May 15th - Kwa Heri Moshi!

It’s Cold and I’m Cranky! Kwa Heri Moshi!

So, it has gotten cold here. Not East Coast freezing cold, but damp cold, enough so that I wish I had a pair of sweat pants and a pair of those colorful slipper socks that my Nanna would give me every Christmas. And knowing that it has been so beautiful and warm in Durham does not make this rainy season any easier. I will admit, though, I prefer the damp weather and mud to the red dust from March that infiltrated our house and mouth and nostrils. While the mud is a nuisance, it’s really not as bad as I expected, and it falls off of shoes quite easily once it has dried. Our clothes take at least two days to dry, though, and it’s no good leaving them outside as they would only get rained on over and over again. So, as I sit here on my fourth to last night in Moshi, I am staring at our weekend’s clean laundry, strewn over every chair back and window pane, hoping that by tomorrow evening it will be ready for folding. I am wrapped in a new robe I had made here, over a nightgown, and inside of a blanket, wearing fuzzy slippers, and I am still chilled. And Nairobi is supposed to be cooler…..this makes me nervous.

So, today is Monday (as I write, but you will most likely be reading this Tuesday and beyond). We leave on Friday morning, 6:30 AM, on a shuttle for Nairobi. The ride should take 6-8 hours, I think, but one never knows with rain, road conditions, and border patrol. We will be staying with Judd and Ramona, friends from the Duke Med Peds Program. They currently live in Nairobi with their three kids, as Judd is doing work as an infectious disease fellow through University of Washington, the same program Christian will be joining in July. We’re supposed to be checking out the city for a possible one year stint two years down the road, but I am looking more forward to being out of boring Moshi and in a big city! (For those of you who have not yet guessed, I have not fallen in love with Africa, and a year long trip back here would take some serious negotiations at this point.) Without a car, and especially given the rain and mud, our outings have lessened, which means I’ve been more housebound, and it’s about driven me mad. On top of that, there has been no electricity from about 7:30 AM to 6:30 PM each day. So, the one domestic activity I have enjoyed during the day (other than playing a 300th game of bingo with Diego, that is) – cooking and baking – has been curtailed, and now I just sift through the refrigerator during the day, trying to find something we can eat that doesn’t require cooking, baking, blending, frying, boiling, or toasting. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. My suspician is that the housing administration of the medical center here systematically turns off the electricity during the day because they figure everyone is at work anyways, and they will save money. There is no good discussing this problem with them now, but it has got me so frustrated that I’m about to scream! I’ve got two dinner parties planned this week, and cooking for them has become quite a chore, but I think I’ve got it planned out so that most things will just take some time to heat up when the power goes on at 6:30 and we’ll be able to eat by 7:30 easily. Since there’s really nothing to do around here at night anyways, a laterish dinner is no big deal for most folks. Right now, I’m baking a lasagna, green beans, and a cake – all for dinners sometime this week in the future!

Tonight we are having my friend Janine and her husband Simon and two kids (Luke, 2, Hannah, 10 mo.) over for a vegetarian dinner. Then, tomorrow I am attempting as best as I can to make Mexican food (with some variations) for the Duke folks that have been so kind to us here in the compound. Thursday night will be our usual pizza gathering at Uptown Market, and then we’ll head to Nairobi. That’s the plan!

I’ve been thinking about the things that I definitely WILL NOT miss about this place: our cold, unfriendly house, barred windows, cement floors, hand washing clothes, hang drying clothes, ironing clothes, ants, beetles, all flying bugs (including the nasty flying termites that come out every so often, mate, then die on our porch - the Tanzanians collect them to fry up and eat; I just get grossed out by them), slippery mud, dust, bad roads, body odor, dangerous drivers, bugs and sticks and rocks in the vegetables, beans and rice, bread without preservatives (it goes moldy so fast here!), intermittent electricity, noisy early mornings, uncomfortable foam mattresses, ugly curtains that don’t match the furniture, peeling paint, limited hot water and drippy showers, the leaky tub, no car, and moldy ceilings that are about to cave in. Oh, and long boring days with very little to do other than Tuesday morning playgroup and an occasional trip to town to go shopping for food.

What I will miss: 30 cent avocados (they call them butter pears here…yum…), shopping at the market and spending $5 for a week’s supply of vegetables and fruit, El Rancho (our favorite Indian restaurant), chipati (though, I’m sure I can find that in the US), our new friends, seeing lizards and geckos everywhere, getting custom-made clothes for $5-$10, passion fruit juice and the yogurt shakes at the Coffee Lounge. I already miss seeing the animals on safari, but we don’t see those here every day anyways.

What I look most forward to returning to the US: Having a car, driving, grocery shopping in one place instead of five, having things to do during the day, all of my friends, eating out at all our favorite restaurants – but most especially eating tender meat and Mexican food, Starbuck’s, the mall, getting a haircut and a pedicure, carpet, hot showers with good water pressure, clean smelling people, going to the movies, catching up on all of the US gossip (both personal and celebrity), reading a US newspaper and Newsweek magazine, catching up on 3 months of missed TV (Grey’s Anatomy, Lost, Brothers and Sisters, etc.), watching Season 3 of ‘24’, cuddling with our cats, sleeping in a comfortable bed with soft sheets, drinking good beer, sour cream, and being HOME SWEET HOME.

So, here’s our tentative schedule for those of you that are interested. We return May 26 to good old RDU airport and will promptly go to Tyler’s Taproom for food and friends reunion (if our plane arrives on time). Christian starts working for one more month at Duke while I will wrap up things in Durham – I’ve got a ‘to do’ list of 35 items already. Diego and I will leave on June 2 to Seattle for some house hunting and my friend’s baby shower. We’ll return to Durham June 15 in order to attend a few good-bye dinners. Then, Christian has to drive cross country and arrive to Seattle by June 29. I will be working in Dallas, TX from the 24th-29th, then I’ll fly to Seattle to meet him. We’ll be staying with my friend, Tracey, and her husband, Shane, in West Seattle. Christian has one month of classes then begins working on the wards, while I will have 3 more weeks of travel, working for AVID at the summer institutes. Hopefully sometime in August we’ll close escrow on a new highly overpriced house, move in, and get settled. Boy, do I look forward to that!

I’ll try to update the blog with a post from Nairobi. Oh, the one thing Christian looks most forward to in Nairobi is eating at a place called Carnivore – they serve meat like at those Brazilian steak houses, on a stick. But the meat they serve is impala, zebra, warthog, etc. Yummy….I’ll be sure to give you the full update on that if we end up going.

I look forward to seeing some of you in person, phoning others of you, and please keep in touch! I have missed you all so much! Kwa Heri to Moshi! Jambo, Nairobi!