Two Dinners & a Dance Party (Friday 7/10)

Like clock work, I woke up to my alarm around 7:30am and laid in my bed for another 10 minutes. It wasn’t until I officially started getting ready did I hear Joseph wake up! He woke up late and I could tell he was rushing a ton (what I usually do when I’m back home). Either his alarm didn’t go off or I wasn’t loud enough to wake him up, but I felt bad that he didn’t get any time to get ready! Walking out the door his collar was all out of whack and I could tell he was quite disheveled. 

We got to the office and I got to work on my computer. The WiFi here is slow, but today it was incredibly horrible. My assumption, and this could be completely wrong, is that a lot of people are on their phones and using their WiFi for personal use. There’s nothing wrong with that, but when 10+ people are all trying to watch their internet feed, there’s no bandwidth left for the people who are trying to get work done. I’m curious if there’s a way to set a restriction on what sort of content can be streamed in through the router and make it impossible to play on a phone. I know that seems harsh, but I have a lot to get done and I need just a little bit of internet!

Without WiFi, it’s kind of impossible to get new work done as I don’t have the internet to look things up or check my work. Since my video scripts and blog can be edited offline, I choose to work on those to stay productive through the morning and some stuff done. I did this up until tea time where I left with Eli and Miraclin to Roza’s house at our regular time of 10:00am. We once more ate chapati and drank some delicious coffee with it. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m getting older, but coffee is starting to taste a lot better to me even with nothing in it! Nothing like the slippery-slope of a lifelong coffee/caffeine addiction.

When we finished, we went back to the office where I talked with a Miraclin for a bit in the sun. While talking, we noticed Eli making a science video about the process of photosynthesis with a member of the education department (Mateo and Peter). It looked like a cool experiment proving the process of photosynthesis by tying a clear bag over the leaves and watching as water exiting the leaf is collected at the bottom. When the video was finished, Eli came up to me and chuckled that he was introduced in the video as Mateo’s white friend! 

With my sun bathing over, I went inside and began to work on fixing Peter’s laptop. After doing something that was a little technical, all it needed was to sit with a WiFi connection and update. Unfortunately with the WiFi here that might mean sitting in the office to update for a couple of days! As I mentioned briefly yesterday, his laptop is quite nice. It’s a Windows laptop with decent components and I’m impressed. That’s not to say that someone out here having a nice laptop is a weird thing, it was simply something I was not expecting (the development out and access to technology out here is impressive!). After I set up the laptop to update, I went back to work on my computer. Towards the start of lunch break, Rambo came in and confirmed what I thought was a lie; he is a muslim! I didn’t know VST hired muslims (they’re a Christian organization), but I also see no reason why they would discriminate either as Jesus loves everyone! It was only surprising as I thought that he was making up a series of lies to Eli, Miraclin, and I. You never know when someone is messing with you for fun!

I worked until it was time to go to lunch around 2:00pm. Today we ate rice with a mini eggplant sauce. I’m not sure if they were actually mini eggplants as they didn’t look like eggplants, but it’s what Roza called them. The sauce and eggplant had a very interesting taste but one that paired well with the rice. The conversation for the meal was debates on religion, philosophy, and things of the world as there’s not much else to talk about since we three have already covered everything about our lives and experiences here. It’s always fun to have these types of conversations as Eli always plays the devil’s advocate. This typically leaves us with no resolution to any of our debates (as they should. A lot of things we talk about don’t have a definitive answer). 

Since I thought I needed to get back and teach, we left at 2:30pm to the office. When we arrived, Eli and I barged into the main office room to find an assessment going on! I felt bad that we were so disruptive, but I suppose that’s normal for any class environment. I sat down immediately and started working on my teaching lesson for the day and Eli left as soon as he could! Even though I wasn’t paying that much attention to the assessment, the applying teacher did not seem to do very well. Perhaps I’m too harsh and have too many expectations, but he was supposed to teach the concept of cells and I couldn’t understand anything. It didn’t help that the education department wasn’t engaged and never got “rowdy” like Jonathan said they would. I also think the education department set him up for failure as the marker they gave him for the white board was so dried out you couldn’t see a single thing he wrote! I hope the aspiring teacher did better on the second part of his interview.

