A Week in the Life or... "Why did you paint white on your feet?"

Monday: Hike back from sitemate Rachel's house, work at the clinic- “Your hair looks terrible, its because you're tired, you couldn't do it right."-Mama Mosha Read The Alchemist. Eat dinner at Mama Mosha's house.

Tuesday: Plant my garden with a jembe- Tanzanian hoe- aka make triceps. Finish The Alchemist. Read Holidays on Ice. Eat dinner at Baba's house.

Wednesday: Work at the clinic. Get a mani-pedi from a 6 year old and a 3 year old with crayons. Celebrate Mama Mosha retiring by eating meat!

Thursday: Read The Unheard. Have an oddly familiar college experience of taking girl to buy a pregnancy test, then talk about birth control options. Run to darajani kubwa “the big bridge.” Biggest lightning storm I've seen since Training! Eat dinner at Baba's house again.

Friday: Work at the clinic. Go to the big soko (vegetable market) and eat at my favorite chai place- beans, vitumbua, katumbali, AND chai. Hike to Rachel's house, “I walked in the rain, so now all your villagers think I'm crazy. Half of your villagers think I'm you.”-Kat “PERIOD TEA!”-Kat and Rachel “Listening to Beach House, drinking herbal tea, PLAYING SPEED!”-Kat “Its as FAT AS A BABY'S ARM!” “She's a PINCUSHION!” Watched New Girl (Rachel has access to electricity in her vill, she's fancy).

Saturday: Hike the mountain behind Rachel's house; follow some random trails that may or may not be for humans, find impressive feat of Tanzanian engineering, run away from Siafu (biting ants), stop following trails and bush whack our way up to the top, get attacked by the fire plant. Total time to reach the top: 2.5 hours. Eat lunch, enjoy the view, nap on top. “What's growling? I think its a lizard.”-Kat “Oh SHIT! Cows.”-Rachel How are we going to get down? Rachel finds a trail. Total time to get down: half hour. Make a chocolate cake with pili pili kali (hot pepper) added; I am a GENIUS! Start reading Cutting for Stone.

Sunday: Go to the health center to work on the Girl's Conference grant. Harass a praying mantis en route “I am zen, STOP PISSING ME OFF!”-Kat speaking for Praying Mantis. Write this blog, avoid working on grant.

Monday: hike back from sitemate Rachel's house. Work at clinic......

 

 

Its flacid, get it?

Some gems from Josh Swiller's The Unheard:

“You might be the greatest bush nurse ever, the kind of woman Mother Teresa looks up to, and still be raped by a platoon of children playing war. There are beauties like Alice and then at the clinic, the faces of angels are attached to bodies assembled from deflated balloons. Chickens and petty revenge and then moments when you can make diamond necklaces out of the stars.”

“Volunteers who go to South America come back politically active, volunteers who go to Southeast Asia return spiritually aware and curious, and volunteers who go to Africa?- They come back drunk and laughing.”