Life Update

It has been so long since I the last blogged, so I thought I would give you all a little update about what’s been going on in our life.

From our last post you can see that we had a great time in Zanzibar! It was a blast and it was really nice to get away from our daily working routine. But now it’s back to real life...

Work
It’s the second semester at school and I am teaching Entrepreneurship in Health to the 3rd year medical students. Things are going well so far, but the language barrier makes things difficult at times. Additionally, I just finished gathering data for a library needs assessment of 8 health training institutions in Southern TZ. Now I’m compiling a report and trying to get books and shelving for a number of libraries.

Moss has been working away with both marine park work and his law work back in the states. For the park he is making a great manual, complete with pictures of all the fish and their various samaki names so that the fisherman can properly identify the fish they are catching. He has also been working non-stop on a report for a client back at home (the topic is over my head, so I won’t even try to explain that one.)

Our Garden
It’s growing big time! We have actually been able to make real salads with spinach and mix greens. Anyone that knows me well knows this makes me really happy! We also have kale, various peppers, tomatoes, watermelon, broccoli (it’s kinda dying though), and a number of flowers growing. Our big papaya tree also has fruit on it. We planted a few other trees in our front yard; they are coming along slowly but surely.

Cooking
We now have a new amazing addition in our kitchen, a toaster oven! Yes, it is wonderful! It almost feels like we are cooking in America (besides the fact that we haven’t had running water for 4 days). We have been baking non-stop – we made banana bread, oatmeal raisin cookies, pizza, and last night I made whole wheat pita bread (and it tasted like the real thing, with the little pita pocket in the middle and all). In other culinary adventures, Moss rigged up a grill using a charcoal jiko so we have been grilling fish and steak. You can buy a huge piece of ‘steaki’, which is enough to feed 6 people, for 6,000 shilingi or about $4.00.

Adventures
On Saturday we had an interesting experience... We were dressed in our beach wear (for me that just includes shorts and a tee-shirt, but of course I wouldn’t dare to bare my knees in public, so I just wear a long black skirt on top of my shorts). So we hop on our bikes to ride to the beach, right as a man that Moss works with shows up at our house on a pikipiki. He rode all the way across town to remind Moss of the fundraising event happening at his church. He mentioned this function to Moss the previous week, but Moss completely forgot about it. So after his surprise visit, we decided that we really needed to just stop by and donate a little to the church. We thought we could simply slip in, stay for a few minutes, give a little pesa, slide out, and continue on our way to the beach. Boy, were we wrong!

So we ride to the church, which is actually about 20 minutes away. We did not know exactly where we were going, but we simply followed the sound of the loud music in the distance. This was a singing/dancing event, where the church choir and various performers were selling their CD to raise money. Despite the exciting performance, Moss and I became the show! We parked our bikes and just wanted to listen to a few songs, but suddenly all the kids have formed a circle around us and are just staring and giggling as we stood there watching the dancers. They were mesmerized by the new wazungu. You would have honestly thought that we were the ones jumping around and singing. We ended up staying for a little while; one community member even tried to get Moss to make a speech. Moss managed to dodge that one and we still made it to the beach for a quick swim before the sun went down. All and all it was a fun and interesting day. We told the pastor that we would love to join them next Sunday, so I will have to let you know how that goes.

Kali, Our Paka
We think she might be pregnant! (Or maybe she’s just getting fat!) We are not quite sure, but she has 2 boyfriends that will not leave her alone. Moss continues to scare them away, but who knows what kind of trouble she’s getting into when we are not around. We measured her belly and will measure it again in a week. Hopefully it will not grow. I’ll let you know.

I hope you all had a great Mother's Day! XOXOX