Straight from the Journal of Kristen Wallerius

As I sit at the Msinjilis kitchen table, drinking chai za maziwa (tea boiled in hot milk) with ginger root infusions, Dr. Msinjili and Mama D are preparing hot water for the washing machine so that we IF students can wash our clothes. Dr. Msinjili bought this machine in Russia while he studied there in the eighties. We will take turns washing our clothes in the first cycle of the machine, then we will scrub the clothes with our hands, then we will rinse them in buckets, and they will dry tomorrow morning on the clothes line outside. Hooray for clean underwear!

Yesterday we took our first trip into Arusha on the daladala (bus) from Monduli. We visited some shops, visited Ernest's recording company (a small shack tagged with rapper names and DJ names, and portraits of Che Guevara and Malcolm X). TGP Records (Truth Gives Power) raps about staying HIV free, about working toward a better life, about education, and about "the power of truth." We heard a recording of Ernest's group and it was pretty nifty. First time I really dug rap, aside from a few songs I've heard otherwise (even though this stuff was mostly rapped in Kiswahili).

We ate lunch at a cafe across from the Arusha International Conference Center and UN library. Delicious fresh tilapia from Lake Victoria, with rice. Afterwards, we visited the UN library and accessed the Itnernet for free!! Yay free things!

Jake decided to return to Monduli on the daladala in order to catch the evening's football game and to give an English lesson to our friend Reynalda. Emma and I stayed with Ernest to visit a lovely lake and a fresh spring, where we sat and watched monkeys play across the water, swinging between trees. This spring was for local drinking water, I assume. We counted eight locals carrying water buckets to and from the place. A young boy balanced a blue jug of fresh water on his head and teetered back p the path toward home. He was interested in our camera, so Emma snapped a photo of him and we showed it to him on the display screen ; he giggled and continued walking. We left the spot soon after taking some photos, only to find a dead cow along the path. The cow was foaming at the mouth - looked like its lips were entirely covered in shaving cream. Must have had rabies, and we were unsure whether the cow had been deliberately killed or whether it had just expired.

We walked back to a clearing where we found a market, and a daladala to take us back to the center of Arusha. Oh, the daladala. There's always room for one more. These refurbished, independently owned vans from places like China and India are meant to seat about eight passengers. Somehow, twenty one passengers rode with us back to Arusha in one such van, and this is the norm. This is public transportation in Tanzania, and the fee per person is approx 1000 shillings (1 dollar). We needed to fidn another daladala from Arsha to Monduli, but due to pushy customers, Emma, Ernest and I could not make it into the first three daladalas. So we were late for dinner, and I felt pretty terrible. It was ok though.

Anyhow, flash forward to sleep and the next morning. Today, Emma and I hiked up to somewhere near the peak of this mountain which Monduli is located at the bottom of. Along the way, we saw more giant locusts, beautiful painted beatles whose colors looked like they came off of the most colorful kanga, some butterflies, and the vast, vast steppe. We heard monkeys laughing in treetops. We really walked through some wild, overgrown brush - thorny brush - Im talking four feet high, and we can't see what's in front of us, of what is underneath our feet, or what is watching us from our sides. Totally wild and untamed. There were bees with black bodies and bright red stingers/abdomens. There were strange pulsating clicks coming from small animals or insects that we could not locate, but were surrounded by. There were all sorts of flying, hopping insects that sprung across our paths, always seeming to aim for our faces as we walked. A bug fell down Emma's pants and she pulled out a part of its body and some legs, but the rest undoubtedly remained lodged for later. When I took my shirt off later, four dead bugs poured out. We are scratched up our legs and arms, and we are still picking burrs off of our skin and clothing. Some burrs feel like shards of fiberglass stuck in my fingers. But we had an amazing day, and I wouldn't trade it.

In other news, after seeing goats slaughtered at the market, I'm considering becoming a vegetarian again. Oof. It's really tough to eat meat without thinking of terrible things...

But I am a big fan of the sugarcane which can be bought in its natural state, but hacked into twelve inch sticks by a machete. Emma and I bought some at the market today at 4pm, and we chewed it and sucked the sugary water out of it while we watched the Monduli soccer game. We played hand games with some of the young girls and we took photos of them and showed them the images afterwards. It was a great deal of fun. Sticky, dirty, sugary fingers, playing hand games. We felt like children again! Liberating, and just overall fun.

(September 28, 2006)