Yardwork and Chocolate Cake

I recently wrote about how some of the boys who graduated last year came to visit me. When they visited, they saw that the weeds in my yard were getting out of hand. I usually hire some students during school holidays to clean the weeds out because there are always students needing some pocket money, but it's been awhile since a school holiday! They said they'd come back on the weekend and help, and they wouldn't take any payment. 

Four of them were free the day they decided to come, so it didn't take too long. They were almost finished, just leaving a couple of piles that needed to be carried out, when the rain hit. It's still rainy season here, so it can come quickly and with a vengeance! It was pouring, so everyone ran for the house. 

Since they had said they wouldn't take payment for helping me, I made them a chocolate cake to say thank you, so we sat around eating cake and listening to music until the rain finally slowed and they were able to walk back into town. I did worry a bit about Bahati's blood sugar...he ate three big pieces of cake and four pineapple sodas. I think he bounced all the way home... 

 

Kitenge Fabric!

One thing I really love here is all the beautiful kitenge fabric! Some are printed with designs, and some are batik. I'm really trying not to get addicted to buying more...

Graduation isn't until September, but since I had the chance today to spend some time in the Kitenge market in Arusha, I decided to look for fabric for a new dress for the occasion. Which one do you think? I think I'm going to go with the yellow one on the top left. It reminds me of sunflowers! I think I'm going to use the leaf pattern below for an everyday dress. 

 

Visit from Last Year's Graduates

Some students who graduated last year contacted me and asked if they could come to visit me. On Thursday (the day I don't have any scheduled classes at school), a group of six students who graduated last year came over.  I made some no-bake (chocolate oatmeal) cookies and got some sodas, and we had a nice visit.  It was good to see them all again! Above are the boys: Innocent, Paulo, Daniel, Bahati, Gabriel and Meleji.  Most of the boys live in this area.  Gabriel and Daniel are from a town in central Tanzania, but they are visiting Monduli right now.  

We had a good laugh because Bahati is still as crazy as always--he decided to have a picture with long hair, so he sat next to me and draped my hair over his head.  😂

 

In Tanzania, form 4 ends in November, but form 5 (which is often a different school, and definitely a different program; Tanzania's system is similar to the British system with O-level and A-level) doesn't start until July or August to allow time to receive test results, apply to schools, etc., so they have several months' gap in between.  It's hard for teenagers to find jobs here as everyone knows they'll leave after a few months and even low-level jobs are mostly needed by adults, but they find what they can to do, and many of them are taking some enrichment classes at a local college, like a computer class or refresher classes in various subjects so that they don't forget everything before going back to school.  Most of the boys want to continue in the sciences in various ways; Daniel really wants to become a veterianarian, especially for livestock.  

The boys also noticed that the weeds around my house have gotten high, so they said they will come back over the weekend to do some yardwork for me.  I usually pay students to do it, but they said they don't want any payment.  Maybe I will make them a cake...

I enjoyed the visit from the boys!  It's good to see how they're doing and to know they haven't forgotten us from their old school already.  I look forward to seeing what they will do next! 

Going Up to the School

I'm heading down my road to go up to the school.  The students return today!  Schools have been closed since March 18th because of corona, so we've had about a three and a half month break.  It's not as bad as it could have been; our two-week spring break and our midterm break for the month of June would have been during this time, so we've only actually missed about two months of school time that we would have had. Most of the students are excited to get back; they've been rather bored.  

 

New Kitenge Dresses!

I know they aren't great pictures, but I got my two new dresses today!  I've had the top fabric for a long time, since only a few months after I arrived in Tanzania, but hadn't done anything with it before now.  The second fabric I bought here in Monduli recently.  I didn't really need it, but I really like the pattern and it's just nice to have something new now and then, and I don't spend much on personal items here.  It's a rather slow time of year for Grace, my favourite seamstress, now that all the rush for school uniforms at the beginning of the year has finished, and I'm afraid that things might get rough here if there are a lot of closures in the future due to the virus, so I went ahead and had two dresses made.  I really like them!  I'm planning to save the top one for graduation this year.  If you can't see it well, it's a lime green pattern with big fuschia lilies all over it.  It's a little loud, but I love it.  I love the kitenge fabrics here; fair warning that when I do come back to the US I'm likely to dress rather loudly for local tastes. 

