Saturday 6-14-14

Saturday 6-14-14

                Today started out well. We got up at six and decided we could all use an extra half hour of sleep and there wasn’t much to do anyways to get ready for Mikumi. The kids got up great when the time was ready. Samweli showed up at the perfect time and he had gotten all dressed up for the occasion. He even had his hair cut. The kid looked sharp. Abdallah got here on time also, which was nice. The land rover did not make it back yesterday so we had the extended cab truck. We talked with Abdallah and we were considering changing it to next weekend, but he ended up convincing us to continue going and possibly go again next weekend in the land rover so we could still get a chance to invite the few other kids. So we packed up our stuff and we were off. The kids played their tablets and were both doing a great job of sharing them with Samweli. They would all just keep rotating who was playing.

                About one hour into the trip toward Morogoro where we were going to pick up chipati for all of us to eat, Abdallah pulls over onto the side of the road and pops the hood. It turns out that the truck broke down. He played with it for about an hour. During this time, we decided to go walking around. We were lucky and there was a lot of open area nearby that was far away from the road.  So we went exploring. On the walk, we basically played follow the leader and everyone got to take a turn at leading where we would go. I saw we had reception so I called Asa quick to let him know what was going on since I have no internet at home to keep him updated. On the walk back toward the car, the kids found two very large holes of dirt to play in. So they would back way up, run as fast as they could and basically do the long jump, just Africa style. It was awesome. I love how these kids can find fun just about anywhere.

                Abdallah had called a fundi (guy who fixes things) and he was leaving a place called Lunch in an hour to come see if he could get it working. So in the meantime Abdallah continued to play around with it. At about the 2 hour point, he got it running again so we decided to try and see if we could get as far as the Maasai market where at least we could get out and walk around a bit. No such luck, we made it about a minute driving before it died again. So he played with it some more with no luck. Then it became a waiting game for the guy to get to us with the part we believed needed to be fixed.

                The kids luckily had their tablets and they also hunted down pretty rocks on the side of the road. I walked up to the truck to check on Samweli who had gone in a few minutes before. When I saw him, he was sitting there with both of the tablets on, playing temple run on both of them at the same time. I told him he could play, but he could only use one at a time. Out of the three kids, he definitely hoarded the tablet the most. I think he was trying to soak up as much as he possibly could. I went back outside to be near the kids. The traffic went so fast there it made me nervous to leave them alone even off on the side of the road.  As I was standing a dalladalla nearly hit me. Then a pikipiki (motorcycle) also almost hit me. He must have been upset that he missed because he threw an empty bottle of water right at my leg. He went on slowly after that. Logan made a comment about how he had a very large smile. Samweli who had come out of the truck saw what happened and said that man was bad because he threw a bottle at Teacher Sarah.

The fundi made it after quite a while. He showed up on a dalladalla (bus) with nothing but a thin plastic bag with a few screw drivers in it. Yes this was our mechanic. Only in Africa would this be acceptable. They tried to work on it together and we discovered there wasn’t enough gas in the truck, so Abdallah caught a different dalladalla and went into dimilla which was the town we had just drove through about 15 minutes away. When he got back, they cut a water bottle to use it as a funnel, and more tinkering followed.

                At one point, a Berega One van pulled over and out came a few men. One turned out to be Joan’s father. Logan and I were planning on getting a ride with that back to Berega. Abdallah kept saying to wait, he thought it would start up. So right as we were getting ready to say we are going, the truck starts and he gives the Berega One van the thumbs up that they can leave. It made it maybe a minute or two before the truck died again. I so badly just wanted to go home, get the kids fed some lunch and be done with the day’s trip. After the total time of being broke down reached 4 hours it finally started up and worked well enough to get us to Morogoro.  When leaving we realized we would have only been maybe an 8 minute walk away from the Maasai market from the second place we broke down. I so wish we would have known.

                Once in Morogoro we dropped of a teacher that had hitched a ride with us. She had been volunteering in our school for the last week to see how Mamaliz has the school set up. She welcomed us to Morogoro anytime and thanked us for the ride. Next we went to Ricky’s Café for some lunch. We were all getting hungry. The only thing anyone had eaten was some of the bread that I made the day before. The kids finished up the entire thing of the banana peanut butter one. So we ordered food and the kids went to play. Abdallah was supposed to be back in a half hour to have lunch with us, but he ended up being gone for 3 hours. The truck was being looked at and trying to get it in decent working order. Ayla and Jove split a hamburger and some macaroni and cheese. Samweli and I both got chicken fried rice, and Logan got chicken alfredo and spring rolls.

                Many kids showed up during our three hours at Ricky’s. Toward the end, there was this one little girl (by her mother’s accent I would assume they were from Australia or maybe somewhere in England). Well the little girl was nearly 5. Her name was Talya. She announced upon seeing Jove that she wanted to kiss that boy. So the next bit of time was filled with a game between her and Jove where she would chase him in order to try to kiss him. When Abdallah showed up I asked Jove if he would like to hug his friend. He said okay and went to give her a hug. She immediately grabbed his face to plant a big kiss on his cheek. Then he tried to give her a kiss on the lips. All she could say was “No, not on the lips, No”, so I had him give her a kiss on the cheek instead. I was glad I had remembered the camera because man was it just too cute. Jove’s first kiss.

                We left and went to the store to pick up our few things. That all went smoothly. I found it very entertaining when picking up medicine for my messed up back that muscle relaxers are cheaper than ibuprophen here. 10 muscle relaxers were about $1.75, whereas the other was closer to $2 for ten pills. It was just too amusing.

                We made our way back to Berega and at 7:00pm we were home. Right before we got to the house, Ayla spotted an owl on a fence post right next to the hospital. She was so pleased with her find. Jove had fallen asleep on Samweli’s shoulder and Samweli fell asleep against Jove’s head. They both woke up to the commotion. Logan and I both tried to get a picture, but when we finally had what would have been the perfect shot, a pikipiki drove by and scared the owl away. It wasn’t very big, but how cool. Abdallah let us know that here they all believe that seeing an owl is a sign of bad luck. I figure that it made my kids happy, and that made the day better for me. What could be bad about that J I fed the kids something super fast, got them cleaned up, read them a book, and finally tucked them into bed. Basically the same thing for myself followed.

                Today definitely didn’t turn out as planned. And it didn’t even really turn out good, but there were some good points and those are the points that I know I need to hang on to.