a weekend in which I accomplished very little but did a lot.

I had such a lazy weekend, schoolwork-wise. I can't say that I regret it, because I also had a lot of fun.

I taught class again on Friday, on rather short notice. The teacher asked me on Tuesday if I would teach on Friday, and under normal circumstances I would have said no, but because the last session went well and because this is why I am here, I said yes. Hesitantly. Unfortunately, this session did not go so well, so I don't really want to talk about it. Ha. But it was on pain management, a tricky subject for Tanzanians anyway, but combined with the limited class period and the language barrier, I think some students ended up confused. One in-service nurse asked me, "but why would we use a pain scale if we can tell by looking at a patient if they are in pain?" I thought to myself, "oh dear goodness. Is this for real?" The cultural attitudes towards pain here are just so different. So anyway. It was not great. But I survived, the students survived, and they have since reviewed the notes and additional resources I gave them, and talking to a few of them, it seems like they are okay. Whew. Moving on.

So since I taught on Friday and had spent the preceding few days preparing, I took Friday night off of schoolwork. Helen and I had plans to go back to Sikh Club with Jess and Candy to watch field hockey and eat Indian food. Our cab picked us up early so we got there about 30 minutes before the other girls. Helen and I caught like the last 2 minutes of the field hockey match (match? game?) because it started at 4:30. Darn it. But it was legit! Like the players wore uniforms and there were refs and fans and everything. Behind us on a chalkboard there was the league tournament schedule. We had heard there was field hockey, but in my head it was more like a practice than a game. Nope, these were full-fledged adults playing field hockey, like a city league. There was a DJ who was blaring music that alternated between Top 40 and Indian beats, playing FUN's "We Are Young" and then an Indian rock song. And after the game, the apparent owner of the place and some others were trying out new hockey sticks. It was pretty awesome. I wish we could have seen more of the game.

I didn't get a picture of the actual game, but the field is behind these guys, and you can kind of see the players.

On Saturday, Helen and I went into town in the morning to do some shopping. We went to the local market, which was an experience. It was a couple of blocks big, and crammed full of stalls full of vegetables, dried corn, baskets of anchovies, spices, and lots lots more. I wish I could have taken a picture but didn't want to take my phone out in the middle of the market. We didn't see many mzungus there, ha. The place was a maze of stalls. We passed a butcher with carcasses hanging in his stall. We were greeted with calls of "karibu mzungu!" The stalls were mostly made of scrap wood and many of them leaned precariously. The prices were cheap. If we weren't going to be walking for a couple more hours and carrying what we bought, I would have bought some small dark green watermelons. As it was, Helen found and bought a bunch of cilantro and we headed out.

We spent the next couple hours walking to different curios and other shops around town. It was my day to buy souvenirs, so we shopped around and compared prices and bought several things. I Curio in Moshi has fixed but reasonable prices, so it is a good place to go to get a feel for what the going rate is for things, as many of the curios sell similar products. Helen and I both had our eyes on carved wooden bowls, so each shop we went to we asked what their price was, as you can generally bargain. We tried bargaining down at a few shops but were met with resistance, so we will probably head back to i Curio next weekend and just buy them there, as they had the best price.

After we hit up several curios we realized we were right next to Uhuru Park. So we went in to get a snack from their food court. The food court is a row of vendor stalls, they look like snack bars, selling everything from lunches like they have at the cafeteria at KCMC to snacks such as kababu and samosas and maandazi. The food court is open to air and faces an open green area with picnic tables and benches. It's quite nice. We walked down the whole row of vendors and were greeted by each worker with either a "karibu," or a "welcome." I don't know if it's because they were mostly young and female, but the girls working the snack bars were much less pushy than most people selling stuff in Moshi, which was refreshing. We walked back down the row of snack bars and I stopped to buy a samosa, and Helen kept going to look further. There were two girls behind the counter and two other female park or vendor employees hanging out by the stall. One of the girls behind the counter had four or five vitumbua on a plate on the counter, which she was snacking on. I have a soft spot for vitumbua; it's a small...I don't really want to call it a pastry, but it's kind of like a muffin? Except it's not. But it's made from a batter of rice flour and coconut, among other things, which is probably why I like it so much. It's a food that, texture and taste-wise, could be Hawaiian. Anyway, so she's snacking on vitumbua but I don't see any in the display so I ask her how much they are. "500," she replies. I say okay and say I will just take a samosa, also for 500 Tsh. Vitumbua are sold at the canteen by KCMC for 300 Tsh. Helen comes to where I am and looks at the kababu. The other girl behind the counter hands me my samosa. The girl who has been snacking on the vitumbua handed one to her friend, and I asked her if I could have one. She points to her plate of dwindling treats and I nod. She hands one to me, and I happily take it and thank her. I tell Helen, "well, you should buy your kababu here now, since she just gave me a treat." She laughed and got a kababu. We took our snacks over to a bench and ate them contentedly. It was really quite perfect.

