25 October 2011

The day I drank porridge for breakfast.


 Tuesday

I walked down to get my usual Chi for breakfast and they had cups sitting out that were filled with white liquid.

Neat, I thought!  A new flavor chi!  Maybe with milk!  How fun!

But really, it wasn’t chi, it was porridge.  A thick, mixture with a taste like blended oatmeal (well, it tasted like cornmeal if you know what that tastes like).  I could only imagine I was drinking Ugale (which is what we had for lunch incidentally, more cornmeal…mmmm!)

I’ve decided that while sugar and cornmeal is a hearty breakfast, I’d prefer the regular Simba (which means lion in Swahili-turns out those guys who wrote The Lion King got something right) chi tea with the plain bread for breakfast.

But the kids seemed to like it, which is good.

I ate my porridge with Martha, one of the tiniest girls ever.  She reminded me of sweet Evet at Harvest Children’s Home in Cameroon.  She would not let go of my hand.  Even when it was time for class, so I walked her to the pre-school room.

I returned to work on my project for school (It hasn’t been successful at finishing itself, so I suppose I should work on it) and found Stephanie and Jackie (one of the Tanzanian women who helps run JBFC Children’s Home and School) in an argument over the water filters.

We had just begun to filter water yesterday because we have no more blue “sparklettes” style water pitchers and we need water to survive.  The water filters were labeled JBFC and we thought they were for guests to use since they were in the guest house. 

Turns out one belonged to someone else, and he came back for it today.  Convenient.  I cleaned them both out after mildly successfully dumping the filtered water into a new jug and went to read.

Which turned into a nap.  I’m really being productive so far today.  When I woke up one of the filters was gone, and one was left for us.  Thankfully, they left us the non-broken one.

Thanks for watching out for us God!

Also while I was sleeping Chris and Kayci and the 2 kids left for their flight out of Mwanza.  They were planning to leave tomorrow, but when you try to buy a last minute ticket for 4 people, that’s what you get I guess.

They abandoned our water jugs because the car was full of luggage.

Good thing we’re not thirsty for water that tastes good.

I’m ready to be back in America when mice eat Julia and I’s cookies.  She threw away the rest of the package of cookies (thankfully it was only 4) and the cat ate the rest.  Seriously, yuck.

Also yuck:

I was on the porch of the big house (where Chris and his 4 boys live and Kayci has a room too) minding my own business while I worked on my project for school when a stick looking catipillar inched towards me.  I call Jonas, one of Chris’s adopted boys, over and he starts to pick it up and get it away from me, when there is some yelling in Swahili by momma Mary (the housekeeper of the big house).

Then Jonas calls out that Stephanie and I should come see their “pet.”

Which turns out to be a poisonous snake in the closet.

Chris’s newly abandoned closet that still has clothes hanging.  Good thing he just packed up and left for America or he might be dead right now.

Jonas yells in Swahili and calls Cha Cha, one of the Masai guards, over and he tried with a stick to kill it. 

Cha Cha hit it, but didn’t kill it, but he ran and so did Jonas.  Momma Mary held her ground, and so did I, which I don’t think was the wisest decision.  I went to the kitchen while Momma Mary returned with a can of raid and Cha Cha finally killed the snake. 

Stephanie got a picture of it.  It was nice and long and green.  I would never have seen it, let alone know it was poisonous. 

Lord, please keep me safe from poisonous things!

………………………………………………………………………

For dinner, we decided we’d had enough rice and beans (or cornmeal and beans) so we commandeered the rice (don’t worry, we pay them for food) and ate our Indian leftovers.  The power was off, so we ate by candlelight.

As there was no internet (no power, no way to turn on the power) we called it an early night.

I attempted to sleep, but very squeaky sounds kept me awake.  I thought for a while in Zambia that the squeaky sounds were mice (we’ve already seen mice here!) but I was afraid they might be bats.  Bats would be too terrifying.

I attempted to text Ryan from Julia’s newly working, but illegal phone.  I think it worked.  (I hope!) Julia’s phone didn’t have a charger for 2 weeks, and wouldn’t charge with the “universal” charger.  We finally got a charger, but the minutes she had purchased were expired.  They were sold to her with a 2010 expiration date.  No one here realized they expired prior to purchasing them.  When she finally got non-expired minutes about a week later, she got a text from Airtel that she had to register her phone at a shop so it would be legal.  Which is fine, but there’s no shop anywhere close.  And now that Chris and Kayci are gone, we’re on our own with no phone or car.

So her phone will just be unregistered (it still works, we’ve heard there’s a month grace period) until we go back to town on Saturday.

Welcome to Africa.

No comments:

Post a Comment