The assessment finished and it was time for me to teach (Eli was joining me today as well). My time was once more cut short so we focused on how to use Microsoft Word and Google Docs to draw diagrams and pictures for their exams. I taught the first half of the lesson on Google Docs which was a little frustrating as Google Drawings needs the internet for some reason to work. It took a while to get everyone into Google Drawings, but once everyone was in, the learning was seamless. When we draw on Google Docs and Microsoft Word, it’s essentially placing shapes, lines, and text in a way that demonstrates a specific concept. It’s not the most intuitive at first, but as long as you can break down the thing you want to draw into its most simplest components, it’s smooth sailing from there. When it was Eli’s turn to teach Microsoft Word drawing, he turned out to teach it on the fly. The whole reason I gave him the responsibility of teaching Microsoft Word is that he knew how it worked! Nevertheless, he did a very good job! I think Word does a better job with making drawings as it doesn’t require the internet and gives a lot more customizability for its users. 

While Eli taught, I supervised and helped. It was completely unintentional, but I ended up farting in front of the entire class (I hope no one noticed!). After that embarrassing moment, I walked around and helped everyone navigate the programs. I was told I should walk around with a stick as a joke to make sure all of my students were well disciplined! Towards the end when everyone had the drawing programs under their belt, we had a drawing competition to see who could draw the best house! It was funny to see everyone’s attempts. Some people made a house while others made something that resembled nothing!

The time was over and it was time to go to volleyball! Eli came with me to my house to change quickly where I learned that Joseph was going to the church again. If I haven’t mentioned it yet, he’s Roman Catholic so I’ll be looking forward to church service on Sunday! Once I was changed we went to Eli’s house so he could change and stopped by Peter's house to talk and check on the ball. The volleyball has been getting destroyed the past couple of days and the panels on it are falling off. I think it's a combination of the ball being pumped up to a ridiculous amount and the fact that we’re always kicking it like a soccer ball when it gets launched away. I’m thinking that with the tiniest amount of super glue we could reattach some of the panels, but Peter is worried about destroying the ball permanently (super glue does chemically melt things). He wants to get a new ball, but to get a good one is quite expensive, around 100,000 shillings (around $40 USD). I think the reason that a ball is so expensive is because of our location! Transporting a volleyball from Dar Es Salaam is expensive.

I advised to let out just a little bit of air out of the ball and Eli and I were off on a quick jog to warm up. Volleyball doesn’t get us tired like soccer so we figured we needed to do some running beforehand. We ran four times around the soccer field while lots of students who just finished cleaning the school watched us. At one point a couple kids joined us in our jog! The running reminded me how enjoyable it is to simply run for fun!

With our running warm up finished, we went to play volleyball as players began to trickle in. The students filled in a lot of the spots as most of the adults we played with were already starting their weekend cleaning. Regardless, it was a ton of fun! I didn’t play as amazing as I did yesterday, but was still able to contribute to a winning team. I typically play as the setter where my sets are good about half of the time. The more I play the more respect I have for everyone that’s good at the game. Volleyball is quite technical! While setting the ball over and over again, my blister cracked and started bleeding. It hurt a lot but after I rubbed it in some dirt, it started to feel better. I should also mention that since we play on a dirt court, by the end of the game your entire body is covered in a film of dust! When the students left, we were left with some pretty small teams. My team had three and Eli’s had four. Even though we were disadvantaged numbers wise, we ended up winning most of the sets. Alfred showed up for a bit and is such a funny nonchalant player. All in all it was a great evening of playing!