Also, have a view of my apartment from my dining table...and here's the second dress.  The background is mostly light blue with bits of green, with the major orange and black curlicue print.  I really like how it came out! I had her do a different neckline on this one, as all the rest I have are simple round necks.  

Car Wash!

Well, yesterday I wrote about how muddy the car was after the trip to Moshi and the flooded and muddy roads of Monduli last night.  Well, several of the students have been dropping by my house to say hi or texting me regularly because they're bored and miss the social network that being in a boarding school provided.  I was chatting with one of my coworkers, Oscar, on Whatsapp this morning and I joked that the next student who bothered me was going to be put to work.  It didn't take long--I hadn't even finished my conversation with him before my phone rang.  I sent out a message to a Whatsapp group of local students, too, and quickly ended up with four boys.

I pulled the car outside the gate to the gravel area at the edge of the road.  Much to their disappointment, I moved the car myself and didn't let any of them touch the keys.  None of them have a license or have really learned to drive yet, but they are eager to try.  It's a bit of a narrow fit pulling out of my driveway, though, and it's not my car, so I said no. 

I sat out buckets, rags, brushes and laundry detergent to use as soap, and they got to work.  It didn't take long before the car was looking much, much better! Look, it really is silver!

The finished car, mud free!  The four boys are Salum's friend (Izaki I think, but I don't remember for sure), and my students Salum, Mathayo and Paulo.  

Yardwork Day

Well, with school out for so long, there are plenty of teenagers hanging around town who have nothing to do and would love to earn some money.  The area inside my gate is all paved with paving stones, so you would think I wouldn't need to deal with mowing in any fashion, but alas, weeds grow up between the paving stones like crazy.  I've let them get pretty bad; I really don't spend a lot of time outside--if I'm at home I'm in the house, or I'm somewhere else.  There are plenty of better places to be outdoors that have a better view than my seven-foot wall.  I also have a small patch of weedy grass outside my gate to the side of my driveway, which is also rather overgrown at the moment.  So, I hired my student Salum to come be my gardener.  He brought his friend Kevin with him and they spent a couple of hours whacking down all the big weeds and uprooting the small ones.  It started pouring rain as soon as they finished, so I invited them in and made them some French toast while we waited out the downpour.  My yard look much, much better now! 

Clean Dishes at Last!

With everything going on this week with closing school and making a shopping trip to Arusha to stock up in case things really do start locking down here, my kitchen got rather out of hand.  But today I finally stayed home and got caught up.  I had been joking with Beth about my dish pile yesterday, so I snapped a phot to prove that EVERYTHING is clean now! 

My Sunny Living Room

Since I moved into my own apartment last March, I've been slowly decorating and acquiring furniture.  A lot of things I've just done without for a while, knowing that the Shorts would be selling a lot of their furniture and such when they started preparing to move.  My living room finally feels complete now that I have a bookshelf.  It used to be in Michela's room, but she packed up her books and knickknacks last week, so now I have it.  It's nice to have a place for all the odds and ends that accumulate, and the room finally feels complete.

I love my living room early in the morning as the sun streams in! Also, believe it or not, that is a very demure and understated couch by local tastes.  I'm fortunate to have one in neutral colors that's not bright orange or purple or red.  

Green Curry!

In my adult life, I've lived mostly in large cities: Milan, Wuhan, Nashville... I love being able to eat all sorts of international foods and be around a mix of cultures.  Monduli is quite different.  If I want to eat out, there's chicken and french fries or chips mayai (basically a french fry omelet).  That's really about it as far as options.  There's a bit more in Arusha (Chinese, Indian, Greek, pizza), but not everything, and I don't get the chance to eat out there much anyhow.  I don't mind cooking, but I do miss easily having a wider variety.  So, I've been trying out some new recipes. 

One of the foods I particularly miss is Thai food, which is not available even in Arusha.  However, I found that curry pastes are available!  I bought green curry paste (a mix of all the spices) and coconut milk, and made some pretty good green curry!  It's not really all that green looking, but it tastes good.  I put chicken, mushrooms, broccoli, and bell peppers in it this time and ate it with rice.  Green curry is one of my comfort foods, so I'm really excited that I can now make it at home! 

