I'll See Ya In Tanzania: Saba Saba

So most of us Peace Corpsers live in families with running water. Which really, is great. Except, you start to rely on it and then it goes away. The water shuts off from time to time - for a few seconds, a few minutes, a few hours, or a few days. I'm starting to figure out some of the tricks (i.e. unexpectedly a lot of rain means you'll lose water for quite awhile - hours or days) but I'm still mostly unaware. Theoretically, these shut off's shouldn't be a big deal, because you keep stores of water in buckets for when this happens. You should keep stores of water, that is, but sometimes you don't because you are a dumb American.

Let me back up. Taking a cold shower goes something like this: You wake up and think "holy hell I don't want to get up, and I really don't want to get up and take a cold shower." So you trick yourself by getting up to pee then just freakin' turn the knob while you're in the bathroom, suppress a scream as the water hits you, and try to get completely wet as quickly as possible so you can turn the water off. Then you soap up, and do a rinse. Except sometimes the water shuts off while you're sudsing up. This has happened a few times, but I've had water at the ready so it wasn't a big deal. Yesterday I got cocky and decided I didn't need to have extra water. Of course, the water shut off.

It isn't until you realize you are standing naked in the bathroom, completely covered in soap and shampoo, with no way of rinsing off, that you know you are truly out of your element.

Anyway, I now have a bucket of water in my bathroom. I will always have a bucket of water in my bathroom.

What else is new? We had half a day off on Saturday to play sports. We all met up at some school and just played games for like four hours. It was really really great. With the combination of weird cultural issues, a busy schedule and my general laziness, I hadn't done any form of exercise at all, except walking because that's my only means of transportation, since I arrived in country. Being active was awesome. We played ultimate (with you're disc Matt, thanks!), soccer, kickball and random relays. My small group won the piggyback race despite the fact that I collapsed during my leg. Got a sweet battle wound.

Today I did lotsa laundry with the help of the family. Except I have to wash my own erm, delicates, so I did that while my family was at church this morning. They leave the house at 6am and today didn't get back until 10am, intense. I had the house to myself so I just washed underwear and rocked out to Katy Perry. It was excellent. Oh that reminds me, the radio here plays an interesting combo of what I think is traditionalish Tanzanian music, weird new Tanzanian rap music, and American dance club music. Anyway, I often end up laughing quietly to myself (LQTM, its the new LOL) while I eat dinner with my host family with some Black Eyes Peas song blasting in the background.

So later we went to the market to get some clothes and just check it out. I ended up just getting one thing, but its a pretty sweet Zanzibar soccer jersey. I paid Tsh 9000 which is like $5.75. Probably the foreigners price, but we (okay, 95% my host mom, 5% me) got it reduced from 12,000 so whatever, I'll take it. We got it at a big street market that just runs on Sundays. It was super crowded and apparently a hotbed of pickpocketers. I was hyper aware of my surroundings and was continually checking my pockets and such, but I was actually surprised how little attention I got as the white dude. The market is called "Saba Saba" which means "Seven Seven." Though no one seemed to know why it was called that, I guess Tanzania (or Swahili speaking countries in general..?) have mini holidays when the date and month are the same. So next Saturday is "Saba Saba," since its the 7th of July. Maybe its connected. Who knows.

In Swahili, people refer to pork as "kiti moto" which literally translates to "hot seat." Everyone seems confused as to why we would think this is weird and can give no explanation for it. I don't understand.

K, picture time.

view from just a couple minute walk up the mountain from my house. Oh yeah, I live on a mountain.

This is at Morogoro Secondary School, where I have class about half the time, and where starting next week (eek!) I'll be teaching very part time. They've had a super popular traveling preacher chilling there for the last week.