The Rainy Season is Here!!

The Rainy Season is Here

For a while now, the rains have been tempting us with appetizers of evening rain showers, satisfying our hunger for some cooler weather and less fine red dust. I do believe last night was the beginning of the rainy season here in Tanzania. It began raining around 8 PM, rained throughout the night, and as we woke up it was still raining. Unfortunately, we forgot to bring in the newly washed clothes, and so they went through a couple of extra rinse cycles in the last 12 hours : ) It was so cool this morning, that I put on a long sleeve shirt to feel more cozy, and made an extra pot of French press coffee. It was so loud last night falling asleep to the pitter patter of the rain storm, that I eventually had to put in my ear plugs. It is especially loud here, all day long, but at night especially when we are drifting to sleep, because we do not have proper window that close. All of our windows have screens to keep out the bugs, but the windows are slatted and do not close all of the way, even when they are in their upright position. This is great when there is wind and the house needs to cool down, but at night you can hear every neighbor talking, car passing, dog barking, and car passing.

Last night we had over our friends Meghan and Travis (our Arusha adventure friends) for dinner. I made a tomato/vegetable sauce from scratch (even boiled the skins off the tomatoes so it would be less sour, and baked lasagna. The ovens here are a bit weird, and you never really know what temperature you are setting, so the noodles could have been a bit more cooked, but all in all, it was quite good (if I do say so myself). We feasted on morsels of mango-pear cake, banana bread, and chocolate-banana bread (yes, I’m soon opening up a bake shop….Barb, how are the plans for your café coming? I’m in with my breads!) and ice cream (supposedly vanilla, but tastes more fruity). Meghan is leaving for nearly a month to go back to Durham, visit her family, and then spend a bit of time in Amsterdam with her Dutch boyfriend. We will miss her, but especially Diego. He has grown quite fond of her, in absence of his other older girlfriends back home (Emma, Avery, Jane, Julia, and Rowan). So this was her farewell, bon voyage dinner. We’ll adopt her pal Travis this month, as he’ll be quite lonely without his comrade.

Speaking of Emma…Yesterday, we were outside looking for the once-again-missing soccer ball (I am now quick to blame our gardener, who I think is full of mischief), and Diego said to me, “Emma took the ball.” I asked him if Emma could tell us where it was. He promptly put in a “phone call” to her, by putting his hand to his hear, and calling her. He had a full conversation with her concerning the whereabouts of the ball, and then told me, “She doesn’t know, mama.” I laughed so hard….

I have finished four books so far: The Pursuit of Happyness (I rate it a 3 on a scale of 10 – inspiring story in the end, but I didn’t like the main character all that much – kind of a slimy guy. I wonder how he is portrayed by Will Smith in the movie; I imagine less slimy.), The Undomestic Goddess (Rating – 7, not a sophisticated read, but humorous and I could totally relate!), The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency (Rating – 6, clever and set in Botswana, Africa, so it gives me a further flavor of the culture.), The White Maasai (Rating 7 – the writing is TERRIBLE; it is a German translation, and clearly the author is not a writer, but her story is FASCINATING. She visited Kenya with her boyfriend, met a Maasai warrior, fell in love at first sight, ended up moving to the African bush to live with him in a manyatta (mud and stick house), got married, had a baby, opened up a business, then realized that after malaria and hepatitis, she could no longer live in such conditions and returned back to Switzerland with her daughter. It was amazing what she went through – all for her devout love – and I was captivated by the story, but spent the entire time wishing that the author knew what a complex sentence was. I am in the midst of reading, The State of Africa (a historical piece that puts the last 50 years of the independence of Africa into perspective and helps to explain why things are so very, very underdeveloped and behind here…everyone is corrupt…This is a wonderfully written book that is not at all like the boring history books I read in college. I recommend it to anyone who has an interest in learning about the most recent past and current situation of Africa. It is very comprehensive, and thoroughly enjoyable to read, though difficult to digest all at once, so I take it chapter by chapter each day. The author is Martin Meredith.), and The Coming Plague (probably shouldn’t have started that here – it’s quite frightening to read about ebola and other deadly outbreaks, of course all happening in Africa within the last 50-60 years. Again, another fascinating and compelling read, but I can literally only stomach small morsels at a time. I begin to think that every stomach ache or small fever I or Diego develops is the start of something terrible. Laurie Garrett is the author, if you are interested in the worst of all infectious diseases.). I’m planning to go rain Meghan’s bookshelves this evening to stock up on more books, and hopefully my mother got my reading request list. Our friends who had been here this past summer did warn us that we should bring a lot of reading material, but in the frenzy of packing up our house, I did not have time to borrow books from folks, and so I came with almost no reading material. Everyone here has many books, though, and I imagine at the rate I am reading, I’ll devour most of that. It is GREAT to be reading again. I have missed recreational reading, with working and taking care of Diego and such. By the time I finish the day, I have barely enough energy to plop in front of the TV for an hour. But here, I have a lot of time, and fill much of it with reading either in our living room or out on the patio, watching Diego play in the dirt. Diego is reading a lot more, too, with less toys around. He just now looked through about four new books that were loaned to him, and proceeded to tell me what was happening in each picture. I love that his love of literacy has been cultivated at such an early age, and I only hope that he continues to love to read as much as Christian and I do.

I wish I had more to write about. I’ve been home a lot this week, hosting play group on Tuesday (I prepared for that all morning), and then cooking all day Wednesday for our dinner party. The only outing I had was a walk down to Uptown market, just down the road from where we live, partly to make Diego tired so that he would nap, and partly to go scope out the Diet Coke situation. I discovered that production of Diet Coke here is very low because people do not drink it much; they prefer the sugary Coke (and it is so much sweeter when bottled). So, until bottles are returned to stores, they cannot purchase more Diet Coke. This weekend I’ll see how many empty bottles I can gather from folks in the compound so to help the shop owner so he can buy more Diet Coke. All in a day’s work, eh?