Today in Tanzania

Today in Tanzania, Carla and I are preparing to go back to Kibakwe after a bit of online time and some fruit and vegetable shopping at the soko(market). Angus has been kind enough to let us use the computers at the teacher's college for a short time this morning. I'd like to take this opportunity to refer all of you to Carla's blog www.carlaintanzania.blogspot.com if you don't already have it. I know, it's long overdue and I apologize for not linking it earlier. Carla is just so much better at documenting our daily activities than I am. For example, check out the past few days for the story of the five a.m. dance party in Kibakwe that we passed on our walk to the bus stand. I try to cover posting the pictures and Carla is very good at detailing the nuts and bolts of living here. Speaking of pictures, I have some new ones to post today. They show what we've been working on for the past couple of weeks at our house in Kibakwe. The young men in the pictures are our helpers Zawadi aka Zizo (the taller of the two) and Gilbert aka Man G. Within the first couple of weeks they started showing up asking us if we needed any help with cleaning or washing clothes or anything and so we decided to try it out for a while. So far, they've been great, helping out with whatever we need and just hanging out with us practicing their English and letting us practice our Kiswahili. You'll notice in one of the pictures that there's some freshly poorly laid tile in our bafu(shower). This is an example of how we're trying to make our house a home here in Tanzania. I've never laid tile before and my resources were limited - no tile adhesive, only cement, no bubble level, no grout, and no previous experience laying tile. This being said, I'm trying to make the bathroom a little more familiar. Word of advice: if you have any cuts on your hands do not mix cement without wearing gloves. I did this and the lime content of the cement aggravated my wounds so badly that I thought I had serious chemical burns. Everything is fine now and my sores are healing. I hope these pictures give everyone a little glimpse of how it is to be living large in the village. What we have is not a typical Tanzanian domicile.