vitumbua on the left, kababu on the right. This was for tea one day at the school, but just to show you what they look like.

After we ate we walked over to Nakumatt, which is a supermarket, to get some groceries for the week, as well as some popcorn to eat while we watched a movie that night. We hit up yet another curio shop and then went home. We both took a nap and then we met Jess, Candy, and some of their friends to watch a soccer game at Meku's bistro. There was a bar with a TV behind it and locals filled the bar watching the game. We sat at a table behind them and drank soda (I had a Tangawizi-my favorite) while chatting and watching the game. After the game, Jess, Candy, Helen and I walked the 40 or so minutes to Jess and Candy's house in Rau. They are staying at a guest house that they share with several other people. The house was nice but it made me really glad that it's just me and Helen in our house, and that Helen isn't crazy-loud or annoying. She's actually quieter than I am, believe it or not. Anyway, we got to their house and we were all starving so Jess started cooking a Tanzanian vegan stew with rice. Helen and I felt like we were hovering so we went and sat outside. About 15 minutes after we got to their house it started to pour rain. Like, it was raining buckets. We just sat on the covered porch area and watched it rain while we snacked on some golden raisin challah bread they had gotten from the German bakery in Arusha. And then the power went out. Luckily the stove in their kitchen is gas so Jess continued to cook, and then we ate lentil and coconut stew with rice by flashlight at their dining table. Afterwards, Candy had gotten some of the cocoa that we had on safari and we boiled water and made hot cocoa and dumped popcorn into a bowl and watched The Lion King on a laptop. Well, we started to watch it. We had just gotten to the part where Simba returns to pride rock to challenge Scar when the battery died. I remember watching The Lion King in the theatres when I was a kid, and it's possible I've only watched it a couple times since, because it is so horribly sad. We had a good time pointing at all the animals we saw on safari though. By this time it was after 9pm so we headed home and crashed.

Sunday morning we were both on our laptops in the living room and I was being a good student and working on homework when Helen says, "there's a Christmas market today at a Zimbabwean sculpture garden from 11-5. Do you want to find it?" And I said yes. So we did homework for a couple more hours and then headed out on foot to find the Christmas market, which doesn't sound very adventurous, but it was. Helen had found an announcement for the Christmas market online, and the directions were probably not originally written in English and did not include any street names. So we left around 11 and finally found it just after noon. While we were walking around we passed lots of large, very posh homes on quiet dirt roads. We finally stopped at the gate of a hotel to ask for directions. There was a guard and I asked him if he knew where the sculpture garden was. Well, I don't speak Swahili, and this guard did not speak English, so he said yes to the garden and opened the gate and pointed around back. We said "um, okay" and walked into the courtyard of a fancy hotel. There was a bar and restaurant and a boutique and it even had its own curio shop. There was also a path through the gardens and bar area, so we followed the path around, on the off chance that the sculpture garden was, in fact, at this hotel. It wasn't. But we did find a gigantic, refreshingly cool-looking pool and we both kind of gasped. We had been walking for an hour and it was hot and sunny and we were sweaty and a dip in a pool sounded so awesome right then. We decided that no, the sculpture garden was not at this hotel, but if it was this easy to sneak into the hotel, we should totally come back sometime with our bathing suits. With a last longing look at the pool, we headed back out and thanked the guard and continued down the road. At this point one of Helen's friends replied to a text Helen had sent asking for directions, and we finally got a street name. Armed with that, we easily found the market, and I am so glad we didn't give up because it was great.

