony notices there is a Chinese girl on her balcony with a video camera. He jokes and says, hey we are being filmed. Joe, Max, and I all turn and look. Dead give away that we have been spotted. Joe laughs and says, nah they must be taping somebody across right below us. We all laugh—yeah, right! Amanda finally comes back to joins us and within minutes this Chinese girl is on our roof top with her camera in hand…. “can I tape you guys?” Ugh, sure… She got some good footage of us all making complete asses of ourselves, and then when she left we all joked about it ending up on Youtube. Maybe in a few months we can do a youtube search of American’s playing drums on a Tanzanian roof top. Would be quite the ending to a drum class…and we told her to come back at the end of the semester when we had finished learning—not three weeks into class. I bumped into them as I was leaving and they wanted to know how long we had been playing for and began praising how well we had played. Yeah riiight!
A few things I forgot to mention before posting my previously crappy blog.
Amanda is still sleep talking, but I can’t ever make out what she is saying. I try and try to antagonize it, but unfortunately I don’t think I will be able to write a blog solely on her sleep talking. Great sadness, yes, I know. However, I will write what happened weeks ago.
Amanda is sleeping and I am playing around on my phone. I roll over or move in my squeaky bed which tends to set her off. She stumbles and says something about scissors. I reply, “what about scissors?” In a pissy voice she goes, “I was wondering where they went?!” I hesitate and I am not sure I want to keep pushing this conversation because of her tone. So I pause and decide, eh, why not keep it going? I proceed to ask her, “Why do you need them?” In a semi-bold voice she states. “Because it’s HOT.” I left it at that, but nearly died laughing. What is she dreaming sometimes and of all things to need when it’s hot: scissors?! I suppose she wanted to cut herself out of the mosquito net? Maybe she wanted to cut off her clothes too?? Who knows, and I am not denying it’s not hot, but scissors are not the first thing I think about when it’s hot. Maybe some ice or ice cold water, but SCISSORS!?! Seriously?!
Speaking of dreams, my dreams continue. I was in a forest with a bear trying to find my blackberry. I am sure Amanda loved that dream! I am currently drawing a blank with the other dream.
Yesterday was a productive days since there was no class. We went to the orphanage and finally I got to play with some young kids! Totally made my day and despite the language barrier I had more than half the kids following me. I brought them in the mosque and threw them around on my feet, played a rock game, a little hand game (which helped me with my counting), and then this card game which was basically all different sizes of cardboard with pictures on it. It was similar to Spoons but with 1 bottle cap. There was only about 16 pieces of cardboard though. The kids loved it and I hope to go back a few more times. It’s very difficult though because of the language barrier, but it was amazing how much fun we all still had.
Then last night had a very awkward moment at Mwenge while teaching. They asked me the meaning of ‘gringos.’ Shouted over to Amanda for some help and she proceeded to describe it as when locals here call us an ‘azungu.’ The students laughed and then another student asked if it was a polite word. Amanda was like, ‘nah man, it’s not really polite when you call us azungu.’ They laughed again and then this extremely nice and polite female whom is always there looks up and says to me, ‘oh, like you call us nigger’s?’ ::GASP::GASP::GASP:: Moses (the head man of this volunteer teaching program) gazes at her and says, ‘Nooo, shhh!’ She put her hand on her face and began laughing slightly realizing that was not exactly kosher. I was speechless and wasn’t exactly sure if I should explain it or leave it. I left it. Figured maybe it wasn’t a good idea to continue talking about and Moses changed the topic rapidly. It was awkward for sure.
So, off to Zanzibar tomorrow—take II.
ZANZIBAR DELIGHT
WOW, Zanzibar has so much more to offer than what Amanda and I saw the first time around. Take II was by far one of my African highlights. I haven’t laughed or enjoyed myself and my surroundings as much as I did these past few days. I knew this trip would be better, but I didn’t expect it to be this amazing. It was a total hit with bringing the Swede boys. For the reference of this blog, I will refer to them as Brown Erik (he’s the older of the two—28) and Blonde Erik (he’s the younger—23 I believe). They both have the same name so I distinguish them as Blonde and Brown. I will apologize for the length of this blog ahead of time. It might just turn into pages upon pages, but there really is so much to say. Here it goes…
We started off in hopes of getting on the early ferry around 10:30 am Wednesday morning. Amanda sent a text to the boys telling them we had to ‘leave’ Mwenge at 8 am. Apparently they were more excited then us and arrived at Mwenge at about 7:30. Due to the strike Amanda and I had a tough time getting a dally to Mwenge—at least that’s the best solution we could think of. We arrived there and tried to catch a dally to Posta, but of course there were few to none. We finally found one and mashed ourselves in to claim us a seat. Three out of the four of us managed to grab a seat while blonde Erik was left standing. Somewhere along the push and shove of boarding the dally he managed to get his phone snatched straight from his pocket. So as he said, “The trip started off OK, and then…”
We arrive at Posta and head off to buy our ferry tickets. We managed to purchase them for 25,000 shillings, but it wasn’t first class again. Same price but not same class—argh! Blonde Erik was a tad hung over for the ride over, but he survived. Approximately three hours later we arrived and were once again attacked by locals for taxi’s and hotels. We decided to eat at Mercury’s because the boys were starving and as Amanda said, it wasn’t a far walk. She was teased relentlessly for the trip about her description of the walk because the boys prepared themselves for a 5 min walk when in all reality it was about a 30 second walk. It was great fun and instead of pizza I ordered some sort of red meat with pepper sauce. Wasn’t sure I would like it because of the sauce, but DAMN it was DELICIOUS! I shared a piece with everyone and brown Erik said, “I ordered the wrong thing.” He sure did because I had eaten their pizza the last time and nothing compared to this hunk of meat. MMMM MMMM GOOD!
After we ate we were off to find the hotel we had decided on and drop off our stuff. We were attacked with some offers when we left the port, but we were fairly set on this one location. One fairly persistent man got us to come and look for free at this place called “Zenji Hotel.” It was nice, near the port, and a reasonable price. We said OK. It would only be later that we found out how truly amazing this place was. The best shower any of us had taken in over 2 months (hot water and excellent water pressure) along with some of the best breakfast ever and free internet that worked amazingly fast! It was run by two western girls and it was like Heaven. I certainly didn’t want to come home! The boys stayed in the ‘Treasure Chamber” accompanied by a treasure chest and Amanda and I had the “Room of Wonders.” It gave us something to laugh about, that’s for sure.
After we dropped our stuff we headed off to explore Stone Town with the boys. Amanda and I had strolled through it before, but it was much more fun with them. Brown Erik and I tend to walk much faster and believe me, I have tried to walk African pace but it’s just down right HARD! After the hot and sweaty stroll through Stone Town we head home to shower and get ready for the evening! I took a nap after I showered, while Amanda and blonde Erik went hunting for alcohol. After they found some alcohol and had a few shots, we walked to the meat market where all the fisherman display their fresh raw fish and cook them after you choose what you want. I took some lobster and barracuda (never tried it before) because one of the Erik’s said it was good. I can’t say it was great, but may have been just the plain grilled, fishy taste. Nonetheless, this is where we met Alex. Alex is a local Tanzanian man who does spice tours and that’s exactly what we wanted to try and do on Thursday. He is also the same man who told brown Erik that if he ate lots of Octopus it would help him out in the bedroom. Erik took lots of Octopus that night! Alex was funny and we semi-agreed to him that we would use him for the spice tour. We finished eating and slipped away to Livingstone.
Livingstone is a total mzungu hang out in Zanzibar. It’s a nice little place right on the beach. I was surprised when we arrived to see a fellow man standing there waiting to serve us—that is, a fellow azungu. This was the first time I had seen a mzungu working at a place like this, but didn’t think anything of it. He came over to order drinks and I said ‘maji.’ He asked me again and I said, “maji ::pause:: water.” That’s when I realized he didn’t speak Swahili. After waiting on us and listening to the Swede boys talk with their accents, he came over to ask where they were from. Ends up being he is Danish and only here for a few weeks. This is where we met the 2 Danish boys from Denmark. Adam was a 20 year old with long shaggy hair and Svend was a 19 year old who looked older than Adam. Svend invited us to go out with him and his buddy to a Danish school on the East coast for a beach party on Saturday. We exchanged numbers and headed home.
Took full advantage of our open roof top and went upstairs to play drinking card games. My cup consisted of water, but all was good. Crawled out on the edge and watched the sky for a bit before I went off to bed. Got a few hours of sleep before the sun turned our room into an oven and not to mention I was suppose to wake everyone up for the day. So at 7 am sharp I pound on the boy’s door and Brown Erik answers it—I have a huge grin on my face saying, “time to wake up!” I thought we had to be ready at 8 but apparently we didn’t have to be ready till 9. I never heard the end of that one—waking everyone up at 7 am. That was almost as bad as Amanda saying Mercury’s was in walking distance. The owner approaches us on the roof top asking if we had settled with a tour and we told him yes, but twenty minutes later he came to our room saying he would advise us not take the tour with this man Alex because it’s not safe and he is a drug addict etc. I was a little unsure, but we all decided to go with a tour agency in the book and took our owners advice. Have I mentioned our hotel owners were kick ass! Okay, now I have! So Alex is waiting for us outside and we dodge him saying pole sana pole sana, but he was not a happy man. Oops.
Spice Tour:
Spice tour was fantastic! The tour guide really knew his information and he could tell you the name of most spices in multiple languages. That’s a huge bonus when you have people from all over Europe, America, and other countries. We got to taste all sorts of different spices and I tried them all, despite the fact that I had no water. I really enjoyed the star fruit. It was a bit tangy but it washed down the pepper seed I had just previously chewed. At the end we sat around on some logs and we got to try all sorts of other fresh fruits. Some I like, but I wasn’t too fond of. After we finished trying the fruits, we headed off to a bath house and then to lunch. Lunch was chapati (not my favorite, but I am getting better at eating it) and their spiced rice (pilou?) which I hate. So, I basically ate a chapati and that was lunch. Oh, and lunch is where we met our Irish friends. We had briefly chatted along the tour but we were a group of four and needed two more for lunch so they sat with us. Meet Kate and Killian. They were a cute, young Irish couple who had been traveling around Tanzania for about 8 weeks. They were in their final 2 weeks when we met them. Anyhow, we chatted with them at lunch and then headed off to the slave cave. It was an intense climb in, but nice and cool inside. It was this enormous cave that actually leads into the ocean. After hiking back out of the cave we hiked to the beach where we had an hour to swim. No bathrooms to use for changing or restroom needs. Fantastic, eh?! Yeah, so Amanda and I hiked up about 10 feet and changed and then she left so I could pee. You know, now that I type this, Amanda hadn’t peed all day?! How is that possible?! That’s besides the point—hung out on the beach and then headed back home. Exchanged numbers with the Irish kids so we could meet up for dinner and drinking later.
Showered and napped again while Amanda and Blonde Erik went for another liquor run. I had a decent nap when I was rudely awoken by Brown Erik. Amanda had the key to our cabinet so I couldn’t get my clothes. All I had after my shower was a towel and that’s what I passed out in. So Erik was making fun of me for sleeping and not getting dressed when I answered the door still in my towel and half asleep. These keys were tricky on who had them and where to keep them. Eh, it was all good and fun.
When I went upstairs to the roof top to meet everyone I noticed our group had grown significantly. Brown Erik said he was waiting for 3 Swedish friends to arrive. Then he changed the number to 2 and apparently when they actually arrived it was 4! I didn’t catch their names, but we headed out to dinner where the 8 of us met up with our Irish friends and searched for Monsoon restaurant. That turned into a duck hunt. A group of ten with 2 people insisting we passed it, another 2 people saying its up ahead, and the 4 new Swedish bunch taking the lead and powering ahead. This is a prime example of why Amanda likes small groups, I am sure! Not to mention we were stopped by Alex when passing the meat market because we decided not to go with him. He gave the Brown Swede a bit of a hassle and then attacked Amanda hard core. Some locals jumped in and said back off and Amanda finally walked away. We all finally agreed if it was not at this particular location we will eat anywhere, even if it meant Brown Erik getting stoned to death by Fina (that’s their German roommate who said they must eat at the Monsoon restaurant or she would stone him to death). Thankfully, we found it or thankfully for Erik we found it. I sat at the end with Brown Erik and Killian. The three of us primarily had our own conversation going on. Somehow we got on the topic of natural disasters and they started questioning me about hurricanes and such. It was an interesting conversation and Killian was describing how it had been raining in Ireland a lot. He was complaining that it rained too much and his exact quote was, “It rained for 64 days straight. Now that’s some biblical shit!” Dinner was served and I once again order some sort of peppery meat steak. It wasn’t as delicious as Mercury’s, but it was ok. I let Erik try another piece of my meat and he said again, “shit, I ordered the wrong meal again!” He had order a king fish I believe.
After dinner the 4 new Swedish friends went back to the hotel and the 4 of us and the Irish couple went back to Livingstone for some more drinks. Our buddies were working again and they came to join us when they were done. We had a lovely mix of 2 Danish, 2 Swedish, 2 Irish, and 2 American’s sitting outside on the beach chatting away. After they had a few drinks the eight of us walked back to our hotel and went upstairs for a few more drinks. The Danish boys left and later Amanda, Blonde Erik, and the Irish couple went to some sort of a local club. Not too sure since I stayed home, but it seems that we didn’t miss anything but a bunch of prostitutes. I was too tired and apparently so was the Brown Swede. He managed to lock himself out of his room so I ended up sharing my bed with him. It wasn’t so bad except he was drunk and talking a lot when all I wanted to do was sleep. Then Amanda came home so all three of us were sleeping in the same bed and I was stuck in the middle. Wouldn’t have been so bad except no AC and 3 sweaty people trying to keep that inch of space between each other’s sticky body—Erik finally woke up and went back to his room. As he was leaving he joked, “this will be the longest walk of shame.”
Brown Erik sleeping in our bed turned into a huge joke. He didn’t remember much of what he had said to me the night before so I was constantly teasing him with stories ranging from eating Octopus to what he wanted to do with his biceps. On one particular dally ride he picked something out of my head and goes, “I can do this now that we have shared a night together.”
The Irish couple left as quickly as they came and I think we all fell in love with them. They were simply amazing and we were sad to see them go.
Friday turned into what Lacey wanted to do. Not sure how or why, but I was more than happy to choose. I love monkeys and have been wanting to catch one since I have been here. About 2 weeks ago I was chatting with Mama Dorica’s nephew and he said he would catch a monkey and a mongoose for me. Our neighborhood has had lots of baby mongoose’s around and he assured me he could do it. Anyhow, you’ll understand the moral of this story in a few minutes. I choose to go to Jozani forest and find some red colobus monkeys! There is something about the thought of hiking through a forest I just love too. I left it up to our geography boys to figure out how to get us there and thank GOD for them. We really couldn’t have lucked out better with picking to boys to travel with. I wouldn’t tell them to their face, but they were pretty damn good at getting us around Zanzibar. He he he! We decided on taking a dally since it would be the least expensive.
*** Dally Side Note and FUNNIEST moment***
Here is the deal. The dally system in Zanzibar isn’t quite like Dar. They use numbers instead of names, but fear not—we found the right dally. Zanzibar dallys aren’t quite the same as Dar either. They are basically a flat bed cab truck with bench seats and a roof and 2X4 on the side. They seem to be more efficient for a rural area because you can load tree branches and such on the roof. The four of us duck our heads and crawl into the back of this empty truck. We tell them where we want to get off since we don’t really know our location and they assure us they will drop us when we need to be dropped. We pass a few stops and our dally slowly starts to fill up when we come to this one particular stop. Brown Erik is sitting on the right of me and Amanda and Blonde Erik are to the left. Some local man walks up to Brown Erik and says my name is Sherridan and gives him a punch high five. He does this repetitively and Erik finally says my name is Erik. Than this man moves on to me and wants me to give him a punch high five. I do so and he sort of walks away. He returns for more and changes his name to Paris. He has something in his hand and it looks like he has Ugali smashed all over his face—therefore when he talks, he sprays it all over us. Another local Tanzanian man sitting next to Brown Erik on the dally says something to this strange man in Swahili. Amanda tried to get what he said, but we really don’t know. By the man’s reaction, he probably said something along the lines of ‘back the fuck off.’ This man outside the dally went CRAZY! He tried to start punching him through the dally, ran off to a near by tree and did some karate moves, ran around to the back of the dally and peered in as if he was going to come in and start a fight, ran to the left where Amanda and Blonde Swede were, etc. He just lost it and for a minute I was slightly scared. How can I get out of this dally and when is the driver going to start going. What is happening and what sort of drugs is this man on?! He makes a few rounds and we sit as patiently as possible watching. This Sherridan/Paris man walks away about ten feet and turns back around towards us. He comes back to the dally and takes a bite of this raw potato in his hand and spits it at the other local Tanzanian but it went everywhere. He does a few more kung fu moves, throws his potato on the ground, pounces to the potato, takes his hand and tries to hammer it. After a few missed hits, he slams a good one and the potato flies behind his head. He jumps up, startled like someone stole his potato, finds it and pounces to it again. Hammer’s it again, picks it up, takes a bite, and walks away. PRICELESS and as we drove away not only were we laughing, but all the local’s laughed too.
As promised they dropped us off right where we needed to be. We headed in to find us a tour guide and with Amanda’s Swahili and the Erik’s passport’s to prove our residency, we got the resident price. How exciting is that! Found the red monkeys (!!!!), hiked to the mangrove’s where it felt like we were walking on water through the tree’s, fed some sea turtles, and then hiked through the forest. The forest was a short hike, but it was nice. Amanda and I learned how to weave. You see, despite the lack of education at the university we really are learning! Then, it was another dally off to home. This dally was packed and of course I was last to get on so I had no where to squeeze into. I started of with sitting on Amanda’s lap, but everyone insisted on my sitting. I just kept saying Nzuri Sana and they kept insisting otherwise. Finally I gave up and squeezed onto the floor with everyone’s feet. Nope, that wasn’t good either. Than some elderly lady leaned over and said, you have to sit because of police. SAWA, ASANTE! I get up and Amanda asks what was said and I say, apparently there are police regulations to abide by. Who knew! We smash a local Tanzanian man into the corner—I mean literally, all you could see was his head. He no longer had legs, a chest, or shoulders. Just a head! Ten people must have gotten off, but we were still smashed. It’s unreal.
