I don't know if I've ever mentioned the spaghetti (noodles, not the lovely pasta with marinara we have in the States) and beans combo. So, we enjoyed our first spaghetti dish with Mama Sisi/Sia (we finally figured out where her name comes from. Her daughter is Sia, so she goes by Mama Sia--Sia's mom--but when she cooks for us she likes to go by Mama Sisi--which means 'our mom') during orientation. Then a couple of days ago, Mama Ali made it for Mara and I. We look at it and I say, "I wish I had some Blue Band [butter/margarine stuff]. And maybe some Parmesan." We're eating it. It's really plain. So we mix the beans with the pasta. I mean, it's not the best thing we've ever had here. Then we get home after a really long and frustrating day. And we're nervous about having ugale (corn puddy stuff that is also not very pleasant but Tanzanians love it). We look in the dish. Spaghetti and beans. When I put it in on my plate, I honestly cannot even think about eating it. I look at Mara and say, "I don't think I can put this in my mouth without throwing up." Mara felt the same way. That's how bad it was. So now we joke about it. When we tell stories, people sometimes get confused and we often get the question, "What is a spaghetti bean?" because they think it's one type of food. No no. Our group now calls the entire meal a Spean.
I know everyone knows about Build-A-Bear. Well, Ramadan, Frank and Jarrod's little brother (about 1), was caught wearing these tiiiiiiny jean shorts the other day. They don't even cover his butt all the way. But at one point he turns around and we notice this hole in the back. It's for a bear tail. Rachel looks at it and says, "I worked at Build-a-Bear for a year and a half. Those are bear shorts." It was the funniest thing. We cracked up everytime we saw Ramadan the rest of the day. Poor kid. He had no idea.
Our bibi (grandmother) was in the hospital a few days ago. When Mara and I came back to the house in the evening, Mama Ali told us that bibi had to return to the hospital and get her eye removed. This was all said in pantomime of course, us not knowing Kiswahili. Please just imagine someone miming an eye being removed. Somehow we found out that bibi is diabetic and it has something to do with that. Not sure what, but it does. Mama Ali took us to see bibi in her room. She's lying in bed with half of her head wrapped. Really creepy. I don't think I'd ever want to get my eye removed in Tanzania. So the next day, bibi goes to the hospital in the morning. We see her sitting up, her head is wrapped and one eye is covered. We go out to teach and come back in the evening, around 5. Bibi is back and sitting up and seems pretty lively. Her head is wrapped still, but this time in cloth and not a bandage. Weird, considering she just got her eye taken out. We find out later that bibi didn't actually have her eye taken out. They just needed to clean it...
Yesterday we had the most ridiculous day teaching. It's really hard to put into words. We met at Rachel's house at 9 to meet up with a guy for a teaching at 10. He shows up at 9:30 and says he'll come back with a car to take us, since we are going far. An hour later, he returns. So we leave Rachel's at 10:30 when we were supposed to be teaching at 10. We get to Nangara Secondary School, way out of our boundary, and this guy Raymundi or so I hear his name is, sits us down on some steps and says to wait, people weren't expecting us to teach. WTF? He arranged it! Frank says, "I think the dissemination of information was poor." No kidding. So we sit for a while before R comes back for Frank, Jarrod, and Rachel (he has a weird obsession with her). He tells the rest of us we can't go anywhere and we should stay. Excuse me? I'm a teacher, too, sir. About 30 minutes later he returns for us. He's speed walking ahead, while Mara has a bad knee. Then he turns around and asks us if we are tired and that's why we are slow. Excuse me? No. We meet up with the others and Rachel says they didn't even do anything. They were just sitting in a random room... Ok. So we go to a class to teach. The kids are about 4 years younger than they were supposed to be so we have to change our entire lesson plan. So irritating. It was so choppy. Everyone was really frustrated with it. Mara and I were frustrated because this guy R kept ignoring us and then he started teaching our lesson at one point when Frank and Jarrod left to get rid of some kids hanging around outside. It's not his lesson! And of course BT isn't translating anything for us so we have no idea what's going on.
So we finish this lesson at 1 PM. Let me tell you that we were supposed to be teaching our second lesson at 1. R also told us he was going to provide us with lunch. We sat outside for an hour and half. No lunch. No teaching. At about 2:45, he returns with some mamas and our lunch. He sets up chairs and tables that are about 10 feet from each other. Apparently we aren't allowed to sit near each other. He has special places for Rachel. Mara moved a table and was moving her chair to it and R says, "No, Rachel here." I'm sorry, did Rachel move that table and chair there? No. Mara has a bad knee. She can sit where she likes. Then our lunch comes out. Four fried bananas. I hate any sort of weird banana dish and this one makes me want to vomit. I ate one half of one banana. I think we were all kind of slap happy at this point because Rachel, Mara, and I were just laughing so hard we started crying. Laughing is a sign of craziness in Tanzania, especially among girls. So we're crazy. Then Frank tells us that R says we need to hurry and teach a class because they are waiting on us. I'm sorry, R, you arranged both lunch and this teaching, so you shouldn't have scheduled them at the same time when we did nothing for an hour and a half.
We teach the second class, which was the age group we were supposed to teach. It went really smoothly and we were much happier with that. Then we walked a bit to meet up with the car. We were all super happy to get home, but we had been planning on making guacamole again that afternoon and we didn't have time since we got home about 3 hours after we were supposed to.
But the night would only get better...
Story to be continued after I return from our teaching at the mosque (I'm late...).
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