Weather: Hot & Humid. Occasional lightening and thunder so loud I woke up and almost peed my pants, followed by an immediate electrical outage for 16 hours…Swahili Word of the Week: Mboo- so rude, my instructor will not even say it out loud. He whispers it in my ear. It means penis. Unfortunately, it sounds like the word for vegetable, Mboga. I will NOT mix this up!
The Week:
It seems to be a week of excitement in Dar. Our office boy, Maganga, turned 25 this week. He is lovely and I got to witness some new birthday traditions, I can now add them to my repertoire. His thank you speech touched my heart as he stated “I am proud to be 25, and to have a birthday cake with my name on it!”. Another important birthday, my dear friend Jon. Happy Birthday Jon!!
My office is located in central Dar and there is always many happenings around. The BIG excitement this Friday was a car accident that happened right outside my window. This caused a hullabaloo that was beyond imagination. The giant crash first of all got all my co-workers excitedly running to my desk to look at what was happening. I think literally anyone that was in a 4 block radius came running through the streets to witness the confrontation with the TZ army officer driving the landy and the gentleman driving the vintage Mercedes. It lasted a good two hours with traffic stopped in all directions, everyone offering an opinion and the crowd growing rather than dispersing until finally the cars were pushed to who knows where…
I was invited to a kitchen party which I attended last night. Great fun. Mama Safe the Tanzanian nurse I work closely with said that “you can come on my umbrella”. Basically meaning I could come as her tag along Muzungo (white person). I was told it was like a wedding shower. Hmmmmm, it was not quite like that. I arrived thinking it would be small, intimate affair and I was nicely surprised. I arrived and it was a huge hall, with probably 150 women. It looked like a game show with stove, refrigerator, microwave and any type of utensil you could think of displayed proudly in the front (gifts from the guests). The dancing started at 4pm and probably ended around 1 am. My favorite ceremony (there were many!) was each table presented 1-4 kangas to the mother of the bride by dancing in a line and then wrap the kangas around her until she looked like the abominable snowman. She probably had about 50 kangas piled around her. All I can say is she must have been hot. We all got given sieves as party favours at the end of the night and as I meandered out around 1130, I looked back and caught a glimpse of 50 Tanzanian women dancing up a storm with sieves flying wildly above their heads. A night to remember!
Work has been very busy. I am excited because we have confirmation that our mobile libraries have been shipped and should be arriving mid Feb. I will be traveling to the different nursing schools to help train librarians on how to manage the libraries (our survey results stated that most nursing books currently in the nursing schools are published in 1950-1960, youch!) I am going up the Nation’s capital next week. It is described in my rough guide as “a disconsolately arid nowhere!” I will be there for 6 days, Yay?? The purpose is a meeting with all the deans of the nursing schools. We are converting many of the curriculums to be shorter and more defined in order to increase the workforce of nurses as they are desperately short over here.
Life is good!
a
xoxo
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