Made it home, showered and off to find the Lithuanians at some fancy resort right on the beach. For the record, this is the man who said when school was cancelled for another week due to the moon showing up, ‘dats a good one.’ Anyhow, we head off to find dinner after they have a beer. Found some little restaurant and hiked up three flights of stairs to eat there. I order some sort of meat while Amanda and Brown Erik got some crab. Blonde Erik had a seafood platter and the Lithuanian’s had already eaten so they had a drink. I wasn’t happy with my meat, let Brown Erik try it and once again, ‘he ordered the wrong meal!’ He offered me some of his crab, but I declined. I like fish, but not when you can taste the fish hard core! After we ate the Lithuanians went to their hotel and we went to bother our Danish friends working at Livingstone. These Danish boys were pretty kick ass, if I haven’t mentioned that yet. Anyhow, while sitting at this restaurant I notice a local Tanzanian sitting at my table has something in his shirt. First time I hit Amanda and said, “he has a monkey in his shirt!” She laughed it off and basically called me stupid, which is far from the truth but I know what I saw. Then I spotted it again and she got a small glimpse. I asked him if it was a monkey and he told me it was a puppy. PLEASE! I know the difference between a puppy’s head and a monkey’s head. A few minutes later he stood up and grabbed my hand to take me to the beach. I laughed and said, “where is the monkey?!” He said he would show me when we got to the beach, but I couldn’t see the monkey anymore under his shirt. It magically disappeared! In the middle of a really nice mzungu restaurant I give a local Tanzanian man full bodies pat down trying to find this monkey. I couldn’t find it, but I took his word and headed to the beach—Amanda brought her camera and sure enough, I GOT TO HOLD A MONKEY!!!! He likes beer so when they gave him beer and took it away, he bit both Amanda and I. NO WORRIES…he did NOT cut us with his bite. He was just a baby and it caused no harm, but I got TO HOLD A MONKEY!!!!!!!!!!! =) So yeah, we hang out there till the live music is over and then we head home. I am beyond tired and head straight to bed. It’s about 2 am and Brown Erik says the same, but adds in “I promise I won’t pull a stunt like last night” (in reference to him locking himself out of the room). Ah man, you mean we won’t have to try and dodge each other’s sweaty bodies all night again, and then to hear him say the next day, “It didn’t happen. You didn’t do it.” (cuddling!!!) He really thought that night when all three of us were in the same bed that we would cuddle with him? Maybe if it had been 20 degree’s, but when it’s 95 degree’s and you’re dripping sweat—I think I will pass—even if you are the sexiest man to walk the earth!!
Amanda and Blonde Erik head out to meet the Danish boys at some local joint for a few more beers. I wake up at 7 am to Amanda entering our room. Whoa, how does one stay awake so late! I guess they got lost and couldn’t find our hotel and then the sun was coming up so they went to the roof and watched the sunrise. Yeah, I had finally a solid night’s sleep and felt great. Amanda and Blonde Erik, meh, not so much! We all slept till after 10 and missed breakfast and damn did that suck. They had some great food! Oh well, packed our bags and headed off to meet the Danish boys at the dala dala station.
Yes, it’s time for another dally experience. This little adventure is all up to the Danish boys and some Danish girls they happened to meet, so we only know we’re headed east to Paje. They speak to the dally man and he says he will point us in the direction when we get off. It was a long ride and very little leg room. Literally, Svend had to pull his leg up and lay it on my knee. Everyone on the dally got to smell his lovely feet. Truth be told, I just wanted to know how they were so damn clean. I didn’t tell him why but I asked him how often he wears sandals. Seriously there wasn’t a speck of dirt under his nails. Just seems impossible and he has been in the area for a good 2 weeks and aside from Tanzania traveling for a good 6 weeks elsewhere. I can’t imagine how bad my toes would be if I didn’t have nail polish covering them. Anyways, Svend lost his note with details of where to tell the dally to stop and about three times they stopped to try and figure out where we wanted to go. At one point they even turned the whole dala dala around and tried to take us back, but it was a failed attempt. Finally they said they wanted to go to the end and then drop us off on their way back. A lovely 30 minute detour, but no worries we found the Danish school and a beautiful beach. Six bunks in one room—perfect number for us since there were only 6 of us, Amanda and I being the only two girls. All was good though. We changed and headed off to the beach. Went out as far as we could, which was fairly far and then went back to rinse off and get dressed for the night. We walked up to the football field (large patch of beach sand) and walked around to different vender’s selling food. We stopped at Jambo on our way so they could have a few drinks. While here I vanished for a bit to go check out the sky. The moon hadn’t risen yet so the sky was spectacular. After a while I decided to join them and once again our group had expanded. Two other men were sitting and chatting. One man started telling stories of incidents that had happened in Paje. I will leave details out, but it was more than enough to make me sketchy walking 800 meters back to our hostel with my bag. I told the boys they had to be my body guard and I latched onto the pepper spray Amanda’s father sent (thanks!!!!). We made it back with no problems and headed upstairs to play a card game. I had one drink for the first time the entire trip and then 2 shots. It didn’t have any effect on me, which given the fact I don’t drink and the lack of food I had eaten that day, it didn’t make sense. We head back to the field for the live music and I stuff a few shillings in the top of my dress and take the phone and my pepper spray. Brown Erik and I don’t dance so we sad along the side for a bit before everyone headed back to Jambo. I went back to the beach because it was too gorgeous not too. Everyone followed me, but they stayed on the shore. It was low tide so I walked as far as I could. I followed the moonlight and all of a sudden I see a large lump. I walk over to it and stare for a minute. Is this really what I am seeing? I take my phone and use it for a light. Sure enough, it is, it is a huge starfish with a diameter about the size of a five gallon bucket. I have nothing for a picture so I haul ass to shore and snatch Adam’s camera. I run back out to the ocean trying to follow the same path to find the star fish again when I let out a fairly decent yelp. My excitement got the best of me because had I been walking and taking my time I wouldn’t have stepped on whatever I had. Not sure what it was, but maybe a sea urchin? Something definitely spiky and truth be told, I only felt the one spike. It wasn’t until I got back to shore with a light that I noticed my entire heel was covered in spikes. Amanda and Brown Erik picked what they could, but the deep one that hurt the most wasn’t budging. I was pissed I didn’t find the starfish again and mad I had wounded myself. I took the key and pepper spray and went to fight the beasts alone. Something about that pepper spray makes gives me a bit more confidence. I am almost to the exit gate when I notice Brown Erik following me. I assure him I am fine and that he can go back to everyone else. He says no way, you were worried about walking home with ALL of us earlier and now you are okay to do it alone. Earlier I had a bag and now I have pepper spray in hand! Duh! Anyways, the two of us make it back to the hostel. I take Blonde Erik’s pocket knife and start butchering my foot. I got the deepest one out and it was about ¾ of an inch deep. That’s the bitch that made me scream. Somehow I let Erik try to remove a few and that didn’t turn out so well—maybe he was a little too intoxicated?! The two of us decided to stay in for the night; I mean it was already near 2 am. He tried to sleep, but our room was soooo HOT. We had no fans and ONE window. I was up by 7 am because I just couldn’t sleep, not to mention I had a ton of mosquitos in my net. I spent the night covering myself with my sheet and only exposing my two hands to hold the sheet over my head. I woke up with 3 bites on my two hands. Go figure. I just need to get out of our suffocated room because outside was a good ten degree’s cooler. I snatched Amanda’s camera and walked to the beach. I was hoping the tide would be out and maybe, just maybe I would find another star fish. Argh, still pissed about that. We hung outside for a bit while everyone gradually woke up and then packed our stuff and headed off to find us a dally ride home. Amanda noticed at dally station that she had forgotten her camera that I had left on the table. Oops. So, the two of us headed back to the hostel which originally didn’t seem so far, but limping a tad bit from my heel made it about ten miles longer. We knew a dally was coming shortly so we decided to run. We got the camera and met the boys just in time. As we were boarding the dala dala Brown Erik make a lovely comment along the lines of “I like the two shades of your shirt.” I actually think he was being nice because I think my light gray shirt was literally so drenched it was a solid dark gray, but I knew what he was saying. The Swedes were too funny!
We made it back to Stonetown and searched for a ferry ticket. I was most unhappy about this decision and I think we were totally lied to and if we weren’t lied to, I think we could have gone elsewhere and gotten a better priceless. Nonetheless, it’s done and over with. It was the only time during this whole trip that we sort of had a split decision and a bit of hesitation, but I honestly think Brown Erik was ready for home and just wanted what he wanted. Oh well, so it goes. Ferry ride home was MUCH better than the last time. I didn’t actually fall asleep ever, but I stayed in a decent state of mind with my head down. The sea wasn’t as choppy and it felt great to be home. Showered, cleaned my foot, and ate some good ole African food before I passed out for the night.
Side notes:
When we were in Dar getting ready to board the ferry we were standing by a large group of men. Two of them approached us and asked if were Canadian. We laughed and said no, but they turned out to be a really awesome group of guys. Amongst them they could speak over ten languages. When we said we were from America they were shocked and said, “Americans aren’t well traveled.” When I mentioned I was born and raised in Vegas they called over a fellow man who apparently was also from Vegas. He asked my name and after I told him, he joked, now what’s your real name? If I was quick enough I would have given him a stage name, but I laughed it off and thought nothing more off it. Well, it must have killed Brown Erik because he waited till AFTER the ferry ride and till AFTER we ate before he had me alone enough to ask me. We were walking to find this Zenji hotel and Amanda and Blonde Erik were in the back. Brown Erik says to me, “Hey, I have a question.” He said it in such a serious voice I was scared! He wanted to know if that man had offended me when he asked what my real name was or am I used to it because I might get it often when I say I am from Vegas. ::sigh:: I actually get that response more when I am IN Vegas than when I am outside of Vegas, but definitely wouldn’t have ever thought I would get it in Africa. Most people in Africa have no idea about Vegas. And to answer the question, no, it doesn’t offend me. Should it, probably.
Obama is amazing, but the Swede’s definitely got a taste of how many Obama comments we get. First thing anyone says to us when they find out we are from America—OBAMA! The joke throughout the trip became, “how about the world cup that Sweden came last in. Why is that the only news, Obama?!” They were a riot, that’s for sure. They definitely made this trip a highlight.
11/11/08
So I posted my blog this morning but I have so much to say and I figured I should start typing before I get yelled at for NOT typing and before I forget or decide not to type. Oops!!
As you know, I hiked to campus today in hopes of finding my piano professor and sure enough I found him! After class I hiked back over to the Administration office to get some internet. I had over 200 emails and over half was junk mail. Goes to show how much I care about that email account. I was able to email Ally about my classes and I have conveniently still not been able to email KEI. Ugh oh, I wonder what will happen with that whole scenario. Just I was about to tap into my Bank of America Privacy Assist my laptop died. I had about 3 notices in my email about suspicious activity with my credit. Yikes! Nothing I can do so I hike home because I am starving and too cheap to pay for lunch on campus. I guess it’s about 1,000 shillings which is nothing more than 1 American dollar, but food is free at home! Amanda was surprised to see me, but probably a bit relieved because this meant she didn’t have to carry my drum anymore. I noticed Amanda had finally cleaned up her messy side of the room, which is leaving me feeling obligated to also clean up my side. Cool off, chow down on some food, and head off to campus with my drum in hand…
I am at the end of our neighborhood when I notice a large crowd of people walking. I take a closer look at where this crowd is headed and I see them surrounding the Udasa club. It was an endless stampede of locals making their rounds on campus. I pick up my pace, curse myself out for not having my camera, and start following the crowd. I actually need to pass by them to get where I am going so as I am cutting through the crowd start yelling NGOME. They wanted me to play my drum and sure, if I was good at it, I would have been more than happy to play. However, Amanda and I were meeting with the boys because we SUCK! I laugh and shake my head with a NO! I am suddenly being approached by a few locals and my thought process: a) maybe I should have brought the pepper spray Amanda’s father gave her which she happened to leave one on my bed today (THANKS to Amanda’s father!) and b) they want to destroy my drum because it looks like I am going to class! One man did take my drum and I was more than happy to hand it over. I was going to put up a fight and thankfully he didn’t destroy it! I finish walking up the hill with a local following me. Our reaction to this strike seems to have gotten most people off the talk of politics. He was asking me all sorts of questions. They don’t have strikes in America? They have campaigns instead? Why are you all fascinated with this strike? Why are all the foreigners taking pictures? It’s crazy, but I remember unions on strike while growing up in Vegas. It’s not like I haven’t ever witnessed a strike, but to be affected by a strike is completely different. This is the first time it has ever affected ME personally.
Anyways, I find Tony who is flaunting some mighty short shorts that are a bright florescent green. I chuckle slightly because I wouldn’t even show that much legs! Minutes later we spot Amanda and head back up to his dorm roof top. We find us a shady spot and start drumming away. [Side note: The dorms across from Hall IIII are filled with lots of Chinese people. Apparently at night they stand on their balcony’s and shout across the Hall’s to their friends. The boys find it annoying and so their payback—make as much noise as they can with their drums.] We have a fairly good rhythm going when Amanda gets a phone call from either her father or mother. She walks away and the boys and I keep messing around. All of a sudden Tony notices there is a Chinese girl on her balcony with a video camera. He jokes and says, hey we are being filmed. Joe, Max, and I all turn and look. Dead give away that we have been spotted. Joe laughs and says, nah they must be taping somebody across right below us. We all laugh—yeah, right! Amanda finally comes back to joins us and within minutes this Chinese girl is on our roof top with her camera in hand…. “can I tape you guys?” Ugh, sure… She got some good footage of us all making complete asses of ourselves, and then when she left we all joked about it ending up on Youtube. Maybe in a few months we can do a youtube search of American’s playing drums on a Tanzanian roof top. Would be quite the ending to a drum class…and we told her to come back at the end of the semester when we had finished learning—not three weeks into class. I bumped into them as I was leaving and they wanted to know how long we had been playing for and began praising how well we had played. Yeah riiight!
A few things I forgot to mention before posting my previously crappy blog.
Amanda is still sleep talking, but I can’t ever make out what she is saying. I try and try to antagonize it, but unfortunately I don’t think I will be able to write a blog solely on her sleep talking. Great sadness, yes, I know. However, I will write what happened weeks ago.
Amanda is sleeping and I am playing around on my phone. I roll over or move in my squeaky bed which tends to set her off. She stumbles and says something about scissors. I reply, “what about scissors?” In a pissy voice she goes, “I was wondering where they went?!” I hesitate and I am not sure I want to keep pushing this conversation because of her tone. So I pause and decide, eh, why not keep it going? I proceed to ask her, “Why do you need them?” In a semi-bold voice she states. “Because it’s HOT.” I left it at that, but nearly died laughing. What is she dreaming sometimes and of all things to need when it’s hot: scissors?! I suppose she wanted to cut herself out of the mosquito net? Maybe she wanted to cut off her clothes too?? Who knows, and I am not denying it’s not hot, but scissors are not the first thing I think about when it’s hot. Maybe some ice or ice cold water, but SCISSORS!?! Seriously?!
Speaking of dreams, my dreams continue. I was in a forest with a bear trying to find my blackberry. I am sure Amanda loved that dream! I am currently drawing a blank with the other dream.
Yesterday was a productive days since there was no class. We went to the orphanage and finally I got to play with some young kids! Totally made my day and despite the language barrier I had more than half the kids following me. I brought them in the mosque and threw them around on my feet, played a rock game, a little hand game (which helped me with my counting), and then this card game which was basically all different sizes of cardboard with pictures on it. It was similar to Spoons but with 1 bottle cap. There was only about 16 pieces of cardboard though. The kids loved it and I hope to go back a few more times. It’s very difficult though because of the language barrier, but it was amazing how much fun we all still had.
Then last night had a very awkward moment at Mwenge while teaching. They asked me the meaning of ‘gringos.’ Shouted over to Amanda for some help and she proceeded to describe it as when locals here call us an ‘azungu.’ The students laughed and then another student asked if it was a polite word. Amanda was like, ‘nah man, it’s not really polite when you call us azungu.’ They laughed again and then this extremely nice and polite female whom is always there looks up and says to me, ‘oh, like you call us nigger’s?’ ::GASP::GASP::GASP:: Moses (the head man of this volunteer teaching program) gazes at her and says, ‘Nooo, shhh!’ She put her hand on her face and began laughing slightly realizing that was not exactly kosher. I was speechless and wasn’t exactly sure if I should explain it or leave it. I left it. Figured maybe it wasn’t a good idea to continue talking about and Moses changed the topic rapidly. It was awkward for sure.
So, off to Zanzibar tomorrow—take II.
ZANZIBAR DELIGHT
WOW, Zanzibar has so much more to offer than what Amanda and I saw the first time around. Take II was by far one of my African highlights. I haven’t laughed or enjoyed myself and my surroundings as much as I did these past few days. I knew this trip would be better, but I didn’t expect it to be this amazing. It was a total hit with bringing the Swede boys. For the reference of this blog, I will refer to them as Brown Erik (he’s the older of the two—28) and Blonde Erik (he’s the younger—23 I believe). They both have the same name so I distinguish them as Blonde and Brown. I will apologize for the length of this blog ahead of time. It might just turn into pages upon pages, but there really is so much to say. Here it goes…
We started off in hopes of getting on the early ferry around 10:30 am Wednesday morning. Amanda sent a text to the boys telling them we had to ‘leave’ Mwenge at 8 am. Apparently they were more excited then us and arrived at Mwenge at about 7:30. Due to the strike Amanda and I had a tough time getting a dally to Mwenge—at least that’s the best solution we could think of. We arrived there and tried to catch a dally to Posta, but of course there were few to none. We finally found one and mashed ourselves in to claim us a seat. Three out of the four of us managed to grab a seat while blonde Erik was left standing. Somewhere along the push and shove of boarding the dally he managed to get his phone snatched straight from his pocket. So as he said, “The trip started off OK, and then…”
We arrive at Posta and head off to buy our ferry tickets. We managed to purchase them for 25,000 shillings, but it wasn’t first class again. Same price but not same class—argh! Blonde Erik was a tad hung over for the ride over, but he survived. Approximately three hours later we arrived and were once again attacked by locals for taxi’s and hotels. We decided to eat at Mercury’s because the boys were starving and as Amanda said, it wasn’t a far walk. She was teased relentlessly for the trip about her description of the walk because the boys prepared themselves for a 5 min walk when in all reality it was about a 30 second walk. It was great fun and instead of pizza I ordered some sort of red meat with pepper sauce. Wasn’t sure I would like it because of the sauce, but DAMN it was DELICIOUS! I shared a piece with everyone and brown Erik said, “I ordered the wrong thing.” He sure did because I had eaten their pizza the last time and nothing compared to this hunk of meat. MMMM MMMM GOOD!
After we ate we were off to find the hotel we had decided on and drop off our stuff. We were attacked with some offers when we left the port, but we were fairly set on this one location. One fairly persistent man got us to come and look for free at this place called “Zenji Hotel.” It was nice, near the port, and a reasonable price. We said OK. It would only be later that we found out how truly amazing this place was. The best shower any of us had taken in over 2 months (hot water and excellent water pressure) along with some of the best breakfast ever and free internet that worked amazingly fast! It was run by two western girls and it was like Heaven. I certainly didn’t want to come home! The boys stayed in the ‘Treasure Chamber” accompanied by a treasure chest and Amanda and I had the “Room of Wonders.” It gave us something to laugh about, that’s for sure.
After we dropped our stuff we headed off to explore Stone Town with the boys. Amanda and I had strolled through it before, but it was much more fun with them. Brown Erik and I tend to walk much faster and believe me, I have tried to walk African pace but it’s just down right HARD! After the hot and sweaty stroll through Stone Town we head home to shower and get ready for the evening! I took a nap after I showered, while Amanda and blonde Erik went hunting for alcohol. After they found some alcohol and had a few shots, we walked to the meat market where all the fisherman display their fresh raw fish and cook them after you choose what you want. I took some lobster and barracuda (never tried it before) because one of the Erik’s said it was good. I can’t say it was great, but may have been just the plain grilled, fishy taste. Nonetheless, this is where we met Alex. Alex is a local Tanzanian man who does spice tours and that’s exactly what we wanted to try and do on Thursday. He is also the same man who told brown Erik that if he ate lots of Octopus it would help him out in the bedroom. Erik took lots of Octopus that night! Alex was funny and we semi-agreed to him that we would use him for the spice tour. We finished eating and slipped away to Livingstone.
