African sky, wazungus and expectations

So I've come to realise that im totally obsessed and in love with the African sky! Night, morning, day, dusk..it's always so beautiful. I especially love when it's about to storm and the entire sky looks like it is being swallowed into darkness. the huge black cloud moves so quickly (as Nathan pointed out it reminds you of Independence Day when the giant mothership or whatever is taking over the sky) and then the rain comes on so suddenly and so hard. The entire family runs outside trying to get all the washing in but the downpour is tremendous and you just have to sit inside and do your own thing because if you try to talk you can't hear eachother. Even though I do love the rain it has meant there is flooding in Southern Tanzania, Mozambique and Uganda I think. Africa just can't win, droughts when the rains fail and then flooding when they don't.

This last Sunday, feeling very restless and bored Nathan and I climbed up a small mountain (well more like a big hill) near his house. It was so beautiful and we took tonnes of pictures. We found this huge, amazing, prehistoric glue tree that makes you feel like your back in the time of cavemen. The ancient Tanzanians used to get glue from it because if you hit it with a rock or break off a bit of the branch its filled with glue..and its realllyyy sticky!!! We even saw a green tree snake as well as lots and lots of lizards. It was a fun day because I got to climb trees and scale rocks and look off into the hills that remind me a lot of the Lord of the Rings. It made me really want to go to Isimila which is a stone age site just out of iringa that is supposed to be so beautiful. Soon soon!

On sunday morning i made banana pancakes for my family thinking that they'd love them because they love chapatis and they love bananas...but no! I think its just because the kids at my house are SO fussy! They hardly eat anything, thats my excuse anyway. It wasn't so bad because i got to eat lots of pancakes with syrup...yumm!!! It was fun though because as my swahili gets better I've been able to talk more witht he house girl, marietta and she is so funny. the only thing she can say in english is "I said nooooo" in this really strange accent and it is the funniest thing I've ever heard! I say it back to her in swahili "Nilisema hapannaaaa" but it just doesn't have the same ring to it!! I've been helping her with the dishes and washing aswell and she loves it when I help and is always surprised that I can wash dishes. hahaha

We've been planning our next lesson which will be about equality! Our plan is really good and we've found out names of all these really cool African women who are doing amazing things..namely Rose Migiro who is the vice secretary of the UN and she's from tanzania. How cool is that??? I'm excited to drum my feminist beliefs into the Tanzanian girls...haha just joking but it is very evident the discrimination that exists in Tanzanian culture but it is slowly changing. Literacy rates among women increased by 10% between 1990 and 2004 whilst in men it only increased by 2% and although women are still behind, they are slowly catching up! It's exciting!!!

Ohhh and Bottoms Up (our favourite hang out) is closing down on march 10th...im so sad! I feel like im losing my second home hahaha. But they are having a massive closing down party on March 5th and the SPW and Peace Core volunteers are all dressing up!! It shall be fun but now we have to find a new pub and we can't go to twisters (the other good one) because they are the reason Bottoms is closing...we are loyal customers!

Sooo tanzanian life is racing on and the time is going by so quickly and everday im meeting new people (there are tonnes of wazungu's in Iringa aswell - i think its a big base for voluntary work) and having all my expectations go down the drain. No more expectations...T.I.A has become our new motto "This is Africa" and everytime something doesn't go to plan or the post office tries to make you pay $50US to pick up a package someone will always be there to remind you "T.I.A my friend...TIA!!!"

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