Swahili, hippies, and a meatastick Saturday

Before I start my blog toady, I just wanted to say I hope you are all keeping warm. I mean that in all sincerity. Seriously... I won't rub the beautiful warm weather of Tanzania in your face. I won't talk about the clear blue sky, the 80 degrees of average, or the warm African breeze. And I definatley won't tell you that I can't even remember what snow looks like. :)

So Friday morning we started Swahili lessons! For those of you who don't know we have a lesson, 10:00 tea time, another lesson, 12:00 lunch, break until 2:30, and one more short lesson for the day. For the first two lessons my teacher was Mariki. We sit out in these open cabanas next to the school. It is a little hard to concentrate because everything around you is so beautiful. To the south of the compound is one of the most beautiful mountain ranges I have ever seen (I'll include pictures later). Birds also frequent the cabana as well as some of Toby's friends (Toby is the lizard that lives in my room, who I have still not gotten a picture of f.y.i.). My third and final lesson for the day was taught by Franke. I think Franke was a little tired, he seemed out of it, and didn't give it much heart. But I have to give him credit, it can not be easy watching two American's come in and butcher your language. Overall, I really enjoyed the lessons and was sad when I realized I would have to wait until Monday for the next one.

At supper I got to chat with some of the other people here at LJS. When I first arrived I thought it was a convent because there were nuns EVERYWHERE. Turns out there are only three of them. I don't know what they are doing, but they sure get around fast. I've gotten to know Sister Judith pretty well. She comes from a war torn are of Nigeria. She fled for safety but still wanted to continue ministering, so she came to LJS to learn Swahili. There are also two Canadians here, Paulette and Audry. Paulette is a part of a Catholic lay missionary that works to dig wells and get adequate sanitary conditions for village across Tanzania. Audry is the mother of all hippies. She constantly travels the world wither her boyfriend Paul and she thinks she is going to "settle down" in Tanzania. She is learning Swahili so she can join Paul at some windmill project. Despite the fact that she is not technically divorced from her husband and has "relations" with Paul, she works for a very conservative Catholic mission. They must really be desperate for help. Audry and I talk about out travels a lot. We chatted a while about Germany (we've both traveled there) and the differences between cultures. Another common dinner topic is Barack Obama. I'm sad I won't be back home for his inauguration, but it will be interesting to see if anything has changed once I come back and he has had a few months in office. Who knows? Guantanamo will hopefully be closed and some of our troops might be home!

Overall its really interesting to talk with all these different people. I knew I would learn about Tanzania, but but I had no idea LJS was so diverse.

After breakfast, Saturday, we went to the Maasai cattle market about thirty minutes outside of Morogoro. It was nothing like I expected. I thought there would be a few herds of cattle, some food stands, and a clothing stand or two. But there were HUNDREDS of people. PH tells me some travel almost hundred miles just to come to the cattle market. There were dozens of butcher stands (mainly serving goat), rows and rows of clothing stands, many jewlery vendors, and few stands that covered everything else. At the far end of the market was the cattle yards. There were hundred and hundreds of cows.

We had a very long day, not because the market was necessarily that big, but every 15 seconds (literally) PH would have to stop and say hello to someone coming up to shake his hand. He must have known 1/3 massai there. Eventually he fled the market and went and hid in the car. Kim and I were escorted around by two of the maasai teachers from LJS. We both bought Maasai clubs, and Kim bought a few kitenges (wraps/skirts that the women wear - you'll see them in pictures). We ate lunch with the Bishop. I'm not sure what area he is the Bishop of, but he was a really nice guy.

But they way we ate was very interesting. We sat in a circle on benches. In the middle was an upturned bucket. A maasai stood up and cut a few branched of leaves from a nearby tree and put it on the bucket. Then someone came over and put a big hunk of beef on the branches. One of the men was chosen to cut the meat. He took out his knife and would cut little one inch cubes of meat off and hand it around. As soon as you ate your meat chunk he would give you a new one. While most of the meat was good... you were supposed to eat the fat. The elders actually fought over who got the really big chunks of fat. It was kinda gross for me, but I sucked it up. I'm sure my mom is puking right now, she hates to eat fat- if you gave her a 8 inch stake, by the time she got done cutting off the parts she didn't want there would be about 3 inches left... she would never make it here. After lunch we wandered through he market a little more. Then, to Kim's and my surprise we got together again to eat, but this time it was goat. This was my first time eating goat and, I guess, i kind of liked it. Altogether that day I probably ate around 3 pounds of meat... and that was it!

We left the market and I went almost immediately to bed so I could digest for a while.

Low: Got meat has a very pungent aroma. Ok, that is putting it too delicately - goat stinks, IT REAKS. Other people aren't bothered by the smell, but for some reason it really ... gets my goat (pun intended). My hands reaked of goat, my shirt reaked of goat, and even after brushing my teeth 4 TIMES I still had goat breath! Another Low, everything is in the metric system. KM/hour, distances, lengths. I hate the metric system. I can't reason properly. I think its because the metric system never really caught on in the U.S. - unless you count the increasing popularity of the 9mm bullet.

High: I had a chance to practice Swahili. I was able to effectively greet people, ask them how they were doing, and tell them where I was from. Other then that, I could have only told people that bananas were small, Tanzania is a country, and a book is not food.