Back in Musoma, little enough has changed since I left for Kilimanjaro, but I have a new appreciation of it. I feel comfortable in Musoma and it is a relaxing place to be. Now that I can actually communicate a bit in Swahili, everything around town has just gotten a bit more enjoyable.
In school, we continue our same lessons in the morning but now we also have a conversation after lunch with one of the teachers. For the first two weeks of “mazungumzo” (conversation) I talk with Stephano, a young teacher who tries to make up for his shortness by wearing very tall shoes. I feel good about my speaking and understanding abilities and we do virtually the whole conversation in Swahili, except when I occasionally ask how to say a word in Swahili. I’m sure that the speed that I speak, and that Stephano needs to speak so he is sure I can understand him, is painfully slow for him, but he’s patient and doesn’t let it show and I’m glad to be able to speak as well as I can after less than two months of classes.
At that point, the time goes very quickly. We’ve gotten into a routine, school during the week and relaxing and cooking during the weekends. The bread here is terrible. This dry white bread that is painful to eat. So we take advantage of the bread pans I found in Dar to bake some whole wheat bread to bring to school for lunch. My mom bakes a chocolate cake and I decorate it for Mak’s birthday. And life here is becoming more and more comfortable as we make up for the things that just don’t exist in the peoples’ lives here. They’ll never know what they were missing, but we do.
And suddenly we’re leaving next week.
