guess what season it is?

I got back to the village feeling really awful and was sick for a few days. Must be the dust and the cold we've got right now. The village has been doing circumcisions the last few weeks, so I hear there have been several all-night parties; but I live too far away to hear them. No one will tell me much about it, me being a woman and all. All I know is that they (the Gogo) do it on the teenage boys as initiation and it's an excuse to party. As a side note, I know even less about the female circumcisions, since its very illegal. I don't even know when they do that or what variant they do, just that it happens.

My village friend's daughter is making me some clothes as a gift before I leave. She just finished a tailoring course in town and is apprenticing with a tailor in the village. I think I'm her first customer outside her family. This should be interesting.

Some girls from the primary school came to bring me water the other day ad offered to clean my house. They will do anything to get out of class, and since recently there have been areas of my house so dusty that I've decided to leave it that way until I move, I took them up on it. They did the dishes and swept and mopped and got rid of all the trash that the mice had piled into the corners without me noticing. They felt the need to tell me that, even though they swept the trash against the wall, I shouldn't burn it there or my house will catch fire. Duh? Then they took it out to the trash pit, just in case I was really dumb. Maybe they thought if I was dumb enough to keep my house that messy there's no telling what I'll do next.

Less than two months left! I am really ready to get OUT of here. I'm tired of trying to wash my hair in a bucket. I'm tired of having nothing to eat but rice and beans or peanut sauce. I've had it up to *here* (over my head) with people being rude to me because of my skin color and with the sexism I get outside the village (and sometimes inside it). I'm tired of not being able to get anything done because people tell me what I want to hear instead of what they really think/what they did. People are inconsiderate to me, take advantage of my kindness, and sometimes treat me like I'm mentally handicapped just because I'm foreign. I'm tired. I'm ready to go home.

Speaking of which, I'll be getting home in the most roundabout way I can think of. After all, its not really an African adventure if I stay in Tanzania, right? First, I will take a train to Zambia to see this. When I've had my fill of rushing water, I'll go to Namibia, where I hear the food is excellent, and hopefully see some of this. From there, I'm going to Cape Town to reintroduce myself to the First World and see this and this. Finally, I'll pop over to Madagascar to see these guys. Then home. :)

PS: Please don't send any mail after the 1st or it might miss me!