Livingstone is a total mzungu hang out in Zanzibar. It’s a nice little place right on the beach. I was surprised when we arrived to see a fellow man standing there waiting to serve us—that is, a fellow azungu. This was the first time I had seen a mzungu working at a place like this, but didn’t think anything of it. He came over to order drinks and I said ‘maji.’ He asked me again and I said, “maji ::pause:: water.” That’s when I realized he didn’t speak Swahili. After waiting on us and listening to the Swede boys talk with their accents, he came over to ask where they were from. Ends up being he is Danish and only here for a few weeks. This is where we met the 2 Danish boys from Denmark. Adam was a 20 year old with long shaggy hair and Svend was a 19 year old who looked older than Adam. Svend invited us to go out with him and his buddy to a Danish school on the East coast for a beach party on Saturday. We exchanged numbers and headed home.
Took full advantage of our open roof top and went upstairs to play drinking card games. My cup consisted of water, but all was good. Crawled out on the edge and watched the sky for a bit before I went off to bed. Got a few hours of sleep before the sun turned our room into an oven and not to mention I was suppose to wake everyone up for the day. So at 7 am sharp I pound on the boy’s door and Brown Erik answers it—I have a huge grin on my face saying, “time to wake up!” I thought we had to be ready at 8 but apparently we didn’t have to be ready till 9. I never heard the end of that one—waking everyone up at 7 am. That was almost as bad as Amanda saying Mercury’s was in walking distance. The owner approaches us on the roof top asking if we had settled with a tour and we told him yes, but twenty minutes later he came to our room saying he would advise us not take the tour with this man Alex because it’s not safe and he is a drug addict etc. I was a little unsure, but we all decided to go with a tour agency in the book and took our owners advice. Have I mentioned our hotel owners were kick ass! Okay, now I have! So Alex is waiting for us outside and we dodge him saying pole sana pole sana, but he was not a happy man. Oops.
Spice Tour:
Spice tour was fantastic! The tour guide really knew his information and he could tell you the name of most spices in multiple languages. That’s a huge bonus when you have people from all over Europe, America, and other countries. We got to taste all sorts of different spices and I tried them all, despite the fact that I had no water. I really enjoyed the star fruit. It was a bit tangy but it washed down the pepper seed I had just previously chewed. At the end we sat around on some logs and we got to try all sorts of other fresh fruits. Some I like, but I wasn’t too fond of. After we finished trying the fruits, we headed off to a bath house and then to lunch. Lunch was chapati (not my favorite, but I am getting better at eating it) and their spiced rice (pilou?) which I hate. So, I basically ate a chapati and that was lunch. Oh, and lunch is where we met our Irish friends. We had briefly chatted along the tour but we were a group of four and needed two more for lunch so they sat with us. Meet Kate and Killian. They were a cute, young Irish couple who had been traveling around Tanzania for about 8 weeks. They were in their final 2 weeks when we met them. Anyhow, we chatted with them at lunch and then headed off to the slave cave. It was an intense climb in, but nice and cool inside. It was this enormous cave that actually leads into the ocean. After hiking back out of the cave we hiked to the beach where we had an hour to swim. No bathrooms to use for changing or restroom needs. Fantastic, eh?! Yeah, so Amanda and I hiked up about 10 feet and changed and then she left so I could pee. You know, now that I type this, Amanda hadn’t peed all day?! How is that possible?! That’s besides the point—hung out on the beach and then headed back home. Exchanged numbers with the Irish kids so we could meet up for dinner and drinking later.
Showered and napped again while Amanda and Blonde Erik went for another liquor run. I had a decent nap when I was rudely awoken by Brown Erik. Amanda had the key to our cabinet so I couldn’t get my clothes. All I had after my shower was a towel and that’s what I passed out in. So Erik was making fun of me for sleeping and not getting dressed when I answered the door still in my towel and half asleep. These keys were tricky on who had them and where to keep them. Eh, it was all good and fun.
When I went upstairs to the roof top to meet everyone I noticed our group had grown significantly. Brown Erik said he was waiting for 3 Swedish friends to arrive. Then he changed the number to 2 and apparently when they actually arrived it was 4! I didn’t catch their names, but we headed out to dinner where the 8 of us met up with our Irish friends and searched for Monsoon restaurant. That turned into a duck hunt. A group of ten with 2 people insisting we passed it, another 2 people saying its up ahead, and the 4 new Swedish bunch taking the lead and powering ahead. This is a prime example of why Amanda likes small groups, I am sure! Not to mention we were stopped by Alex when passing the meat market because we decided not to go with him. He gave the Brown Swede a bit of a hassle and then attacked Amanda hard core. Some locals jumped in and said back off and Amanda finally walked away. We all finally agreed if it was not at this particular location we will eat anywhere, even if it meant Brown Erik getting stoned to death by Fina (that’s their German roommate who said they must eat at the Monsoon restaurant or she would stone him to death). Thankfully, we found it or thankfully for Erik we found it. I sat at the end with Brown Erik and Killian. The three of us primarily had our own conversation going on. Somehow we got on the topic of natural disasters and they started questioning me about hurricanes and such. It was an interesting conversation and Killian was describing how it had been raining in Ireland a lot. He was complaining that it rained too much and his exact quote was, “It rained for 64 days straight. Now that’s some biblical shit!” Dinner was served and I once again order some sort of peppery meat steak. It wasn’t as delicious as Mercury’s, but it was ok. I let Erik try another piece of my meat and he said again, “shit, I ordered the wrong meal again!” He had order a king fish I believe.
After dinner the 4 new Swedish friends went back to the hotel and the 4 of us and the Irish couple went back to Livingstone for some more drinks. Our buddies were working again and they came to join us when they were done. We had a lovely mix of 2 Danish, 2 Swedish, 2 Irish, and 2 American’s sitting outside on the beach chatting away. After they had a few drinks the eight of us walked back to our hotel and went upstairs for a few more drinks. The Danish boys left and later Amanda, Blonde Erik, and the Irish couple went to some sort of a local club. Not too sure since I stayed home, but it seems that we didn’t miss anything but a bunch of prostitutes. I was too tired and apparently so was the Brown Swede. He managed to lock himself out of his room so I ended up sharing my bed with him. It wasn’t so bad except he was drunk and talking a lot when all I wanted to do was sleep. Then Amanda came home so all three of us were sleeping in the same bed and I was stuck in the middle. Wouldn’t have been so bad except no AC and 3 sweaty people trying to keep that inch of space between each other’s sticky body—Erik finally woke up and went back to his room. As he was leaving he joked, “this will be the longest walk of shame.”
Brown Erik sleeping in our bed turned into a huge joke. He didn’t remember much of what he had said to me the night before so I was constantly teasing him with stories ranging from eating Octopus to what he wanted to do with his biceps. On one particular dally ride he picked something out of my head and goes, “I can do this now that we have shared a night together.”
The Irish couple left as quickly as they came and I think we all fell in love with them. They were simply amazing and we were sad to see them go.
Friday turned into what Lacey wanted to do. Not sure how or why, but I was more than happy to choose. I love monkeys and have been wanting to catch one since I have been here. About 2 weeks ago I was chatting with Mama Dorica’s nephew and he said he would catch a monkey and a mongoose for me. Our neighborhood has had lots of baby mongoose’s around and he assured me he could do it. Anyhow, you’ll understand the moral of this story in a few minutes. I choose to go to Jozani forest and find some red colobus monkeys! There is something about the thought of hiking through a forest I just love too. I left it up to our geography boys to figure out how to get us there and thank GOD for them. We really couldn’t have lucked out better with picking to boys to travel with. I wouldn’t tell them to their face, but they were pretty damn good at getting us around Zanzibar. He he he! We decided on taking a dally since it would be the least expensive.
*** Dally Side Note and FUNNIEST moment***
Here is the deal. The dally system in Zanzibar isn’t quite like Dar. They use numbers instead of names, but fear not—we found the right dally. Zanzibar dallys aren’t quite the same as Dar either. They are basically a flat bed cab truck with bench seats and a roof and 2X4 on the side. They seem to be more efficient for a rural area because you can load tree branches and such on the roof. The four of us duck our heads and crawl into the back of this empty truck. We tell them where we want to get off since we don’t really know our location and they assure us they will drop us when we need to be dropped. We pass a few stops and our dally slowly starts to fill up when we come to this one particular stop. Brown Erik is sitting on the right of me and Amanda and Blonde Erik are to the left. Some local man walks up to Brown Erik and says my name is Sherridan and gives him a punch high five. He does this repetitively and Erik finally says my name is Erik. Than this man moves on to me and wants me to give him a punch high five. I do so and he sort of walks away. He returns for more and changes his name to Paris. He has something in his hand and it looks like he has Ugali smashed all over his face—therefore when he talks, he sprays it all over us. Another local Tanzanian man sitting next to Brown Erik on the dally says something to this strange man in Swahili. Amanda tried to get what he said, but we really don’t know. By the man’s reaction, he probably said something along the lines of ‘back the fuck off.’ This man outside the dally went CRAZY! He tried to start punching him through the dally, ran off to a near by tree and did some karate moves, ran around to the back of the dally and peered in as if he was going to come in and start a fight, ran to the left where Amanda and Blonde Swede were, etc. He just lost it and for a minute I was slightly scared. How can I get out of this dally and when is the driver going to start going. What is happening and what sort of drugs is this man on?! He makes a few rounds and we sit as patiently as possible watching. This Sherridan/Paris man walks away about ten feet and turns back around towards us. He comes back to the dally and takes a bite of this raw potato in his hand and spits it at the other local Tanzanian but it went everywhere. He does a few more kung fu moves, throws his potato on the ground, pounces to the potato, takes his hand and tries to hammer it. After a few missed hits, he slams a good one and the potato flies behind his head. He jumps up, startled like someone stole his potato, finds it and pounces to it again. Hammer’s it again, picks it up, takes a bite, and walks away. PRICELESS and as we drove away not only were we laughing, but all the local’s laughed too.
As promised they dropped us off right where we needed to be. We headed in to find us a tour guide and with Amanda’s Swahili and the Erik’s passport’s to prove our residency, we got the resident price. How exciting is that! Found the red monkeys (!!!!), hiked to the mangrove’s where it felt like we were walking on water through the tree’s, fed some sea turtles, and then hiked through the forest. The forest was a short hike, but it was nice. Amanda and I learned how to weave. You see, despite the lack of education at the university we really are learning! Then, it was another dally off to home. This dally was packed and of course I was last to get on so I had no where to squeeze into. I started of with sitting on Amanda’s lap, but everyone insisted on my sitting. I just kept saying Nzuri Sana and they kept insisting otherwise. Finally I gave up and squeezed onto the floor with everyone’s feet. Nope, that wasn’t good either. Than some elderly lady leaned over and said, you have to sit because of police. SAWA, ASANTE! I get up and Amanda asks what was said and I say, apparently there are police regulations to abide by. Who knew! We smash a local Tanzanian man into the corner—I mean literally, all you could see was his head. He no longer had legs, a chest, or shoulders. Just a head! Ten people must have gotten off, but we were still smashed. It’s unreal.
Made it home, showered and off to find the Lithuanians at some fancy resort right on the beach. For the record, this is the man who said when school was cancelled for another week due to the moon showing up, ‘dats a good one.’ Anyhow, we head off to find dinner after they have a beer. Found some little restaurant and hiked up three flights of stairs to eat there. I order some sort of meat while Amanda and Brown Erik got some crab. Blonde Erik had a seafood platter and the Lithuanian’s had already eaten so they had a drink. I wasn’t happy with my meat, let Brown Erik try it and once again, ‘he ordered the wrong meal!’ He offered me some of his crab, but I declined. I like fish, but not when you can taste the fish hard core! After we ate the Lithuanians went to their hotel and we went to bother our Danish friends working at Livingstone. These Danish boys were pretty kick ass, if I haven’t mentioned that yet. Anyhow, while sitting at this restaurant I notice a local Tanzanian sitting at my table has something in his shirt. First time I hit Amanda and said, “he has a monkey in his shirt!” She laughed it off and basically called me stupid, which is far from the truth but I know what I saw. Then I spotted it again and she got a small glimpse. I asked him if it was a monkey and he told me it was a puppy. PLEASE! I know the difference between a puppy’s head and a monkey’s head. A few minutes later he stood up and grabbed my hand to take me to the beach. I laughed and said, “where is the monkey?!” He said he would show me when we got to the beach, but I couldn’t see the monkey anymore under his shirt. It magically disappeared! In the middle of a really nice mzungu restaurant I give a local Tanzanian man full bodies pat down trying to find this monkey. I couldn’t find it, but I took his word and headed to the beach—Amanda brought her camera and sure enough, I GOT TO HOLD A MONKEY!!!! He likes beer so when they gave him beer and took it away, he bit both Amanda and I. NO WORRIES…he did NOT cut us with his bite. He was just a baby and it caused no harm, but I got TO HOLD A MONKEY!!!!!!!!!!! =) So yeah, we hang out there till the live music is over and then we head home. I am beyond tired and head straight to bed. It’s about 2 am and Brown Erik says the same, but adds in “I promise I won’t pull a stunt like last night” (in reference to him locking himself out of the room). Ah man, you mean we won’t have to try and dodge each other’s sweaty bodies all night again, and then to hear him say the next day, “It didn’t happen. You didn’t do it.” (cuddling!!!) He really thought that night when all three of us were in the same bed that we would cuddle with him? Maybe if it had been 20 degree’s, but when it’s 95 degree’s and you’re dripping sweat—I think I will pass—even if you are the sexiest man to walk the earth!!
Amanda and Blonde Erik head out to meet the Danish boys at some local joint for a few more beers. I wake up at 7 am to Amanda entering our room. Whoa, how does one stay awake so late! I guess they got lost and couldn’t find our hotel and then the sun was coming up so they went to the roof and watched the sunrise. Yeah, I had finally a solid night’s sleep and felt great. Amanda and Blonde Erik, meh, not so much! We all slept till after 10 and missed breakfast and damn did that suck. They had some great food! Oh well, packed our bags and headed off to meet the Danish boys at the dala dala station.
Yes, it’s time for another dally experience. This little adventure is all up to the Danish boys and some Danish girls they happened to meet, so we only know we’re headed east to Paje. They speak to the dally man and he says he will point us in the direction when we get off. It was a long ride and very little leg room. Literally, Svend had to pull his leg up and lay it on my knee. Everyone on the dally got to smell his lovely feet. Truth be told, I just wanted to know how they were so damn clean. I didn’t tell him why but I asked him how often he wears sandals. Seriously there wasn’t a speck of dirt under his nails. Just seems impossible and he has been in the area for a good 2 weeks and aside from Tanzania traveling for a good 6 weeks elsewhere. I can’t imagine how bad my toes would be if I didn’t have nail polish covering them. Anyways, Svend lost his note with details of where to tell the dally to stop and about three times they stopped to try and figure out where we wanted to go. At one point they even turned the whole dala dala around and tried to take us back, but it was a failed attempt. Finally they said they wanted to go to the end and then drop us off on their way back. A lovely 30 minute detour, but no worries we found the Danish school and a beautiful beach. Six bunks in one room—perfect number for us since there were only 6 of us, Amanda and I being the only two girls. All was good though. We changed and headed off to the beach. Went out as far as we could, which was fairly far and then went back to rinse off and get dressed for the night. We walked up to the football field (large patch of beach sand) and walked around to different vender’s selling food. We stopped at Jambo on our way so they could have a few drinks. While here I vanished for a bit to go check out the sky. The moon hadn’t risen yet so the sky was spectacular. After a while I decided to join them and once again our group had expanded. Two other men were sitting and chatting. One man started telling stories of incidents that had happened in Paje. I will leave details out, but it was more than enough to make me sketchy walking 800 meters back to our hostel with my bag. I told the boys they had to be my body guard and I latched onto the pepper spray Amanda’s father sent (thanks!!!!). We made it back with no problems and headed upstairs to play a card game. I had one drink for the first time the entire trip and then 2 shots. It didn’t have any effect on me, which given the fact I don’t drink and the lack of food I had eaten that day, it didn’t make sense. We head back to the field for the live music and I stuff a few shillings in the top of my dress and take the phone and my pepper spray. Brown Erik and I don’t dance so we sad along the side for a bit before everyone headed back to Jambo. I went back to the beach because it was too gorgeous not too. Everyone followed me, but they stayed on the shore. It was low tide so I walked as far as I could. I followed the moonlight and all of a sudden I see a large lump. I walk over to it and stare for a minute. Is this really what I am seeing? I take my phone and use it for a light. Sure enough, it is, it is a huge starfish with a diameter about the size of a five gallon bucket. I have nothing for a picture so I haul ass to shore and snatch Adam’s camera. I run back out to the ocean trying to follow the same path to find the star fish again when I let out a fairly decent yelp. My excitement got the best of me because had I been walking and taking my time I wouldn’t have stepped on whatever I had. Not sure what it was, but maybe a sea urchin? Something definitely spiky and truth be told, I only felt the one spike. It wasn’t until I got back to shore with a light that I noticed my entire heel was covered in spikes. Amanda and Brown Erik picked what they could, but the deep one that hurt the most wasn’t budging. I was pissed I didn’t find the starfish again and mad I had wounded myself. I took the key and pepper spray and went to fight the beasts alone. Something about that pepper spray makes gives me a bit more confidence. I am almost to the exit gate when I notice Brown Erik following me. I assure him I am fine and that he can go back to everyone else. He says no way, you were worried about walking home with ALL of us earlier and now you are okay to do it alone. Earlier I had a bag and now I have pepper spray in hand! Duh! Anyways, the two of us make it back to the hostel. I take Blonde Erik’s pocket knife and start butchering my foot. I got the deepest one out and it was about ¾ of an inch deep. That’s the bitch that made me scream. Somehow I let Erik try to remove a few and that didn’t turn out so well—maybe he was a little too intoxicated?! The two of us decided to stay in for the night; I mean it was already near 2 am. He tried to sleep, but our room was soooo HOT. We had no fans and ONE window. I was up by 7 am because I just couldn’t sleep, not to mention I had a ton of mosquitos in my net. I spent the night covering myself with my sheet and only exposing my two hands to hold the sheet over my head. I woke up with 3 bites on my two hands. Go figure. I just need to get out of our suffocated room because outside was a good ten degree’s cooler. I snatched Amanda’s camera and walked to the beach. I was hoping the tide would be out and maybe, just maybe I would find another star fish. Argh, still pissed about that. We hung outside for a bit while everyone gradually woke up and then packed our stuff and headed off to find us a dally ride home. Amanda noticed at dally station that she had forgotten her camera that I had left on the table. Oops. So, the two of us headed back to the hostel which originally didn’t seem so far, but limping a tad bit from my heel made it about ten miles longer. We knew a dally was coming shortly so we decided to run. We got the camera and met the boys just in time. As we were boarding the dala dala Brown Erik make a lovely comment along the lines of “I like the two shades of your shirt.” I actually think he was being nice because I think my light gray shirt was literally so drenched it was a solid dark gray, but I knew what he was saying. The Swedes were too funny!
We made it back to Stonetown and searched for a ferry ticket. I was most unhappy about this decision and I think we were totally lied to and if we weren’t lied to, I think we could have gone elsewhere and gotten a better priceless. Nonetheless, it’s done and over with. It was the only time during this whole trip that we sort of had a split decision and a bit of hesitation, but I honestly think Brown Erik was ready for home and just wanted what he wanted. Oh well, so it goes. Ferry ride home was MUCH better than the last time. I didn’t actually fall asleep ever, but I stayed in a decent state of mind with my head down. The sea wasn’t as choppy and it felt great to be home. Showered, cleaned my foot, and ate some good ole African food before I passed out for the night.
