You're Making Me Crazy

I had a little “safety and security incident” this week. The local crazy guy, who has always annoyed me, but liited himself to following me and shouting nonsense at me, decided he didn't like me ignoring him anymore and hit me on the arm. Not hard, he just wanted my attention. I called Peace Corps to as what to do, because I was worried the situation could escalate. Plus, the guy always has two large walking sticks. I figured, he if he hit me with his hand, he might work up to using the sticks. He's already used them to poke at me. They called my village leaders who demanded to see the bruises, convinced that I must have been beaten bloody to hve the gall to call Dar es Salaam directly. Their first solution was to have him committed, which didn't sit well with me, especially since he didn't hurt me, and honestly, he was here first. Things settled down a little and we found a solution that I could live with. Turns out, that guy doesn't even live in my village! He lives in a neighboring village, so they told him that he needed to stay there from now on. And they told the people in the area where he hangs out that if he does come here and starts bugging me, they should do something about it to make him stop. This would be a refreshing change from their normal reaction, which is to pull up a chair and grab a bag of popcorn to watch their free show for the day.

Life Skills classes are going well, even better since my counterpart started translating instead of the science teacher, since he actually understands the point of all this and well, cares. Mali Hai went on a tree-planting frenzy and is getting ready to fund raise and plan a trip to Mikumi National Park, in near-by Morogoro during the semester break in June. Woohoo, road trip! For most of them, this may their first and only trip to one of their own awesome national parks. Aaaand my soap project is still circling the drain as I try desperately to revive it. Basically, anything soap-related that can go wrong has, from the wrong oil to my lye-eaten pot, up to the point that we might have trouble making money off this. Which, for an income generating project, is especially not good.

The corn harvest has started to come in. They'll leave most of it on the stalk to harden and use to make corn flour for ugali all year, but they've started picking a little to eat ripe. You can't swing a dead cat this week without hitting someone munching on grilled corn on the cob. My neighbors felt bad that I don't have a farm and can't share in the fresh corn goodness (it only comes once a year) and have been sharing theirs with me, usually more than I can eat, but I'm not complaining. And I've been informed that it's high time I claimed my ducks. That family is moving closer into the village and my ducks will not get to join their siblings in the move. Also, they said they're getting big and eating too much. I've gotten permission to use some space at the school, I just need to buy some wire mesh to enclose a little yard for them to walk around in, and I should probably buy something for them to eat.

I don't know if I've mentioned the school kitchen before. The World Food Program is trying to support school lunches in Tanzania, which is good, because I see a lot of kids who don't go home for lunch, either because it's too far away to get back to school in time or there's no food at home anyway. They told my village that if they (the village) builds a store room and a kitchen, the WFP will provide the food. They came out to do their inspection of the schools and found an unused classroom cleared out to be the store room and no kitchen. My villagers and the teachers remained in no hurry. A few weeks ago they started to build the kitchen , but last week they ran out of bricks. This week, someone must have paid for more bricks, because I stepped out of my house to see all 500 students walking single file, each with a brick on his/her head, helping to get them across the river and up the hill to the school. And building resumed. Mind you, the building should have been done before the inspection, I think the WFP is being very generous to let them finish it late and still get the food. Which goes to show me that my village will wait until the last minute for anything. I should have known this the day I arrived, as the cement on my bathroom was still drying. But, at least the walls are up, even if they aren't cemented yet and there's no roof. Hopefully they'll finish it and the kids will be able to get some ugali or porridge or something to help them concentrate in class.

Also, I think the secondary students are getting a raw deal; their two student teachers leave tomorrow, meaning there will be no one to teach biology, chemistry, history, or geography. How will they pass their exams? No one knows, or seems too worried about it.