Claudia's Visit

Saturday I was at a boxing class – consisting of all sorts of exercises. Not being accustomed to doing much other than biking, I was very sore for a couple of days after. This isn’t exactly the kind of class that you would go to in the United States. In one of the rooms at the recreation center, a small concrete room which was permeated with the smell of sweat, a group of men do exercises with what equipment they have. One punching bag hangs in the center of the room and tires serve very well to help do sit-ups and a length of fabric wrapped around the knuckles are the gloves.

I wouldn’t have gone to this class except that Claudia was staying with us for the weekend. After she finished language school the week before, she went to work in Buhemba, a village that is about an hour from Musoma by public transportation: daladala (little busses – Toyota Hiaces that are loaded up with people) or pikipiki (motorcycle). While she was in Musoma, she went to these classes more often, now she is only here for the weekend. She had responded to my text inviting her to dinner with a request to borrow a bed. I think she was planning to just stay the one night, but she ended up staying all weekend.

Claudia loves talking with anyone and everyone that she sees. She only had a five-week course at the school, which wasn’t enough for her to perfect her Swahili. She’s from Switzerland and her accent is clear whenever she speaks Swahili in her “R,” too, but she doesn’t let that stop her. Biking out to the Peninsula, the same one I visited last year with Pineapple Fishstick and Daniel, with her was great – and a great opportunity to speak Swahili. We climbed on the rocks on the edge of Lake Victoria and found out that the fishermen use chicken as fish bait. We have a drink on the peninsula while it rains a bit, along with Jonathan, another mzungu who just got back from a trip home to England and would stay at our house for the night before returning to his school in the village (welcome to our hotel. Good thing we have three extra beds). This weekend reminded me of what I ought to be doing. Claudia seems to be constantly talking to random people and I wish I had someone to go do these random things with normally. No, my mom doesn’t count.