Side notes:
When we were in Dar getting ready to board the ferry we were standing by a large group of men. Two of them approached us and asked if were Canadian. We laughed and said no, but they turned out to be a really awesome group of guys. Amongst them they could speak over ten languages. When we said we were from America they were shocked and said, “Americans aren’t well traveled.” When I mentioned I was born and raised in Vegas they called over a fellow man who apparently was also from Vegas. He asked my name and after I told him, he joked, now what’s your real name? If I was quick enough I would have given him a stage name, but I laughed it off and thought nothing more off it. Well, it must have killed Brown Erik because he waited till AFTER the ferry ride and till AFTER we ate before he had me alone enough to ask me. We were walking to find this Zenji hotel and Amanda and Blonde Erik were in the back. Brown Erik says to me, “Hey, I have a question.” He said it in such a serious voice I was scared! He wanted to know if that man had offended me when he asked what my real name was or am I used to it because I might get it often when I say I am from Vegas. ::sigh:: I actually get that response more when I am IN Vegas than when I am outside of Vegas, but definitely wouldn’t have ever thought I would get it in Africa. Most people in Africa have no idea about Vegas. And to answer the question, no, it doesn’t offend me. Should it, probably.
Obama is amazing, but the Swede’s definitely got a taste of how many Obama comments we get. First thing anyone says to us when they find out we are from America—OBAMA! The joke throughout the trip became, “how about the world cup that Sweden came last in. Why is that the only news, Obama?!” They were a riot, that’s for sure. They definitely made this trip a highlight.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Latest news....
I spent a large portion of last night typing. Unfortunately can't post that blog till we return. I am currently using my phone to type this little update.
School has officially been shut down. Students have 3 hours to leave before police are brought into the picture. Foreigners staying in dorms are allowed to stay from my understanding. Local students are apparently going to continue protesting and not leave. Should be interesting.
What happens from here? What happens with classes? When will school open back up? What happens with the foreigners? So many questions and no realt definite answer. Crazy...
The swede's, Amanda, and myself are currently on the ferry to Zanzibar. Will try to keep ya'll updated with the news....
School has officially been shut down. Students have 3 hours to leave before police are brought into the picture. Foreigners staying in dorms are allowed to stay from my understanding. Local students are apparently going to continue protesting and not leave. Should be interesting.
What happens from here? What happens with classes? When will school open back up? What happens with the foreigners? So many questions and no realt definite answer. Crazy...
The swede's, Amanda, and myself are currently on the ferry to Zanzibar. Will try to keep ya'll updated with the news....
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Warning: Inappropriate language
11/3/08
Well, it’s been a while and unfortunately I have NOT been writing. Why you might ask? Well, I have been too busy sleeping. It’s quite sad and lame, I know. Does it surprise you? Probably not! I have the sleeping reputation while Amanda has the drinking reputation. All is good!
So what has happened? In short, went to Zanzibar and it was a total disaster. We plan on going back for my birthday with the Swede boys and maybe a few others. Should be interesting since they all want me to drink…
Took out my hair and it wasn’t easy. I think it took longer to take out than to put in. I started the Friday in Zanzibar and finished on the following Wednesday night I believe. My head was tender and sore, not to mention the amount of hair I lost! Kathy and Dana would be livid, I already know!
The two best things we saw in Zanzibar—a shark getting butchered (All I could think about was Maddy and how he would be in HEAVEN and then I could hear his little voice telling the men 101 things about ALL the sharks in the Ocean and in particular that shark, what it eats, where it lives, how much it’s maximum weight is, etc. It made me far too sad to say the least. I miss the little man! I mean, I was still finding his toys, shoes, and clothes in my apartment before I left. Sigh.) and our tour guide eating pizza. Most Tanzanians have never had pizza and the sight of seeing them try to eat it, it’s pretty flippin priceless!
Halloween in Africa was interesting. Amanda and I spent the afternoon trying to get my package from Crystal, which turned into a rather larger adventure. We took a dala dala to posta, but when we got there everyone was on lunch break. That was fine until Amanda asked how long till they return and the man said at 3. Wow, that’s a serious lunch break so we decided to scope out the Subway and a local hotel for Amanda’s parents. As we were leaving Posta I got brave and put my bag on my back. Within minutes I felt something like a slash and then swung my hands around my back. Everything felt fine so I continued to walk. Slowly I pulled my bag to the side and then when we were in the clear I examined the bag and sure enough, someone had slashed it. S.O.B.! Can’t complain though because not only did I manage to not loose anything, but I also put the bag on my back. Stupid move and I learned a valuable lesson. I am so cautious when I go to Mwenge at night to teach making sure to only bring 600 shillings and the local phone, but what the hell was I thinking I could walk around Posta with a bag on my back! Anyhow, made it to subway—it smelled delicious, looked like a subway, and was freezing inside. Perhaps that was because we were drenched in sweat or maybe we are just getting used to no AC! Our next stop was the hotel and we looked like we belonged there. After we stalled enough we found our way back to the post office where we could NOT get the package because my name was NOT on the box. I tried but to no avail left empty handed. The box was right in front of my eyes and yet so far and it was Halloween for cripes sakes! Oh well. Stopped at Millimani to get candy and snacks where all the employee’s were probably wondering why all the mzungus were loading up on chocolate! Went home and showered before heading off to find this house where the pastor’s family lives. I was trying to beat the dark, but failed miserably almost giving myself a minor panic attack. I had never been there before, didn’t really know where I was walking too or if I was in the right place, locals walking in the opposite directions were stopping and turning around to talk and follow me, and not to mention I had a large bag stuffed with goodies for the party. My hands were dripping in sweat and I wanted to curl up in a ball and hide, but finally I found the chair and balloons. Big sigh of relief. The house was just as imagined, awesome. It was on a large piece of land with guards, air conditioning, two floors, modern furniture, and much more. I must say though, I prefer our bathroom at home. I seen both of their bathrooms and I am still fonder of ours! Snacks, pedicures, massages (I had my first massage by a Tanzanian in Africa!), games (catch phrase!!), and movies. It was a lot of fun and I was late to the roof party. Everyone there had cars and all night I could only think of how I was going to get back to the university. Someone offered to drop me off with a bahjahjee. The bahjahjee driver wanted me to share it with another local Tanzanian at 11:30 at night. HELL NO. I turned back around and got back in the car. They brought me to the dorms and I found my way to the top of hall 4 with the help of Joe. I had no intentions of drinking, but somehow ended up having a bit to drink. It wasn’t a good thing either. Amanda and I got home, despite the pack of fierce dogs roaming the neighborhood, took a quick pee in the front yard before attempting to wake up someone. That took forever and not to mention mosquitoes were swarming me. Amanda was laughing and I was getting pissed. Why do they love me so much! I seriously feel like a mosquito magnet. I had multiple bites by the time we got inside and a large welt on my back. Argh!
Speaking of mosquito’s, I have been using my net because I have been getting bit relentlessly. My anti-itch tube is near empty. I have two mosquito bites on my forehead because I tried to sleep with my head outside the net. Seriously, my forehead!?! WTF! Two nights ago I was completely under my net and managed to get two bites before I had fallen asleep. I snatched Amanda’s flashlight and about 30 minutes later killed the little shit that was in my net. It just seems inevitable and pretty damn near impossible to avoid the little bastards. Sorry for the language, but I am not happy with the mosquito’s!
11/6/08
I am allergic to Africa or Amanda, can’t figure it out yet. I sneeze often (I literally just sneezed and got the dirty stare from Amanda) and have thought about taking some Sudafed, but I would be taking it daily and something about that doesn’t seem right. Amanda hates my sneezes because they scare her—she jumped a good two feet off her bed tonight when I sneezed. I started laughing and then I got the second degree from her about my sneezing. Apparently if I don’t sneeze twice it throws her off. After first sneeze she is waiting anxiously for next or if I have two sneezes and a third one slips in, she hasn’t prepared herself for that third one. Some of my sneezes are so intense I feel like I could blow down the house with them. I think Amanda should shower more often and that would solve the problem.
I was typing an email last night to KEI when I noticed some mosquito’s flying around trying to be oh so friendly too me. I feel like a walking mosquito magnet and as more rain comes, it will only get worse. I decide I will sit and type under my net instead of using my spray. I only have one bottle left and the worst of the little pests have yet to come, not to mention I switched to taking my malaria pills in the AM which I conveniently forget to take all the time. Go figure. Amanda is peer pressuring me into overdosing, but I think I will pass. Anyways, I got up to use the restroom and came back. I was getting comfy under my net when all of a sudden I was encompassed by a ring, laughing, and asking Amanda for help. Somehow I had managed to pop out the metal wire at the top of my net. How does that happen?! Amanda busted out her sewing kit with a few safety pins and I had some clothespins. We managed to ghetto rig the net for the night and then I had to confront Haika today that I had broken my net. No worries, Haika is magical and she fixed it in minutes! It’s as good as new!
This week has been one of the best weeks in Africa! It started off with OBAMA winning! How awesome is that?!! A bunch of mzungus huddled around a projector in the American Embassy listening to his speech and watching all the live coverage. Found my history professor and I have class Friday. Also managed to hunt down the Piano Man which means I have landed myself in a 1 to 1 piano class. How awesome is that!
11/9/08
Happy Birthday to my one and only FLEA!
To Amanda’s father… Back off!!!! I will post a blog when my lazy ass feels like A) typing and B) bringing my laptop to campus! Joking! I hear lots of great stories about you and thanks for the card in the package. Also, a few weeks ago noticed you had left a message on one of my blogs—thanks! I realized it a bit late! I am typing tonight because you are hassling me, but I haven’t a clue when I will carry my laptop to post this!
So, what does one say when it’s been ages?! Started using my new toothbrush today and my toothpaste is almost gone. My shampoo and conditioner are over halfway empty (Amanda’s on the other hand are basically full to the brim) and my mosquito repellent is gone. All good signs that time is definitely passing. It’s going to be on hell of a last month. So much to do, so little time and I can’t believe I will be home so soon. Speaking of home, Amanda and I cooked a kick ass meal tonight. It was a tad too spicy for the family, but we devoured it! Stir fry, chicken strips, garlic potatoes, and rice. It was the best damn meal I have had since my arrival. Hell yeah!
I am currently in a battle of whether or not I want to take my malaria medicine. First medicine made me crazy and I think the second one creates pain in my chest. One day I am protesting it and refusing to take it and then the next night I am taking the pill. It’s just seems much to risky for me since mosquito’s are so highly attracted to me. Amanda laughs, but if she had the welts on her body like I do mine, it wouldn’t be so funny! She doesn’t even need to put bug spray on, but I on the other hand must remember to bring it with me always! So I can’t decide if I want to fully risk the malaria or keep taking the pills. Decisions…speaking of decisions my indecisiveness drives Amanda wild. Oops!
School has finally started moving along. I have a test in 2 weeks, my history professor is back from Denmark and I have a presentation in that class, drumming is wild, and Amanda and I ruin the entire beat in the class?! Piano has me worried. Yeah, still not sure how I managed to pull that one off, but I thought it was a great idea…until I went to practice yesterday. Holy shit, what was I thinking! I have never played the piano for a grade. It has only been for fun and I am a tad worried what will be expected. I am supposed to meet with him on Tuesday, but it looks like there won’t be class because of the strike. Go figure. My classes start happening a month before I am suppose to leave, only to be postponed until further notice due to a student strike.
11/11/08
Student strike is official. Had no classes yesterday, but I did manage to have a session with the piano professor. He wanted to down grade me a level, but then it’s too easy and I don’t want that. I told him I would practice more. He was impressed with my scales. I got bonus points there and we started chatting about where I was from etc. and found out he had studied a semester in Massachusetts. I guess the Swedes want to leave earlier for Zanzibar and it looks like we will leave tomorrow. Amanda messaged me something along the lines of should we skip class tomorrow if the strike is over. Um, has she forgotten who she was asking that question too!?! I really do have a lot to do for school, but I will worry about that later. Other than that, sorry for such a short, shitty blog! I am getting hell from everyone for not typing…
HAKUNA MATA!
Well, it’s been a while and unfortunately I have NOT been writing. Why you might ask? Well, I have been too busy sleeping. It’s quite sad and lame, I know. Does it surprise you? Probably not! I have the sleeping reputation while Amanda has the drinking reputation. All is good!
So what has happened? In short, went to Zanzibar and it was a total disaster. We plan on going back for my birthday with the Swede boys and maybe a few others. Should be interesting since they all want me to drink…
Took out my hair and it wasn’t easy. I think it took longer to take out than to put in. I started the Friday in Zanzibar and finished on the following Wednesday night I believe. My head was tender and sore, not to mention the amount of hair I lost! Kathy and Dana would be livid, I already know!
The two best things we saw in Zanzibar—a shark getting butchered (All I could think about was Maddy and how he would be in HEAVEN and then I could hear his little voice telling the men 101 things about ALL the sharks in the Ocean and in particular that shark, what it eats, where it lives, how much it’s maximum weight is, etc. It made me far too sad to say the least. I miss the little man! I mean, I was still finding his toys, shoes, and clothes in my apartment before I left. Sigh.) and our tour guide eating pizza. Most Tanzanians have never had pizza and the sight of seeing them try to eat it, it’s pretty flippin priceless!
Halloween in Africa was interesting. Amanda and I spent the afternoon trying to get my package from Crystal, which turned into a rather larger adventure. We took a dala dala to posta, but when we got there everyone was on lunch break. That was fine until Amanda asked how long till they return and the man said at 3. Wow, that’s a serious lunch break so we decided to scope out the Subway and a local hotel for Amanda’s parents. As we were leaving Posta I got brave and put my bag on my back. Within minutes I felt something like a slash and then swung my hands around my back. Everything felt fine so I continued to walk. Slowly I pulled my bag to the side and then when we were in the clear I examined the bag and sure enough, someone had slashed it. S.O.B.! Can’t complain though because not only did I manage to not loose anything, but I also put the bag on my back. Stupid move and I learned a valuable lesson. I am so cautious when I go to Mwenge at night to teach making sure to only bring 600 shillings and the local phone, but what the hell was I thinking I could walk around Posta with a bag on my back! Anyhow, made it to subway—it smelled delicious, looked like a subway, and was freezing inside. Perhaps that was because we were drenched in sweat or maybe we are just getting used to no AC! Our next stop was the hotel and we looked like we belonged there. After we stalled enough we found our way back to the post office where we could NOT get the package because my name was NOT on the box. I tried but to no avail left empty handed. The box was right in front of my eyes and yet so far and it was Halloween for cripes sakes! Oh well. Stopped at Millimani to get candy and snacks where all the employee’s were probably wondering why all the mzungus were loading up on chocolate! Went home and showered before heading off to find this house where the pastor’s family lives. I was trying to beat the dark, but failed miserably almost giving myself a minor panic attack. I had never been there before, didn’t really know where I was walking too or if I was in the right place, locals walking in the opposite directions were stopping and turning around to talk and follow me, and not to mention I had a large bag stuffed with goodies for the party. My hands were dripping in sweat and I wanted to curl up in a ball and hide, but finally I found the chair and balloons. Big sigh of relief. The house was just as imagined, awesome. It was on a large piece of land with guards, air conditioning, two floors, modern furniture, and much more. I must say though, I prefer our bathroom at home. I seen both of their bathrooms and I am still fonder of ours! Snacks, pedicures, massages (I had my first massage by a Tanzanian in Africa!), games (catch phrase!!), and movies. It was a lot of fun and I was late to the roof party. Everyone there had cars and all night I could only think of how I was going to get back to the university. Someone offered to drop me off with a bahjahjee. The bahjahjee driver wanted me to share it with another local Tanzanian at 11:30 at night. HELL NO. I turned back around and got back in the car. They brought me to the dorms and I found my way to the top of hall 4 with the help of Joe. I had no intentions of drinking, but somehow ended up having a bit to drink. It wasn’t a good thing either. Amanda and I got home, despite the pack of fierce dogs roaming the neighborhood, took a quick pee in the front yard before attempting to wake up someone. That took forever and not to mention mosquitoes were swarming me. Amanda was laughing and I was getting pissed. Why do they love me so much! I seriously feel like a mosquito magnet. I had multiple bites by the time we got inside and a large welt on my back. Argh!
Speaking of mosquito’s, I have been using my net because I have been getting bit relentlessly. My anti-itch tube is near empty. I have two mosquito bites on my forehead because I tried to sleep with my head outside the net. Seriously, my forehead!?! WTF! Two nights ago I was completely under my net and managed to get two bites before I had fallen asleep. I snatched Amanda’s flashlight and about 30 minutes later killed the little shit that was in my net. It just seems inevitable and pretty damn near impossible to avoid the little bastards. Sorry for the language, but I am not happy with the mosquito’s!
11/6/08
I am allergic to Africa or Amanda, can’t figure it out yet. I sneeze often (I literally just sneezed and got the dirty stare from Amanda) and have thought about taking some Sudafed, but I would be taking it daily and something about that doesn’t seem right. Amanda hates my sneezes because they scare her—she jumped a good two feet off her bed tonight when I sneezed. I started laughing and then I got the second degree from her about my sneezing. Apparently if I don’t sneeze twice it throws her off. After first sneeze she is waiting anxiously for next or if I have two sneezes and a third one slips in, she hasn’t prepared herself for that third one. Some of my sneezes are so intense I feel like I could blow down the house with them. I think Amanda should shower more often and that would solve the problem.
I was typing an email last night to KEI when I noticed some mosquito’s flying around trying to be oh so friendly too me. I feel like a walking mosquito magnet and as more rain comes, it will only get worse. I decide I will sit and type under my net instead of using my spray. I only have one bottle left and the worst of the little pests have yet to come, not to mention I switched to taking my malaria pills in the AM which I conveniently forget to take all the time. Go figure. Amanda is peer pressuring me into overdosing, but I think I will pass. Anyways, I got up to use the restroom and came back. I was getting comfy under my net when all of a sudden I was encompassed by a ring, laughing, and asking Amanda for help. Somehow I had managed to pop out the metal wire at the top of my net. How does that happen?! Amanda busted out her sewing kit with a few safety pins and I had some clothespins. We managed to ghetto rig the net for the night and then I had to confront Haika today that I had broken my net. No worries, Haika is magical and she fixed it in minutes! It’s as good as new!
This week has been one of the best weeks in Africa! It started off with OBAMA winning! How awesome is that?!! A bunch of mzungus huddled around a projector in the American Embassy listening to his speech and watching all the live coverage. Found my history professor and I have class Friday. Also managed to hunt down the Piano Man which means I have landed myself in a 1 to 1 piano class. How awesome is that!
11/9/08
Happy Birthday to my one and only FLEA!
To Amanda’s father… Back off!!!! I will post a blog when my lazy ass feels like A) typing and B) bringing my laptop to campus! Joking! I hear lots of great stories about you and thanks for the card in the package. Also, a few weeks ago noticed you had left a message on one of my blogs—thanks! I realized it a bit late! I am typing tonight because you are hassling me, but I haven’t a clue when I will carry my laptop to post this!
So, what does one say when it’s been ages?! Started using my new toothbrush today and my toothpaste is almost gone. My shampoo and conditioner are over halfway empty (Amanda’s on the other hand are basically full to the brim) and my mosquito repellent is gone. All good signs that time is definitely passing. It’s going to be on hell of a last month. So much to do, so little time and I can’t believe I will be home so soon. Speaking of home, Amanda and I cooked a kick ass meal tonight. It was a tad too spicy for the family, but we devoured it! Stir fry, chicken strips, garlic potatoes, and rice. It was the best damn meal I have had since my arrival. Hell yeah!
