When I arrived at the school, the blackboards were gone. The story I heard was that Daniel, the owner of the school, couldn't pay his bills so they took them. Someone brought in another piece of wood that we painted so it kind of works as a chalk board.
Near the end of December, some local friends of mine took me out to try the local brew. It was the consistency of baby vomit and, I would imagine, tastes pretty similar as well. It is made from ugali and bananas, but definitely does not taste like bananas. The bar patrons were pretty excited I was there. I don't think they get many tourists in there. I couldn't drink much, I think it would have made me really sick, but it was a unique experience.
I went to the hot springs for a second time just before new years. It was raining a bit on the way there (it is rainy season), but we were sleeping and it didn't seem like that much. However, when we headed out from the springs we encountered a slight problem. We were driving in a cab, which was just a small car. The roads to the hot springs are bad on dry days(at some points it is basically like driving on a pile of boulders with some dirt on them), but add in some rain and it becomes a lot worse. We reached the area that is probably the worst part of the drive already, and it was filled with water about knee deep. Without hesitation, our cab driver headed in with his tiny car, but got stuck on one of the particularly bad points where there is a small hill. Water started flooding into the car and it didn't seem like we were getting anywhere so we decided to get out to see if it would help. He eventually got though and somehow the car was ok after driving though water that almost went past the car windows, but now we had to get to the car. The other three managed to jump the rivers pretty easily, but for me and my friend Kristina it was another story. First she fell in while she was considering jumping over, then a guy tried to help us by showing us a better way across. This way was not better and he tried to help, but it somehow lead to me landing directly in the centre of the river. At the next crossing we had to jump onto a pointed rock to get across, which was clearly doomed to fail since my flip flops were already wet. By the time we got to the cab, one of my flip flops was broken, we were covered in water that given the location was likely filled with cow poop, and my khanga kept falling off so that I was wearing only bathing suit bottoms in this conservative little village. As we made our way back into the cab, some guy drove by on a piki piki and said in swahili, "welcome to Tanzania".
For New Years, I ended up staying in Moshi and we went to glaciers: the outdoor club that everyone goes to on Friday nights. There were a lot of children there, which I thought was slightly innappropriate considering it was a club where people were drinking, but that was before midnight. The tribe from the Moshi area is called Chagga, and the Chaggas have a special tradition on New Years of shooting guns into the air at midnight. This is now illegal, for obvious reasons, but it is a strong tradition so that doesn't entirely stop people. A few of them got some shots in before the police took them down. In addition, they had a fireworks display that was right inside the club. It was pretty cool being so close, but I soon discovered why they don't do that in Canada. Some of the fireworks were literally aimed directly into the crowd. At one point, I saw one land on the grass roof and it started smoking. Then, one went right down the shirt of one of the girls I was with. They managed to put it out, but not without a major burn scar and a big hole in her bra. After the fireworks, there was a concert and Barney and Mickey-Mouse-slash-spider-man showed up to dance. Welcome to Tanzania.
No comments:
Post a Comment