Sunday 5-4-14 Happy
Birthday to Jove
Of
course the day that the kids are staying with Bibi, I wake up early and want
them to be awake. It is all because it was Jove’s birthday and I wanted to sing
to him. So we waited until Bibi woke up to let the kids out of the room. First
thing out of Jove’s mouth when he saw us was “Am I 5?” He can be so very sweet
and innocent when he wants to be. Once we had the kids we went for breakfast down
in the lobby. Jove ate lots of
watermelon and drank some chai spoonful by spoonful. Ayla had four pieces of
toast and also decided to drink her chai spoonful by spoonful. They can be very
much like their mommy sometimes. That is just how I used to drink my hot cocoa
as a child.
We went
back up to the room and watched Rio2 which Bibi had given Jove the night before
as an early birthday present. The four of us cuddled on the beds and watched
together. Not the best movie, but the kids really enjoyed it. Once that was
over we decided to start out on our day.
We
walked over to a pizza place around the corner and got Jove a pepperoni and
mushroom pizza which was exactly what he wanted for his birthday lunch. Ayla of
course picked everything off except for the cheese. We also ordered a chicken
paneer masala pizza for the adults. It was different but pretty good still.
Next we
went walking to find a bakery for some birthday cake. The bakery by the hotel
where we were going to go turned out to be closed even though they should have
been open for another hour, but hamna shida. We continued on our walk and found
a café (another place that was as if it was dropped into the third world out of
America. We all ordered some cake and sang Jove happy birthday a few different
times. Since we didn’t have any candles we each took a turn holding up our hand
with five fingers and had him blow them out. He loved it. Bibi and Ayla
pretended theirs were trick candles, it was quite funny. I still can’t believe
my little guy is already five. Time just goes by so quickly with children. While
sitting there it started to rain pretty hard so we decided to take a taxi over
to the mall to waste some time and hope the rain would stop. We checked a few
furniture places for Mamaliz. She is working on finding some decent furniture
for a guest house for organization. We wandered around a small book store for a
little while, but the mall didn’t have much so we were finished pretty quick.
Mwenge was close by so we all climbed into the bajagi (this is kind of like a tricycle
golf cart. They are very cheap and can easily weave in and out of traffic.) The
bajagi would normally fit two adults comfortably, but we crammed three adults
and two children. It was a short way, but still very fun. We picked up the few
things we still wanted and didn’t get the day before. We started by walking
from one duka to the next that way we could figure out the best price and
nicest, least pushy duka owner. We decided on a very nice Bibi that had gone to
business school and had been to many places in America. She had great prices
and was very nice. At one point there
were some Turkish men in there being very rude. Mamaliz tried to tell them to
go away, the Bibi tried to tell them to go away, but they just wouldn’t.
Finally Asa got in their face and shamed them by taking this shirt they were
trying to bargain too much for and said he would buy it for the full price.
They ended up buying a different shirt for the full price simply because they
couldn’t look lesser than an American. The Bibi thanked us and gave us a good
deal on some very nice items. Jove had a great time telling everyone about how
it was his birthday. He got lots of hugs and one man even gave him a hand
carved wooden whistle and an animal postcard. Again, everyone loves the little
white kids.
After
we were finished we caught a taxi over near the hotel. We wanted to take a bajagi
but the city decided they couldn’t enter the city limits. We believe the taxi
people bribed someone to keep them out. It was too bad, because it would have
been fun to take another one. We got to the area around the hotel and went
around buying some fruits and veggies from the vendors on the sides of the
street. Mamaliz ended up with 25 mangoes, which made the kids very happy. We
bought quite a few apples also. Apples are very expensive compared to most other
things, but we were able to get them for 600 tsh, which works out to being
about 40 cents. Great price and now we have 20 apples. There was a decent
amount of veggies but we were planning on stopping in Morogoro so we skipped
most of those.
Next
came dropping everything off then off to Mamboz again for another super tasty
dinner. Over the two days we worked our way through most of the menu and went
away with nice full bellies again. I bought Mr. Peabody and Sherman movie for
the kids to watch that night at the hotel. We needed to stay up late in order
to take Asa to the airport at 12:30 and we figured the movie would help. We
managed to get Asa all packed up. We didn’t have much for Jove but we did get
him this really cool set of five ebony hand-carved monkeys that hang one from
the other. Five monkeys for five years of being our monkey. He said thank you
but wasn’t too pleased. He kept telling us that he doesn’t like it when we call
him monkey. Oh well.
About
11:30 we began bringing everything down stairs to the lobby. Abdala was
supposed to be there at 12:30 to take us all to drop Asa off at the airport. We
all are sitting in the lobby waiting, Jove asleep on Asa and Ayla wide awake.
12:30 came and went and still can’t get a hold of Abdala. Finally at 1am he
called Mamaliz and said he was on his way. This means nothing so we had to say
goodbye to Asa in the lobby and send him in a taxi on to the airport to catch
his flight. Jove woke up enough to mutter a sleepy “bye” and Ayla broke down
into massive tears. She takes after her momma because I couldn’t hold the tears
back either. I am very happy and grateful for the experience to stay longer and
teach, but I am wishing it wasn’t as long. More for the kid’s sake than my own,
but it is what it is. Hopefully they will adjust to being away from daddy for
the next two months. Abdala finally showed up at 1:30 to start our trek back to
Berega.
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