I am currently in a battle of whether or not I want to take my malaria medicine. First medicine made me crazy and I think the second one creates pain in my chest. One day I am protesting it and refusing to take it and then the next night I am taking the pill. It’s just seems much to risky for me since mosquito’s are so highly attracted to me. Amanda laughs, but if she had the welts on her body like I do mine, it wouldn’t be so funny! She doesn’t even need to put bug spray on, but I on the other hand must remember to bring it with me always! So I can’t decide if I want to fully risk the malaria or keep taking the pills. Decisions…speaking of decisions my indecisiveness drives Amanda wild. Oops!
School has finally started moving along. I have a test in 2 weeks, my history professor is back from Denmark and I have a presentation in that class, drumming is wild, and Amanda and I ruin the entire beat in the class?! Piano has me worried. Yeah, still not sure how I managed to pull that one off, but I thought it was a great idea…until I went to practice yesterday. Holy shit, what was I thinking! I have never played the piano for a grade. It has only been for fun and I am a tad worried what will be expected. I am supposed to meet with him on Tuesday, but it looks like there won’t be class because of the strike. Go figure. My classes start happening a month before I am suppose to leave, only to be postponed until further notice due to a student strike.
11/11/08
Student strike is official. Had no classes yesterday, but I did manage to have a session with the piano professor. He wanted to down grade me a level, but then it’s too easy and I don’t want that. I told him I would practice more. He was impressed with my scales. I got bonus points there and we started chatting about where I was from etc. and found out he had studied a semester in Massachusetts. I guess the Swedes want to leave earlier for Zanzibar and it looks like we will leave tomorrow. Amanda messaged me something along the lines of should we skip class tomorrow if the strike is over. Um, has she forgotten who she was asking that question too!?! I really do have a lot to do for school, but I will worry about that later. Other than that, sorry for such a short, shitty blog! I am getting hell from everyone for not typing…
HAKUNA MATA!
Thursday, October 23, 2008
The Shortest Semester in HISTORY
10/12/08
Oh, before I forget, let me tell you the best part of the cockroach story! Mama Dorica came home that night and proceeded to tell me that when she went to pay her friend for taking me to the post office he told her he had a very interesting day. I laughed a bit when she told me this and asked why, what does he think of Americans? She proceeded to tell me that he asked if America has roaches and if I had never seen that type of insect before! Unfortunately so, America has roaches! Anyhow, Mama Dorica tells him NOOO! She told the poor man that America doesn’t have roaches! Excellent, job well done!
Amanda and I decided to go for a dala dala ride on Thursday as we had a free afternoon. We jumped on a dala dala and found our way to Mwenge where we searched for an unfamiliar dala dala to hop on and unfamiliar we did find. This particular dala dala seemed to be turned backwards from all the rest with a foreign location neither of us knew. Kunduchi? Something similar to that name, but anyways we start cruising and it’s definitely taking us in a direction I have never been. I was sitting by the window, which I thought was the best seat but in all reality it was probably the worst. My neck doesn’t really bend that way and I wanted to stick my head out the window, but Amanda insisted I should not. With the thought of Judy’s husband in Vegas getting his head decapitated by a CAT bus, I thought it was wise to keep my head inside the van. So anyways, about thirty minutes into the ride a few local school aged students spotted me through the window and shouted our favorite word “mzungu” so I replied while driving pass “mambo.” I got a ‘nice job’ from Amanda because that always gets their attention, and I totally feed off of it. (I am going to miss that in America—being so recognizable) Few minutes later Amanda says, “I see some slides.” “Water slides?” “Yeah, something like that.” Seriously?! Moments later everyone is getting off our dala dala so we follow and what do we find before us? Yeah, some sort of a Wet-n-Wild resort! Our luck, right? Amanda and I venture around and find the beach behind the resort—our second time finding the Indian Ocean and neither time planned! I found some pretty awesome shells and collected them to bring home—felt like Jessica on the beach. Ha ha!
So yesterday our host family wanted to take us to the beach. Finally, we are actually going to go swimming in the Indian Ocean! We pack our stuff and head out the door with Haika, Debby, and Baba. We start driving and they proceed to tell us they are taking us to a place that also has pools and showers because Debby isn’t comfortable with swimming in the Ocean. To our surprise, we find ourselves back at the Wet-N-Wild resort we had found just days earlier! I am not too thrilled as I hate water parks for numerous reasons—number one, I am fat and don’t like wearing a bathing suit. Anyhow, I figure I have nothing to lose and we can find the beach another day—not that I am fond of the beach either, but that’s probably because I live just miles from any beach in Florida. Nonetheless, it turned out to be quite fun once I got over the fact that the water was slightly lime green from all the algae. Amanda and I were probably the oldest kids there, but we made ourselves fit in. Hakia wouldn’t come in the water and we couldn’t figure out why. We tried so hard to get her to come play, but to no avail she sat there guarding our belongings. I can’t even describe what happened on the rides, but I do know my fat abs and neck are a tad sore today—need I say more! Put two overgrown adults in a water park for children and use your imagination. I am certain Amanda got more beat up going down one time than I did, but I still managed to take a small beating. She was also a trouble maker—skipping stairs and bouncing her tube on the ground. Tsk tsk tsk!
10/19/08
Sorry for the delay in blog writing. I have had very little motivation to write. Not too sure why, but let me try to recap some of the past few days. I have still had very little success with any of my classes. The psychology course that was approved by FAU is the only class I have really had any luck with. I have been to two lectures last week and hopefully will get another three in this week. Met a few Tanzanian guys in the class, and they exchanged numbers. They haven’t been trying to stalk me like Emmanuel. Speaking of Emmanuel, he seems to have moved onto Mandi. Mandi is an American from Wisconsin originally, but attending the University of Minnesota. I feel her pain, but if she is smart and puts him on extinction like I did, he might leave her alone! I am just glad he has stopped bothering me and the other Tanzanian guys haven’t sent me crazy texts either. I will keep my fingers crossed.
On Thursday two Massai men came to the house to braid my hair for the bargain price of 20,000 TZS, plus the price of the fake hair which was another 10,000 TZS. All together it was about 30 dollars. It hurt like hell and it didn’t help to sit between the two men. Literally, my head was wedge between their two thighs—one on each side. The smell was not pleasant, I could have probably had a peak show if I wanted to look, and it only lasted 5 hours. Not bad, right? The hair came out nice. It’s red and extremely tiny. I haven’t seen myself with this dark of hair in a long time and unfortunately because our hair is different, it’s not holding for as long as I was hoping. I will try to keep it in for as long as possible, but I am afraid it will be out before long. On the brighter side of things, I washed it on Thursday night and haven’t washed it since! I don’t have to worry about how I want to wear it, because there isn’t much I can really do with it. It’s a little awkward feeling, but nothing horrendous.
Friday after class we ventured off to Bagamoya for an art festival show. Mandi came along and I am glad she did. We lounged on the beach for a while, watched a Massai man undress and go for a swim with some other foreigners, and then went to watch some sort of show. Mandi wanted to head back before dark because she doesn’t like to be out walking after the sun sets. I can’t blame her one bit. She was one of the girls involved with the machete incident her first week here. So Amanda stayed and we ventured home. I am a tad sad after looking at some of Amanda’s pictures that I didn’t stay, but all is good.
Saturday, I did what I do best, and I slept all day. Literally! I don’t know how I can always manage to be tired and sleep some days, while other days I can’t sleep for crap! Anyhow, we had another wedding to attend and I was slightly dreading it because weddings last for hours in Africa. Once again, I don’t know the bride or the groom, but we’re sitting and watching when BAM—out goes the power! Amanda and I have had several candle lit dinners, but now a wedding? Do they prepare for power outages at weddings? This stalled the wedding by a good hour and we ended up not leaving till almost 1am! Amanda was extremely tired, but I on the other hand, wide awake. I guess that’s what happens after sleeping all night and day. I was also getting bit by my favorite little friends, mosquitos. I didn’t know the wedding was going to be outside, as the other wedding was inside, but no worries because as the night cooled down they basically left.
What else is there to say… Well, I have been messing around with Haika. She is afraid of me—go figure. I just tried to give her a massage and she freaked out. It works out well though because I get a massage in return. I am a smart cookie and she has strong hands! I had to tell her to be gentler because she was hurting me. Anyhow, she taught Amanda how to make a chipote tonight. I try them every time, but I am just not a chipote fan. I want to learn how to make some other food though, so tomorrow night she will start teaching us other things. I helped her wash dishes tonight. She stood over my shoulder and watched me like a hawk! It was a little awkward and I asked her if I was doing it ok, but she still didn’t leave. Made for an awkward dish washing, but I figured I could use it as English time and I taught her a few words such as—washing dishes, spatchula, rinse, scrub, glass, coffee mug, etc. After mama and baba left, I played around with her and Debby. Tried to play catch with Debby using an egg and that resulted in me cleaning up a broken egg and Haika laughing. Hopefully they won’t tell Mama Dorica?
Oh, Friday night I finally got to see Hall 3 dorms. They were interestingly shaped, but quite possibly not as bad as Algonquin at FAU. Imagine that!
I chatted this afternoon for quite some time with Mama Dorica’s mother and sister. The four of us sat outside in a shady spot sharing stories of Africa and America. I had some stories they were shocked to hear, such as that teenage girl who lived down the street from our house in Fort Lauderdale who gave birth to her baby in a bathtub and proceeded to wrap it in a plastic bag and toss in the garbage. They were shocked to hear that incidents like that happen in America. They were telling me about men in Africa and another story about women cheating in Nairobi and the price they pay. The gist of the story was they follow these women around like paparazzi and take pictures of them cheating. Afterwards, they go to the women and demand they pay a certain price if they want the pictures or else they will show their family. The women pay for the pictures and think they have received them all, but then another man comes up and has more pictures demanding once again for more money. It’s a vicious cycle apparently. It was a very interesting conversation, probably the most interesting one since I have been here.
I have been having some interesting dreams or maybe I am just remembering dreams. I had one dream that I came to Africa for 4 days and then I went back to America, but our shelf in our room was in America and I was upset that I didn’t get the pictures from Amanda’s camera. I had another dream about my knee and elbows. I went to the doctor to have an MRI and my right knee and my right elbow had this fracture/splinter looking thing? I can’t really explain it and I am drawing a huge blank with medical words, but I can still vividly see the pictures in my head as if it were real. I have had a few other dreams, but I can’t remember them off the top of my head. Amanda happens to be in a few and I am beginning to wonder if it’s the new pills. I am not complaining about the pills. They aren’t bad dreams and I am certainly much happier with these pills, but I never remember dreams like this. I should keep a dream journal. That would be interesting. I mean, I have started to collect notes on Amanda’s sleep talking and before I leave I will definitely write a blog about all that.
I got Laura’s message about Isaac! I am so excited and Tracy has sent me a voice recording of it. She has also sent me a voice recording of Lucas. I am going to take an African drumming class with Amanda and a few other foreigners—the best part, we get to keep the drum! Maybe when I get back I can show Isaac the basics and he’ll out do me in a matter of months? Anyone want to make any predictions or wagers?
I also went to church and met up with that family we ran into at the Embassy. It was an okay experience. Nothing to great, but met some really cool people and I plan to go back next Sunday. I told the family if they ever wanted to go out for any reason that I would be more than happy to hang out with the kids. They actually have two kids. One new born infant and another adoptive son, whom I am assuming is a Tanzanian native.
My thoughts are everywhere. Sorry! Just remembered, I don’t think I mentioned since my last blog anything about the ‘roof party.’ Yeah, when I say roof party, that’s exactly what it was. You walk all the way up 5 or so levels of spiral stairs and tada, you’re on the roof! No balcony, no ledge, and no lights except a few candles they brought up. I sat along the edge for a few minutes before I realized I didn’t trust myself and decided to move. I mean, one simple push or even an accidental fall from someone else could have sent me tumbling 5 floors down. Pretty crazy, but it turned out to be a decent night. It’s really interesting how all the foreigners basically flock together—American, Canada, Germany, Japan, Sweden, etc! All walks of life, sitting on the roof of a dorm in Tanzania with candles illuminating your faces, and accents flowing with crazy intoxicated foreigners—conversations were ranging from being chased by lions to a lecture on Canadian politics and the night ended with a ten second bajahjee ride home followed by the Swedish comment, “we’ll have a talk about this later,” in reference to our ten second ride home. (There is a story behind that, but I don’t feel like typing it!)
10/21/08
Being in Africa was supposed to be an escape from the world. I wanted time to relax and simply be nothing more than a college bum. Well, I am in Africa and it is definitely an escape from what I am used too. I might not be waking up to an alarm clock at 5:45 to leave my house by 6:15 so I can race through traffic to make it to Adam’s by 7, but instead I toss and turn with my hot sweaty sheet’s while listening to Haika sweep outside our window and the birds chirp—although, somehow, I think a bird chirping sounds much better than these crows. Nonetheless, the sweeping, the birds, and the roosters (they remind me of Vegas summer’s) crowing along with the bright sun and scorching heat could possibly drive anyone crazy.
Last night was interesting to say the least and finally I had done something halfway productive since I have been here—went to Mwenge to teach some local Tanzanians a little bit of English. I was teaching the advanced group because my Swahili is more than just terrible, but anyhow I have never felt quite so illiterate in all my life (except when around Amanda). I know I am not the brightest crayon in the box, but some of the words these Tanzanians had found from who knows what they were reading, left me almost speechless. I could use the words in a sentence, but not sure how to explain them and god forbid I give them false information! I am sure I did somewhere along the lines, but it was a really neat experience overall. Anyhow, I am trying to figure out what to do with all my time. I haven’t had this much time since…hell, not even high school! Like I mentioned, part of the reason I ventured to Africa was to be a college bum and just attend classes, but I only have one class to attend and its past mid-October! I have worked non-stop for the past four years and all this down time is starting to get the best of me. The European Film Festival is great, but I HATE movies and the last movie we saw was far too depressing. The movies are a great time killer with AC, but my legs can’t sit still. I don’t even notice my ADD legs until someone points them out. Apparently my vigorous shaking got the best of Amanda because she reached over and slapped them still! I spent the rest of that movie focusing on keeping my legs still which took a lot of brain power, but was doable for the most part. Anyhow, after the German movie a few nights ago, I decided I didn’t want to see anymore movies, even if they are free! Souhail might just be in heaven if he were here with all these movies and I would hate to see his follow up blog critiques afterwards. (Where the hell did Souhail’s name just come from?!) Anyhow, I think I have watched more movies in the past month than I have in ALL my life!
Last night I started venting to Baba since the poor man asked me if something was wrong—I broke down and told him everything! Somehow during our little talk about the money and classes my frustration turned to anger. It’s so tempting sometimes to call it quits and find the next flight home, but realistically that won’t solve any of the current problems. Why did my frustration turn to anger? Well, our host family (who is extremely awesome, I’d like to add) was told they would be given $130 to $150 American dollars per student per week. Since there are two of us living here, the host family was expecting a total of $260 to $300 dollars a week for hosting us Americans and not to mention, it’s not easy to host Americans. When I first started looking at the program I thought about staying in a dorm because it was over $2,000 dollars cheaper, but instead I went with paying more for a homestay. So while I am chatting about money with Baba, I learn that AFTER Amanda and I were ALREADY here, KEI decided to tell them that they were only going to get $100 dollars per student per week. That makes for a total of $200 dollars vs. the original $260 to $300 they were informed of getting and once we were here they couldn’t say no, so Baba said they had no choice but to continue to host us. Simply put, out of the ten grand I am paying, my host family who feeds us three meals a day and much more is only getting $1600 dollars for my entire stay. Whoa, why am I paying over $2000 more for a homestay if this family isn’t getting all their money they were promised! I feel that KEI took complete advantage of the situation because had this been any other European country, a host family would not accept what happened here. KEI will be receiving an email soon, that’s all I have to say!
Today I was on a mission of locating the professor of my missing classes. First stop, history department and what do I find out…the professor is in Denmark until October 31st! This means I don’t have class till he returns which literally means I will be in my history class for about 1 month and 1 week. Crazy, eh! I was also instructed that the class probably doesn’t meet at the time shown on the time table and it will be really hard to actually find out when it does meet, but I guess I will worry about that on Oct 31st!
10/22/08
I was lying in bed last night scratching all my mosquito bites when it dawned on me that I had forgotten to take my malaria pills. I carefully removed myself from squeaky bed and swallow my handful of pills while untying my mosquito net. I have not been sleeping with it lately because there really aren’t any mosquito’s, but I figured for the next few days I will suffocate myself and revert back to my princess like bed till I heal. Amanda was probably a little surprised to see my net down as I was half asleep when she turned out the lights, but my net was tied up. Anyways, I had another bizarre dream last night, but nothing serious. The characters: Crystal, Juliette, a safari guide, and me. The short version story line: Crystal wanted to commit suicide so we pushed out our safari guide and stole his land rover. Crystal drove (why, I don’t know! I should have been the driver since it was manual) and dropped me off at a camp site. Her and Juliette left. Few hours later Juliette appeared in a Bajahjee paying the man 100 TZS. I asked her where Crystal was and she said she didn’t know. I am a great sister letting her go kill herself. I run inside the house (where did the house come from, I am supposed to be at a camp site!) and grab my phone to make a call. Walk back outside and there is Crystal! She is upset and crying and I am livid at what almost happened and started beating her. Eh, she didn’t die! Damn! I had another interesting dream the other day while I was napping, but words can’t explain it! It is something that could only happen in a dream and it was wicked fun! It reminded me of the movie (Blank Check?) and a Ferris wheel. Good combination, eh?!
This morning I hiked to campus to talk to Christopher. He would be the French professor. Such a sweet man, but not to my surprise, I can’t take French. Their beginner’s level in college is probably equivalent to an advanced level in America. Their students have take French for 6 years in secondary school so by the time they get to college they are probably almost fluent. America’s foreign language system is crap and we get teased being American’s and not knowing a second language. Most of the other foreigners here speak their home language, English, and are also learning Swahili. Some even speak more than that! I know how to greet people in French, tell you my colors in Hebrew, count to ten in Spanish, and barely communicate essential needs in Swahili. That will get me far, not!
Haika laughs at how much I sleep, but I like to take afternoon naps! It’s so hot and I have nothing else to do, why not? Although, a part of me feels slightly guilty for sleeping while she slaves away washing our clothes or cooking lunch. I followed her around the kitchen tonight learning how to make their beans. I would type it in Swahili, but I would butcher the words to hell. She finds it humorous how I cut certain things or peel a potato. I have never peeled a potato with just a knife so I am super slow! She is very patient though and if there are four potato’s, she makes me peel two and she will peel two—even if she is just standing there watching which sometimes is a tad stressful!
The highlight of my day—AFRICAN DRUMMING! We received our drums today (which are currently making our room stink like vomit) and our drum sticks (2 branches from a tree) are a nice added feature. The drums are a combination of wood, cow, and goat—they stand about 2 ½ feet tall and are rather difficult to play. We found ourselves sitting under a tree swarming with bee’s in the far back of campus pounding away on our drums. There were three Tanzanians and six mzungu’s in the class, which should make for a nice combination. At some point during our drumming lesson, I scratched my head (I have been complaining about it itching lately) and noticed a lot of white crap falling out. I haven’t washed my hair since they braided it and even then I didn’t get a chance to wash it. I had put gel in it that day and they said no, it was fine. When I got home tonight I washed it, but I am still not sure if I have dandruff or if it’s literally just dirt!
