School and African-ness

Whew! Almost whole week of teaching, and we’re still alive! Yesterday we found out we have to move 8 tables a half a mile from the school to the church because we’re getting kicked out for two weeks. Form 2 testing, the equivalent to sophomores. What a joke. Jacob, a teacher here in Manow, is helping us a great deal and arranging for help from students on Saturday. He’s also driving 3-4 hours round trip to take Nancy on a motorcycle to return to the states. I’ve never seen such a loved person. The whole town loves her, they call out, “Mama Nancy!” When we walk around. We were in Tukuyu, two hours away from Manow where the school is and a girl says, “Hi Mama Nancy!” and Nancy didn’t even recognize her! But lucky for us we got a ride home because of it, saving 50,000 shillings!

So another Tanzania tidbit. I wake up to roosters every morning at 6:15am. They’re punctual. Sometimes in the afternoons the pigs go nutty and squeal. Those are next to our front lawn. We have chickens and baby chicks running around the perimeter of our house. They’re funny. We have a 500 gallon bucket on a 15 foot platform that keeps our water. Every night you think it’s raining but Nancy and I went on a wild goose hunt chase and found it to be water from the tank…overflowing! Funny how sometimes we have no indoor water and other times we have overflowing. We have buckets fortunately, that keep water in droughts or when our neighbor washes a lot of laundry.

I’m a bit terrified Nancy is leaving. Marty and I will do the program on our own. She knows so many people and quick with names. But it’s nice and relieving that there are people who will help us like Jacob and Joshua. Nancy has done so much for the community, her home really is in Tanzania and America. Ok goodnight, my tea is done. I’m learning to drink lots of tea and chapatti and mandazi! Mandazi is soo good!