Commotion, Guavas, and Dancing (Friday 6/12)

At the bright and early time of 4:00am there was a mass exodus leaving the house! Tons of talking, yelling, and slamming doors. At one point there was someone banging on a door down the hall as fast and as hard as possible. They were yelling someone’s name and that someone was not quick to open up the door. The commotion lasted about an hour before things finally settled down. This meant that Paul and I at this point were really the only ones left in the house just like at the beginning of my stay!

After being jostled awake and unable to fall asleep during the move out, I promptly slept in until 8:30am again; there was no impetus to get up any earlier as there’s not a set time to start working. I could not find the kettle so I did not have a shower. If it wasn’t so cold in the morning, I would consider a cold shower, but I know it would be quite the experience. I got ready and left for the office.

I worked on my stuff until it was time to go to tea time. We had the regular, but this time around I got a giant egg (closer to the size you’d find in the States). I was excited to have more protein with the bigger egg, yet to my dismay it just didn’t taste quite right. A large gulp of water made it go down easy though!

When tea time is finished, this is when it’s time to go on a project for the students. I was excited to go as I downloaded a couple more videos to watch, but could not find the HDMI cable that connected my laptop and the projector together anywhere. Every square inch of the office building was searched! I realized that the last ones to use the projector were the directors during their meeting yesterday and that the last and only place to find the cable would be behind the locked door of the director’s office. I asked around for a key and eventually someone showed up to let me in. Sitting on the table was the cable and I ran back to the school as I thought I was late; I was not.

I set up the projector until I realized that I forgot the extension cable that allows me to push the projector farther away from the wall to project a larger image. Once more I ran back and forth from the office and grabbed what I needed. Finally, everything was set up and it was time for the Cha Cha slide and Cupid Shuffle (both requested by Mr. Chesco). All of the dancing was a blast and the students seemed to really enjoy the Cha Cha Slide. It seems like I’m the comedic relief and the fun for the students; instead of teaching, I come in and dance which is a role I don’t mind heading at all.

Afterwards, we sat around and did more work. Before we could get much done, Mr. Chesco wrangled us all together (excluding Michael, he was working on a truck outside) and brought us to a nearby guava tree. Mr. Chesco was the smallest out of the four of us so we let him climb the small tree to pluck fruits from its branches. 

He picked around 20 for us! I couldn’t believe how high up he was and that the branches weren’t breaking! The guavas are very small (about the size of a golf ball) and are absolutely packed full of seeds leaving very little meat to eat (you still eat the seeds, but don’t chew them). Ripe guavas are yellow, while the less ripe ones are green. They have a very subtle flavor that Eli swears tastes like cotton candy; I don’t really taste anything at all. We stood around and ate a bunch of them before heading back to the office.

Lunch came and we had the regular (I hope at this point you know what that is!). Whilst eating, we saw a cat for the first time since we’ve been here. Miraclin, having two cats at home, loves cats and slowly approached it and eventually became friends with it. Eli and I came down as well to see the cat and he was stunning.

His tail looked like a lemur’s and had bright, light green eyes. We named him Pumpkin (pumpkin is what you get called when you have no wins in Cardi so we thought it would be fun to name the cat that)! Pumpkin loved getting pets so we made sure to give him lots of love (he looked pretty clean so we figured we’d be fine). 

Eli and I left Miraclin to spend more time with Pumpkin while we went and observed a very interesting looking spider. Its body had a shell similar to that of a crab that was a striking red color and full of spikes. It was no larger than my thumbnail but was still so cool to look at!

(another spider photo)

We all went back to the office to do more “work”. I sat down and finished my book 1984, it had quite the ending! I’m sad that it’s already over, but all in all I enjoyed it a lot. Eating and reading had me feeling pretty tired (carb coma!)Eli and I did pushups to wake us up. We went back to get some actual work done until I got sleepy once more and took a nap.

I was awoken by Henry to let me know that we had just got paid. I’m not sure if I mentioned before, but since we’re teachers here we’re are treated as such and therefore get paid like we’re a teacher (we don’t get paid as much as the teachers as we obviously don’t need the money, but it’s so we can have some spending money here in the village and give us some more independence. I don’t think we’ll get paid again as it doesn’t make sense that we would, but I’ll update if that’s the case). 

The allowance, as I’ll call it, totaled 125,000 Tshs which is around $48. Money here has a lot of buying power so that goes a long way here. I plan to eventually buy some laundry soap for myself so I don’t have to use Paul’s anymore, more Embe drinks because they’re amazing, and probably some fruit. The only problem is that I don’t have my wallet, it’s locked up in the safe, so I don’t have a good place to put my money. As of now, it’s just sitting in the pocket of my backpack!

What followed us getting paid was hanging out, finishing work, and doing a lot of reading on random things on the Wiki. Dinner followed where we had the usual ugali, beans, and chicken. Eli got so many beans as his host, Luka, was the one serving him and wanted to make sure Eli got plenty to eat. Due to the sheer amount of beans on his plate, Eli tried to scoop some onto my plate and being confused as to what he was doing, I jumped back and let a good chunk of beans fall onto the floor; someone spilled the beans! 

We shared a good laugh, but no one there would let us clean it up (probably because they don’t want guests doing something like that). Eli somehow got all of the beans down! We all went back to the office and waited for Eli with his other phone from the safe as he needed it to login into his school account to start his Harvey refund (something I’m waiting for too).

Michael was going to walk back to his host's house, but Paul refused to let him walk alone. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s a Tanzanian custom to not let a guest walk by themselves even if they know the area well. The walk was decently short and when we arrived at the house we went inside. His host’s house is very well furnished, has a TV, a refrigerator, two cars outside, and a motorcycle just from what I could see. By Tanzanian standards, this is extremely nice and I’m curious as to what the host does for work to be able to live so luxuriously out here! 

After dropping Michael off and saying goodnight, Paul and I walked back to our house. He was carrying a very bright lamp and I was carrying the WiFi router so we could have Wifi back at home. When we got to the top of the hill before going down to the house, I could hear the thumping of music already; I was going to be in for a treat… 

When we got to the house, Paul and I were greeted with 6 or so women all dancing in the main room with music blasting as loud as Paul’s speakers went (pretty loud!). Of course Paul and I had to join in and it was definitely a little odd and smelt of B.O.. To make a long story short, and I’m not sure if this was actually the case, but it truly seemed like this one woman was trying to get my attention and dance with me constantly. She’d tap my shoulder before going to a wall and shaking her butt. Safe to say I was pretty uncomfortable, but stayed around to not let Paul down.

We danced to a ton of Swahili music where I either could not understand the lyrics or it was just a fast beat for dancing. At one point, a slower song came on and I danced with the woman that kept trying to get my attention (she came up to me and grabbed my hands). I felt bad but I didn’t give any attention to her as to not give off some sort of unintended body language. It also seemed there might have been some alcohol involved with everyone as I could smell it on Paul’s breath, but who knows! 

When Paul walked off to his room, I quickly left and went to my room. I know I should’ve stayed but I kind of wanted some alone time before going to bed as it was already 10:00pm. The small dance party was still bumping of course for the next hour while the music never stopped. Paul just left YouTube on auto play so random songs just blasted on full volume for the next couple of hours. 

I blogged in my room and was able to pirate (don’t tell anyone) all of the Indiana Jones movies and The Goonies. Those movies seemed the most nostalgic to me so I wanted to watch them again! Perhaps if I finish blogging quickly and don’t feel like reading, I’ll put on one of them. Once I finished writing, I settled in to sleep (it took awhile to fall asleep amidst the noise, but when you’re tired enough you’ll fall asleep eventually!).