So the semi-bad news is…I doubt I will be able to graduate on time. This adventure, which as far as schooling is concerned, hasn’t been very productive. I think I have finally accepted the idea that I won’t graduate this semester and I am OK with that for a few different reasons. First, I can work all summer and get out of debt and second if I graduate next fall it postpones all my student school loans by about 6 more months than originally planned. Than I can work all spring semester and start saving before I have to start paying off my school loans. I think that is the best solution I have come up with thus far. As Amanda says, ‘it also postpones the real world.’ Eh, to an extent she may be right, but I do live in the real world now. My job will be the same whether I graduate this spring or next fall. It’s just a difference of 25-30 hours or 40-50 hours a week and maybe a slight increase in pay. Another solution is I work less this semester and try to cram in all my classes. Choices…decisions…any suggestions??? If I can pull it off and graduate this semester, start working full time in June, pay off debt this summer, and save till November (that’ll be the 6 month grace period)…hmmm, that’s definitely a possibility too.
(I think these are the final classes I have left to take unless I am missing one)
Research Methods in Psych
French 11
DIS
Psych Elective
Anatomy/Biology
Deep breath. It’s doable, but is it doable working 18 hours with Adam, 6 with Lucas, and as many as I can find with Isaac? Crap, that’s probably more than 35 hours! ::screaming:: I guess after a semester of doing nothing, I can suck it up? Maybe I can rotate Saturday’s with Crystal when working with Adam, but Saturdays I never accomplish anything anyway. Although, that could possibly mean every other Saturday I could do a short session with Isaac if Crystal were to work with Adam. BIG SIGH. I am a naughty student. Ok, scratch my plan of graduating in the fall and I am going to graduate this semester!
10/23/08
This blog is all out of order and probably makes very little sense, but it all makes sense to me! Anyhoo, we have another drumming class today, plan on going to Mwenge to teach again, and then we are off to Zanzibar for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday! The beaches and snorkeling are supposed to be AMAZING! Oh, and we finally got our residency! Whoo hoo! I actually just find that a tad ironic for me since I am leaving about 6 weeks, but it’s good until June! Anyone want to come back to Tanzania with me?!
On a quick side note while I am thinking of it—this morning’s dream. I was at the summer Olympics in Egypt! I was being taught how to swim fast like an Olympian and then the water dried up so we had to make a damn and ride this silly cart that launched up a hill. Very funny now that I think of it, but it was fun!
Just finished my Psychology lecture and at the beginning of class the professor came up to me and started talking to me in Swahili! She threw me for a quick loop when she asked me what my name was. I hesitated and then realized what she was asking. Phew. It was a nice chat in front of the entire class. I am the only azungu in the class, but she also informed me in our chat that I could take my exam in December! Whoo hoo!
Oh, before I forget, let me tell you the best part of the cockroach story! Mama Dorica came home that night and proceeded to tell me that when she went to pay her friend for taking me to the post office he told her he had a very interesting day. I laughed a bit when she told me this and asked why, what does he think of Americans? She proceeded to tell me that he asked if America has roaches and if I had never seen that type of insect before! Unfortunately so, America has roaches! Anyhow, Mama Dorica tells him NOOO! She told the poor man that America doesn’t have roaches! Excellent, job well done!
Amanda and I decided to go for a dala dala ride on Thursday as we had a free afternoon. We jumped on a dala dala and found our way to Mwenge where we searched for an unfamiliar dala dala to hop on and unfamiliar we did find. This particular dala dala seemed to be turned backwards from all the rest with a foreign location neither of us knew. Kunduchi? Something similar to that name, but anyways we start cruising and it’s definitely taking us in a direction I have never been. I was sitting by the window, which I thought was the best seat but in all reality it was probably the worst. My neck doesn’t really bend that way and I wanted to stick my head out the window, but Amanda insisted I should not. With the thought of Judy’s husband in Vegas getting his head decapitated by a CAT bus, I thought it was wise to keep my head inside the van. So anyways, about thirty minutes into the ride a few local school aged students spotted me through the window and shouted our favorite word “mzungu” so I replied while driving pass “mambo.” I got a ‘nice job’ from Amanda because that always gets their attention, and I totally feed off of it. (I am going to miss that in America—being so recognizable) Few minutes later Amanda says, “I see some slides.” “Water slides?” “Yeah, something like that.” Seriously?! Moments later everyone is getting off our dala dala so we follow and what do we find before us? Yeah, some sort of a Wet-n-Wild resort! Our luck, right? Amanda and I venture around and find the beach behind the resort—our second time finding the Indian Ocean and neither time planned! I found some pretty awesome shells and collected them to bring home—felt like Jessica on the beach. Ha ha!
So yesterday our host family wanted to take us to the beach. Finally, we are actually going to go swimming in the Indian Ocean! We pack our stuff and head out the door with Haika, Debby, and Baba. We start driving and they proceed to tell us they are taking us to a place that also has pools and showers because Debby isn’t comfortable with swimming in the Ocean. To our surprise, we find ourselves back at the Wet-N-Wild resort we had found just days earlier! I am not too thrilled as I hate water parks for numerous reasons—number one, I am fat and don’t like wearing a bathing suit. Anyhow, I figure I have nothing to lose and we can find the beach another day—not that I am fond of the beach either, but that’s probably because I live just miles from any beach in Florida. Nonetheless, it turned out to be quite fun once I got over the fact that the water was slightly lime green from all the algae. Amanda and I were probably the oldest kids there, but we made ourselves fit in. Hakia wouldn’t come in the water and we couldn’t figure out why. We tried so hard to get her to come play, but to no avail she sat there guarding our belongings. I can’t even describe what happened on the rides, but I do know my fat abs and neck are a tad sore today—need I say more! Put two overgrown adults in a water park for children and use your imagination. I am certain Amanda got more beat up going down one time than I did, but I still managed to take a small beating. She was also a trouble maker—skipping stairs and bouncing her tube on the ground. Tsk tsk tsk!
10/19/08
Sorry for the delay in blog writing. I have had very little motivation to write. Not too sure why, but let me try to recap some of the past few days. I have still had very little success with any of my classes. The psychology course that was approved by FAU is the only class I have really had any luck with. I have been to two lectures last week and hopefully will get another three in this week. Met a few Tanzanian guys in the class, and they exchanged numbers. They haven’t been trying to stalk me like Emmanuel. Speaking of Emmanuel, he seems to have moved onto Mandi. Mandi is an American from Wisconsin originally, but attending the University of Minnesota. I feel her pain, but if she is smart and puts him on extinction like I did, he might leave her alone! I am just glad he has stopped bothering me and the other Tanzanian guys haven’t sent me crazy texts either. I will keep my fingers crossed.
On Thursday two Massai men came to the house to braid my hair for the bargain price of 20,000 TZS, plus the price of the fake hair which was another 10,000 TZS. All together it was about 30 dollars. It hurt like hell and it didn’t help to sit between the two men. Literally, my head was wedge between their two thighs—one on each side. The smell was not pleasant, I could have probably had a peak show if I wanted to look, and it only lasted 5 hours. Not bad, right? The hair came out nice. It’s red and extremely tiny. I haven’t seen myself with this dark of hair in a long time and unfortunately because our hair is different, it’s not holding for as long as I was hoping. I will try to keep it in for as long as possible, but I am afraid it will be out before long. On the brighter side of things, I washed it on Thursday night and haven’t washed it since! I don’t have to worry about how I want to wear it, because there isn’t much I can really do with it. It’s a little awkward feeling, but nothing horrendous.
Friday after class we ventured off to Bagamoya for an art festival show. Mandi came along and I am glad she did. We lounged on the beach for a while, watched a Massai man undress and go for a swim with some other foreigners, and then went to watch some sort of show. Mandi wanted to head back before dark because she doesn’t like to be out walking after the sun sets. I can’t blame her one bit. She was one of the girls involved with the machete incident her first week here. So Amanda stayed and we ventured home. I am a tad sad after looking at some of Amanda’s pictures that I didn’t stay, but all is good.
Saturday, I did what I do best, and I slept all day. Literally! I don’t know how I can always manage to be tired and sleep some days, while other days I can’t sleep for crap! Anyhow, we had another wedding to attend and I was slightly dreading it because weddings last for hours in Africa. Once again, I don’t know the bride or the groom, but we’re sitting and watching when BAM—out goes the power! Amanda and I have had several candle lit dinners, but now a wedding? Do they prepare for power outages at weddings? This stalled the wedding by a good hour and we ended up not leaving till almost 1am! Amanda was extremely tired, but I on the other hand, wide awake. I guess that’s what happens after sleeping all night and day. I was also getting bit by my favorite little friends, mosquitos. I didn’t know the wedding was going to be outside, as the other wedding was inside, but no worries because as the night cooled down they basically left.
What else is there to say… Well, I have been messing around with Haika. She is afraid of me—go figure. I just tried to give her a massage and she freaked out. It works out well though because I get a massage in return. I am a smart cookie and she has strong hands! I had to tell her to be gentler because she was hurting me. Anyhow, she taught Amanda how to make a chipote tonight. I try them every time, but I am just not a chipote fan. I want to learn how to make some other food though, so tomorrow night she will start teaching us other things. I helped her wash dishes tonight. She stood over my shoulder and watched me like a hawk! It was a little awkward and I asked her if I was doing it ok, but she still didn’t leave. Made for an awkward dish washing, but I figured I could use it as English time and I taught her a few words such as—washing dishes, spatchula, rinse, scrub, glass, coffee mug, etc. After mama and baba left, I played around with her and Debby. Tried to play catch with Debby using an egg and that resulted in me cleaning up a broken egg and Haika laughing. Hopefully they won’t tell Mama Dorica?
Oh, Friday night I finally got to see Hall 3 dorms. They were interestingly shaped, but quite possibly not as bad as Algonquin at FAU. Imagine that!
I chatted this afternoon for quite some time with Mama Dorica’s mother and sister. The four of us sat outside in a shady spot sharing stories of Africa and America. I had some stories they were shocked to hear, such as that teenage girl who lived down the street from our house in Fort Lauderdale who gave birth to her baby in a bathtub and proceeded to wrap it in a plastic bag and toss in the garbage. They were shocked to hear that incidents like that happen in America. They were telling me about men in Africa and another story about women cheating in Nairobi and the price they pay. The gist of the story was they follow these women around like paparazzi and take pictures of them cheating. Afterwards, they go to the women and demand they pay a certain price if they want the pictures or else they will show their family. The women pay for the pictures and think they have received them all, but then another man comes up and has more pictures demanding once again for more money. It’s a vicious cycle apparently. It was a very interesting conversation, probably the most interesting one since I have been here.
I have been having some interesting dreams or maybe I am just remembering dreams. I had one dream that I came to Africa for 4 days and then I went back to America, but our shelf in our room was in America and I was upset that I didn’t get the pictures from Amanda’s camera. I had another dream about my knee and elbows. I went to the doctor to have an MRI and my right knee and my right elbow had this fracture/splinter looking thing? I can’t really explain it and I am drawing a huge blank with medical words, but I can still vividly see the pictures in my head as if it were real. I have had a few other dreams, but I can’t remember them off the top of my head. Amanda happens to be in a few and I am beginning to wonder if it’s the new pills. I am not complaining about the pills. They aren’t bad dreams and I am certainly much happier with these pills, but I never remember dreams like this. I should keep a dream journal. That would be interesting. I mean, I have started to collect notes on Amanda’s sleep talking and before I leave I will definitely write a blog about all that.
I got Laura’s message about Isaac! I am so excited and Tracy has sent me a voice recording of it. She has also sent me a voice recording of Lucas. I am going to take an African drumming class with Amanda and a few other foreigners—the best part, we get to keep the drum! Maybe when I get back I can show Isaac the basics and he’ll out do me in a matter of months? Anyone want to make any predictions or wagers?
I also went to church and met up with that family we ran into at the Embassy. It was an okay experience. Nothing to great, but met some really cool people and I plan to go back next Sunday. I told the family if they ever wanted to go out for any reason that I would be more than happy to hang out with the kids. They actually have two kids. One new born infant and another adoptive son, whom I am assuming is a Tanzanian native.
My thoughts are everywhere. Sorry! Just remembered, I don’t think I mentioned since my last blog anything about the ‘roof party.’ Yeah, when I say roof party, that’s exactly what it was. You walk all the way up 5 or so levels of spiral stairs and tada, you’re on the roof! No balcony, no ledge, and no lights except a few candles they brought up. I sat along the edge for a few minutes before I realized I didn’t trust myself and decided to move. I mean, one simple push or even an accidental fall from someone else could have sent me tumbling 5 floors down. Pretty crazy, but it turned out to be a decent night. It’s really interesting how all the foreigners basically flock together—American, Canada, Germany, Japan, Sweden, etc! All walks of life, sitting on the roof of a dorm in Tanzania with candles illuminating your faces, and accents flowing with crazy intoxicated foreigners—conversations were ranging from being chased by lions to a lecture on Canadian politics and the night ended with a ten second bajahjee ride home followed by the Swedish comment, “we’ll have a talk about this later,” in reference to our ten second ride home. (There is a story behind that, but I don’t feel like typing it!)
10/21/08
Being in Africa was supposed to be an escape from the world. I wanted time to relax and simply be nothing more than a college bum. Well, I am in Africa and it is definitely an escape from what I am used too. I might not be waking up to an alarm clock at 5:45 to leave my house by 6:15 so I can race through traffic to make it to Adam’s by 7, but instead I toss and turn with my hot sweaty sheet’s while listening to Haika sweep outside our window and the birds chirp—although, somehow, I think a bird chirping sounds much better than these crows. Nonetheless, the sweeping, the birds, and the roosters (they remind me of Vegas summer’s) crowing along with the bright sun and scorching heat could possibly drive anyone crazy.
Last night was interesting to say the least and finally I had done something halfway productive since I have been here—went to Mwenge to teach some local Tanzanians a little bit of English. I was teaching the advanced group because my Swahili is more than just terrible, but anyhow I have never felt quite so illiterate in all my life (except when around Amanda). I know I am not the brightest crayon in the box, but some of the words these Tanzanians had found from who knows what they were reading, left me almost speechless. I could use the words in a sentence, but not sure how to explain them and god forbid I give them false information! I am sure I did somewhere along the lines, but it was a really neat experience overall. Anyhow, I am trying to figure out what to do with all my time. I haven’t had this much time since…hell, not even high school! Like I mentioned, part of the reason I ventured to Africa was to be a college bum and just attend classes, but I only have one class to attend and its past mid-October! I have worked non-stop for the past four years and all this down time is starting to get the best of me. The European Film Festival is great, but I HATE movies and the last movie we saw was far too depressing. The movies are a great time killer with AC, but my legs can’t sit still. I don’t even notice my ADD legs until someone points them out. Apparently my vigorous shaking got the best of Amanda because she reached over and slapped them still! I spent the rest of that movie focusing on keeping my legs still which took a lot of brain power, but was doable for the most part. Anyhow, after the German movie a few nights ago, I decided I didn’t want to see anymore movies, even if they are free! Souhail might just be in heaven if he were here with all these movies and I would hate to see his follow up blog critiques afterwards. (Where the hell did Souhail’s name just come from?!) Anyhow, I think I have watched more movies in the past month than I have in ALL my life!
Last night I started venting to Baba since the poor man asked me if something was wrong—I broke down and told him everything! Somehow during our little talk about the money and classes my frustration turned to anger. It’s so tempting sometimes to call it quits and find the next flight home, but realistically that won’t solve any of the current problems. Why did my frustration turn to anger? Well, our host family (who is extremely awesome, I’d like to add) was told they would be given $130 to $150 American dollars per student per week. Since there are two of us living here, the host family was expecting a total of $260 to $300 dollars a week for hosting us Americans and not to mention, it’s not easy to host Americans. When I first started looking at the program I thought about staying in a dorm because it was over $2,000 dollars cheaper, but instead I went with paying more for a homestay. So while I am chatting about money with Baba, I learn that AFTER Amanda and I were ALREADY here, KEI decided to tell them that they were only going to get $100 dollars per student per week. That makes for a total of $200 dollars vs. the original $260 to $300 they were informed of getting and once we were here they couldn’t say no, so Baba said they had no choice but to continue to host us. Simply put, out of the ten grand I am paying, my host family who feeds us three meals a day and much more is only getting $1600 dollars for my entire stay. Whoa, why am I paying over $2000 more for a homestay if this family isn’t getting all their money they were promised! I feel that KEI took complete advantage of the situation because had this been any other European country, a host family would not accept what happened here. KEI will be receiving an email soon, that’s all I have to say!
Today I was on a mission of locating the professor of my missing classes. First stop, history department and what do I find out…the professor is in Denmark until October 31st! This means I don’t have class till he returns which literally means I will be in my history class for about 1 month and 1 week. Crazy, eh! I was also instructed that the class probably doesn’t meet at the time shown on the time table and it will be really hard to actually find out when it does meet, but I guess I will worry about that on Oct 31st!
10/22/08
I was lying in bed last night scratching all my mosquito bites when it dawned on me that I had forgotten to take my malaria pills. I carefully removed myself from squeaky bed and swallow my handful of pills while untying my mosquito net. I have not been sleeping with it lately because there really aren’t any mosquito’s, but I figured for the next few days I will suffocate myself and revert back to my princess like bed till I heal. Amanda was probably a little surprised to see my net down as I was half asleep when she turned out the lights, but my net was tied up. Anyways, I had another bizarre dream last night, but nothing serious. The characters: Crystal, Juliette, a safari guide, and me. The short version story line: Crystal wanted to commit suicide so we pushed out our safari guide and stole his land rover. Crystal drove (why, I don’t know! I should have been the driver since it was manual) and dropped me off at a camp site. Her and Juliette left. Few hours later Juliette appeared in a Bajahjee paying the man 100 TZS. I asked her where Crystal was and she said she didn’t know. I am a great sister letting her go kill herself. I run inside the house (where did the house come from, I am supposed to be at a camp site!) and grab my phone to make a call. Walk back outside and there is Crystal! She is upset and crying and I am livid at what almost happened and started beating her. Eh, she didn’t die! Damn! I had another interesting dream the other day while I was napping, but words can’t explain it! It is something that could only happen in a dream and it was wicked fun! It reminded me of the movie (Blank Check?) and a Ferris wheel. Good combination, eh?!
This morning I hiked to campus to talk to Christopher. He would be the French professor. Such a sweet man, but not to my surprise, I can’t take French. Their beginner’s level in college is probably equivalent to an advanced level in America. Their students have take French for 6 years in secondary school so by the time they get to college they are probably almost fluent. America’s foreign language system is crap and we get teased being American’s and not knowing a second language. Most of the other foreigners here speak their home language, English, and are also learning Swahili. Some even speak more than that! I know how to greet people in French, tell you my colors in Hebrew, count to ten in Spanish, and barely communicate essential needs in Swahili. That will get me far, not!
Haika laughs at how much I sleep, but I like to take afternoon naps! It’s so hot and I have nothing else to do, why not? Although, a part of me feels slightly guilty for sleeping while she slaves away washing our clothes or cooking lunch. I followed her around the kitchen tonight learning how to make their beans. I would type it in Swahili, but I would butcher the words to hell. She finds it humorous how I cut certain things or peel a potato. I have never peeled a potato with just a knife so I am super slow! She is very patient though and if there are four potato’s, she makes me peel two and she will peel two—even if she is just standing there watching which sometimes is a tad stressful!
The highlight of my day—AFRICAN DRUMMING! We received our drums today (which are currently making our room stink like vomit) and our drum sticks (2 branches from a tree) are a nice added feature. The drums are a combination of wood, cow, and goat—they stand about 2 ½ feet tall and are rather difficult to play. We found ourselves sitting under a tree swarming with bee’s in the far back of campus pounding away on our drums. There were three Tanzanians and six mzungu’s in the class, which should make for a nice combination. At some point during our drumming lesson, I scratched my head (I have been complaining about it itching lately) and noticed a lot of white crap falling out. I haven’t washed my hair since they braided it and even then I didn’t get a chance to wash it. I had put gel in it that day and they said no, it was fine. When I got home tonight I washed it, but I am still not sure if I have dandruff or if it’s literally just dirt!
