Habari za Siku Nyingi

Let me translate that for you: it means news from the last several days. Ok, literally it means news of many days, but that just doesn’t work in English. Last blog post, I was talking about school, and not much has changed since then. I’m still in the class with sisters Cinzia and Maria we seem to switch teachers every week, a good thing because some of them are more competent than others and it is good to have a variety of perspectives and accents for the various parts of the lesson (conversation, story, grammar and exercises). Outside of school, I haven’t been doing much. I go into town to buy food at the market, go to the Anglican at lunch and hang out at home at the compound.

Weekends are especially relaxing, reading in the sun or on the porch in the hammock even if the power is out, which it often is on the weekends – apparently Tanesko (sp?), the utility here, doesn’t run the generators because the demand is low. It makes it difficult to cook food if the sun isn’t out, though. We only have a couple of electric burners and a solar cooker right now but we are going to get a gas oven in Mwanza tomorrow, Saturday, so that will fix that problem. With the rainy season practically upon us, that is a relief because the solar cookers, which we had been relying on for food and tea on the weekends, will be considerably less useful if it’s raining. .

Speaking of the rainy season, we had an amazingly intense storm the other night. Evening was approaching and I looked out the window and the world was yellow. It was the strangest thing. Walking across the compound, my eyes adjusted to the strange coloration, but from inside, the contrast of the white walls inside as compared to the white walls outside (which were yellow) it was quite a trippy experience. Soon, though, it became obvious that the yellow sky was just a warning of the storm to come. Lightning lit the sky and thunder pounded the ears and the rain was loud on the roof. I was only worried about the bike ride to school the next day. My mom would not be going to school the next day, for the second day, but I would either be biking in the rain or on a muddy road. As it turned out, I had nothing to worry about: the sky was clear and bright the next day, and the road was astonishingly dry, only a few puddles betraying the storm of the previous night. I already need to be alert for loose patches and potholes in the road every day, so the puddles don’t even affect my morning bike ride. .

Why did my mother not accompany on that bike ride to school? She was staying home to recover from malaria. The illness is so common here that the two teachers who presently have it are still teaching. This being my mother’s first time to have malaria, though it was somewhat of a bigger deal for her. Taking everyone’s advice, she took two days away from school to fully recover in order to not simply go right back to being sick. She ate nothing but fruit during that time. Her symptoms were not too extreme, for malaria. Luckily she caught it early and started taking the medicine after the test told us she had 2 rings, a measure of the severity (the lower the number the better). One student at the school had just recovered from malaria 6, which is quite bad, but the more severe cases can be much higher than that. After her two days of rest, she was back up today, Friday, and our neighbor gave us a ride to school to aid in my mom’s recovery. I’m glad to report that she is feeling much better and is off her fruit diet and back to normal food. Hopefully she is completely recovered because we have an early morning tomorrow going to Mwanza for the day.