Thursday 5-1-14

Thursday 5-1-14               

                So, there was no school today. It is “workers day”. Our goals for the day were to go to the river and to build our tree fort. The day starts by Jove telling me he wet the bed. Well shit, what I am supposed to do with that. At least Bibi Hasani was coming today to do laundry, so I didn’t have to do it. I really did not want to wash pee sheets. I will still have to scrub the foam mattress; I shall see how this turns out. Coffee after a wake up like that is a must, so into the kitchen I went to get coffee and oatmeal going. Once breakfast was finished, Asa and I went out to start on the tree fort. So, it did not work. We tried to get the steps nailed into the tree first. Not only did every nail bend because the wood is too fresh, but when Asa tried to pull the nails out, the hammer bent. WTF! Africa can really ruin plans fast. Pole sana!

                All of the kids came over again and played in the rain and the mud with the toys. Ayla got so wet and gross that her dress that was pink and orange on the bottom was brown. Asa and I walked up to town to buy some beer and goat for dinner later. We are going to make chili, Africa style. Dr. Sion is going to come over as a going away for Asa. He even let us borrow his pressure cooker.

                We decided to walk down to the river to check it out. There are some very cool areas that Mamaliz says there are chameleons and other very cool things to see. So it had been raining all morning but it started slowing down so it was worth a chance. We start walking and almost right away it started raining more and more. We got half way to the river and it is now coming down so very hard that we just can’t keep going; so time to turn around. As we walk back, so many people gestured at us to invite us over to stay out of the rain. When we waved to them and kept walking, they would just laugh and laugh at us. “Look at these stupid wzungu (white people), they don’t know how to get out of the rain”.  I guess here in Tanzania they believe that if you get wet from the rain it will cause a fever. We got good and thoroughly drenched. Asa took the kids into the shower to clean them up, and then it was tablet time in the kid tent for Ayla and Jove and it was coffee time for us grown ups.

                Dinner of Africa style chili with greens and rice turned out very nice. We all at as much as we could hold, the kids included. It took longer to get the kids down to bed than I had hoped, hopefully the morning goes well. We have to wake up at five am to start our trip to Mukumi National Park for our safari, then off to Dar es Salaam.