So the semi-bad news is…I doubt I will be able to graduate on time. This adventure, which as far as schooling is concerned, hasn’t been very productive. I think I have finally accepted the idea that I won’t graduate this semester and I am OK with that for a few different reasons. First, I can work all summer and get out of debt and second if I graduate next fall it postpones all my student school loans by about 6 more months than originally planned. Than I can work all spring semester and start saving before I have to start paying off my school loans. I think that is the best solution I have come up with thus far. As Amanda says, ‘it also postpones the real world.’ Eh, to an extent she may be right, but I do live in the real world now. My job will be the same whether I graduate this spring or next fall. It’s just a difference of 25-30 hours or 40-50 hours a week and maybe a slight increase in pay. Another solution is I work less this semester and try to cram in all my classes. Choices…decisions…any suggestions??? If I can pull it off and graduate this semester, start working full time in June, pay off debt this summer, and save till November (that’ll be the 6 month grace period)…hmmm, that’s definitely a possibility too.
(I think these are the final classes I have left to take unless I am missing one)
Research Methods in Psych
French 11
DIS
Psych Elective
Anatomy/Biology
Deep breath. It’s doable, but is it doable working 18 hours with Adam, 6 with Lucas, and as many as I can find with Isaac? Crap, that’s probably more than 35 hours! ::screaming:: I guess after a semester of doing nothing, I can suck it up? Maybe I can rotate Saturday’s with Crystal when working with Adam, but Saturdays I never accomplish anything anyway. Although, that could possibly mean every other Saturday I could do a short session with Isaac if Crystal were to work with Adam. BIG SIGH. I am a naughty student. Ok, scratch my plan of graduating in the fall and I am going to graduate this semester!
10/23/08
This blog is all out of order and probably makes very little sense, but it all makes sense to me! Anyhoo, we have another drumming class today, plan on going to Mwenge to teach again, and then we are off to Zanzibar for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday! The beaches and snorkeling are supposed to be AMAZING! Oh, and we finally got our residency! Whoo hoo! I actually just find that a tad ironic for me since I am leaving about 6 weeks, but it’s good until June! Anyone want to come back to Tanzania with me?!
On a quick side note while I am thinking of it—this morning’s dream. I was at the summer Olympics in Egypt! I was being taught how to swim fast like an Olympian and then the water dried up so we had to make a damn and ride this silly cart that launched up a hill. Very funny now that I think of it, but it was fun!
Just finished my Psychology lecture and at the beginning of class the professor came up to me and started talking to me in Swahili! She threw me for a quick loop when she asked me what my name was. I hesitated and then realized what she was asking. Phew. It was a nice chat in front of the entire class. I am the only azungu in the class, but she also informed me in our chat that I could take my exam in December! Whoo hoo!
Saturday, October 11, 2008
FINALLY....the infamous blog....
10/6/08
Juice…
I have suddenly stopped drinking the ‘fresh’ squeezed juice and Haika has taken notice. So, this morning while I am eating alone, she asks me, ‘why?’ Ah, well, honestly I didn’t stop drinking it because of the water, but she is mixing fruit in there I don’t like. So without Amanda I sit trying to say.. ninapenda nanasi (I like pineapple), ninapenda chungua (I like oranges) hapana (no) mango, hapana passion. [By the way, I barely know how to speak Swahili let alone spell it, so I am typing it phonetically how it sounds to me!] Yeah, that’s the best I can do, but she understands! She immediately picks up the oranges and wants to go make me some… hapana hapana hapana asante! Oi! A banana, toast, and water will be just fine believe it or not! Hell, that’s more than I eat at home! I am the weird American who never wants to eat and Amanda is the polar opposite American who always eats! Sheesh, keep stuffing the Americans though! Mama Dorica said she wanted to send me home nice and fat…umm Mama Dorica I am already fat and I would rather go home a few pounds lighter, eh?
School….
Ah, so today we were suppose to start classes, right? Ah, alas, it’s October and you think I am going to bring you good news? Well, baba dropped me off at 8:30 and I sat outside the classroom waiting patiently for my very first class to start. As I was sitting there I began to realize, I might actually have to take notes since professors won’t be posting their slides online. Lacey, write notes?! Get serious kids! What shall I do, but that will figure its self out. Anyhow, I mingle my way into the classroom accompanied by the local birds and a slight few other students. Since I already stand out like a sore thumb, I decide I will sit in the third row—close enough to the professor so I can hear since all doors and windows are open for our lovely fresh air! Anyways, to my luck, the professor starts talking in Swahili! You must be joking right?! After a few minutes I discover this is not a psychology class, but rather a law class. Seriously? So, I gather my crap and up pops the white kid in the third row and shimmy my way out. Deep breath. I will find my classes and hopefully next week, everything will be ok!
So, I hike back up to the wireless hotspot to find our other foreign friends. I look around online at the time tables in hopes of finding who the professors are because apparently this is the best way to find out when your class actually is. I have no such luck and decide (after having another minor heart attack about my required foreign language not being offered) to gather my belongings and hike home. It’s much easier going home as it’s all down hill, but I have another class at three so I will end up hiking back. Anyways, after trying to take a short cut and being chased by this enormous bug, I managed to find home…only to not be able to go in! Bug man is here and not the ordinary bug man, but a mosquito man. So, I sit on the porch with Haika and the other maid next door. They start molesting my smooth legs, which I happened to have shaved yesterday. They’re laughing, ranting, and giggling in Swahili. They want me to touch their hairy legs…thanks, but no thanks! Needless to say, my nose nearly falls off with this pesticide inhalation and I am not even in the house. I feel like at any moment it’s going to burst into blood accompanied by all my sneezing. So I am sitting under a tree listening to a mix of music while Haika records it on her phone/tries to take pictures of me? Forgot to mention—she wants to wash my bed sheets! If you haven’t already taken note on my hoarding issues with my soft clothes—I don’t want her to wash my sheets!!!!!! Please not my sheets! Hapana! Hapana! She’s replies, “whyy?” with a funny look. I pull my sheets out of the dirty clothes and set them on the table by the front door. Hapana sheets, sawaw?! I will bring them back to bed when I go inside and my sheets will remain unwashed for three months! I don’t care! So as we are sitting under the tree, to my surprise, the pesticide man walks around the house with his blower and mists the house with his pesticide. Guess what? Yeahh, there sit my sheets as I watch them get torched with the pesticide. ****! ****! ****! WHY?!!!! Why did it have to be my sheets! Ndyo, sawaw, now you can wash my sheets Haika. Argh, there is no way they will even be dry by tonight! I don’t want hard crunchy sheets. I don’t, I don’t!
::crying::pouting::
So after ranting and raving about the bug man ruining my precious sheets, I throw my laptop in my bag, grab my chair, and walk back over to the porch. Ahh, my inner OCD voice says, sniff the sheets, sniff the sheets Lacey, it’s worth a try and if you smell the pesticide then let Haika wash them. Oh, I love talking with my inner voice—it tells me to do a lot of good things such as type this blog for your sheer entertainment my dear reader. Sooo, I reach over to my pile of sheets and take a nice big whiff! Smells good to me! That’s right, you filthy sheets are coming back upstairs with me. You will not be washed and I will sleep in dirty pesticide sheets for two more months! HA! I am a happy kid again!
Sweat…
Well, I hiked to campus in the dead heat of the day after eating lunch with baba, walked into my second class of the day to find—no French class. Go figure. I turned around and decided time to go face Emmanuel in the links office. Thankfully he wasn’t there, but I do find mama Kaaya and we venture to the department head of the times tables. No luck. The man looks at me and says, “I don’t know, class should be there.” “Should I just try again tomorrow?” “Yeah, try again tomorrow and hopefully by next week everything will be sorted out.” “Ah, thanks, thanks a lot.” So, since three of my classes overlap tomorrow morning at 10 am, I am undecided which class I should give a try in hopes of finding a class. I have already taken calc-it’s just a class for credits. I need French to graduate-but have a strange feeling it won’t be there and the psych class seems to be a toss up. Maybe I will try French again.
I am sitting back at home titling my fingers wondering what I should do while listening to Mercy Me, Homesick. It’s an amazing song, but not exactly helping my crappy mood. It’s making me think of America, Grandma, God, friends, and I have it on REPEAT. Crystal’s favorite button, but it’s totally crushing what little ounce of happiness I can find at this moment in time. Should I walk to Milimani City and stand in line to use an ATM—maybe go to a movie after or find something in the store to entertain myself? I just want some sort of order, a little bit of routine would be nice! Sent Rachel a text—maybe I can meet her at the orphanage. Something, anything!
Amanda…
I am lying in bed when she walks in and turns on the lights…to her surprise she finds new sheets on her bed. I laugh knowing what happened today and am forced to roll over and enlighten her about Haika wanting to wash our sheets. For whatever reason though, Haika didn’t get the chance to do it today and brought Amanda’s sheets back up and put them in the dirty basket—so I point to her sheets. Amanda picks them up and sits on the edge of her bed like a little girl holding her favorite stuffed animal and says, ‘I don’t want her to wash my sheets either.’ So as she is holding her sheets I proceed to tell her how they were also mystified with the pesticide, but I still took my sheets back. She hesitates long and hard before ripping apart her flowery bed sheets Haika had ironed this afternoon and reapplying her dirty sheets.
10/7/08
Maybe today I will have better luck with classes? NOT! I am going to be back in America before classes ever start! I went to two classes this morning and the first was empty and the other was an accounting lecture. I should currently be hiking back to school but I am icing my knee and listening to homesick. Perhaps I should delete the song and stop torturing myself. No, that would only make sense. Anyways, my knee hasn’t hurt like this since my first two days in Dar. I had to sleep with it on a pillow last night after taking some medicine. I am assuming it wasn’t happy with the two hikes to campus yesterday because otherwise I haven’t been doing anything different. My first two days here we toured all of downtown Dar so that was probably a great deal of stress plus an acclimation to the weather. Anyhow, it should be back normal or as normal as it can get by tomorrow I hope.
Well, I ventured to the American embassy today…ALONE! Yeah, Amanda and I couldn’t go together because our schedules conflict and today was the last day we could go and send in our votes for presidency! Whoo hoo! It was so exciting to vote and totally worth the venture. When I say venture, let me explain. I have been out of shillings for quite some time and all I have is about 7 American dollars so I waited in a line for about thirty minutes to get some shillings. After, I collect my money and I hike to the road in hopes of finding a Bahjahjee. Of course when you need one, there isn’t any! My reasoning for taking one of these versus a daladala—I don’t know where to get off on the daladala. I can get to mwenge and from mwenge I can catch a daladala towards Posta or KKoo, but I don’t know when to scream and tell them I want off! So, a Bahjahjee will take me right where I need to go. Anyhow, I finally find me a Bahjahjee and tell him I want to go to the Embassy and I ask him how much it will cost. He says 10. I pause for a moment and say 1,000 or 10,000 and he says, one zero zero zero. So a thousand—wow, that’s a deal and I hop on board! He starts heading in the right direction before stopping to ask someone who speaks English where exactly I want to go. Then he turns around and starts heading towards Umbungo. Oh no, what did those two Tanzanians just say and where is he really taking me. That, my friends, was my initial thought. I don’t understand the language and I don’t know my way around well enough, should I go home? No, no I have to vote. So, I tell him to STOP and turn back around towards Mwenge. I say to him, Mwenge to Posta. Just take me to Posta and I will walk the rest of the way. Well, he keeps trying to talk to me and I keep saying sijui repetitively which translates to ‘I don’t know.’ How vulnerable do I look and hell, at this point, feel. I have over a 130,000 shillings on me because I just went to the bank, I can’t speak a lick of Swahili, and all I can tell him is Posta. So he seems to be heading in the right direction, but I am not entirely sure as he is taking back routes. I feel safer on main roads where I can see the daladala’s passing by, but I sit and enjoy my ride. We approach a familiar looking intersection and I motion him with my hands to turn right. He hesitates, but I keep insisting I know where I am at and I want to go right. So right he turns and wrong I was! I thought the embassy was on the next corner, but nope. So he stops and I start laughing while saying, posta, posta, posta. So he starts driving again and I sit back for the adventure. We pass by the ocean, Steers, the little Vegas building, but no Embassy. He pulls into this fairly nice looking hotel and says, posta! Well, Mr. this isn’t the Posta I have come to know in the past 3 weeks so I am not getting out of your bahjahjee yet. This is a completely foreign place! So, he finds him some taxi friends and tells them what’s happening. They ask me where I want to go and I reply, US Embassy! They start laughing and talking in Swahili and give the poor man directions. We take off and not to my surprise, pass the ocean again and many other places we had cruised by previously before he turns down this awkward street and drives for a few more minutes before pulling over and shutting off his moped. My thought—oh shit, I should have had him take me home! He says, here! Um, no, this isn’t the Embassy either and I am not getting off here because I don’t know where I am at. At this point, I am wondering if I should tell him to just take me back to the University and I’ll try a daladala or should I keep going with this man. Again, no I must vote so as he is pointing up towards these houses, I tell him no and he starts his moped back up and heads straight. Just moments later I am yelling, stop! I see the guards and the Embassy! Alas! I go to pay him and I hand him 5000 and he says 10. Are you serious? 10,000? I thought you said 1000, but I didn’t try and bargain anything as I had been driving this poor man all over Dar for nearly 45 minutes trying to find the Embassy. So anyways, I finally get to vote and leave the embassy against my will. I love the Embassy—the toilets are so Americanized that you don’t even flush them. Anyhow, I am walking out and heading towards the daladala station (I can get myself home on a daladala, just not to places) when there comes my previous bahjahjee driver! He stops and I tell him I want to go to back to the school, but for 5000. He agrees and brings me home safely. So despite being totally ripped off from the bahjahjee, I like to think of it as a whole. I spent 15,000 shillings for a ride to and from the embassy which breaks down to approximately 7,500 shillings per way. Baba said it should cost about 3,000 so I paid double, but that’s what I get for being an American and not knowing their language. I spent roughly 15 American dollars to get my vote in and it better make a difference! Oh, and when I got home, I went to get a coke from the house Haika always buys them from. I give the lady a 5000 and she gives me back 3500 and a coke. I thought she gave me back 4,500 which was still technically wrong, but not a significant amount off. I walk home and look at my money again when I notice she totally was off in giving me back change! These Tanzanians are taking full advantage of me! So I tell Haika and she walks back to the house with me, says something in Swahili and gets me my 1000 shillings back! Go Haika! The coke was supposed to cost 400 and I paid 1500! Whoa! They still owe me a hundred and Haika said they would give it back to me later. From now on, I will let Haika get me drinks—I was just trying to make her life a tad easier.
10/8/08
Posta…
Another big story: Warning!
After telling Mama Dorica yesterday about my troubles of getting to the US Embassy, she insisted on me taking a taxi driver that was a friend of theirs. So, after battling this out through the evening with her saying I can take a dala dala, let me pay, etc I decided to just go with it.
I wake up this morning to Haika asking me if I am going to school. It’s not even 7 am, but I had tossed and turned since the sun came around at 6 am! Yeah, way too early for me and I don’t have my black out shades. So anyways, I tell Haika yes, school and eventually get up to go and try to find this class. Well, it’s Wednesday and again, I have yet to discover a class, but instead of worrying about my classes today, I am ecstatic to pick up my box from Posta! I rush home and text Mama Dorica who then calls for the driver to come and pick me up. Whoa, front door service with air conditioning. Could I ask for more…other than my package at the post office!?! Ah, totally stoked as Amanda might say.
I arrive at Posta and head inside to collect my goods and can hardly keep a smile off my face. For a slight minute I thought they weren’t going to give me the box because it was for ‘Mabel Kaaya.’ I would not have been a graceful, looking American had I not gotten my box, but with a phone call to Mama Dorica they released the box. If my smile wasn’t big enough before they brought out the box, it was definitely visible after they brought it out. I was expecting the malaria pills and not too much more, especially since this wasn’t the box from Crystal. They make me pay for it and then walk me over to customs and make me pay another fee. Who knew, but my thought, are you serious? Totally wiped me empty of all my shillings and thank goodness I wasn’t paying for the taxi because otherwise I would have been in trouble and standing in line at the bank takes forever. The box was already smashed and bent out of shape, but what do they do to it at customs—hack it open and start shuffling through the items. Ah, thanks, appreciate that. I don’t notice much, but can’t wait to get into the car and take a better look.
Let me set the scene—a white foreigner locked in the back of a taxi with a box. Driver, driving and dodging other cars.
I notice my favorite sweater has been packed in this box—the one I forgot and only noticed after arriving at the airport and boarding my palne! I reach in to remove it and notice it is wet and smelly. A little bummed, but I yank it out.
Big deep breath for what is about to occur. I have a minor phobia and some might argue it’s more than just minor, but I like to think of it as minor. So out comes my wet, stinky sweater with a GINORMOUS ROACH! I freak and maybe freak is an understatement. My heart jumps out of my chess, I scream loud enough that every pedestrian could probably hear me through the windows, and I leap onto the middle consul with my left foot while my right foot lands on his back seat and my ass hits the roof. Get me out of this locked car before I break down into tears over a cockroach. Ridiculous, I know and I probably created a minor heart attack for the driver as he swerves off the road, unlocks the door, and out leaps the white person. I am looking at the box, holding back my tears, calming my heart, and refusing to get in the car until he gets that nasty ass creature out!
Big sigh, it’s okay, it’s gone, I take a deep breath, remind myself it is just a bug, and I get back in the car. I smash myself as far away from the box as possible (where ever there is a mama roach, there shall be lots of babies somewhere, usually) and I begin to chuckle at how foolish I just looked. Moments later as I am apologizing to the driver in English, he asks ‘what country are you from?’ Ughhh, America I reply… Yeah, sorry about that reputation folks, but Lacey and roaches are not a good combination.
I arrive home and very cautiously yank the box out of the car and drop it on the front porch. I try to wipe off the seat and middle consul where you could clearly see I jumped too, and then apologized again and said fair well to the poor gentleman. I yell for Haika and decide it’s best she helps me scope out the box for anymore roaches. Coast is clear, don’t know why the inside of my package was wet as there was nothing inside to cause the damage, and the outside of the box had not been wet. It’s a mystery, but nonetheless the damaged seemed to be minimal. I am more than nervous to pick up Crystal’s box of food because heaven knows how many roaches will be in a box of just food goodies!
For those of you who know me, these are the two incidents that kept reoccurring during my drive home after I had the minor scare with the roach—first incident was sophomore year. I was in the back of Golda’s Tiburon? It’s a two door car, and that’s all the really matters. It’s dark and Crystal is driving while Golda is lighting fireworks and tossing them out the window. Is this what normal high school kids do? Eh! Well, she lit one and didn’t quite have time to throw it out the window so she tosses it back to me because that’s what her gut instinct told her to do? Once again I am stuck in the back of a moving car while a firework show is happening at my feet. Miss those carefree days. Second incident was about two years ago, if that. Took the dogs to the beach and Crystal’s dog drank too much salt water. First he had a liquid waterfall come out of his ass which conveniently was sitting on my shoulder as he enjoyed the fresh air out of the window. I thought Crystal was being a smartass and pouring warm water on my shoulders, but no it was coming straight from her dog’s butt. After I gag momentarily and shove the dog around we finally find a gas station where a bunch of females jump out and start gagging—I vomit. We get back in the car and I make her hold the dog in the back. He decides to stick his head over the middle consul…moments later he starts barfing chunks of potatoes, meat, carrots, etc all over Lauren and I. Yeah, Crystal fed him some left over roast before the beach. Fabulous!
