No warning required

YIKES, who is that guy, and what is he doing?! Oh, it's me, i'm sweaty, but that can't stop me from being happy because i'm holding a papaya from a tree that I planted myself, with a seed from a nice fruit that I ate. And since taking this picture, I have eaten, along with my neighbors, the papaya in question. It was delicious, red, sweet, smooth, perfect. I wanted to show how big they can get, this one would probably sell for maybe 40-50 cents at the market [vs way expensive in the states, from what my mom tells me]

ANYWAYS,

I’m in a better mood than I was when I wrote my last post. Which doesn’t mean that I don’t still believe most of what I wrote, or that it wasn’t accurate, but that I’ve consciously made an effort to put it aside and look for the positive, even when I’m faced with constant reminders of the not-so-nice sort.

Today I had a good chuckle, which I needed. Last night I felt hot and tired, and woke up in the middle of the night DRENCHED in sweat. It was really, really disgusting, it felt like I had just got out of a bath and hadn’t dried off. Except sweat, not water. I was too tired to take a bathe [not as easy here as just jumping in the shower, i.e. no running water] so I took off the sheet and put a towel down and was just about to fall asleep again when I heard a loud drumming. We are in the middle of the Muslim holy month of Ramadhan, and the commotion I was hearing was a group of people who walk around at midnight and wake people up to remind them to eat again, since as soon as it hits 5am they have to fast until about 7pm. Important for them, but kind of annoying for me. But I was so tired it didn’t really matter anyways, I passed out after a few minutes.

This morning I woke up early and went running again. It was nice, my friend Alex whom I run with was sick yesterday and so I ran by myself, which is NOT nice. I was trying to explain this to someone, and they asked ‘oh, so you talk a lot and stuff while you run?’ and the answer, honestly, is no. After about the first 3 minutes, I’m huffing and puffing too much to talk. But just running with another person, especially someone who is a bit better than you, is very encouraging and pushes you to go faster, farther. And let me be honest, if I’m stuck doing something that’s exhausting [exercise] or boring [some classes, for example] or tedious [some work meetings, for example], I like knowing that I’m not the only poor soul being tortured, but that I have company.

So the laughing part – we had just gotten back from our run, about 40 minutes, and were stretching in the soccer field while greeting students passing by on their way to school [kind of embarrassing for me as their teacher, but oh well, I just greet them in English and they get nervous and embarrassed too and we’re all in the same boat]. We were stretching and we saw, for about the 5^th day in a row, two young men working together to push a trolley loaded with pretty large bricks. We had spoken to them a few days ago, and discovered that they were hauling 3,000 bricks from our neighborhood up to a plot near the school [‘up’ being a key word here]. Each load they can carry 60 bricks, so do the math – 50 loads. They start at 4am and go until maybe 10am. One of the guys said they’ll probably finish tomorrow or the next day.

But today, I had a question for them. You see, they had challenged us after our run a few days back that what we were doing wasn’t really exercise, but that their work was real exercise. I agreed that they had very hard work, and just watching them you can see their muscles straining while pushing the trolley. However, yesterday I saw something which puzzled me – a young man pushing a trolley DOWN, from an area up near the school, to a plot in our neighborhood. He was having quite a difficult time, but mainly in trying to slow the card down so it wouldn’t get away from him. In other words, the young men we had been speaking to are busting their asses to take bricks up, and someone else is hauling bricks down. This struck me as very comical, stupid, and kind of sad. This morning I asked them why they don’t just trade bricks with the other guy, so that the bricks ‘up there’ get moved to the plot ‘up there’ and the ones in our neighborhood get moved to the plot nearby. They looked baffled at the logic of this, and finally answered that ‘well, some of the bricks differ in size’ which I guess was true, but still. At least, I guess, some people are getting a little bit of income and keeping themselves busy in the meantime – better having them do SOMETHING than just sitting around all day, right? Even if it means hauling bricks/crossing paths…

Yeah, the run was good this morning. Alex joked to me that my leg muscles are starting to develop, I joked back that they’ve always been there I just hadn’t been using them so much. Which I think is actually true. Yesterday I was too tired to ride my bike around after the run, so I spent the day hiring bike taxis. These bike taxi guys, whom I’ve written a little about before, have SUPER muscle legs. Yesterday one of these young men reminded me of the movie The Triplets of Belleville, which by the way is very good and you should see it, which parodies the Tour de France and shows the crazy bicycle guys and their skinny but very toned legs. Kind of freaks me out, looks to much like a horse or something, skinny ankles but huge thighs…

Other news/highlights:

Fresh juice is now available in Misungwi! Despite a plethora of great fruits, people here don’t seem to want to pay to drink fruit juice. Soda, they drink by the crates, but juice? No. But finally some people are starting to catch on, and one store now sells various fruit juices. Yesterday was pineapple/passion/banana mix. It was delicious. Apparently the guy who makes it has been doing pretty good business, so I expect I’ll be able to enjoy it for the rest of my time here.

My neighbor bought a new daladala car, so now he has two. I swear, every day there is another car that starts doing the Missungwi/Mwanza route. I wonder sometimes how they still do business, and whether the profit isn’t shrinking rather drastically. Actually, I suspect that may be part of the reason my neighbor DID buy a second car, because the profits off the first were lagging, so he figured he up his stake in the general all-car daily take. I offered to be the driver or conductor, but they laughed at me. I said I’d bring a TON of business, since everyone would want to ride in the white guy’s car, there would be a high level of amusement. Seriously, one of my good friends [Dominic’s brother] wanted to be the conductor, but I advised him against it – most drivers and conductors have not-so-great behavior, i.e. drink and especially women [every night, often someone different from yesterday]. But yeah, a new car on our street is certainly exciting news in a small town like this.

Form IV students are taking their exams. Already they’ve been asked a question on birth control, a topic I taught them, and today they take the biology test where I’m SURE there will be questions about HIV, STDs, reproductive system, or something along those lines. We’ll see if they were actually paying attention to anything I was saying…

I've been watching '24' with some Belgian girls who are in town doing research. It's a pretty good show, we're halfway into the 3rd season. I am greatly looking forward to January, a month I plan on devoting to three things: the couch, the fridge, and a Netflix subscription [hint hint welcome home present]