Today We Leave Our Homestays

Our last week in Babati went by so quickly. I can't even remember most of what we did. We had four days of teaching and Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were our community days. Our teaching was pretty normal. We went to our school on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. We tried to do our community teachings, but no one showed up to any of them. We actually had a lot more down time than expected.

The Ward Executive Officer for Maisaka B is named Ernest. He helped set up our community teachings. He's also very creepy. He's short and stout. He has really soft hands, which always creeps me out, especially when we're in Africa. Aren't you supposed to be doing some sort of physical work? Plus, he likes to hold my hand much longer than necessary. He doesn't do this with anyone else. He stares. All-around creep. I voiced my thoughts to Frank one day, who then decided to offer me to Ernest as his second wife. Last time I ever do that.

We also did some shopping this week. Got plenty of fabric to give away as gifts. Or keep for myself. Haven't quite decided yet. ;) I tried to get a dress fixed that I had made the first week. It was too big around the very top and around my stomach, but fit everywhere else. I told the tailor what I wanted and got the dress back a few days later. Still loose around the stomach, now too tight on my boobs. I can't even zip it up. Wonderful. So I didn't get anything else made. But we had a good time meeting up with other groups in town and buying fabrics and deciding what we were going to do with them.

Community days were long. We set up on a big field and had testing and volleyball and soccer tournaments. Each group taught for one hour if anyone had questions. We just hung out all day and answered questions and brought people to testing. Mara, Meg, Sana, Peery, and I were regulars at New First & Last Bar, where we ordered our favorite dish: chips mayai (a fry omelette). Don't you worry, I will be making those for everyone at home to try. We smother them in salt and ketchup and chili sauce. Delicious. On Sunday, Mara and I had to eat at home because our mama got offended that we weren't eating lunch. Boo. I got chips mayai anyway. Meg came for lunch that day and we had TONS of potatoes. She got to experience what Mara and I experience everyday. Then I went back to First & Last and got chips mayai.

We got about 300 people tested every day over the weekend. We almost beat the SIC record of 2400. We only needed about 100 more people and we were going to get that on Monday because we were going to test the prison. But then our counselors decided they didn't want to work, so we couldn't test the prison. This happens all the time. When my group did testing, our counselor just decided to stop working an hour before our testing day was over. Frustrating! Oh well. We still got tons of people tested and we are very satisfied with the work we did.

Monday we just did some packing. We cleaned up our room and gave our mama our empty water bottles and passed along some gifts. We had our last cassava night with everyone. Loads of fun. We had rice and beans--our favorite meal! We took pictures with our family and took pictures of the house. We tried to get our last chips mayai in the morning (mid-morning snack, see). Two hours later and still no chips mayai. So we left and went to lunch at our house. Then I went back later with Meg to eat some chips mayai. Best decision ever.

This morning we said goodbye to our family, to Frank and Jarrod's family. Then we have to run some errands and head to a meeting. Mara and I both got the Campus Development Coordinator positions at our respective schools for next year. This means we're in charge of getting SIC known on our campuses and recruiting people for next summer. Hopefully I am successful at this. I thought it would be a good thing to try. But we have a meeting before we leave on when to start recruiting people and such.

Then we head out for Arusha and closing dinner. A bunch of us are planning to get our legs waxed for Zanzibar. We're going to the Burger Stand for a last bite and then out to a Chinese restaurant for our closing dinner. It's sad that we're all going separate ways now. Some of us are leaving tomorrow morning for Zanzibar, so it's a quick goodbye. But it's been fun!

I'll update on the goings-on in Zanzibar when we get there. We're planning to get a bungalow on the beach for the first couple of nights while there are tons of people to split the cost. We are planning on snorkeling, visiting Stone Town, shopping for gifts, and more.