random thoughts

I'm in Mwanza town, having just enjoyed, REALLY enjoyed, a smaller scale version of the breakfast brunch that I enjoyed in Dar. nice.

Last night I came into town to teach another period at the Teachers Training College. I went on Thursday to attend the graduation, which was a fantastic experience. I got to see traditional dancing [ngoma], songs, poems, speeches, and my 5 good friends who were in the Lifeskills club who were graduating were VERY excited to see me and take pictures. It was a nice break from normal work, and a rare opportunity to really see some of the impact that I guess i'm having on these folks.

However, graduation combined with Easter, Muslim holidays [id el something i forget], Tanzanian Union day [celebrating the merger of Tanganyika, i.e. the mainland, and Zanzibar], and the upcoming May 1st national holiday [woohoo socialist roots!!!], has led to major disruption of our studying schedule. So they invited me to come spend the night at the college, and stay overnight in one of the guest houses. So I came, and we met to study the disease progression and testing procedures for HIV. Well, we started at 8:00 with about 15 people and finally finished up at quarter to 11 with a good 30+ club members!! I was really shocked and pleased, they didn't even appear to be too tired, all seemed very interested in the topic at hand.
It also provided me a very interesting opportunity to see college life here in Tanzania.
SURPRISE
It's not that different from the states. Crowded, loud, dirty, noisy, but full of youthful energy, passionate conversations, and hard working people. I dare say harder working people - how many american college students get together to study on Saturday night, and then make it to Church the next morning at 8?!?!

There is one other thing that always amazes me when I'm on my way out to the TTC. There is a big market on the corner of the main road and the unpaved one that goes out to the college, and there are ladies selling all kinds of fruits and produce, woven mats to sit/pray on, clay pots, clothes, etc. Now those of you who know me well know that I hate shopping, and thus have very little expertise when it comes to department store sales. But one thing i'm most sure of is that if any department store in the States tried to display their clothes the way it's done here, they'd be out of business.

Imagine a coat hanger. It's a triangle, right? Now take that triangle and make it into a circle. Then make it bigger. Then stretch a dress or skirt around it, making sure that the waist area of this garment looks like it's about to bust because of this circle of wire. This is how Tanzanian women assess their potential purchases. By making sure there's plenty of room where it counts, because that IS where it DOES count, at least in this culture. There's even a swahili word for 'big butt', which is 'wowowo' [i like to think it means whoa whoa whoa because people are impressed].

Speaking of wowowo - sometimes in Swahili, in order to add emphasis or slightly change the meaning of a word, it is repeated several times. So 'hapa' means 'here,' and 'hapahapa' means 'right here.' For some reason the other day, when I was at a nearby volunteers house feasting on some excellent chilli they made to celebrate Union day [even though there's no connection remotely between Tanzania and chili other than that there's lots of beans here....], I commented that this chili would be really good with a baked potato. But that there's not enough big potatoes here to make it work. I was then challenge - 'why sure, there are big potatoes here!' To which I replied, in English, 'well yeah, but bakedpotatobakedpotatobakedpotato?!!' It made sense at the time....

Rains are improved, though it hasn't rained since last week, when I had gone to the big weekly friday market to buy dustbins for condom disposal in guesthouses, and got caught in the downpour on my way home. Tanzanians, despite having a 'rainy season', don't really deal with rain. The basic strategy is that, if it starts to rain, you seek out the nearest awning or house and wait until it stops. Because it pretty much always does. So that's what I did, I stopped.

There was a kick-ass rainbow that followed, one that reminded me of a science class from 7th grade. Every rainbow has a second, complimentary rainbow above it, which is fainter, and is also inverted in colors [VIBGYOR]. I think at one point in my life I started a band called 'inverted rainbow', but that seems awfully lame looking back on it....

All this typing has got me hungry again - time to go find some yogurt. Which the more I look at it is really just chunky milk here, but I like it. None of this skim crap.