food, kariakoo, and the village museum in dar

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Well I just wrote a beautiful blog message and just as i was going to send it over the satelite waves, my computer shut down and i lost it. ugh. i will say quickly what i wanted to say in a more more eloquent way.
i cant provide pictures at this time due to the slow internet, though i will look around for faster internet. i am not taking pictures anyway outside of my dorm because the camera i have now is an expensive video camera and theft is possible, frequent, and i dont want to risk it. i will wait until i get my regular camera sent to me. i apologize.
on food,
i wake up in the morning and walk 20 minutes to the administration buildings where there is a lovely outdoor cafe. i eat a fried dough ball and coffee or tea for 40 cents. its amazing how many different varieties there are of friend dough!!! something like 9, different shapes, different amounts of fried-ed-ness. at lunch i avoid the cafeteria even though it only costs 50 cents a meal because it is not so good for vegetarians. the administration cafe is much better, i eat a big load of bean stew and rice every day with a bit of cooked cabbage or spinach and a soda as water is getting very boring and i need sugar from all of the salty tasting food. not so sure how good for me this diet is, but hopefully i will learn to vary a bit. i had fried fish once and will probably have more. usually the fish they have is heavily salted and dried. ick!. sometimes i have chipati, a fried dough pancake instead of rice. or ugali, a mush ball you mop the bean stew up with. (cheers to eating ugali with your hands, i feel much closer to the food this way).
in any case, this week has been busy. i went with three friends to kariakoo market which is well known for its theft and busy-ness. it was certainly busy and there were many attempts to steal my things. one person would grab one arm and while i was looking at him another would come up to my bag or pockets. i need to learn to be more aggressive. then my bag was slashed with a razor blade which was ok since i wore a money belt, was expecting it, and didnt put any small objects in it that could fall out. i later sewed the bag and it is as good as new. i did not want to yell "thief" because the man certainly would have been killed, though i saw him do it and could have easily identified him. "mob justice" is common here and since people look down upon theft so much, people run to the accused person and beat them, many times to death.
the group of us went yesterday, monday, to the "village museum" which was interesting, though a bit disturbing. it was basically a group of 20 or so buildings built by some of the largest tribes of tanzania in their customary way. there was also "traditional" dancing and music. i could not tell if it was a legitimate way of sharing and preserving a diverse range of tanzania's culture or if it was a way of commoditizing these cultures, collapsing a group of diverse culture into one racist idea of a foreign, primitive, pre-colonial african. or if it was in a way a celebration of tanzania's "modernizing" which is really "westernizing" away from these customs,

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Photos

sunset from dorm
i get a nice veiw of the sunsets from the dorm since we are elevated. beautiful.

chess set
wish i had waited a bit to buy this since i am now going to be teaching english to the carvers at mwenge and could have bought it direct from them, but this is a very nice set and i have played a few games on it (And won)

Comments

[limagao]

Bless your heart!
That was really nice of you to spare the thief. I know how upsetting it can get being stolen from. Though I also avoid telling knowing the consequences the thief will face are just unimaginable. I saw a real picture of a man who was mobbed in Tanzania and it was really disturbing. By the way they later burn them to death after the stoning. I don't know whether this is still common theree , but in Kenya it is now not as bad. You also seem so smart getting around there laura :)

[Vrinda]

Wow---it sounds like you're having some really incredible day-to-day experiences! How did that "Village Museum" compare to that museum in DC that we ripped apart? :) I talked to Ariel today and we shared a moment of "aw wow, Laura's in Tanzania... " Keep up the posts... How is your school's library?