Nimemaliza!

I'm finished!

The SPW program has ended and I am no longer a resident of Mdilidili village. My last few weeks were bittersweet, but I can safely say that an African village is not the place I want to spend the rest of my life. Also, I left not a moment too soon because they found a lion in one of the neighboring villages and it was eating everyone's goats. This resulted in an unofficial 7pm curfew.

We had a big sherehe (party) on the last night and invited our favorite Mdilidilians for a little bamboo juice and some conversation. We got three chickens as parting gifts. Unfortunately, two of them were not ready to die. One kept me up all night sqwaking and then managed to escape, (he went home, apparently, because we found him there the next day acting as if nothing had happened) and the other one got really rowdy and managed to get herself stuck upside-down between the table and the wall, where she promptly fell asleep.

As soon as all the fowl was accounted for, my favorite mama killed and cooked them. We didn't actually have bamboo liquor at the party because we couldn't find any in the village. Someone had died that day and apparently they don't make bamboo juice on the days when people die. However, we scored some corn alcohol which tasted like dirt. I'll stick with the whiskey flavored gin they sell in plastic pouches.

Things got a little crazy on account of the corn alcohol and everyone put on their Obama t-shirts (a gift for the guests, courtesy of a care package from my Aunt Rosemary) and danced around shouting, "Mwinyo Kwivava!" We took a lot of pictures with everyone making the gang sign for Mdilidili. A ridiculous end to a ridiculous experience.

The week before I left I also attended a goat roast which was hosted by a Peace Corps volunteer who lives in a village about 50 km away from Mdilidili. I got to hang out with a bunch of Peace Corps, who are quite the fun-loving bunch: expats in Tanzania clearly take a cue from the village bibis in their hard-partying ways. We slaughtered the goat in the backyard. It was quite sickening. The man who killed the goat used a dull knife, so it took a long time for the goat to die. Eventually Brian, the Peace Corps volunteer who lives in my village and is a hunter-gatherer mountain man from Minnesota, jumped in yelling, "We have to sever the spinal cord!" and starting hacking away at the poor goat. I almost threw up. Anyway, my threshhold for watching things die is getting higher and I'm working my way up to a human sacrifice! Also, for anyone who hasn't tried it, goat is delicious. I'm going to open up a restaurant in the US that sells bacon and cheese goatburgers.

The day after the goat roast, with my judgement and vision still clouded by whiskey-flavored gin, I decided to start walking back to Mdilidili in an attempt to catch a ride. Unlike in America, where hitchhiking is reserved for the criminally insane, it is pretty common here. Besides, I had no other way home. Luck was not on my side because I barely saw another human being for 3 hours. After 10 or 12 miles I was hot and delirious and about to die when I saw a pikipiki (motorcycle) and basically jumped in front of it. There were already two people riding, but they were nice enough to sqeeze me on the back and give me a "lifti" (ride) the rest of the way back.

I'm writing this post from Mwanza, Tanzania, which is in the north or the country and on the southern coast of Lake Victoria. Two other SPW volunteers, (Jo and Ali) and I are making our way through Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya. We traveled from the southern city of Mbeya, TZ to Mwanza in four days, via two 15 hour bus rides. We stopped midway in the capital city of Dodoma, to visit my friend Alex, (Kyler's Tanzanian partner and resident of the neighboring village) where we proceeded to be introduced to everyone in the city. As Ali says, the Tanzanians love to show off their white people. Also, Tanzanians refer to everyone as brother, sister, mother or father, which can be confusing when you're trying to figure out how people are related. Alex introduced us two four of his different mamas and no less than six fathers, non of whom were actually his parents.

The bus ride from Dodoma to Mwanza was horrendous. The driver treated the bus like a daladala, stuffing people into the aisles. I finally hit my breaking point when the requisite chicken arrived on board. I had a man sitting on my armrest and nodding off on top of me for four hours. There are police checks every 100 miles or so, whose sole purpose is to stop this kind of overcrowding. Yet every time we passed a police check, the driver would yell at all the people standing in the aisles to crouch down and hide. Then the policeman would mount the bus, survey the situation, shake his head and tell the driver that there are too many people on the bus, then turn around and get off the bus and wave the bus driver on his way. The driver was also extremely unsympathetic to those who had to go to the bathroom. Every time I got off the bus to go, I would return to find the bus pulling away and I would have to run after it screaming. Also, most pit stops consisted of the bus pulling over to the side of a deserted road in the middle of a desert. The ladies room was one side of the road and the men's was another.

Another couple of random observations on Tanzanians:

It is perfectly acceptable to pick your nose in public. You'll be talking to someone and they'll just start digging in. It's not just a little wipe, but oftentimes a huge double-finger pick, often requiring observation of the findings and then a little flick to get rid of the booger. This is all done without losing train of thought in the conversation. Because I've adapted so well to my surroundings, I apologize in advance if I come back to the US and start picking my nose while you're talking to me.

Cell phones are extremely important to Tanzanians and they never ever reject a call. During meetings, the village officers would be talking to a crowd of 50 people and their phone would ring and they would pick up the phone and have a five minute conversation while the crowd waited patiently. Teachers often pick up their cell phones in the middle of the class and leave for ten minutes and Rehema regularly got calls at 4am and picked them up, oblivious to the fact that I was trying to sleep right next to her.

Anyway, as I mentioned before, I'll be in East Africa for the next six weeks or so and will continue the blog. I will definitely miss this part of the world, mostly because at least 700 crazy things happen every day. I'll keep everyone updated on the inevitable wacky things to come.