The market was at a house in a residential area, and there were indeed many sculptures outside. Vendors had set up tables and fabric gazebo/canopy things and were selling a variety of handmade goods. I bought several souvenirs here, because the stuff that was being sold was stuff not typically in the curio shops. Things like handmade soap, handwoven scarves and teatowels, local vanilla extract, etc. It was fantastic. And then. I saw it. MY bag. This requires a short bit of background information. When Paul and I were in Costa Rica a couple of years ago we were walking around Puerto Viejo and saw an old man with a cart of handmade leather shoes. They were beautiful shoes and I fell in love with them. At this point in my life I was still buying crappy, cheaper things rather than higher quality items I would have for longer and love, so spending $60 on a pair of handmade leather shoes was appalling to me at the time. But Paul convinced me that it was a unique item that would remind me of our trip, so with his encouragement I bought a pair of those woven leather shoes and he's right: every time I wear them I think of Costa Rica, and I get compliments all the time and Paul and I refer to them as my adventure shoes. So. This bag that I saw at the market. As soon as I saw it and touched it I knew it was the African equivalent of my Costa Rican adventure shoes. The leather bags are handmade by women in the Kilimanjaro region using mudcloth sourced from Malawi. They're beautiful. The problem was, it was pretty expensive, and I didn't have the cash. I sighed, got the girl's card and wandered away from the stall. Then I went back to look at it again. Then I went to a different stall and bought some bath salts for a girl in my office and met up with Helen. Then I went back with her to show her the bag. Then we started walking towards the exit and I told her I wanted to look just one more time. She took a picture of me with the bag and texted it to me.

We walked home and as we walked I determined that I was going to walk to the atm at the hospital, get some cash, and walk back and buy the bag. It was now 1:40pm and we had been walking since 11. I googled the company from the card the girl had given me, and noted that online the bags were selling for twice as much as they were in person (the prices were listed in USD, EUR, and GBP. Mzungu prices, my guess). I sent Paul a quick email telling him what I was going to do, rolled up my pants cuz I was effing hot, grabbed my ATM card, and left towards the hospital, which was the opposite direction of the Christmas market. On my way back, as I was taking the shortcut past the student hostels, a local called out "mambo, mzungu!" to me and I rolled my eyes, waved, and said "poa!" Whoops. He took that as an invitation to follow me, and talk to me, and then asked for my email address. I gave him one of my many email addresses and then hurried on my way. The market closed at 5, but Helen and I were going to a hash at 3:45, so I had to hustle. I got to the market and the girl at the bag stand greeted me, saying she had reserved "my" bag for me. I looked over all the other bags at the stall, but I already knew the one for me. I handed over a stack of shillings, she wrote out a receipt for me, I removed the tag from the bag, stuffed my other purse into it, and went happily on my way. I made it home at 3:00, poured myself a cup of water, made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and collapsed on the couch. I let my legs rest for about half an hour and then we left for the hash!

The hash route this week was beautiful. It went through a coffee plantation and followed a river for a ways, and there was a view of Kili for much of it, though the mountain was being shy and just poking her head out through the clouds. Helen decided to run it, because she is hardcore like that, but Jess and Candy and I walked at a comfortably brisk pace, enjoying the scenery and chatting with each other and other folk on the hash. I met a couple of Dutch doctors and a Tanzanian farmer who lived in Baltimore for several years. At the end of the hash we met up with Helen and I grabbed a Tangawizi and stood against the wall, behind the food tables. It was a strategic spot because I wasn't blocking anyone else from getting food, but I had easy and continuous access to it myself. I know, I know. Eventually Helen and Candy and a couple other younger people joined me and we held up the wall and snacked on samosas and watermelon. There was also a plate that had at one point held a carrot cake, and we ate the remnants of that. Overall, a very fun hash. The Bartletts drove us again, which was lovely of them. I don't think I mentioned, but they took Helen and I for pizza last Wednesday and bought our dinner. They said they are our Tanzanian parents. They are wonderful people.

By the time we got home from the hash it was almost 7. Helen and I showered, then I chatted online with my husband and read my book and fell asleep. So if we're judging based on how much schoolwork was accomplished, this was a very nonproductive weekend. However, if we look at the number of fun and memorable things I did, I would say it's a definite winner.