Last week (2/26/2006)

Things have been a bit different the last week. Power seems to come on every other night and disappear every other morning. For some reason I could not send texts or receive phone calls Sunday night so I missed my call home for the week. Also because of school farm work the students were only in half of my classes.

On the plus side I spent a long time reading the mail on my inbox. I just finished running a 5K Kili fun run in perfect weather looking at Kilimanjo with fresh snow and perfect clouds. I ran the race in classic T fashion walking shoes untied, and without training, but managed the jog with only minimal sweat and tired legs in a little over 30 minutes. That's a pretty slow pace but it was a wonderful morning and the fee was less than a dollar and I got a t-shirt. We'll see if next year I can run a real marathon.

Also while I am bragging about half achieved goals. I think I would like to have one month of spending a dollar per day. I did not try last month and this month will probably be shot because of the upcoming PEPFAR week in Moshi, but maybe the month after. I think this weekend excluded my febuary tab is close to 25,000 but dinner last night was 4000 shillings. I just bought a towel today for 3500 and lunch was that much again. It is impossible to live cheap in the city but at site it is hard for me to spend 6000 in a week.

Although I am still far from fluent my kiswahili improved considerably last week. I am throwing kiswahili words because the students seem to really enjoy it (and not understand it otherwise). Being assistant teacher on duty again combined with the form five and six students being gone I think is the reason for my improvement. As TOD I get lots of people speaking in Kiswahili telling me about a problem, which usually I don't understand but I am getting to learn how to guess what they are talking about and then help. Then with the absence of form 5 and 6 students there are less people who speak English and more who use kiswahili.

Another highlight of the week was that I got fresh milk last week. For 300 per liter it is fairly cheap and tastes great. The down side is that one liter is alot for one person per day and there are a couple of negative aspects to getting fresh milk. The most obvious (and also the least consequencial) reason is that the cost 300 per day is a big setback in my dollar per day ambition. There is also the time it takes to boil the milk and finally it may only come as liter per day every weekday delivery after breakfast. However I have the most time on the weekends and the easiest use of milk is ugi, basically a breakfast porridge.

Still cooking it up,
T.