When the game ended, we had a very short brief and I went back with Eli to his house. Jordan invited us to play the piano and we performed the song we practiced yesterday. I played the chords and Eli sang! Jordan wanted to teach me the “Congalese” way to play the chords he taught me yesterday. The chords themselves aren’t difficult, but when you play them at the blistering speed Jordan does it gets difficult quickly. I practiced while Eli talked with Jordan. Eventually Eli came back to the piano and I asked if we could search up some jazz chords. I was immediately in over my head and would need a lot more practice before I could play any jazz! Jordan went to check if Roza had hot water for us, but came back empty handed. Out of Jordan’s kindness, he began boiling water for Eli and I with his electric kettle (brings me back to the days with Paul). With Eli’s water ready, he went to shower while I sat and figured out how to play happy birthday by ear! Eventually my water was ready too and I was told to bathe quickly to get back in time for food! I raced home, grabbed a large bucket to put the hot water in from Roza’s house, made my warm water, took my bucket bath, got dressed, and cleaned my cut. With a fresh band aid on my hand, I returned Roza’s bucket and went back to Eli’s house

When I got back to the house, they were already eating dinner and I joined in (I didn’t think I took that long to bathe, but maybe I did). Jordan was very kind and gave up his seat so I could sit near the meal. The bandaid to protect the cut on my thumb did not last long eating ugali and got gross immediately. I took it off after a couple minutes as I figured it’d be fine without it (if I pack enough ugali into the wound it’ll heal faster I think). For Jordan’s dinner we were eating this type of mushroom/soy thing that is packaged in Malawi! I’m not sure if it’s actually mushroom or if it was all soy, but it was very good. The texture and taste almost reminded me of ground beef! There was also some avocado with salt which is always the star of the meal for me! Jordan and Rastaboni talked with us before it was time for Eli and I to go to Roza’s house for another dinner. Since we were technically mooching off of someone’s dinner, we only ate a little bit and still had room for more.

At Roza’s house we ate ugali, eggs, and greens! Frankly it was amazing, yet Roza was being very apologetic about not providing more food. We made sure to tell her how thankful we are to eat and enjoy each other’s company. With the meal over, we talked about Thomas who is a Harvey Scholar that came out to Tanzania a couple of times. Roza knew Thomas well as he was in Bukimau for his second visit and got quite close with Roza. Thomas is on the louder person and his host just happened to hate noise (what a perfect combo). Whenever Thomas wanted to make noise, he’d be kicked out to Roza’s house to make it. Roza told us a couple of stories about Thomas which were all hilarious. The one that stuck out to me the most was when his brother in America was having his birthday so Thomas decided that called for a massive party to occur. He bought tons of bananas, watermelon, and pineapple and ended up making over 30 liters of juice on top of fruit ready to eat for the entire village to come over and enjoy. There was a ton of dancing, talking, eating and overall a good time! I think I could use a fruit party like that.

Another point of conversation was about how Dorris doesn’t get back from school until 10:00pm every night! There is simply so much to study that you must stay that late to stay caught up on all of the learning. I can’t even begin to imagine how hard the students work here day in and day out and have so much respect for them all. 

After the conversation, it was of course time for a dance party and we danced for about an hour! Lots of fun songs and moves. I’m not sure why, but the dancing this time around made me super thirsty and I was drinking so much water. Roza thankfully has a filter and filters water for us where she keeps it in a bucket on the table! Otherwise we’d be spending a lot of money on water bottles! In Madisi we didn’t have to ever buy water as every other day, we were handed a completely full bottle of water (and had a filter in the office)!

We danced the night away (until 11:10pm) and were all exhausted. We parted ways, I got ready for bed, blogged, and went to bed! Getting back so late means that I don’t have the energy nor time to blog very much. I’m going to need to start writing less so I don’t get too behind on writing my blogs! Regardless, I’m excited to start cleaning tomorrow and see everything we get to do!