Gravy and Biscuits

Every now and then, it's good to get a taste of home.  I don't make gravy and biscuits too often because I really don't need to carbs, and bacon is pretty expensive here.  I had a quiet, chilly September Saturday night, though, so I made some.  It didn't turn out as good as I'd hoped; my bacon wasn't fatty enough to really give enough grease so the gravy was a bit bland.  Still, it was nice to have a truly southern meal!

In the biscuits above, you can see the one I pinched to try the raw dough.  Whenever my mother and I were every baking biscuits, we'd always pinch a bite of the salty dough.  Do any of you do that?

You can see a bit of my kitchen here.  I have a built-in range on the counter, but it's not hooked up to gas.  I also have the freestanding stove, and I really didn't need both just for one person.  The freestanding one has an electric oven, one electric burner, and three gas burners, and is hooked up to a small gas cannister that I can lift myself.  The built-in one would be hooked to a large outdoor gas can about three times the size of the one you can see.  So, I chose the freestanding one to have the oven and because I can call a boda boda (motorcycle taxi) to go pick up a new gas canister for me, while the big one would require a car and two people to move it. 

The Smell of Sawdust

Today, they mulched the flower beds in front of the administration building with fresh wood chips.  I was walking by and had to stop and sniff.  The fresh wood chips had such a strong smell of sawdust.  It was a bit of a nostalgic moment; I grew up in the little unincorporated dot-on-the-map called Sawdust.  Also, my dad's a carpenter, so I grew up falling asleep to the distant sound of a table saw and router out in his shop behind the house.  The smell of sawdust always makes me think of home. :)

Also making me think of home, today is my grandmother's 82nd birthday.  Happy birthday to Carol Phillips in Marmaduke, Arkansas!  Here's an old photo of my brother and me sitting with her on the porch many years ago. :)

Sunrise from My Front Gate

I'm definitely not a morning person, but it did help when I had to be out early today to see the sunrise over the field by house.  Good morning from Tanzania! 

My Neighborhood

Today I'm sharing a few more photos of my house and neighborhood.  Here the view looking north towards the higher slopes of the mountain from my road. 

 The big black gate is mine.  The metal roll-up door cover a space meant to be used for a small neighborhood store, but no one has ever opened one there.  It would be convenient to be able to buy drinks and sodas and all right outside my own door, but it would probably be a noisy neighbor, so probably for the best.

 The road leading down to the main road...

 Walking towards the main road...

 The paved road that my neighborhood is off of.  The Shorts, Beth, Albert and his family, and quite a few other people I know live in the neighborhood across the road.  Turning left on the road will take you into town in about a kilometer.

The view out of town on the paved road.  I need to explore in that direction sometime...and below, the view towards town.

First Morning in My New Home

Good morning, everyone!  Today was the first morning I woke up in my new apartment. As it works out (and this was part of my reason for moving the day I did), it's exam week at school, and I'm not scheduled to proctor any exams today, so I have the day to settle in and unpack. Here's a few pictures from my day:

(Above) The view of my driveway (not that I have a car to park in it) and my gate, from just outside my kitchen door.

My front porch.  I'm still not sure why the wall is a different color on the porch.  

Looking back towards my kitchen door from the gate.

The view from just outside my gate (above and below).  The main roads in Monduli are paved, but the neighborhood roads are all dirt roads.  I have to walk around the cornfield (currently freshly plowed) to get out to the main road.

The view the other way from my gate.

My building from the outside.  The open door to the left is mine. There are several connected apartment and an (unused) shop.  

 An unfinished house across the road.  I like the structure of it, though.  You don't see too many two-story houses around here, and you can see the structure of a spiral staircase inside.  Half-finished houses are a common sight around here.  People don't tend to take a loan to build a house here, or if they do, can't get a big enough loan to do it all at once.  They save up money and build a foundation, or possibly even all of the concrete block part of the house, and then it sits for a year or two while they save up more money to build the roof, run electricity, etc.

The electric pole on my street is a bit concerning.

 We have quite a few of these huge black and white birds in my neighborhood.  They're rather noisy.  My doorbell is a very loud and insistent version of this bird's call, which is maybe not the best because I have to figure out if it's the doorbell or just one of the actual birds on my roof.

Deborah rode her bike over to help out a bit.  She washed the rest of my dishes and helped me unpack a few things. She also hid under a curtain. :) 

I stepped back outside of my gate at sunset, as I can't see much from inside my high walls.