My Wanderings, Mistakes, and Awkward pauses.: June 2012

Got a bit of news for anyone who is interested. I’m in love, I have found my soul mate in Tanzania. The only problem is that there isn’t just one soul mate, there are three. And if that wasn't problem enough, they are also all under seven years old. The first one is little Rahema, being a sassy little 5 year old daughter of my village's executive officer. She tends to love tapping me on the shoulder and then quickly hiding her face in embarrassment. She also likes to wind up to hit me, and then just stand there acting like she is going to hit me laughing while I cower in fear. The second is the daughter of the primary school’s headmaster. Weighing in at a little less that 15 KG this Dorika is the most energetic and easily entertained 3 year olds I have ever met. Her favorite activities include rolling around on the ground, writing/drawing extensively on my hand (when paper is available), and 'playing' cards without knowing how to play. But the all time favorite is 'hide and seek'. Hide and seek at my house is a little difficult. We play that you can only hide outside the house, and that you can’t enter the woods, this of course leaves us with three places to hide: my outdoor kitchen, my outdoor shower, and my outdoor toilet. This makes it so that I have a 50% chance of finding her at the first place I check. You may wonder why it’s not 33%, and that is because no one wants to hide in the outdoor toilet. The final love of my life is a bit more older coming in at the age of 7 years old. Rafiki loves to play with my hair when she is being nice, and throw things at me when she is feeling bored. When we go on long walks she has a way of convincing me that if I just carry her to the top of the next hill she will walk the rest of if by herself. She has probably convinced me at least four times per a walk. But, her new evil way to pass the time is quizzing me on my ability to speak the tribal language, and when I fail to know a word she will say something like “Ha ha! Banana? You haven’t learned the word for banana yet!” Which should make me upset, but I just love her too much and I have to just laugh along.

So life has been going pretty well. We are finally starting up a tree nursery in the village which will give me more work as well as a warm feeling of achievement. It is the time of the year when people are harvesting their ginger and therefore weddings are really big right now. This basically means good food, dressing up, and dancing, just like the states. As far as integration goes, I finally found some good Tanzanian music, and now listen to it everyday. My favorite artist is called Roma, and it's awesome because he is from the same Tribe/mountain range as me! Go Wapare! That is not the only thing that makes him cool though, he also speaks out in his songs heavily against corruption that is in Tanzania, as well as problems with the government. One of the great things about Tanzania is that like the States, you have every right to speak you true opinion without fear of punishment.

Food: I have been eating raw peanuts, harvested that day from the farm, don't know how to describe them, I was saying the texture of a hard water chestnut. It is just totally different then the roasted, or the dried out ones.

Clothing: Alot of clothing out here is imported from donation boxes in the states, thus allowing 80 year old women to wear rolling stones shirts, and farmers to unexpectedly be Green Bay Packers fans. But in this past week I guess that a shipment of un-purchased costume Halloween hats made it to my village. So at market I saw 4 people wearing velvet wizard/witch pointed hats.

Language: The names of Father, Mother, Sister, and Brother are translated as... Baba, Mama, Dada, and Kaka. I think it's cool that they chose some of the easiest words for a baby to learn close relatives.

Here we are clearing out some irrigation channels for the village