Life, Friends and Cheese

Swahili Word of the Week: Safari Njema- safe travels

Weather: Cooler and the rains have arrived. Torrential downpours that last 20-30 minutes, flooding streets, and making for the walk home in flip flops a laundry nightmare. All my clothes have mud specks flipped up the back.

Special Shout Out: Mum and Ronnie. Thanks for the mail. Such a treat to get good old snail mail. I loved it!


Life, Friends and Cheese

Coming up to my 3-month anniversary in Dar and Tanzanian (April 23rd) I have had a little flashback to my early days and also a flash forward to life that is. On first arrival I was taken in by TZ’s kindness, change of pace and exoticness. Now three months down the line I have become more blasé and lost a bit of perspective of how life is different here. I have got into a somewhat routine. I have made friends, I can fill my time quite easily. I understand my job, I feel that I am doing a good job and work well with all my colleagues.
This week we had a mobile library training for our librarian managers and librarian assistants. My perspective on time, as I mentioned before, has been taking a beating. Things move so slowly here! A training that should be one day is 5 (though I got it shortened to two). I am keeping my fingers crossed that librarians will be up and running when I do site visits in 1 month (both are around a 16 hour bus ride away, lord help me!)

In essence, I have become very comfortable here and ultimately happy. I have become used to power outages, that generally 9 out of the 10 channels on TV are in Swahili, that crossing the road is a Russian roulette every time, that I am constantly damp with sweat, that buying produce is either from the guy on the bicycle with baskets on the back piled high with veggies and fruits OR men on the sidewalk with small piles of tomatoes, chilis, peppers, eggplant or lychees. I am used to no cheese.

Nothing like a little trip to change some perspectives. Last weekend I went up to Nairobi and then Nanyuki for a visit with my African Family. For those that haven’t heard the stories of how my parents met the de Boers and the Campbell/Duckworth clans, ask me sometime. It is a bookworthy story. I am blessed to have them out here and they showed me a weekend to remember. It was so nice to be among people who knew me well, to be able to relax, let my hair down and be. In previous visits to Nairobi I had seen at as an African city, with its busyness, street stalls and traffic. After living in Dar it was suddenly a Mecca. They had coffee shops! With real coffee! Nakumatt grocery that sold everything under the sun! Thump bought me blender, my cooking life in Dar will forever be changed. And Fi took me shopping for all sorts of excitement including a fitted sheet so I won’t wake up twisted in a flat sheet with my face pasted to my polyester mattress. It was a haven of excitement. I was lucky to be able to go birding with expert, hike up parts of Mt Kenya with gorgeous views, clean air and great conversations (and see a cool chameleon), play tennis and have some lovely conversations and laughs with friends. Coming back to Dar from Nairobi took another adjustment. But coming back was nice, when I walked in the door it was good to be “home”. Not only that, I imported a shocking amount of cheese from Nairobi, this paired with the box of wine that I constantly have chilled in my fridge gave me great excitement this week after coming home for work. Can you overdose on cheese? I don’t know, but if you don’t hear from me in awhile you’ll know why!