Now if the taxi driver new this is why I was laughing so much today after I nearly broke down in tears over a roach, he might not think American’s were all crazy like me…or would he?
10/10/08
So yesterday was another holiday, therefore I had no luck with classes followed up my today’s luck. I am totally lost with why ALL my classes don’t exist, but never fails. I am slowly losing motivation to hike to campus in hopes of finding a lecture. Amanda seems to be having all the luck. Finally have internet today, which is why I am able to post this blog. Yeah, it was a long blog and be thankful I stopped typing! Amanda and I had a little adventure yesterday, but I will let her write about it. My blog is already too long. I had the pleasure of running into Emmanuel today on my way to class. Well, there was not class, but nonetheless that’s what I was attempting to do. Anyways, he says to me, “I SMS’ed you. What happened? I thought maybe I gave the wrong impression?” Sigh, I had to lie and respond with, “no, I just need to get a voucher. I have no minutes.” That turned into a ten minute long lecture of where I can get a voucher and what I have been doing. I had to finally say, I am going to be late if I don’t start walking
10/11/08
The internet stopped working yesterday before I could post the blog. Sorry. I get a little frustrated with it at times, but I am learning to accept it. Last night was interesting…that’s all I will type about that and today we are headed to the beach! Whoo hoo!
Juice…
I have suddenly stopped drinking the ‘fresh’ squeezed juice and Haika has taken notice. So, this morning while I am eating alone, she asks me, ‘why?’ Ah, well, honestly I didn’t stop drinking it because of the water, but she is mixing fruit in there I don’t like. So without Amanda I sit trying to say.. ninapenda nanasi (I like pineapple), ninapenda chungua (I like oranges) hapana (no) mango, hapana passion. [By the way, I barely know how to speak Swahili let alone spell it, so I am typing it phonetically how it sounds to me!] Yeah, that’s the best I can do, but she understands! She immediately picks up the oranges and wants to go make me some… hapana hapana hapana asante! Oi! A banana, toast, and water will be just fine believe it or not! Hell, that’s more than I eat at home! I am the weird American who never wants to eat and Amanda is the polar opposite American who always eats! Sheesh, keep stuffing the Americans though! Mama Dorica said she wanted to send me home nice and fat…umm Mama Dorica I am already fat and I would rather go home a few pounds lighter, eh?
School….
Ah, so today we were suppose to start classes, right? Ah, alas, it’s October and you think I am going to bring you good news? Well, baba dropped me off at 8:30 and I sat outside the classroom waiting patiently for my very first class to start. As I was sitting there I began to realize, I might actually have to take notes since professors won’t be posting their slides online. Lacey, write notes?! Get serious kids! What shall I do, but that will figure its self out. Anyhow, I mingle my way into the classroom accompanied by the local birds and a slight few other students. Since I already stand out like a sore thumb, I decide I will sit in the third row—close enough to the professor so I can hear since all doors and windows are open for our lovely fresh air! Anyways, to my luck, the professor starts talking in Swahili! You must be joking right?! After a few minutes I discover this is not a psychology class, but rather a law class. Seriously? So, I gather my crap and up pops the white kid in the third row and shimmy my way out. Deep breath. I will find my classes and hopefully next week, everything will be ok!
So, I hike back up to the wireless hotspot to find our other foreign friends. I look around online at the time tables in hopes of finding who the professors are because apparently this is the best way to find out when your class actually is. I have no such luck and decide (after having another minor heart attack about my required foreign language not being offered) to gather my belongings and hike home. It’s much easier going home as it’s all down hill, but I have another class at three so I will end up hiking back. Anyways, after trying to take a short cut and being chased by this enormous bug, I managed to find home…only to not be able to go in! Bug man is here and not the ordinary bug man, but a mosquito man. So, I sit on the porch with Haika and the other maid next door. They start molesting my smooth legs, which I happened to have shaved yesterday. They’re laughing, ranting, and giggling in Swahili. They want me to touch their hairy legs…thanks, but no thanks! Needless to say, my nose nearly falls off with this pesticide inhalation and I am not even in the house. I feel like at any moment it’s going to burst into blood accompanied by all my sneezing. So I am sitting under a tree listening to a mix of music while Haika records it on her phone/tries to take pictures of me? Forgot to mention—she wants to wash my bed sheets! If you haven’t already taken note on my hoarding issues with my soft clothes—I don’t want her to wash my sheets!!!!!! Please not my sheets! Hapana! Hapana! She’s replies, “whyy?” with a funny look. I pull my sheets out of the dirty clothes and set them on the table by the front door. Hapana sheets, sawaw?! I will bring them back to bed when I go inside and my sheets will remain unwashed for three months! I don’t care! So as we are sitting under the tree, to my surprise, the pesticide man walks around the house with his blower and mists the house with his pesticide. Guess what? Yeahh, there sit my sheets as I watch them get torched with the pesticide. ****! ****! ****! WHY?!!!! Why did it have to be my sheets! Ndyo, sawaw, now you can wash my sheets Haika. Argh, there is no way they will even be dry by tonight! I don’t want hard crunchy sheets. I don’t, I don’t!
::crying::pouting::
So after ranting and raving about the bug man ruining my precious sheets, I throw my laptop in my bag, grab my chair, and walk back over to the porch. Ahh, my inner OCD voice says, sniff the sheets, sniff the sheets Lacey, it’s worth a try and if you smell the pesticide then let Haika wash them. Oh, I love talking with my inner voice—it tells me to do a lot of good things such as type this blog for your sheer entertainment my dear reader. Sooo, I reach over to my pile of sheets and take a nice big whiff! Smells good to me! That’s right, you filthy sheets are coming back upstairs with me. You will not be washed and I will sleep in dirty pesticide sheets for two more months! HA! I am a happy kid again!
Sweat…
Well, I hiked to campus in the dead heat of the day after eating lunch with baba, walked into my second class of the day to find—no French class. Go figure. I turned around and decided time to go face Emmanuel in the links office. Thankfully he wasn’t there, but I do find mama Kaaya and we venture to the department head of the times tables. No luck. The man looks at me and says, “I don’t know, class should be there.” “Should I just try again tomorrow?” “Yeah, try again tomorrow and hopefully by next week everything will be sorted out.” “Ah, thanks, thanks a lot.” So, since three of my classes overlap tomorrow morning at 10 am, I am undecided which class I should give a try in hopes of finding a class. I have already taken calc-it’s just a class for credits. I need French to graduate-but have a strange feeling it won’t be there and the psych class seems to be a toss up. Maybe I will try French again.
I am sitting back at home titling my fingers wondering what I should do while listening to Mercy Me, Homesick. It’s an amazing song, but not exactly helping my crappy mood. It’s making me think of America, Grandma, God, friends, and I have it on REPEAT. Crystal’s favorite button, but it’s totally crushing what little ounce of happiness I can find at this moment in time. Should I walk to Milimani City and stand in line to use an ATM—maybe go to a movie after or find something in the store to entertain myself? I just want some sort of order, a little bit of routine would be nice! Sent Rachel a text—maybe I can meet her at the orphanage. Something, anything!
Amanda…
I am lying in bed when she walks in and turns on the lights…to her surprise she finds new sheets on her bed. I laugh knowing what happened today and am forced to roll over and enlighten her about Haika wanting to wash our sheets. For whatever reason though, Haika didn’t get the chance to do it today and brought Amanda’s sheets back up and put them in the dirty basket—so I point to her sheets. Amanda picks them up and sits on the edge of her bed like a little girl holding her favorite stuffed animal and says, ‘I don’t want her to wash my sheets either.’ So as she is holding her sheets I proceed to tell her how they were also mystified with the pesticide, but I still took my sheets back. She hesitates long and hard before ripping apart her flowery bed sheets Haika had ironed this afternoon and reapplying her dirty sheets.
10/7/08
Maybe today I will have better luck with classes? NOT! I am going to be back in America before classes ever start! I went to two classes this morning and the first was empty and the other was an accounting lecture. I should currently be hiking back to school but I am icing my knee and listening to homesick. Perhaps I should delete the song and stop torturing myself. No, that would only make sense. Anyways, my knee hasn’t hurt like this since my first two days in Dar. I had to sleep with it on a pillow last night after taking some medicine. I am assuming it wasn’t happy with the two hikes to campus yesterday because otherwise I haven’t been doing anything different. My first two days here we toured all of downtown Dar so that was probably a great deal of stress plus an acclimation to the weather. Anyhow, it should be back normal or as normal as it can get by tomorrow I hope.
Well, I ventured to the American embassy today…ALONE! Yeah, Amanda and I couldn’t go together because our schedules conflict and today was the last day we could go and send in our votes for presidency! Whoo hoo! It was so exciting to vote and totally worth the venture. When I say venture, let me explain. I have been out of shillings for quite some time and all I have is about 7 American dollars so I waited in a line for about thirty minutes to get some shillings. After, I collect my money and I hike to the road in hopes of finding a Bahjahjee. Of course when you need one, there isn’t any! My reasoning for taking one of these versus a daladala—I don’t know where to get off on the daladala. I can get to mwenge and from mwenge I can catch a daladala towards Posta or KKoo, but I don’t know when to scream and tell them I want off! So, a Bahjahjee will take me right where I need to go. Anyhow, I finally find me a Bahjahjee and tell him I want to go to the Embassy and I ask him how much it will cost. He says 10. I pause for a moment and say 1,000 or 10,000 and he says, one zero zero zero. So a thousand—wow, that’s a deal and I hop on board! He starts heading in the right direction before stopping to ask someone who speaks English where exactly I want to go. Then he turns around and starts heading towards Umbungo. Oh no, what did those two Tanzanians just say and where is he really taking me. That, my friends, was my initial thought. I don’t understand the language and I don’t know my way around well enough, should I go home? No, no I have to vote. So, I tell him to STOP and turn back around towards Mwenge. I say to him, Mwenge to Posta. Just take me to Posta and I will walk the rest of the way. Well, he keeps trying to talk to me and I keep saying sijui repetitively which translates to ‘I don’t know.’ How vulnerable do I look and hell, at this point, feel. I have over a 130,000 shillings on me because I just went to the bank, I can’t speak a lick of Swahili, and all I can tell him is Posta. So he seems to be heading in the right direction, but I am not entirely sure as he is taking back routes. I feel safer on main roads where I can see the daladala’s passing by, but I sit and enjoy my ride. We approach a familiar looking intersection and I motion him with my hands to turn right. He hesitates, but I keep insisting I know where I am at and I want to go right. So right he turns and wrong I was! I thought the embassy was on the next corner, but nope. So he stops and I start laughing while saying, posta, posta, posta. So he starts driving again and I sit back for the adventure. We pass by the ocean, Steers, the little Vegas building, but no Embassy. He pulls into this fairly nice looking hotel and says, posta! Well, Mr. this isn’t the Posta I have come to know in the past 3 weeks so I am not getting out of your bahjahjee yet. This is a completely foreign place! So, he finds him some taxi friends and tells them what’s happening. They ask me where I want to go and I reply, US Embassy! They start laughing and talking in Swahili and give the poor man directions. We take off and not to my surprise, pass the ocean again and many other places we had cruised by previously before he turns down this awkward street and drives for a few more minutes before pulling over and shutting off his moped. My thought—oh shit, I should have had him take me home! He says, here! Um, no, this isn’t the Embassy either and I am not getting off here because I don’t know where I am at. At this point, I am wondering if I should tell him to just take me back to the University and I’ll try a daladala or should I keep going with this man. Again, no I must vote so as he is pointing up towards these houses, I tell him no and he starts his moped back up and heads straight. Just moments later I am yelling, stop! I see the guards and the Embassy! Alas! I go to pay him and I hand him 5000 and he says 10. Are you serious? 10,000? I thought you said 1000, but I didn’t try and bargain anything as I had been driving this poor man all over Dar for nearly 45 minutes trying to find the Embassy. So anyways, I finally get to vote and leave the embassy against my will. I love the Embassy—the toilets are so Americanized that you don’t even flush them. Anyhow, I am walking out and heading towards the daladala station (I can get myself home on a daladala, just not to places) when there comes my previous bahjahjee driver! He stops and I tell him I want to go to back to the school, but for 5000. He agrees and brings me home safely. So despite being totally ripped off from the bahjahjee, I like to think of it as a whole. I spent 15,000 shillings for a ride to and from the embassy which breaks down to approximately 7,500 shillings per way. Baba said it should cost about 3,000 so I paid double, but that’s what I get for being an American and not knowing their language. I spent roughly 15 American dollars to get my vote in and it better make a difference! Oh, and when I got home, I went to get a coke from the house Haika always buys them from. I give the lady a 5000 and she gives me back 3500 and a coke. I thought she gave me back 4,500 which was still technically wrong, but not a significant amount off. I walk home and look at my money again when I notice she totally was off in giving me back change! These Tanzanians are taking full advantage of me! So I tell Haika and she walks back to the house with me, says something in Swahili and gets me my 1000 shillings back! Go Haika! The coke was supposed to cost 400 and I paid 1500! Whoa! They still owe me a hundred and Haika said they would give it back to me later. From now on, I will let Haika get me drinks—I was just trying to make her life a tad easier.
10/8/08
Posta…
Another big story: Warning!
After telling Mama Dorica yesterday about my troubles of getting to the US Embassy, she insisted on me taking a taxi driver that was a friend of theirs. So, after battling this out through the evening with her saying I can take a dala dala, let me pay, etc I decided to just go with it.
I wake up this morning to Haika asking me if I am going to school. It’s not even 7 am, but I had tossed and turned since the sun came around at 6 am! Yeah, way too early for me and I don’t have my black out shades. So anyways, I tell Haika yes, school and eventually get up to go and try to find this class. Well, it’s Wednesday and again, I have yet to discover a class, but instead of worrying about my classes today, I am ecstatic to pick up my box from Posta! I rush home and text Mama Dorica who then calls for the driver to come and pick me up. Whoa, front door service with air conditioning. Could I ask for more…other than my package at the post office!?! Ah, totally stoked as Amanda might say.
I arrive at Posta and head inside to collect my goods and can hardly keep a smile off my face. For a slight minute I thought they weren’t going to give me the box because it was for ‘Mabel Kaaya.’ I would not have been a graceful, looking American had I not gotten my box, but with a phone call to Mama Dorica they released the box. If my smile wasn’t big enough before they brought out the box, it was definitely visible after they brought it out. I was expecting the malaria pills and not too much more, especially since this wasn’t the box from Crystal. They make me pay for it and then walk me over to customs and make me pay another fee. Who knew, but my thought, are you serious? Totally wiped me empty of all my shillings and thank goodness I wasn’t paying for the taxi because otherwise I would have been in trouble and standing in line at the bank takes forever. The box was already smashed and bent out of shape, but what do they do to it at customs—hack it open and start shuffling through the items. Ah, thanks, appreciate that. I don’t notice much, but can’t wait to get into the car and take a better look.
Let me set the scene—a white foreigner locked in the back of a taxi with a box. Driver, driving and dodging other cars.
I notice my favorite sweater has been packed in this box—the one I forgot and only noticed after arriving at the airport and boarding my palne! I reach in to remove it and notice it is wet and smelly. A little bummed, but I yank it out.
Big deep breath for what is about to occur. I have a minor phobia and some might argue it’s more than just minor, but I like to think of it as minor. So out comes my wet, stinky sweater with a GINORMOUS ROACH! I freak and maybe freak is an understatement. My heart jumps out of my chess, I scream loud enough that every pedestrian could probably hear me through the windows, and I leap onto the middle consul with my left foot while my right foot lands on his back seat and my ass hits the roof. Get me out of this locked car before I break down into tears over a cockroach. Ridiculous, I know and I probably created a minor heart attack for the driver as he swerves off the road, unlocks the door, and out leaps the white person. I am looking at the box, holding back my tears, calming my heart, and refusing to get in the car until he gets that nasty ass creature out!
Big sigh, it’s okay, it’s gone, I take a deep breath, remind myself it is just a bug, and I get back in the car. I smash myself as far away from the box as possible (where ever there is a mama roach, there shall be lots of babies somewhere, usually) and I begin to chuckle at how foolish I just looked. Moments later as I am apologizing to the driver in English, he asks ‘what country are you from?’ Ughhh, America I reply… Yeah, sorry about that reputation folks, but Lacey and roaches are not a good combination.
I arrive home and very cautiously yank the box out of the car and drop it on the front porch. I try to wipe off the seat and middle consul where you could clearly see I jumped too, and then apologized again and said fair well to the poor gentleman. I yell for Haika and decide it’s best she helps me scope out the box for anymore roaches. Coast is clear, don’t know why the inside of my package was wet as there was nothing inside to cause the damage, and the outside of the box had not been wet. It’s a mystery, but nonetheless the damaged seemed to be minimal. I am more than nervous to pick up Crystal’s box of food because heaven knows how many roaches will be in a box of just food goodies!
For those of you who know me, these are the two incidents that kept reoccurring during my drive home after I had the minor scare with the roach—first incident was sophomore year. I was in the back of Golda’s Tiburon? It’s a two door car, and that’s all the really matters. It’s dark and Crystal is driving while Golda is lighting fireworks and tossing them out the window. Is this what normal high school kids do? Eh! Well, she lit one and didn’t quite have time to throw it out the window so she tosses it back to me because that’s what her gut instinct told her to do? Once again I am stuck in the back of a moving car while a firework show is happening at my feet. Miss those carefree days. Second incident was about two years ago, if that. Took the dogs to the beach and Crystal’s dog drank too much salt water. First he had a liquid waterfall come out of his ass which conveniently was sitting on my shoulder as he enjoyed the fresh air out of the window. I thought Crystal was being a smartass and pouring warm water on my shoulders, but no it was coming straight from her dog’s butt. After I gag momentarily and shove the dog around we finally find a gas station where a bunch of females jump out and start gagging—I vomit. We get back in the car and I make her hold the dog in the back. He decides to stick his head over the middle consul…moments later he starts barfing chunks of potatoes, meat, carrots, etc all over Lauren and I. Yeah, Crystal fed him some left over roast before the beach. Fabulous!
Now if the taxi driver new this is why I was laughing so much today after I nearly broke down in tears over a roach, he might not think American’s were all crazy like me…or would he?
10/10/08
So yesterday was another holiday, therefore I had no luck with classes followed up my today’s luck. I am totally lost with why ALL my classes don’t exist, but never fails. I am slowly losing motivation to hike to campus in hopes of finding a lecture. Amanda seems to be having all the luck. Finally have internet today, which is why I am able to post this blog. Yeah, it was a long blog and be thankful I stopped typing! Amanda and I had a little adventure yesterday, but I will let her write about it. My blog is already too long. I had the pleasure of running into Emmanuel today on my way to class. Well, there was not class, but nonetheless that’s what I was attempting to do. Anyways, he says to me, “I SMS’ed you. What happened? I thought maybe I gave the wrong impression?” Sigh, I had to lie and respond with, “no, I just need to get a voucher. I have no minutes.” That turned into a ten minute long lecture of where I can get a voucher and what I have been doing. I had to finally say, I am going to be late if I don’t start walking
10/11/08
The internet stopped working yesterday before I could post the blog. Sorry. I get a little frustrated with it at times, but I am learning to accept it. Last night was interesting…that’s all I will type about that and today we are headed to the beach! Whoo hoo!
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