wreck

It seems the closer I get to being done here, the more wildly extreme my emotions are.

I see some of my students that I think have a future, or some of my friends that I haven't seen for awhile, or just a cute little kid, or I hear a little bit of news like some of my friends competing in a rap competition in Mwanza, and I get the hugest, dumbest grin on my face and can't help but to show how happy I am to have seen them/heard the good news.

And of course, the other extreme too. I was talking to one of my good friends who is an electrician, and I would say is about 25 years old. I recently bought him a soccer ball so that his team's resources can at least somehow match their level of play in upcoming matches [they are good, but just look at little raggedy]. I walked home with him after he had bought two huge sacks of beans, and he informed me that half were for selling and half were for use at home. You see, his parents are both dead, and he has 5 younger brothers and sisters to care for. He is the head of household. Only one of these younger siblings is old enough to work, he helps my friend out with the electrician business. The others are all in school.

I literally teared up talking to him, and felt pretty stupid considering he manages to keep his cool and stay collected most of the time. Although it seemed like he might have been starting to choke up too, when he said he'd better get going and kind of ran ahead a bit - I think if I had seen him even swallow heavily like he was upset or hodling back teaers, I probably would've lost it.

On Sunday I cooked tacos and ate them with Dominic, which was fun. Not as fun as telling everyone I could what I was doing though, since 'tako' in Swahili means buttock [just one though]. They were GREAT tacos. So great that, yes, I became somehow emotional about them and started thinking about everything i've cooked or eaten here, yada yada yada. I'm losing it, right?

It had been awhile since I had used the meat grinder, but I definitely plan on utilizing it more frequently in the near future. Meat is DELICIOUS, there is a new butcher in town who has greatly improved the hygiene standards in town and thus increased my comfort level when purchasing beef [not to mention I hear they actually kill healthy cows, instead of just the sick or old looking ones].

Yesterday was NOT a good day. It had it's ups, namely a lesson at the Secondary School where the kids gave compliments to each other [building self-esteem], and a few came up after class to get advice on rather personal issues which proved to me that, while these are regular teenagers with regular teenage problems in an unfortunately irregularly dangerous environment for teenagesr, they also have heads on their shoulders and were handling things in a surprisingly adult fashion. And talking about it, and that is a HUGE step here, as a lot of these issues [ok, you guessed it, it's almost always about relationships and sex] are not openly discussed.

But then for some reason the day went downhill. I just kept looking around me, at all the youth on the street, joking around, smoking, drinking [there was a promotional van that had driven into town to sell us vodka and gin], drunk old people asking me for money, coworkers of mine in rather unrespectable places, people not listening to each other, crumbling old buildings, the list goes on and on... pretty much everything I looked at looked like shit, pretty much everyone I looked at was doing something shitty or being a shithead.
The day, quite frankly, turned to shit. And I felt like shit, and felt shitty for feeling like shit.

My use of profanity here makes me seem angry, but it was really much more resignation that I felt yesterday. Anger yes, a little. But mostly sadness. I'm not sure if it's legitimately stemming from my surroundings, or more likely that i'm sad that i'll be leaving these surroundings in just a little over 3 months.

Yikes, could I really be this fragile?! I'm hoping this was just an isolated incedent, and that the next few months will be on the up and up full of soda drinking, picture taking, and all those others things that have made most things the past few yaers enjoyable.

Wow, I'm really glad I've finished writing this entry, I'm feeling MUCH less emotional already... just the way I like it.